hexstatik

after reading an wired article about the clover, i did a quick google search to find out if any cafes in vancouver had managed to aquire one. luckily, of the only 250 machines manufactured by hand before the company was bought by starbucks, 8 are located in vancouver, 2 of which belong to caffé artigiano.

caffé artigiano is known locally for bringing in world class coffees and cup of excellence winners that often retail for $130/lb or more and over the past couple of years, i’ve tried a few different winners from the cup of excellence awards. it will be interesting to compare those (brewed in a french press) to the el salvador cup of excellence winner #2 i’ll be sampling tomorrow with my team for our morning coffee break. at $5.95/cup though, it’s not something i’ll be enjoying very often. i’ll report the results back here tomorrow.

Update: so, the results are in. the coffee was pretty damn good, and didn’t have a single tinge of bitterness. now, was it the clover, or the award winning coffee? i don’t know, i would have had to have a cup brewed in a french press and a cup from the clover at the same time to distinguish if the clover machine itself made that much of a difference. either way, it was a nice little treat.

after over a year of waiting, i have finally become the proud owner of an iphone. while i didn’t line up overnight to be one of the very first to get one, i did end up visiting quite a few fido stores around metro vancouver before finally finding one with the 16GB model in stock.

the cost of my new plan is quite ridiculous, but what the hell - it isn’t known as the jesus phone for nothing.

so far, i absolutely love it;  the interface is amazing, i only carry one device instead of 2, i have a camera with me at all times now too, and with my data plan, i have the internet in my pocket wherever i go. my new iphone (here’s where i make myself sound old) now has more storage capacity and processing power than the very first computer i bought for myself back in highschool and it fits in my pocket.

it’s a good thing i love it though, because i’m going to spend the next three years paying for it.

you know, now that canada’s wireless auction is complete, i am totally ready to have a total shake up of the canadian cell phone industry, and i think the rest of the country is too. we definitely need it!

what, from ridiculous voice and data packages for the iPhone from Rogers, to getting charged for incoming messages by Bell and Telus, Canadians are being asked to bend over by every cell carrier available.

the best parts about getting billed for incoming messages by your carrier are:
a) they are no longer motivated to block spam from their networks, you’re going to pay for it (in fact, there is now incentive for them to allow it)
b) they have effectively just doubled their profits on text messages because they get to bill you AND the person you send the text too. bastards.

the one positive thing about all this is that the federal minister of industry, jim prentice, has taken notice and is finally standing up for canadians and asking Bell and Telus to justify charging consumers the new text messaging rates.  

like my good friend zameer pointed out, how is it that in a country with 1/10th the population of the united states, our cell phone carrier profits are equal to those in the united states? an excellent question i think.

today steve jobs unveiled the 3G iphone at WWDC ‘08 and made it official that the iphone will be arriving in canada on july 11th through rogers or fido. the last piece of the puzzle left to be revealed are the plans that rogers and fido will offer for the phone. I have high hopes that a decent data plan will be available so that i can take full advantage of the data features, but then again, this is canada and we seem to like to pay more for everything here.

while i am happy that the new iphone has better battery life (up to 300 hrs on standby, 5 hrs talk on 3G, 10  talk on 2G), GPS, automatic geotagging of photos and 3rd party apps, i was disappointed to find out that they neglected to upgrade the camera and instead stuck with the current 2MP still camera. granted, the photos from the iphone’s camera aren’t that bad, especially when you compare them to other camera phone pics.

either way, i am very excited to be finally getting my own iphone, especially after my experience in washington state this weekend with my bell prepaid phone.

today, rogers announced that they had reached an agreement with apple to bring the iphone to canada. while details were scarce, and the 3G iphone just around the corner (rumour is june) it’s nice to finally have it officially confirmed. i for one cannot wait!