No, not my new gadget, although I have to say that it’s pretty amazing. The iPhone is the closest thing to the “tablet PC” type of newsreader device that science fiction author Arthur C Clarke (who, remarkably, is still alive and kicking at age 90) had in his novel “2001″- written back in the late 60s… well before the internet, or notebook computers, or web browsers.

Anyway, what’s so awesome that it’s got me drooling?

Alternate Reality Games.

For those who haven’t heard of these, well, here’s a terrific article that you can read to see what they’re all about. In a nutshell, they’re games that someone creates- typically to market something, most frequently a movie- that involve hidden clues, internet sites, and amazingly creative ways to get fans involved into the game.

A guy at work has a buddy who is a comic book nerd. (Sorry, no other way to put it.) CBN, as we’ll call him, is in the midst of an ARG that’s going on to promote the upcoming Batman movie.

Basically… CBN heard about this game. He went to a website, eventually got directions to go to a bakery in Columbia City (which is a neighborhood here in Seattle) and say his name was Robin Banks (robbin’ banks, haha). He goes over there, says he’s picking up a cake for Robin Banks. It’s decorated with writing in the frosting that says he should call a phone number. He calls it, with no luck. Then he tries calling the number when he happens to be next to the cake. He hears muffled ringing. There’s a cellphone inside the cake!

One thing leads to another and basically, CBN is now a member of the Joker’s crew. There’s more going on in the game and of course everyone who is a big fanboy is wildly jealous of CBN and the few dozen other people around the USA who were lucky enough to be the first people to get to the location and ask for the cakes (there was only one in each city).

I haven’t heard what comes next in that ARG, but he’s got the cell phone and of course everyone he knows thinks it’s the coolest thing ever… and of course when they tell the story, they mention that it’s about the upcoming Batman movie, and that gets them talking about the last one and whether they liked it and when the new one is coming out…

So you get the point- the ARG winds up promoting the new movie big-time.

The article I linked to above is an interesting ARG, because it didn’t come out of a marketing budget; Trent Reznor (the guy who basically *is* the rock group Nine Inch Nails) paid for it out of his own budget. But it was such a cool game, and the NIN fans are pretty rabid, so it wound up serving as a marketing tool in a big way.

The guys who create these games are geniuses. I’d LOVE to get into this kind of work- I’m just stupid and devious enough to come up with crazy-ass stuff like they do. Or so I’d like to think- maybe I wouldn’t be creative enough. Still, doesn’t it sound like fun? They stick stuff into the “game” in weird ways. One of the better bits was this (from that Wired story):

A few days later, on February 14, a woman named Sue was about to wash a different T-shirt, which she had bought at one of the Lisbon shows, when she noticed that the tour dates included several boldface digits. Fans quickly interpreted this as a Los Angeles telephone number. People who called it heard a recording of a newscaster announcing, “Presidential address: America is born again,” followed by a distorted snippet of what could only be a new Nine Inch Nails song. Then, a woman named Ana reported finding a USB flash drive in a bathroom stall at the hall where the band had been playing. On the drive was a previously unreleased song, which she promptly uploaded. The metadata tag on the song contained a clue that led to a site displaying a glowing wheat field, with the legend “America Is Born Again.” Clicking and dragging the mouse across the screen, however, revealed a much grimmer-looking site labeled “Another Version of the Truth.” Clicking on that led to a forum about acts of underground resistance.

…

(later in the story) Fans in Europe were so eager to find new flash drives that they ran for the toilets the moment the concert venue doors opened. On February 18, at the Sala Razzmatazz in Barcelona, someone scored. The drive contained an MP3 file of a new Nine Inch Nails song that trailed off into the sound of crickets.

But when the cricket sounds were run through a spectrograph, they yielded a series of blips that gradually resolved into a phone number in Cleveland, Ohio. People who dialed this number (and some 1.7 million did) heard a horrific recording from a mysterious organization called US Wiretap: a young woman on her cell phone at an underground nightclub, with shrieking and gunshots in the background, screaming hysterically that someone had come into the club and killed her friend and that the cops had locked everybody inside and she was going to die.

Coooooool. But here’s the thing- some other nerd out there had to be interested enough in the game to say to him/herself “I wonder what would happen if I ran the crickets sound into a spectrograph?” and then have the facilities to do it.

Of course, the folks running the game could also “drop” a little hint here or there. Which then makes you wonder just how many people who’re in the game are actually fans playing along, and how often the game designers make something too hard and have to pretend to be a fellow player with a great idea about how to, say, decode the sound of crickets into a telephone number.

Which then brings up the question- if the designers are always having to play along, aren’t they simply manipulating people with the game into actually doing their marketing for them? Is that kosher, if they are?

I don’t know about the moral implications, if any, about that kind of “marketing”. I just know it sounds like a heck of a lot of fun- both to play along, and to be a designer of that kind of game.

Of course, the rate things change in the world today, by the time I can retire this kind of thing will be long gone.

One of the things that they pitch when they’re marketing the iPhone is that it’s supposedly got a full-version browser, Safari. Thing is… it doesn’t.

The reason is that Safari, on the iPhone, identifies itself as a mobile version to the server when you go to a web page. This is normally a good thing, since you generally want the server to give you a modified version of the page if possible- modified to take up less bandwidth and display in a smaller, simpler version that’s suitable for viewing on a mobile device.

Problem is that because of this, I can’t use my online banking from Bank of America. Ironically, BoA is listed on Apple’s web site as having an Apple approved “Web App” for the iPhone… but it doesn’t work for my state (Washington). Booo!

I haven’t messed around with it enough to tell yet if there’s a workaround for this or not. I hope so, or I hope that BoA gets their act together and extends their mobile banking server to Washington state soon. (Normally, with all the tech jobs, we get that kind of thing relatively early, so there’s hope.)

So I’m digging my iPhone, except for a few things. Both are kind of surprising in that they’re poor design, which is typically something that Apple just doesn’t do- their products are usually quite well-designed.

First, and foremost is what’s run down in this article. Specifically, the output for the iPod portion of the device. There’s no stereo Bluetooth support. Granted, not a lot of people bother using Bluetooth headphones; they gobble batteries (compared with plain old headphones or earbuds) themselves and run your battery down on your music player as well (since it’s got to send the radio signal out).

But when it comes to hooking your iPod into your car, having Bluetooth for the iPod (not just the phone portion of the device) would be really slick instead of having to deal with cables.

Another thing that’s weird is that the iPod headphone jack is deeply recessed into the case. My headphones wouldn’t plug into the damn thing. This might seem like a small matter- just shop around until finding a pair of headphones that DO fit- but it’s pretty annoying and it’s the kind of thing that should NOT slip through the cracks. I mean, how much more basic can it get than plugging your headphones into your music player?

Googling “iPhone headset jack” pops up a number of pages and posts dedicated to slagging on Apple (”calculated move toward world domination“) for this dumbass design decision.

Now, the decision was deliberate. It’s still stupid. They could have done a little better job and made it so that most headphones would have worked. But, as the last link the previous paragraph states, it might have been a brilliant move by Apple to get just a little bit more marketing going for their products.

I hate that level of manipulation by manufacturers. Of course, Apple is a master at it; it’s one of the things that makes their carping over Microsoft’s much more ham-fisted manipulation amusing. (I sometimes used to think that Apple was just wildly jealous that despite the fact that they were so much BETTER at jerking around consumers than Microsoft, MS still dominated a lot more markets. It would suck when someone who’s a lot worse than you at something still kicks your ass a lot of the time.)

Yet another thing that bugs me is the iPhone’s menu system when it comes to turning on/off the Bluetooth support. It’s about three or four menu choices in. Now, I know that a lot of people that use those crazy little Star-Trek-looking earpieces just turn them on at the start of the day and keep them on all day, but I bet there’s a lot of people like me. I only use my Bluetooth wireless headset when I’m in the car, so I want to be able to jump in, grab the headset, and click a button or two max to turn the phone to use Bluetooth.

I could leave Bluetooth on all the time on the phone, but that eats through the batteries more quickly, because it’s always broadcasting a little signal and trying to set up a pairing.

But with the iPhone, you have to click on “settings”, then “general”, then “bluetooth”, then finally click on (well, tap on the screen with your finger) the bluetooth button to turn it on. Too many clicks! There should be a bluetooth button on the main screen, then turn it on/off, pow, just like that.

Now, all of this is small potatoes compared with the overall phone, which rules. And I’m just starting to mess around a bit with the iPod functionality of the thing, but not having headphones slows that down. (Shopping trip this weekend!) Overall, the thing is awesome- pretty amazing to think about considering this is essentially version 1.0 of the iPhone. (I shudder to think of how awesomely awesome it’ll be by the 4th or 5th generation.)

But they’re weird little things… almost as though they didn’t quite have enough time to refine the phone. I’ll be poking around later to see if I can provide some input to Apple for future versions, though I’m sure this is all stuff they’ve heard before.

My recommendation is still “cool, get it unless you do a lot of data use, in which case you should strongly consider waiting for the 3G version to come out later this year”.

Okay, you probably don’t need to ask.

I had been planning on getting an iPhone… just not yet. I wanted to wait until Apple came out with version 2.0 later this year; the newer version is supposed to have 3G connectivity built in, which of course rules because the standard data rates in the EDGE are considerably slower than what 3G offers.

AT&T claims… “The AT&T EDGE network is available in more than 13,000 cities and towns and in areas along 40,000 miles of highways. It provides average data speeds between 75-135Kbps.”

Blech. The form of 3G that AT&T uses can do speeds of at least 1.4 mpbs, which is considerably faster than EDGE.

What’s held them back from doing this with the iPhone initially was battery life- when people use the 3G data functions, they blow through their battery and the phone would go dead a lot sooner. Unacceptable! So they went with EDGE.

Anyway, there was an iPhone in my pile of gifts, and my girlfriend talked me into keeping it instead of waiting. Her theory was a good one, and pretty simple. She’s got some time left- maybe a year, a bit less- on her current cellular plan. When it runs out, she’s free to go wherever she wants. Meanwhile, I bail on mine (I’m free to leave) and use the iPhone.

When they come out with a new one, she gets my old one and I get the new one. Everyone wins (since she isn’t a geeky gadgethead like me, she doesn’t care about the slower speed.)

This was a convincing argument.

I’ve been messing around with it, as you can imagine, and it’s pretty cool. They say one of the biggest tricks with this device is to set it up for EVERY Wi-Fi network you might be around, so that way if/when you use data services the phone will automatically use the Wi-Fi instead of the AT&T data service. Instantly you get mondo speeds. Sounds good to me!

One thing is for sure- the setup was incredibly easy. I hadn’t loaded iTunes back onto my machine since the big cleanup, so I did that. Plugged the phone in. It was recognized almost instantly and then iTunes went into the setup process. Just a few clicks through- did I want to transfer my old number to the new phone, etc- and I was up and running.

About the only criticism I’d have of it is that they don’t make it very clear that if you select “yes” to transferring your number over from a previous cellular company that you’re liable to get HOSED with fees by the old company. Of course, it’s not in AT&T/Apple’s interest to TELL you that; they prefer that you not have any hesitation about switching over, even if you have to pay an early termination fee to the previous carrier. I imagine there’s some people out there who are pretty upset about this.

Another thing I’ve noticed, in doing some reading beforehand, is that AT&T will let you out of your current contract if you’re using a different model phone. This makes sense, really, because they’re going to clobber almost everyone with the higher monthly bill of the iPhone.

Anyway, beyond that it’s one slick device. The Google Maps function alone is pretty awesome; since you can turn on current traffic conditions, it essentially takes the place of the various traffic information devices that display current traffic conditions. Most of them cost at least 4 bucks a month, with some running as much as 10 or 12 dollars a month; with the iPhone displaying a Google Map of the greater Seattle area, it’s free. Well, not FREE, since you have to have the iPhone and pay AT&T their coin, but you know what I mean; it’s included in the service, wheras if you only had a different phone it’d cost you more.

Obviously I’ll be messing around a LOT more with my new toy. Hopefully I can fill you in later with info.