Developers makes life better

Years go I would get excited about a new device/gadget. I would buy it and accept that it would never get better. No longer.

I bought my T-Mobile Dash the day after Thanksgiving in 2006 in Oregon. At the time it was an awesome phone. A few months later the Iphone came out. My phone started to suck.

October 2008 I bought the T-Mobile G1....the first Android phone. At the time it was an awesome phone (still is amazing). A little more than a year later better phones came out. About a year into owning my phone I "rooted" the phone and installed custom software. The original Android operating system is open source, meaning anyone is free to modify and redistribute the software provided they openly release the changes. The software I installed was developed by Cyanogen. Cyanogen is a nickname for a developer who (along with a team of others) works on cell phone software and makes it better. It made my somewhat stale T-Mobile G1 awesome.

March 2010 I bought a Nexus One, the first Google Superphone (their words not mine). At the time it was an awesome phone. Less than a day later it was better....thanks to Cyanogen.  My Nexus One is the best DEVICE I have ever owned. I am still in awe of how great a world we live in. My "phone" has a faster CPU than my computer did just a few years ago.

My top computer in 2000 was a 500 MHz AMD Athlon. I remember being excited buying a 30 gigabyte hard drive at Office Depot that year. My Nexus One runs at 1000MHz and can hold more than 32 gigabytes of memory on a chip smaller than your pinky fingernail. I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!!!!!

I got bored a few days ago and found  new software for my T-Mobile Dash made by other open source developers. I installed it and played a bit.  I doubt I will ever go back to that phone, but it's nice to see it updated.

The latest version of Android is called Froyo (like Frozen Yogurt). T-Mobile and Google announced that the T-Mobile G1 will NEVER get Eclair (previous version of Android) due to device limitations. Well Cyanogen thought otherwise. It took all of 10 minutes, but I now have Eclair on my G1. If I had never bought a Nexus One, I would be perfectly happy with my G1 now that it runs Eclair. The enhancements are amazing.

My child will never know the heft of a CRT monitor, the weird goo that collects under a computer mouse (mice no longer have balls....ha) or, and this is most alarming, she will never know the soothing sounds of a dial up modem. Bet I can buy computer themed mobile to hang over the crib.....