With this heavily technological info, I have accepted some truths about the reality of my life.

a) the most useful gadget I could buy right now is something that will allow me to plug a 3.5mm jack into my car stereo (which has no aux).  Note that this is trivial and simple compared to the depth I’ve read up on the iPad (which I don’t need) and various smartphones (including on carriers I’ll never be on).

b) I really miss creating and am slipping into  passive consumer.

As far as my next smartphone purchase goes, I’m pretty much decided on Android and I’ll either get a Droid or wait for the HTC Incredible at the end of the month.

For Blackberry users switching to Android (I am one of them), I have a lot of insight because I’ve been using a Droid for the past month and have pushed it in every possible way.

A more in-depth article will come t a later time, but my general opinion is that the Blackberry is the superior communications device (email, texting, phone calls), but that the Android platform (specifically the Droid) is far superior in terms of its web browsing, app ecosystem, and general gadgetiness (all of which appeal to me enough to switch).

When I first got my Curve, I became enamored with getting emails instantly, being able to access Facebook on the go and being able to access the web anywhere.  Now, all of a sudden email was a form of communication that I used often and well – the quality of Blackberry physical keyboards is something I know will not be matched on my next device.  Facebook was no longer a one a day login thing – it was all the time.

More recently, I have had the native app lust and all the essentials (forget the raw 150k numbers) are available for my Blackberry – Opera Mini, Ubertwitter, Google Everything, yammer, Slacker Radio, Pandora, Foursquare, WordPress, etc.  I am always multitasking on the thing and the processor lags all the time (something that I will consider neutral as any device from two years ago would suffer from the strain I put my phone through).

As two years – an eternity in technology – comes to a close, and I am nearing eligibility for an upgrade (April 10 is the day), I am convinced I do not want another Blackberry.  Sure some of my gripes – unusable camera quality, laggy processor, locked down GPS wold be fixed with an upgrade to a newer Blackberry.  However, Blackberry doesn;t even come close to setting the standard to what one can do on a phone and I love that stuff.

Take browsing for instance.  Everyone knows RIM’s browser is dated and RIM has shown that they are taking steps in the right direction.  But frankly, I lust at the possibilities of Mobile Safari, Android’s stock browser, Dolphin, or Firefox and a more real (even without flash for who knows how long) browsing experience on my device.  I just simply can’t do a lot of things thatI could do on another phone.  Mobile Facebook – forget it.  Pay a college tuition bill – forget it.

The crappy browser is why I’m so dependent on native apps anyway – the industry and web standards are evolving for better mobile-optimized sites so that all the stuff that I needs apps to do, I could do on my browser.  As John Hermann of Gizmodo writes, “The hope—and it’s a realistic one—is that certain categories of web apps will supplant native apps.”

Screen resolution is another thing that is killing it for me – while some HVGA screens are still acceptable (iPhone, Droid Eris), I want a larger screen especially on their current flagship offering, the Bold 9700 (the Droid has WVGA 854×480, the Nexus One WVGA 800×480, all Windows Phone 7 Series Phones will be WVGA).  The whole experience is far better for me with a bigger screen.

Finally, Blackberry’s user interface (UI) is just unforgivable.  Why can’t I email someone from their call history?  Why can’t I move photos on my device memory to my sd card except for one by one?  Why doesn’t the contacts app pull Facebook contacts’ email addresses?  Where’s the integration that I’ve come to expect by relying upon giants like Google to have uniform stuff between apps and services?  These simple things I could accept two years ago as status quo, but after realizing that no one else goes through this, I don’t want to either.

To simplify, I’ll do lists

Pros (of another Blackberry)

• Great Physical Keyboard
• BBM
• Build Quality (tons of drops)
• Familiarity factor

Pros (getting another phone)

• Browser
• UI
• Integration (Note iPhone OS, HTC Sense, Motoblur for good examples)
• Potential for greater Screen Resolution
• File management

Believe me, I’ll miss my Blackberry and it’ll be an adjustment to switch.  However, it seems clear to me that as a consumer who doesn’t need any of the enterprise features on a Blackberry, I’ll be going with something else come April 10.

Stay tuned for a breakdown of the rest of the decision making process by clicking “Entries RSS” on the bottom of the page.  Feel free to ccomment and suggest articles, topics, or how-tos!

Anyway, something’s got me deranged enough to join del.ici.ous, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, and flickr (and strt this wordpress blog) all in the same day.  Not to mention” joining the cloud” and getting all my contacts backed up somewhere in Mountain View as well as signing up for Google Latitude, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader and a gdgt profile.  And all that after deleting (scratch that, deactivating) my Facebook which ALL THESE SERVICES integrate with or reference somehow and EVERYONE I KNOW USES.

But what makes any of these these services important?  Connectivity? Universality?

Facebook’s already made the case for universality and it is important simply because so many people use it and its ubiquitous – like Flash.  But also like Flash, it kind of sucks.  Maybe I wasn’t using it the right way.  Maybe with all these other services that can update and share with Facebook it would make more sense.  Maybe if I had screened my friends or reduced them after I accepted anyone and everyone or made groups, it would all work.  But Facebook, even if its live feeds didn’t, had relevance to my life.  Twitter is of course, the new Facebook and it has enough of a following and novelty to keep me interested (and enough purity).  Note to Facebook/millions of my Facebook friends I barely knew: “I DON’T NEED TO KNOW HOW RARE YOUR NAME WAS THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN.”  I wish I could’ve pulled the plug completely, but deep inside I’m gulitily glad I have the option to go right back in and resume facebook.com/jacksonbarber.

But what about stubmleupon, flickr, foursquare, delicious.  My life was just fine without them.  No one I know even came up as a foursquare user (and yes I have the Blackberry App).  Am I ever going to use these services?  I don’t know but I do find comfort in knowing that I have the capability to use them.  I remember a long time ago that I was upset about the potential of having too many web logins and passwords to keep track of them all.  Now, some have died, I basically hit Forgot your password? every time I sign in anywhere, and I definitely have too many to keep track of.  Google could tell you that I recently searched for “Password Manager.”  Its almost like I’m just sampling, waiting to see which web 2.0 services matter to me, which will matter to everyone else, and more importantly which of those two will win out in my daily connected life.

My first reflection (and step back into reality) is that all this time spent fishing for ways to better connect has done nothing but isolate me.  Here I am, tech-lover, early-adopter, geek, human, and this stuff has no relevance to my life yet.  None of this stuff keeps me closer to the people I care about.  It has actually distracted me enough from my life that this blog entry feels cathartic.  Its main use is not tied up in what the spiders think of this page, or how many backlinks I have, or how many shares or retweets I get, or if anyone else ever reads this.  Its main purpose tonight is to serve as a reminder of my humanity.

So what is the relevance of uber-Web 2.0?  I have no idea yet.  But the idea of going into a restaurant where my casual acquaintance just tweeted he is, finding out what to eat with StumbleUpon, posting a geotagged picture to picasa (which then updates Flickr) from my phone which is syncing the number i just updated with the Google cloud and then blogging about it later with shortened urls is still pretty f***ing cool.  I just don’t know if I’ll ever do that.

Note 1: I use the term web2.0 even though in this interview, Tim Berners-Lee (the dude credited with originating the web) says that “I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”