Use kwiry to Avoid Fees for Checking Bags

First of all, apologies for not posting in so long, has been quite a busy time here at kwiry, lot’s of exciting news to come!

Now, to explain that cryptic title….Our latest It’s On Us Promotion winner is Ross D. from San Francisco, CA.  Ross and his girlfriend Abby R. were on vacation in Vermont and browsing in a bookstore when they came across Crafty Mama by Abby Pecoriello (different Abby).  They thought the book would be perfect for a friend of theirs who is expecting.  Normally, they would have just bought the book, but owing to the recently imposed fees by the airlines for checking even 1 piece of luggage, they had no room in their carry-ons.  So they used kwiry to save the day and sent a quick kwiry to make sure to remember to buy it online later. Instead of just saving the $15 or $20 checked bag fee, though, they got the book for free thanks to the kwiry promotion!

Here’s some more info about the book, which once again harkens back to our parenting meme…

“Abby Pecoriello launched the first-ever crafting club for new moms during her maternity leave. The concept proved to be such a hit that in the two and a half years since, she’s led hundreds of sold-out Crafty Mamas classes throughout New York City. Now, in this spirited, witty book, she provides the how-to for women to form their own Crafty Mamas groups, from learning the best ways to reach out to other new moms in the area, to the nuts-and-bolts of running the group: setting a budget, buying tools and supplies, choosing a venue, and more. Then come the projects—50 hip, no-sew craft ideas that are inexpensive and easy to make, and will delight moms and babies alike: “Light the Night” nightlight, No-Sew Swanky Blankies, The Poncherello, Photo Au Go Go Bracelets, Hip Purses, Insta-Bibs, Peek-a-Books, Photo Bragnets. Includes simple tutorials on using a glue gun, editing digital photos, how to decoupage, jewelry basics, and more.” (Product description from Amazon)

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John Adams, HBO & family ties

Our latest It’s on Us Promotion winner is Allan N. of Dallas, GA.  Allan used kwiry to remember to buy David McCullough’s acclaimed biography of John Adams.   Allan had multiple reasons for wanting to check out this book - fascinated by the founding history of the United States, he watched the recent miniseries about John Adams on HBO.  Additionally, per Allan, “John Adams shows up in my family history”.  Sounds like a great set of reasons to me!  Now he’s the proud owner of the book, courtesy of kwiry, so he can be even more of an expert.

The Amazon review of the book includes the following snippet:

Overshadowed by the lustrous presidents Washington and Jefferson, who bracketed his tenure in office, Adams emerges from McCullough’s brilliant biography as a truly heroic figure–not only for his significant role in the American Revolution but also for maintaining his personal integrity in its strife-filled aftermath. McCullough spends much of his narrative examining the troubled friendship between Adams and Jefferson, who had in common a love for books and ideas but differed on almost every other imaginable point. Reading his pages, it is easy to imagine the two as alter egos. (Strangely, both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.) But McCullough also considers Adams in his own light, and the portrait that emerges is altogether fascinating. –Gregory McNamee

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How to Pick a Peach

Huh? This is the title of the book, won by Tracie J of Ann Arbor, MI in our latest It’s on Us Promotion. Tracie was listening to “The Splendid Table” on NPR when she heard them talking about the book.

Tracie says, “The author was talking about what foods shouldn’t be refrigerated when they aren’t ripe, and he ran down a long list of stuff, and I thought, “I’ll never remember all this…let me just Kwiry the book so I can buy it later!”

So she did just that and texted it to kwiry and now she’s our latest winner. The full title is “How to Pick a Peach, The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table”.  The Publisher’s weekly review (from Amazon) states succinctly (and enticingly),

“Equal parts cookbook, agricultural history, chemistry lesson and produce buying guide, this densely packed book is a food-lover’s delight.”

The frequent kwiry blog reader will notice that this story sounds familiar…..in two ways:

1. Ralph C, our winner in week 4, was listening to NPR when he was inspired to kwiry.

2. John C, the week 9 winner, also won a cookbook/food related book inspired while watching a food-related show on TV. “The Whole Beast” book is perhaps the Yang to “How to Pick A Peach’s” Yin.

I don’t know about you guys, but these winning kwirys are giving me lots of ideas for books, movies and music….

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My iPhone experience

So, would have written this sooner, but was too busy playing with my iPhone…. Just kidding, kinda.

Started waiting in line for the iPhone at the Apple Store in San Francisco’s Marina district on Friday morning at about 6:15 AM.  Was a fun and interesting experience.

First, let me say that Apple really knows how to make customers and events like this feel special, other retailers please take notes:

• [free] Starbucks coffee and pastries for everyone in line
• [free] Smartwater for everyone in line
• Camera crews filming the event and getting everyone hyped up
• Employees on hand to answer questions and pass out necessary info so everyone was ready to go.
• General festive and appreciative atmosphere.

Funny post by GeekSugar about the different types who wait in line.

Lot’s of interesting 3rd party companies promoting their apps or acessories in line too. Some that stood out:

• Invisible Shield case - they had a “bulky case” mascot and had texting games to win a free Invisible Shield case.  I did by texting “How cool am I without a bulky case?” to kwiry with my left hand the fastest amongst a group of folks. (you could send to anyone). For anyone that wants a discount code, use 3GLAUNCH. Still debating whether to use this in addition to or instead of the Incase that I bought. Any thoughts?
• Square Trade - 3rd party warranty - interesting idea, debating it, but key drawback to full coverage (includes accidents & loss) is that it doesn’t cover replacment cost, only purchase cost (subsidized by At&t), so still pretty expensive to replace….Anybody have feedback on SquareTrade?

So a 3.5 hour wait to get into the store didn’t seem long or annoying somehow but fun and exciting.  The  experience in the store was great too:

• Tons of employees activating (maybe 30 at a time)
• Clear process and no lines (line stayed outside)
• Friendly and knowledgeable staff (as usual at Apple stores)
• Interesting difference I noticed about Apple activation vs. pics I saw of At&t stores and past experience at wireless store is that the employees used laptops and stood next to you vs. at At&t where they stood behind a counter and you couldn’t see anything…..

And then came the iBrick…. I’m sure you’ve all heard about or experienced the activation issues Apple was having on Friday.  Basically, the iTunes activation server got overloaded which meant that most people couldn’t complet the activation in-store.  For me, it meant that my old phone, a Verizon Blackberry 8830, was deactivated and my iPhone wasn’t working. So that left me with no phone, no voice mail, SMS, etc…..  I would have expected myself to be furious.  It turns out that the whole Apple experience was so good otherwise that I didn’t mind all that much. I went to the office and tried every once in a while (ok, repeatedly) to connect to the iTunes server and got it to work after a couple of hours.

Finally, the iPhone worked! Then it was time to learn all the new tricks on how to use it, explore, etc. So far, here are my conclusions:

Pros:

• Amazing interface to browse lists like e-mails or things like pictures, the whole “flicking” motion is pretty awesome
• Some great third party apps, some that come to mind are Facebook, Google, Apple’s Remote, Yelp, NYTimes and Pandora.  My favorite pointless app is RotaryDialer, which is exactly what it sounds like….
• GPS is a welcome addition and can be used by 3rd party apps in addition to built-in Google Maps, photos, etc.
• Photos - my first phone with a camera, believe it or not.  Here’s my first photo kwiry. While resolution is not great, cool to have something! And integrates well into native and 3rd party apps.
• HTML email! - wow, this is a bigger deal than I thought, enables me to process my email so much more quickly and easily than looking at HTML code on a blackberry…..
• Web browsing - definitely better than anything else I’ve tried, but note the cons below…..
• Screen resolution for viewing anything!
• Gestures - very cool, zoom in/out, etc.
• Physical switch on phone to turn off ringer/sound alerts, this is very useful.

Cons:

• Battery life - as others have mentioned, battery life is defintiely dissapointing so far. Lots of info including this post by Gizmodo on how to conserve battery life, but these are measures I expect to take when my battery is on its last legs, not the first week I own a phone?  Good news is that the ipod dock/chargers are appearing on planes and elsewhere and the portable charger is tiny, but still this is not promising….
• 3G &Wifi speeds - still doesn’t seem very fast.  Compared to Edge certainly better, but still seems so slow compared to broadband…..  Assume this is processing power (at least for wifi)
• Poor 3G coverage - I discounted these criticisms before I bought the phone thinking that it was largely a metro area vs. rural area thing, but even in San Francisco, 3G coverage has been very spotty
• Keyboard is definitely hard to get used-to - we’ll see how this changes over time, but so far, it’s been tough to master. Just learned the art of rejecting suggested word completions….
• No search for email? or for the device in general? This one was mind boggling and right up there with no copy/paste.
• No push email for GMAIL
• No calendar synch/contacts synch except through MobileMe or Exchange (Gmail has calendar synch option for blackberry)
• Slow to load applications/switch applications - this was another surprising one.
• Bluetooth - switch for bluetooth on/off (along with wifi & 3G) is buried deep in menus.

Overall: Even with all of those flaws, I am an iPhone fanboy and definitely glad I bought one.  That said, I can now reaffirm that kwiry is still a welcome and necessary tool even with the best web-browsing device out there.  This is for all the same reasons I mentioned here.  Interested to hear what others think of the iPhone in the comments!

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iPhone Fever

With the new 3G iPhone coming out tomorrow, people are lining up all over the world. From the man in New Zealand who plans to be the first person in the world to get one (thank you international date line) to the folks in New York city who lined up a week early.

Almost the whole team at kwiry plans to get the new iPhone, we all waited for this new 3G model.  I’m the only crazy one that plans to wait in line tomorrow morning though, we’ll see how that goes….

Interesting set of reviews came out yesterday from folks like Walt Mossberg at the WSJ and David Pogue at the NYTimes.  Their reviews were relatively lukewarm. Both have gushed about the first iPhone. Their major complaints about the new phone include:

• Batter life is shorter with new 3G data network
• At&t’s 3G network footprint is limited in some parts of the country
• The pricing for the plans is much higher, negating the lower upfront cost of the device.

While all of these are valid points, I think they’re missing the forest for the trees here.  When stating the benefits, they gloss over the amazing improvements:

• 3G data speeds transform the browsing/applications from an “eh” experience to something usable.
• True GPS is transformative, creating an opportunity for applications to leverage location in ways never before possible.
• Increased storage (up to 16GB) is essential to accomodate an individual’s desire for new applications, photos, videos and music.

I certainly agree with Walt that the new pricing plan is a signficant increase, but the old plan was a bargain compared to smartphone plans on other carriers.  I think what happened here is that the 1 month lag between Apple’s announcment and the actual release made people become used to/complacent about the new features so that they don’t seem as exciting as they did when they were announced.  In reality, they’re pretty revolutionary, I think and I’m certainly excited to start using mine tomorrow!

What do you think? Add a comment on if the 3G iPhone is truly “new” or not that much better than the first one.

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Special Forces

Our latest It’s On Us promotion winner, Brent M from Provo, UT recently finished reading “Lone Survivor”, “a book about Marcus Luttrell and his experience as a Navy SEAL and the only survivor of his four-man team in Afghanistan.”  He mentioned it to a friend who happened to be a former Special Forces A Team member.

The friend recommended “Roughneck Nine-One” by Frank Antenori.  The friend misremembered the name slightly, so Brent kwiry’d “Rougneck Nine-Three-One“, but luckily the search results still returned the right book and even more luckily for Brent, he won and got it free from kwiry!

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Text messaging inflation

There’s lots of talk these days about inflation. Prices for gas, food, etc. all going up…. What about text messaging/SMS?  Since AT&T announced the iPhone pricing plans last week, lots of folks have weighed in about the price of a text message.  All US wireless carriers have steadily increased the price per message as a way to increase their best source of “data” revenues and to push consumers to sign up for montly packages of text messages which brings them more recurring revenue and increases ARPU. Text messages now cost as much as $.15 or $.20 per message.

Techcrunch wrote a post estimating the charge per Megabyte for an SMS from At&t being $1,310. While the calculation might not be exactly correct, it is certainly the case that the cost per transmission of data is much more expensive than other mobile data services, e.g. the iPhone’s $20 for unlimited data plan (e-mail & web). Textually.org reports that “Nigel Bannister, a space scientist at the University of Leicester in Britain, has concluded that sending a text message costs at least four times as much as transmitting scientific data from the Hubble telescope.”

There has definitely been some uproar from wireless customers.  A class-action suit was even filed. Others have used the price increases as a way out of contract commitments to their wireless carrier.

Even more ironic is that the technology SMS uses is the voice part of the wireless network, not the data network.  So wireless carriers use the price increases and revenues from SMS to justify to Wall St. their massive investment in their data networks, even though the two are unrelated.

I certainly have no issue with carriers charging what the market will bear for services, but when they’re effectively state granted oligopolies seemingly colluding to increase prices and actively blocking free/low-priced alternatives, one loses some sympathy.  As customers purchase more smartphones, carriers will face more questions like these:

• I can send unlimited email and use the web for $20 unlimited data but a 160 character text message costs me an additional $.20 or monthly package?
• I can download a full song for $.99 or less but a 10 second clip for a ringtone of the same song costs me $2.99?

Hopefully text messaging prices will normalize and/or start to be included in broader data packages.  In the meantime, let’s hope people like Paige Horne (a 15-year-old from Ohio, who averages about 15,000 texts a month), subscribe to a monthly text messaging package/plan.

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Look, Ma - no hands! California goes hands free

Starting today, it is now against the law in California to talk on your cell phone while driving, unlesss you use a hands free device.   California joins New York and other states who enforce this rule.  Additionally, 16 and 17 year olds can’t talk on a phone at all or text, etc. while driving (how will they enforce that one?)

Most people agree that cell phones present a major distraction and safety problem in cars. We’ve all had a phone call, text message or e-mail distract us in the car.  Self-discipline is important here, but regulations can certainly help. As to whether hands-free devices are a significant improvement, that’s also unclear.  It seems that dialing, texting, reading, etc. are the biggest problems, not holding the handset to one’s ear, but all of those are tough to monitor. Voice dialing is still not perfect and not available on some handsets (like the iPhone).

Some feel strongly that this legislation is stupid. I tend to agree that a $20 fine is not a significant penalty when the gas and parking for almost any drive in CA cost much more.  I do think it’s good that this issue is being addressed.  I also think that headsets - both wired and bluetooth leave much to be desired - I’ve purchased and stopped using at least 3-4 bluetooth headsets.  I’ll have to figure out something by tomorrow though!  Headsets.com is trying to help by offering a free headset to anyone who gets a citation.

Anyway, at kwiry we definitely discourage texting while driving, which is why we offer our Jott integration so you can speak your kwirys when it’s not convenient or safe to text.

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Friends recommending movies

A scenario we all can identify with, right? Jason A. of Rodeo, CA was out with friends when one of them recommended a movie, Black Book. He used kwiry to text it in and had a link waiting when he got to work in the morning. Lucky for Jason, he won the It’s On Us Promotion and kwiry sent him a free copy.

Here’s a quick description of the movie from Amazon, seems interesting, maybe Jason can comment and let us know how it is:

In the darkest days of World War II Jewish fugitives attempt to escape occupied Holland only to face a Nazi ambush. Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) alone survives the attack and joins the Dutch Resistance to avenge her family. She soon confronts the ultimate test: she must infiltrate German headquarters by tempting Captain Ludwig Mntze (Sebastian Hoch). In the heat of passion he uncovers her duplicity…but keeps her secret. Then Rachel’s espionage reveals that a murderous traitor lurks within Resistance ranks. Unable to fully trust anyone Rachel navigates a minefield of deception and becomes an enemy to both sides. Epic passionate breathtaking Black Book relates an untold story of World War II where the distinctions between good and evil become blurred by the complexities of human nature.

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A podcast, D&D and the Civil War

What do podcasting, Dungeons & Dragons and the Civil War have to do with each other?

Our latest It’s On Us Promotion winner, Chris L. of San Francisco, CA was listenting to a Dungeons & Dragons podcast when he heard the Killer Angels book by Michael Shaara mentioned as a source of refernce material.     Chris texted it to kwiry and alas, won our weekly promotion.

Killer Angels is a historical novel about the Civil War. Michael Shaara won a pulitzer prize for this book. He wrote many others with the Civil War as a theme and a famous baseball novel, For the Love of the Game that was published after his death.

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