Coopers Consulting Solutions Limited

A while ago now the UK mobile phone operator Orange announced that they would be starting to sell the iPhone (as soon as the UK exclusivity deal with Vodafone had ended).

As a business customer of Orange I registered my interest in having one. For the last 3 years I have been using a Blackberry 8800 on the Orange network. To be honest I have been very happy with it; it has been a useful tool to have with me on the road and out on client sites. So happy with it that I guess the only thing that would make me give up the BB is if I had chance to swap it for an iPhone.

Anyway a few weeks ago the telephone call came through from the Orange Business Customer Services team, and I duly jumped in and bagged a 32gig iPhone 3Gs. The upgrade deal being offered was exceptionally tempting (especially the all-inclusive data usage), and the 600 monthly minutes of inclusive talk time, and 200 texts, per month over an 18 month contract was no dearer than my current BB tariff.

And so a week later that magical white box arrived and thus started my journey into iPhone ownership.

I’ll admit that I was prepared for some degree of upheaval. The act of changing handsets is never easy, and switching from the BB to the iPhone did mean I was forced to re-evaluate my Contacts database before executing the synchronisation. This proved to be a bit of a cleansing moment, enabling me to break free from the many hundreds of accumulated numbers of people that I have not spoken to in years, of purging old saved numbers for people who have long since changed numbers.

However it would seem that that was the easy task….

Once I had my new phone updated with a (now) streamlined contacts database, the full reality of what I had done began to sink in.

First to hit home was the loss of my custom ring-tone.

I am happy to admit that I did not get into the big “ring tone download” scene that seemed to sweep the UK (and probably elsewhere) a few years ago. For a while (with my much older Nokia and Motorola Flip phones) I had simply hacked down an MP3 of a particular favourite Beastie Boys track and uploaded on the phone. It became my own ring tone (a sort of trade mark or signature tune) for my phone. And so I happily ported it between handsets, with it eventually ending up on the BB.

But now it was gone.

Second thing to hit home was getting to grips with the text-entry interface. I’m not sure who was ultimately responsible for the design, but I assume that they were a nimble-fingered person, whose digits were pointy and precise! I may be middle-aged, but my fingers have yet to descend into resembling some of Walls’ ™ finest! However I still found the entry of text to be painstaking! The margins between hitting the right “key” and the wrong one appear to be wafer thin.

The final home truth was the “single application running” (I’m sure there is a better turn of phrase for this).

Sure, its primary duty is a phone. And wow, the email facility does seem to run in the pseudo background. But the dawning reality of it all was, if I switched from my Twitter App to email or some other app, I would not get any further notification of new Tweets. Come on now Apple! Even my beloved BB was capable of supporting multiple processes running concurrently. The push email was superb, and the Twitter application would happily sit in the background and wink the little “red eye” when new tweets came in! Moving over to the iPhone was like moving from a polyphonic keyboard to a the Stylophone ™

Maybe they have all this technology and capability, but wish to drip feed it to the public, forcing regular upgrades, thus perpetuating the revenue streams….

Anyway, the deed is done. I have made my bed, jumped onto the iPhone bandwagon, and will have to lump-it-and-like it. I’m sure it will grow on me. But for now I will refrain from selling-on my old BB handset and hang onto it just in case of emergencies.

A dangerous thing the internet is…

Working in IT as i do (and as i have done for all of my working life) i have often leapt with open arms onto new technology. Often this took the form of buying into gadgetry, often at great expense, and often only for a short-lived buzz of excitement… Who remembers the Iomega Zip Drive? Or the Creative DAP Digital Music Player, or even the Philips Pronto (or Marantz RC7000) all-in-one programmable remote control? I do…I did buy these things (more or less as they came out)…I did use these things, even when they were not quite fit for purpose (the Iomega was restricted to its proprietry media cartridge system, the DAP had a mere 6gig of storage, and the Pronto was ludicrously difficult to program)…

Other times i have been slow to adopt (or conform as many of the younger generatation would see it). Having burnt my fingers on the Creative DAP, i studiously avoided joining the iPod generation until they brought out a unit with (what i considered to be) a sensible amount of storage. When they did bring out such  version i had no further cause to delay (i am the proud owner of a 160gig iPod and have it chock-full of music – no photo’s just music).

Anyway, this brings me to the general gist of today’s rambling… Web 2.0… Specifically the cult of revealing ones life – full story and pics – to the general masses of the internet public.

I’m happy to say that, until very very recently, my only foray into this culture was by way of “Friends Reunited”. I have (and am proud to admit it) avoided the need to do “Myspace” or “Facebook” or (heaven forbid!) “Tweet”. I work all day with IT – mainly designing, writing and testing code in a variety of languages, and cannot think of any event during my working day that would warrant any form of continuous updating of my life to the general public. Who in their right mind would be interested in it anyway (other than my pay masters – and i suspect that if they saw a continuous stream of twitterings or other nonsense during the working day then they’d be inclined to worry about my delivery deadlines rather than how my day has gone).

However it would appear that the rest of the world moves on, and these things are ‘in’ and popular, and people now regard me as being eccentric for not joining in with the general “2.0″ fun…Even my family appear to be heading down this slippery slope. I know for a fact that both my Wife and Son are “face-booked” (my term, i’m sure there is a proper term but just humour me please:) ). Beyond my immediate family i am aware that others within the blood-line are busy filling their days with all this stuff.

Am I worried? No. In fact i’m reasonably happy to let this sort of thing slide by – i have other things to do with my life. However as a token gesture to it all i have succumed to blogging. The Coopers Consulting Solutions site is back in action (having spent the last 2 years as a static page) and i have a large collection of notes and other information that will eventually get back-ported onto here.

And i’m not just talking about blogging as a business tool either. I have also finally gotten round to setting up our home website with Word Press, and configured personal blogs for both Wife and Son, to do with as they please. I too may well join in the fun, although i’m more inclined to play the voice of the Rabbits, Cats or even the Chickens that we own, than actually convey any information about my own life.

So you see my problem?

On the one hand, i refuse to join the Web 2.0 generation fully and properly, and use the frequent line of “I don’t have the time to indulge”… and on the other hand here i am blogging away on a Saturday evening (whilst waiting for the WP set-up scripts for the family blogs to complete in the background).

Anyway, enough of this guff. Normal service will be resumed in due course, and the content of articles published here will revert back to business.

Thank you for your attention – no go away and get a life