Vila do Conde

José Régio's house before dinner.

This picture was taken with the phone and updated to bloger on the spot along with the tittle and the first line. I am adding this text after. Today's phones are a lot of things. Bruce Sterling speaks about it in the conference of interaction design. You can see that video in this blog. Just look for it. It's true that mobile phones are not just phones anymore. My first one was a Siemens S10. I just could make call with it, the battery lasted a day. It still should work (i still have it). This one is a lot more. I can take notes, save spoken notes, take pictures, take videos, it has a calendar, alarm clock, calculator, browser, RSS feeder, mail, push mail (where available), Messenger, edit videos, edit pictures, edit musics, it can play music and make calls, send sms, mms, faxes and post cards (really paper cards to real addresses), can show maps, satellite pictures and if the network allows even your position. This comes in package of only 76 grams with a battery for two working days. I guess it's impressive.

The problem is that one gets used to all of this. This phone still has four problems with Messenger, the first is that i don't have Yahoo Talk, it says "coming soon". The second is the login and authentication process, i have to try it many times before i can get a successful one. The third is that i can't talk to someone that is just pretending to be offline, he doesn't check if is really offline, it assumes he is. The last one, and the most annoying, is that is my sending connection is idle for more that 5 minutes i can get messages out, they appear to be out but never reach destination. The only way of solving this is to restart Messenger or receive a message. I just need to keep talking.

You might think i am an early adopter, and you would be true. But i was far away from the Internet for a long time. I started coding (games mostly) in my teen years. Then i made some Windows software when no one wanted to do it, because it was just a big step from the Dos world. Then i stopped for many years. Computers where not an important part in my life. Until i restart working with them. I had to prepare networks, code some heavy projects, advise enterprises. And i really discovered Internet for the first time in the last years. Then i just had to know more, so i changed to Linux. I always hated Windows because of the bad times i had with the constant crashes when testing and coding in early days. I even used to code inside Windows emulation over OS/2 because it was easier to recover. Because of these new projects i started looking more into security. I had to keep data and work safe.

There are just a hand full of phones that can even manage some sort of Messenger session, and only Vodafone provides that. But if it's not working correctly i don't like it at all. My problem is not just the Messenger. My problem is also a four hours time difference. It's just frustrating wanting to talk whit someone that is getting up when two hours after you go to bed. That has is lunch hour when you start to work, that goes home when you are just coming from lunch and goes to bed when you are having dinner. I can't live without Messenger today. I didn't used it much until two months ago. Now i have Skype, MSN, two Google accounts, Yahoo, ICQ, MySpace and Facebook. And i want all of that in my phone, and i want all of that in a package that can run for two days and weight just nothing. And i almost have it.

If i didn't had it i just couldn't go over the weekends. Even now, with the phone, they look never going to end. I need those words everyday, somewhere, somehow, anyway i can get them, even if they just last a minute. I even have it in my bedside table on all night. Like today. I posted this picture, when to the restaurant, placed the phone on the table and waited. I got a message, managed to exchange some words, not much, it's never enough. Everybody was looking at me, some even tried to read over what i was doing, discretely of course. I didn't cared, i just needed those words.

That's why i don't consider myself addicted to the Internet or computers or those things. I can live without them. I lived just fine without them for a long time. I am addicted to those "Hi" and "gtg" and "take care". I must have my daily fix or that won't be a good day.