No option: I’m replacing my car’s navigation system with a tablet

imageI was all excited to get a new car with an in-dash system (it happens to have GMC’s Intellilink system which is one of those touch screen all-in-one systems).  When you see it you’d figure that it’s a tablet in a dashboard that’s been fine tuned for a car, right? Yeah it sucks. And I don’t think it’s an exclusive issue. When ranting to friends they all tell me how much their dash systems suck to varying degrees. Let me give you a few issues. First off, the touchscreen itself sucks and as far as I can tell it’s actually a resistive display – yeah really. It requires pressure to react and a touch alone isn’t recognized. The navigation system is horrid as you sit there typing in letter by letter and they have separate boxes for the street name, number, city, etc. It doesn’t need to be that hard and take that long to perform a basic task. And Intellilink does this awesome thing that the navigation ‘app’ is separate than the destination app so if you’re in navigation and want to stop it (you know, because it gave you shitty directions so you started using your phone) you have to go home and then into the ‘’destination’ apps to turn off commands. So long as you pay for XM you get real time traffic however it doesn’t seem like the system takes that into account when routing as the routing is always the same (and yes, traffic is a separate ‘app’). All it does is give you a warning that you’re approaching a traffic jam. Want to get the weather? Yeah better keep a subscription going for that too. And I have to pay for music too. I see.  Add to this that the whole thing has a poor UI that involves way too much pecking around to safely do when driving .

Read more

Nothing is more annoying than the incoming email notification on a WP while you’re on a call

There’s no effing way that Ballmer and Elop are using a Windows Phone to take calls. Seriously, you can’t be on a damn phone call when an email comes in because the notification will give you the shakes. It’s a series of three beeps but the last one is about ten times louder than the … Read more

AT&T Promoting Apathy At The Workplace

There is no doubt that smart phones have greatly aided us to be more efficient at our jobs. No one knows this more than me. I use my AT&T iPhone 5 daily to conference with my International clients and respond to emails in the evening hours because of the time difference. With my exchange email … Read more

I would hesitate to recommend anyone to Mr. Philip Greenspun’s class

                            I know it is a strong statement. But if someone wants to learn something they should learn from someone who never exhibits his/her preferences and priorities in teaching. After reading his classless blog, I felt that he may not have required … Read more

What are people commenting about the new iPhone?

So I’m reading Gizmodo to catch up on the iPhone event, because frankly, I haven’t been able to gather a lot of enthusiasm today.  Aside from all the leaks we’ve had the last month that pretty much told us everything we’d hear today, today’s my best friend’s (from, like, 6th grade) first birthday after her … Read more

MobilityLeaks: How To Code Throwing A Tomato

I have got a few new MobilityLeaks articles to crank out for you today and tomorrow, but for now I wanted to start off with a little bit of humor! Check it out below and thanks to James for cracking me up! David K: Anyone know enough to test it out and see what’s new? … Read more

Twitter Down: “WTF do I do now? work????”

Twitter is experiencing so issues and lot of people are without service. Twitter spokesman says they are “aware” of it and are currently looking into the problem. Whether or not it is the “cascading bug” that interrupted service last month or someone inadvertently pulled the main power plug (LOL) is anyone’s guess right now. Regardless, … Read more