Because I was sitting so far back, I could see a lot of the surrounding wall around the screen. It felt like I was watching the movie through a window. Everything inside the window (screen) was basically like any other movie. Then there was the occasional branch or animal that stuck out of the window at times. It was very hard to get into the movie when objects came out of the screen on top of other people or the walls. The 3D effects were more of a reminder of the fact that I was in a movie theater than something that made the movie more enjoyable.

My second problem with the 3D movie experience was the glasses. The glasses were too heavy and fitted me poorly. They would slide down my nose so I had to readjust them every few minutes. The glasses had an infrared receiver between the eyes, which meant that they lost sync with the movie every time I pushed them back on my nose.

The glasses were pretty big and far from the face to allow persons wearing glasses to use them. In my case, since I don’t wear glasses, the fact that they were so far from my face made them glare form the light of the exit sign behind me.

The last and probably most annoying issue I had with the 3D movie experience was that the frame rate was abysmal. Any fast movement turned into a slide show, which really ruined the movie for me.

I would definitely suggest that you see the movie in 2D if you want to enjoy the movie for what it is instead of distracting yourself with gimmicks. I’ll give 3D movies a second chance, but this time I’ll get a seat somewhere around the 4th or 5th row in center, so that the screen will cover my entire field of vision. Like Wilson, I feel that movie theaters are not trying to enhance the movie experience for their viewers, but instead only want to profit more per showing.

A year went by and the iPhone finally got 3G capabilities, like all the other phones many years earlier. Not only that, the iPhone now had the possibility to use and install third party applications. Watching Steve Jobs’ keynote on the device, I thought to myself that this device would probably again be limited to the US. To my great amazement, Jobs announced that the device would be available in many smaller European countries, Finland included!

At this point I was ready, my wallet in my hand, waiting for the phone to come out. But then disaster struck. Not only did Apple export their device to Finland, but along with it they exported the completely incomprehensible way of selling phones locked to carriers. There had never before been a phone that I couldn’t buy without a contract. The custom in Finland is that people can buy the phone they like, and then choose a carrier that suits their needs. The system works very well – Finland has among the cheapest cell phone rates and best coverage anywhere in the world despite being more sparsely populated than the US. Buying the phone separately also allows people to freely buy new phones when they come out and keep their existing phone number and services without interruptions.

Sonera was, and still is, the only operator in Finland that sells the iPhone. They are notorious for having the most expensive calls and text messages of any operator, in addition to the premium price of the iPhone. For example, changing from my existing provider would have meant that I would have paid 9.90€/month for 384kbps maximum 3G in stead of 9.90€/month for 2Mbps 3G.

I started looking at options. Some European countries, like Italy, had managed to coerce Apple into selling the device unlocked. Many Finns that were in the same situation as me, unwilling to sign a 2 year contract with Sonera, decided to import the devices themselves. The phones worked fine, but the problems started coming in as they began to break. The European Union dictates that the warranty of any product sold in the EU is valid in all other EU countries that have that product for sale. Despite this, I read several horror stories on forums about how people had tried to get Apple to fix their broken phones, but had got rejected. A few determined people decided to push Apple on the issue and finally got their phones sent for repairs. In some cases the phones came back operator locked to the countries from where they were originally purchased. The clear picture here is that Apple does not want to have their phones sold unlocked, even at full price.

After going through my options time and time again, I realized that I had in essence 2 options:

• Pay almost 800€ for an unlocked phone from Italy without a working warranty
• Sign a 2 year contract with Sonera and pay significantly more for the service I currently had

Since there really wasn’t an option that was acceptable, I decided to look into alternatives. Nokia had released the N97, which based on reviews and my own short tests proved to be a total failure, and was out of the question. Another alternative was the HTC Hero. Even if the first reviews complained about it being slow, I could see potential in the phone and finally decided to get one.

I have to say that having used Android for about 5 months now, I really couldn’t even think of owning an iPhone anymore. What Android lacks in esthetics it more than makes up for in functionality. Sure, multitasking makes the phone a bit slow at times, but having to close applications when switching between them is really not an answer for that. I like the fact that I can have a chat program on in the background, listening to Grooveshark while still being able to read emails when they come in.

What really excites me about Android as a platform is its openness. Unlike the iPhone App Store, anyone can have their application added to the Android Market. In the long run, with Android gaining a bigger market share, I can see more and more of developers switching to Android as their main platform. The risk of developing an application for the iPhone and not getting it approved to the App Store will surely make many developers choose the the open platform with the larger growth potential first.

Me not getting an iPhone because of Apples policies was annoying, but the big issue here is that Apple has most likely shot itself in the foot, allowing Android to take over a market that the iPhone once dominated. Google has clearly also noticed this and will be selling their upcoming phone without contract to those who want it.

I have been using Spotify for quite a while, I got an invitation back in October of 2008. At first, I was very happy. The promise of cloud computing seemed to come to life, I had access to all the music I could ever hope to listen to. But gradually the service started degrading. Finally, last month I had enough and canceled my premium subscription and moved to grooveshark.

The thing that I liked most about Spotify in the beginning was the ability to easily access any music I wanted at a particular moment. If I was feeling indecisive, I could always choose a top-list and listen to that. Slowly the country restrictions started rolling in. At one moment I remember closing Spotify with an artist’s listing open. When I opened Spotify the following morning, all but one album had disappeared from the list.

To make matters worse, top lists would show all songs that I couldn’t listen to in pink. The real problem was, however, that the songs that weren’t allowed to be played in Finland seemed to be chosen arbitrarily from different versions of a song. For instance, if I clicked on an artist’s name in the list, I could choose another version of the song to listen to without problems.

So, not only did not Spotify’s country restrictions not work, but they also made my experience worse.

This fall I was happy that Spotify released an Android app, I immediately purchased Spotify premium to try it out. The first big hurdle was that the Spotify app wasn’t anywhere to be found in the Android market. As it turned out, Finland didn’t have, and still doesn’t have,  an official Android Market. This isn’t in any way Spotify’s fault, it’s Google being slow in realizing that the world extends beyond the United States.

Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there. Anyway, the Android app was alright, but not really worth the 10€ a month it cost. The offline playlists were a welcome addition, as I often listen to music while bicycling and at times I’m not within HSPA coverage. The app was a bit buggy, stopping between tracks until the app was taken to the foreground again. This made it impractical while doing anything else since I had to take out the phone every once and again to resume the music.

When I decided that the Android app wasn’t worth paying for, I canceled my Spotify premium subscription. To my horror, I found out that during the two months I had been premium the amount of ads had exploded. Not only had the banners grown larger and more obnoxious, but the audio ads had introduced a bug that caused the next song to start from the time that the previous song had ended on. This meant that if I listened to a long song, Spotify would skip through half of my playlist until it started a commercial.

I finally had enough and decided to check out Grooveshark, a service I’d used on occasion before. The interface had gotten a radical improvement since my last try and I really liked it.

If you clicked the Grooveshark link, you probably already noticed the first advantage that Grooveshark holds against Spotify: a web-based interface. Now I could listen to my playlists anywhere, without having to install any software.

The player interface on Grooveshark is different than on Spotify. When searching for songs you can click on any song to start playing it. But instead of continuing with the next song in the list, you can drag and drop songs into the play queue on the bottom of the screen. The queue remains there across searches and is in my opinion a very nice way to organize my listening. When I’m satisfied with a queue, I can save it as a playlist.

Even better, if you get tired of selecting songs for your self, you can press the “radio” button and let Grooveshark continue your list with similar music. You can then like/dislike the suggested songs to teach Grooveshark what you like.

Grooveshark also released an Android application recently. But as this post is starting to get way too long already, I’ll do another post about that shortly. Stay tuned.