CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove this Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV for 5,765 miles on Road Trip 2009. Along the way, the vehicle averaged about 21 miles a gallon on the highway, not bad for a car of its size.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)When I first began talking with Audi about road-testing the company's new Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV on Road Trip 2009, I have to admit that I was more than a little bit suspicious of that term.
"Clean diesel." It sounded a lot like another new term of art, "clean coal," and I think we know pretty well that there really isn't much that's clean about coal. Plus, I think many of us have negative associations with diesel, a technology long known for sooty fumes, loud engines, and a whole lot of pollution.
Still, Audi was talking about high fuel efficiency, low emissions, and an engine that rivaled--or even surpassed--the power of its traditional gasoline counterparts. Indeed, there was even the discussion about outdoing hybrids for overall performance in certain driving conditions.
Since this would be a vehicle I knew I would be driving for more than 5,000 miles, I began to do a little research. Before I signed on, I wanted to have a sense that I wouldn't be one of those drivers leaving dark clouds of exhaust all over America's highways, and that the Q7 wouldn't eat up my budget at the fuel pump.
Among the very first items I found online was a 2008 Popular Mechanics article by Ben Hewitt exploring clean diesel and whether it truly is clean in any real sense of the word.
The article's opening paragraph certainly seemed to say that it was:
"Merging with northbound traffic on Interstate 75 just outside Auburn Hills, Mich., I punch the accelerator, quickly swing left into the passing lane and pull forcefully ahead of the cars around me," Hewitt wrote. "In any other ride, on any other gray morning, it'd be just another Interstate moment. But this rush hour, I'm behind the wheel of a preproduction 2009 Volkswagen Jetta, which is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo-charged, direct-injected diesel engine that, even as I leave the speed limit in tatters, is averaging nearly 50 mpg. Equally important, what's coming out of the tailpipe is no dirtier than the emissions from the 35-mpg econoboxes I can now see in my rearview mirror. Speed, fuel efficiency and minimal emissions? These aren't characteristics usually associated with diesel-powered vehicles. But they will be."
I tend to trust Popular Mechanics as merchants of sober journalism, so after reading Hewitt's piece lauding the coming of clean diesel, I decided it was worth trying the Q7 TDI out. After all, I thought, it looked like a pretty spiffy car, and one that might well even get better gas mileage than my own Subaru Outback.
The Audi Q7 TDI that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove during Road Trip 2009, as seen along Utah's scenic byway, Route 128.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Of course, I wanted to hear from Audi itself why they thought clean diesel was a technology to be reckoned with. So I asked the company a number of questions about it, including what, in fact, makes it "clean?"
According to Brad Stertz, Audi of America's corporate communications manager, there are two main reasons, the first being the adoption across the United States of a new, ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel.
"Cleaner fuel has allowed further advancements in the Audi TDI engine," Stertz said in a written response to my questions. "The injection system, with its maximum injection pressure of 2000 bar, an all-round advanced exhaust gas recirculation system and an optimized turbocharging system are at the heart of this evolution. A new feature is the integrated cylinder pressure control. All of these things have combined to ensure each drop of diesel fuel burns more efficiently during combustion, thereby reducing emissions and improving fuel economy. (Each drop of diesel gets 12% more power than a drop of gasoline and that translates into 25-30% better fuel efficiency.) All of these modifications constituted the first step in radically reducing the engine's raw emissions."
Further, he said, the TDI engine significantly reduces nitric oxide emissions through the use of a DeNOx converter, "which dramatically eliminated nitrous oxide, a leading factor in smog."
In the end, he said, "the ultra low emission system allows emissions to be minimized by combining modifications inside the engine with an innovative exhaust gas after-treatment system. The result is reduced fuel consumption and the world's cleanest diesel engine."
Picking up the Q7
On June 20, I picked up the Q7 TDI in Denver. It was an exciting moment since, as you can probably gather, there's no Road Trip without a vehicle. And I knew I'd be in this car for several thousand miles.
The Audi Q7 TDI that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdman drove during Road Trip 2009, as seen through one of the concrete tubes that make up artist Nancy Holt's great Earthwork, the Sun Tunnels.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)For the first few days, I didn't try much of anything requiring me to change any settings or do much beyond accelerating and braking. I was too caught up in trying to get the trip going and adapting to its pace. Not to mention the high-altitude I instantly encountered in Colorado. In fact, within a day of my arrival, I had already gone from a mile high--Denver--to more than 14,000 feet high on Colorado's Mt. Evans.
I was certainly feeling the effects of the altitude, but the Q7, not so much. It prowled its way smoothly to the top of what is North America's highest paved road without so much as a sputter. I guess it's that Alpine heritage.
Driving it later on more traditional highways, my first impression was that the Q7 was quite powerful, and indeed, with its quiet engine, I often found myself traveling more than 90 miles an hour without any obvious sign that I was going so fast. I suppose I should have used cruise control to prevent such moments, but I never did. I preferred to control the vehicle with my foot.
In fact, I wasn't driving for speed, but when I needed it, it was there. Passing slow drivers was where I'd say the Q7 really shined: time and again, I would fly by folks with no apparent effort. I'd simply step on the accelerator, and off we'd go.
Fuel efficiency
In the literature I'd read about the Q7 TDI, I found that its 225 horsepower, 406 lbs. ft of torque, 3.0 liter V6 TDI clean diesel engine with a six-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission, and all-wheel drive, was capable of more than 25 miles per gallon, at least in highway driving. One reviewer even wrote about achieving 30.2 miles per gallon over 1,000 miles.
My performance, over the nearly 5,800 miles I drove the Q7, was not quite as impressive. I got about 21 miles a gallon on the highway, and somewhat less than that, probably in the 17-to-18 mpg range in urban conditions. Fortunately, I was mostly on highways.
Although it only reads 1,765 miles, this is actually the final odometer reading for Road Trip 2009, a full 5,765.4 miles of driving in Audi's Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Still, I was a little surprised at first about getting just 21 mpg on the open road. But I think the reason is that I generally had the air conditioning on, and truth be told, was probably driving a little faster than I should have been. On the other hand, 21 miles per gallon for a vehicle the size of the Q7 is actually rather impressive. My Subaru, a much smaller car, gets 24 on the highway.
And, with a nice, big, gas tank, the Q7 would tend to get about 280 miles or so on just half a tank. That meant that while diesel turned out to be readily available everywhere I went, I never had to worry about running out of fuel.
Luxury driving
As a luxury vehicle, the Q7 certainly stacks up. From the nice job Audi did of seamlessly integrating iPods and Bluetooth phones like an iPhone for safe, handsfree driving while talking on the phone or listening to music, to comfortable seating with plenty of control over seat configuration to a powerful Bang & Olufsen audio system, I pretty much always knew, getting into the Q7, that the next few hours were going to be comfortable and cushy.
It's not that I have a lot of experience with luxury cars to compare the Q7 to. Indeed, I'm certain that other high-end SUVs from manufacturers like Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, and others, stack up quite nicely against the Q7.
Regardless, it was a pleasure to drive, a pleasure to sit in and just listen to music, escape the rain, or nap in, all of which I did during the trip.
One area where I was a little surprised was in the Q7's initial pickup. At low speeds, it seemed like the car would usually take a second or so to boost acceleration when I put the pedal to the metal. But only at low speeds since, as I wrote above, accelerating past people on the open road couldn't have been more effortless.
I did end up using the Q7's navigation system quite a bit, but I have to say that from time to time, I found it wanting. That was especially true when trying to find specific addresses or destinations in smaller towns; sometimes, the navigation system simply wouldn't acknowledge that an address even existed, and that could be quite frustrating.
But most of the time, it worked just fine, and I enjoyed having the system give me just the information I need (direction, time to arrival, and distance both to the destination and to the next turn) in a little micro-display to the left of the speedometer. Having that information available made it possible to devote the main multimedia interface to music.
On the other hand, if I wanted to be able to see a map of where I was driving, the Q7 easily showed that and a list of songs in the small display to the left. It was nice to have that choice.
Nice and spacious
When packing to head out on Road Trip 2009, I had tried very hard not to bring too much stuff. One benefit of that was that the Q7 usually felt like, no matter how much I had, there was still plenty of room inside.
I didn't quite realize how much room there was until I arrived home and got in my Subaru, which, suddenly, seemed tiny. I'm sure I'll re-adapt to the smaller interior space of the Outback, but for the moment, I'm quite aware of how big the Q7 was inside.
I'm by no means a professional car reviewer, so I'm well aware that my assessment of the Q7 lacks many of the touchstones of the standard review. Regardless, I can say without reservation that my time in the Q7 TDI was thoroughly enjoyable. It's not a cheap car--the model I tested runs about $50,000--so it's far out of my personal range. But for those who have the means to swing such a transaction and who are interested in getting a vehicle that provides luxury, spaciousness, and impressive performance without sacrificing fuel efficiency, I have no qualms recommending the Q7 TDI.
In fact, I wonder if it's too late for me to go back to Denver, pick it back up, and hit the road again.
SIERRA MADRE MOUNTAINS, Wyo.--When I was planning stages for Road Trip 2009, my wife told me, point blank, that if I fiddled around with either my iPhone or my iPod while I drove, at some point during the thousands of miles I'd be behind the wheel, I'd have an accident.
Fortunately, I was able to counter that argument by explaining that the Audi Q7 TDI I'd be road-testing was supposed to feature really nice integration between those devices and the car, and I promised a hands-free experience, no matter how much I drove.
After more than 5,000 miles in the Q7, I'm prepared to grant Audi high scores for how they managed to make both devices seem like built-in accessories.
In point of fact, the car doesn't have specific iPhone integration. Rather, it's supposed to be for any Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. But since the only one of those I have is an iPhone, that's what I've been using for 32 days, seven states, and nearly enough miles to cross the United States and return.
I've included lengthy videos in this post demonstrating how both the iPhone (see below) and the iPod (see further below) work with the Q7, so rather than explain it all in writing as well, I'll just touch on a few highlights and let the videos speak for themselves.
I'd read in a blog post by Guy Kawasaki that pairing his iPhone and the Q7 TDI he was testing out for a couple months couldn't have been easier. Having seen that report, I was excited about trying it out myself.
And Kawasaki was right. A quick configuration and a recognition by my iPhone of the car's Bluetooth, and I was connected. From then on, anytime I was in the Q7 with my iPhone, it automatically connected, as I could see instantly from the five bars and the Bluetooth logo that would show up on the car's main multimedia interface. In fact, since my iPhone was usually hidden away in a pouch in my backpack, I could tell when its battery had died by the fact that the Bluetooth logo had disappeared.
Dialing numbers is a little tricky--the first time. The car doesn't have a touch screen, so you can't tap out numbers. Instead you have to dial them in, one by one, with a round dial in the center console. But once you've entered a number, you can redial it simply by pushing a "mode" button on the steering wheel that you can easily reach with your left thumb, and then, also with your left thumb, a small scroll wheel when the interface is on your previously dialed numbers.
When you hit the number you want to dial, you click the scroll wheel and it dials, pumping in over the car's audio system. You generally have to turn the volume way up (by scrolling the volume wheel with your right thumb), but I've had dozens of very clear phone conversations in the car without having to move either of my hands at all on the wheel, or, really, my eyes from the road.
And that's pretty cool.
The iPod
The reason I ended up road-testing the Q7 is Apple and Audi were both interested in showcasing how the car integrated with the iPod. So, with Apple having lent me an iPod Touch, and having copied most of my music onto it at home, I brought it along as my music player for the trip.
The integration is good (as the below video demonstrates), but the interface is a bit less elegant than the iPod famously is as a stand-alone device. It maintains the menu-level structure of an iPod, but moving in between the levels is not all that intuitive.
Still, once I got the hang of it, I enjoyed having the device and the car linked up. The songs display on both the car's main interactive screen, and on a small screen in between the speedometer and the RPM meter. Controls to pause, lower, or raise the volume, switch to the next or last song, and move up a level in the menu structure are easily at hand on the center console.
And perhaps most elegantly, the iPod itself would be difficult to find for anyone who didn't know where it was. It fits in a small drawer--connected to a dedicated cable (not a generic AUX IN cable) that continuously powers it--that hides away in a compartment that itself hides away. Which means I need to remind myself to fish out the iPod when I return the car.
All in all, iPod users and those who have Bluetooth phones like the iPhone, will find themselves pleased with Audi's attention to how people want to use their music players and make calls.
From my perspective, they just wanted to make sure I could keep my word to my wife that my eyes would stay on the road, even as I talked on the phone--usually with her, by the way--or controlled my music. She seems won over.
ASPEN, Colo.--One thing I love is finding uses for things that perhaps no one has thought of before.
I'd already been on Road Trip 2009 for several days when I arrived in this tony Colorado mountain town known best as a playground for the rich and famous. I was hoping to go for a walk and find something good to eat.
It had been a long day of driving, starting in Colorado Springs, and traveling over Independence Pass, a 12,095 "Top of the Rockies" spot just on the Continental Divide. I had planned to stroll around Aspen for a bit and then use my iPhone to get online and find something inexpensive for dinner.
But I had neglected to charge the iPhone, and by the time I got to town, the battery was more or less dead. This is Road Trip, however, and as someone carting around a car full of high-tech gear, I was determined to find a workaround.
Though it is designed to provide a hot-spot for as many as five people in one place, the Verizon MiFi 2200 allowed CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman to create a mobile Wi-Fi connection for an iPod Touch as he walked around Aspen, Colo.
(Credit: Verizon)One of the gadgets I am road-testing is a 32GB iPod Touch, a device that, if it has access to a Wi-Fi connection, can do much of what the iPhone can do. But on a walk around a town you don't know, it's hard to count on finding such a connection, especially these days when most people password-protect their Wi-Fi.
However, I also am carrying Verizon's MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot, which converts the carrier's EV-DO signal into a Wi-Fi connection that up to five people can share. I had already used the MiFi to provide a signal for the iPod Touch at the very beginning of the trip so that, while sitting on a boarding airplane, I could download a large file from iTunes.
Now, I realized that by turning the MiFi on and sticking it in my back pocket, I could become, in essence, a walking hot spot, allowing me to get online on the iPod Touch, no matter where I was in town. That meant that I could use the Skype app to make a phone call, run several other apps for one reason or another, and look up good places to eat using the device's browser.
Of course, this is the kind of workaround that isn't going to make sense for most people. If you're going to bother paying for an iPod Touch and a MiFi, you might as well just get an iPhone. But if you're road-testing a number of tech gadgets and you see a way to jerry-rig something to solve a problem, why not do it?
It turns out that it's hard to find decent, inexpensive food in Aspen. But thanks to being able to get online while I walked around, I did end up at a terrific place where I had a good, moderately healthy meal for under $20.
And, since I became a walking hot spot, I was also able to get online on my computer, as well, meaning that I was able to actually do some work while I ate, despite the fact that the restaurant where I found that inexpensive meal didn't offer Wi-Fi.
In the end, one thing puzzled me, though. When I first linked the iPod Touch to the MiFi connection, I tried to locate myself using the device's map feature. But instead of pinpointing where I was in Aspen, it told me I was somewhere in Virginia. I thought that was odd, but I chalked it up to the fact that without a GPS chip, it figures out its location relative to the Wi-Fi signals it finds. Given that the MiFi is a loaner, I thought that maybe it had come from Virginia.
Later, however, when I returned to my car and got ready to head out, I plugged in my iPhone and again, with some power, tried to see if it, with GPS, it could locate me. Oddly, though, the iPhone also told me I was in Virginia.
My only conclusion for the fact that both devices told me this: that the folks in Aspen have figured out some way to trick Google Maps so as to keep out the hoi-polloi. But maybe it was something else. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman sits at the very top of Colorado's Mount Evans on Sunday, just a couple hundred feet above the highest paved road in North America.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)MOUNT EVANS, Colo.--It's the first day of summer, and I'm driving through a snowstorm.
I'm here, on the highest paved road in North America, and my fingers are numb from the cold. But I'm online, and I have to say, that's pretty cool.
This was supposed to be a live-blog, but circumstances got in the way. More on that later.
As part of Road Trip 2009, Terdiman is road-testing an Audi Q7 TDI, which has a so-called 'clean diesel' engine.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)I drove to just below the summit of 14,264-foot Mount Evans (see video below, with audio affected by heavy wind) on Sunday, the first official day of Road Trip 2009, my journey through the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains of the United States.
I got online via Inmarsat's BGAN mobile satellite modem, which, when pointed in the right direction, gets a pretty good signal. Good enough, in fact, that I was able to video chat with my wife and a friend. They said it was the "coolest thing ever." I don't know about that, but it is pretty sweet.
I tweeted from the top, as well, but I wasn't able to live-blog. It was quite cold, the wind was fierce, and I was sitting precariously on some rather uncomfortable rocks at the very top. I'd also hoped to take the Internet signal from the BGAN and share it via the MacBook Pro I'm using with the iPod Touch I've got with me. But for some reason, the Touch couldn't get online, even though it could see the signal coming from the Mac. I blame the rather extreme conditions.
Regardless of a few technical snafus, however, this was a pretty successful venture. As I perched atop North America, live-chatting with my wife and my friend, several people scrambled up to the top, saw me sitting there with my computer and the BGAN, and asked what I was doing. And that felt good.
But what felt even better was being able to pick up the computer while on the video link with my wife and moving it around so that she could see where I was. She can't be with me right now, but in this small way, I was able to bring her along.
And I'll do my best to bring you along as well. For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
Corrected at 3:55 p.m. PDT: This post was updated to correct the elevation of Mount Evans' summit. The correct height is 14,264 feet.
The ability, with iPhone OS 3.0, to cut and paste content across applications will mean a huge boost in traffic for Twitter.
(Credit: Apple)The iPhone world is rejoicing over the "it's about time" cut-and-paste feature in the just-released 3.0 version of the device's operating system. But I'm willing to bet that another group breaking open the champagne right now is the team at Twitter.
Not to mention the makers of Twitter iPhone apps.
And why?
Everyone knows that the reason that cut-and-paste was the most-heralded new feature in iPhone OS 3.0 was that for the first time, it would allow people to move content around between applications, be it between a browser and a note, or from a weather app to a text message and so on. Clearly, then, being able to paste content into Twitter means that for the first time, using the service on an iPhone will approximate the depth of using it on a computer.
(Credit:
Twitter)
And that means that just as global Twitter awareness is going through the roof because of its role as the primary communications platform for rapid fire news developments from and related to post-election Iran, the service is going to get another massive boost from what I'm predicting will be a new huge influx of iPhone users.
Think about the tens of millions of first-gen or iPhone 3G owners, not to mention iPod Touch users, who are going to migrate to OS 3.0. And then add all the iPhone virgins whose first experiences with the device will be on a $99 iPhone 3G with OS 3.0. Or who will go straight to the 3G S.
I would argue that many of those people either have never used Twitter before or have had limited exposure to it, either on their existing iPhones or other mobile devices, or online. Now, with what is sure to be a rush of attention to the fact that it will offer never-before-seen possibilities to someone using an iPhone to participate fully on Twitter--meaning sharing ideas, copying URLs and so forth--I think Twitter is about to see a giant spike in usage.
To be sure, many people will move their already significant Twitter use from their computers to their iPhones. And already, many people are using Twitter on their iPhones every day. But adding the element of being able to paste content into your average Twitter app from elsewhere on the iPhone is going to make the service one of the biggest winners of all.
People may argue that Twitter has yet to reveal a business model, but they certainly can't argue its growth. No one knows how many new users the Iran election has brought, or will bring, Twitter. But with OS 3.0 coming hard on the heels of the turmoil in the Middle East, it's hard to imagine any one service going through two such potentially game-changing events in such a short period time.
No one, of course, could have predicted the situation in Iran. But the release on Wednesday of iPhone OS 3.0 was on everyone's radar. So I wonder if, when the Twitter team blogged about the "significantly increased" network capacity that came as a result of Tuesday's now famous server maintenance-related downtime--famous because the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to postpone the downtime in order to facilitate continued #IranElection posts--they were really hinting at the service's ability to handle any iPhone 3.0-related rush of traffic and new users.
Of course, even as Evan Williams and Biz Stone, et al., are toasting Twitter's latest good fortunes, one would imagine they're also praying to the god of server stability.
On June 21, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
The legacy telecommunications network at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park required an entire wall of switches and wires. New for 2009, the team has rolled out a VoIP system that will save it $355,000 a year, nearly enough to pay for a backup infielder.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)SAN FRANCISCO--Could changing phone systems pay a big-league baseball player's salary? To hear Bill Schlough, the CIO of the San Francisco Giants tell it, the answer is a definite yes.
Last winter, the team migrated to a new $1 million-plus VoIP telecommunications system from ShoreTel for its ballpark, AT&T Park, abandoning its legacy system, which--ironically--was provided by AT&T. According to Schlough, the old system cost $490,000 annually, while the new setup for the 457 phones at the ballpark run the team just $135,000 a year.
Given that the minimum salary for Major League Baseball players this year is $400,000, the resulting annual savings of $355,000 is almost enough to pay for a backup second baseman or a rookie relief pitcher.
San Francisco Giants CIO Bill Schlough explains that the team's new telecommunications system, a VoIP setup from ShoreTel, takes up just a single rack in the back of the its telecommunications hub.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)In all seriousness, though, the Giants implemented the new system at the behest of the team's former owner, Peter Magowan, who, in late 2007, sent a memo around wondering why the club was paying more for its telecommunications infrastructure than any other team in baseball. Now, it is in the final stages of implementing what it hopes will prove to be a cutting-edge system that will allow it to improve customer service, as well as customer tracking, and make it simpler to make changes within its internal network on the fly.
One visceral example of how the new ShoreTel setup is a generational step up from the Giants' old AT&T network is deep in the ballpark's bowels, in what is known as the MPO, or minimum point of entry, its telecommunications infrastructure hub. There, the old system's sets of switches and wiring take up an entire wall. But now, its VoIP setup is doing its job from a single rack in the back of the room.
And beyond the cost savings the new system provides, Schlough told a group of reporters gathered Monday night for a discussion of the ballpark's technology, its integrated software for the first time allows the team to do a much better job of proactively identifying callers to its season ticket customer support line and allowing service representatives to see, even before picking up such a call, a set of information about the customer, including whether they've used their tickets to recent games or whether they've sold them on StubHub.com. Previously, Schlough said, the reps would have no idea who a caller was until the conversation had commenced.
The system also provides benefits throughout the Giants' baseball organization, said team employee Lena Boswell. She explained that coaches in the Giants minor leagues are required to file a detailed report to the parent club after every game, and said that the ShoreTel system allows those coaches can now record a single message and distribute it automatically to everyone that needs to get it.
At more than $1 million, the Giants' new phone system is certainly pricey, but Schlough said that given the annual savings, he expects it to pay for itself in just three years.
The Giants Digital Dugout offers fans a series of features, including a food finder, and a quickly-updated collection of video replays.
(Credit: San Francisco Giants)But the phone setup isn't the teams only major recent technology investment. The Giants have also coughed up big money for things like a state-of-the-art high-definition video scoreboard, as well as hundreds of HDTVs that were installed around the ballpark.
All together, Schlough told CNET News, when large capital expenditures are included, the Giants spend between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of the team's total annual budget on technology. He did not say what the dollar amount of that annual budget is, but its safe to say it is in the high eight figures or low nine figures, since its payroll alone is $82.6 million and it has an annual debt service of at least $20 million on the privately financed AT&T Park, which opened in 2000.
Wi-Fi and the iPhone factor
For years, meanwhile, the ballpark has offered its customers free Wi-Fi. In fact, it was among the very first to do so in all of professional sports. And for years, using it meant toting a laptop to the park, something which usually did not sit well with hard-core fans.
But Schlough said that the iPhone and iPod Touch era has changed things irrevocably for the ballpark's Wi-Fi system and has inspired the team to offer customers a set of services unlike that available in any other park.
He said that the iPhone debuted the same weekend as the Giants hosted the 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and that since then, usage of the park's Wi-Fi network has gone up 537 percent.
At a game on April 21, in fact, he said, 1,289 fans connected to the network. And one thing that has changed dramatically since the advent of the iPhone and iPod Touch is when fans are using Wi-Fi. In the early days, Schlough said, usage was almost exclusively during weekday day games, a function of the many businesspeople who came to games with clients.
Now, however, he explained, the usage pattern has shifted dramatically, and the lion's share of the usage is during night games.
During the 2008 season, Schlough said, there were usually an average of no more than 600 people using the ballpark's Wi-Fi network on any given date. "This year, there were more than 1,000 right out of the box," he said.
"This year," he added, "everybody has a phone in their hand everywhere they go," including the bathrooms.
Customers who do log on to the Wi-Fi network at the park are now able to use an innovative and exclusive system called the Giants Digital Dugout. This offers fans two big benefits.
The first is a "food finder," which can direct fans to the closest concession location for the exact kind of food or beverage they want, and the second is a collection of video replay highlights that includes, within three minutes after it happens, any controversial call by an umpire.
Among the video replay highlights available from the Digital Dugout is this one, slugger Barry Bonds' 756th home run, which broke baseball's all-time career record.
(Credit: San Francisco Giants)In Major League Baseball, unlike other sports, ballparks are not allowed to show replays of controversial calls on the scoreboard. So Schlough worried that too much attention to the video replay feature of the Digital Dugout might force the league to shut the Giants' system down. Short of that, though, it is an attractive feature, and well worth bringing an iPhone to the park.
It's features like that, however, that are inspiring fans by the hundreds, if not thousands, to get online at the ballpark. But in the early days of the Wi-Fi network at AT&T Park, it was mostly reporters and photographers logging on.
In fact, said Schlough, newspapers that were able to run photos in their morning editions the day after former Giants superstar slugger Barry Bonds hit his 660th career home run late in a night game on April 13, 2004, tying his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the all-time list, owed a debt of gratitude to the park's Wi-Fi.
"Without it," Schlough said, "they wouldn't have hit (their) deadlines."
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
Update 4:19 pm: This story has been modified to include reaction from the creator of the card-counting iPhone app.
Since the July 2008 launch of the App Store, Apple has maintained a sort of moral code--a PG-13-type standard, if you will--surrounding the thousands of iPhone and iPod Touch applications available via the service.
That's why, for example, there are no iPhone porn apps, though it is certainly possible to access adult content optimized for the device.
Given that, one would think that Apple wouldn't have given the thumbs-up to an app that, if used in the most logical manner, could get someone arrested, or worse. But with an app called "A Blackjack Card Counter," that's not, in fact, the case.
'A Blackjack Card Counter,' an iPhone application that helps people count cards in blackjack, was the subject of an alert to Nevada casinos by that state's Gaming Control Board.
(Credit: Webtopia)We've all seen the movies where the hot-shot gambler slips up and finds himself hustled off to a back room where a genial but brutal casino manager calmly breaks a few fingers while issuing a stern warning never to come back. Films like The Cooler, 21, Rounders, Casino and many others have made this kind of scene, even if it's not always about card counting, a staple of our imagination.
Yet card counting--a complex practice that gives practitioners a way to determine the optimal times to bet in blackjack--prevails to this day. And it's not even illegal, though being caught at it is sure to lead to a hasty expulsion from a casino, at best, or even the kind of back-room visit discussed above. What is definitely illegal, however, is the employment of any kind of electronic device that aids players in counting cards.
And that's where "A Blackjack Card Counter," and perhaps a few other iPhone apps come into play.
Earlier this month, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, itself tipped off by the California Bureau of Gambling Control, issued an alert to "all non-restricted licensees and interested parties"--the state's casinos--warning of the emergence of iPhone card counting apps.
"This blackjack card-counting program can be utilized on either the Apple iPhone or the Apple iPod Touch...Once this program is installed on the phone through the iTunes Web site it can make counting cards easy," Nevada Gaming Control Board member Randall Sayre wrote in the alert. "This program can be used in the 'stealth mode.' When the program is used in the 'stealth mode' the screen of the phone will remain shut off, and as long as the user knows where the keys are located, the program can be run effortlessly without detection."
And, as Sayre pointed out, "use of this type of program or possession of a device with this type of program on it--with the intent to use it--in a licensed gaming establishment, is a violation" of the law.
For its part, the makers of "A Blackjack Card Counter," an Australian outfit called Webtopia, couldn't be happier about the attention being paid to its app as a result of its potentially illegal nature.
"Since the Nevada Gaming Control Board warned casinos about 'A Blackjack Card Counter' there's been an unprecedented demand for this app," Webtopia wrote in the tool's official App Store description. "Now you can see what all the fuss (is) about at a very reasonable price."
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The film MacHeads, which is scheduled to be released this fall, takes a close look at the culture surrounding Apple and its products.
(Credit: MacHeads)If Tuesday's news of new, more-powerful, Mac laptops wasn't enough to stoke the fires of the Apple faithful, I've got even more to offer.
Tuesday afternoon, the producers of the forthcoming film, MacHeads, released a new trailer. The film is scheduled for a fall release. No word yet on how it will be distributed.
The film, as noted here in January, will take a close look at what Wired writer Leander Kahney has termed the "cult of Mac."
The new trailer doesn't shed much more light on the contents of the film, but for real, ahem, MacHeads, the minute-plus of new footage will nevertheless be catnip.
Featuring video from Macworld, New York's Fifth Avenue Apple Store, the DigiBarn computer museum, and elsewhere, the film looks to be an in-depth examination of just what makes the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and Apple's other products seem like cultural phenomena rather than just consumer electronics.
For years, the Steve Jobs biography has been a staple of the technology business publishing press.
The genre has been highlighted by titles such as Alan Deutschman's 2000 book, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs and 2005's iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey Young and William Simon. The latter was attacked by Jobs himself for being an unauthorized biography, and by Deutschman for being eerily similar to his own book.
There was also, of course, Forbes writer Daniel Lyons' (aka "Fake Steve Jobs") 2007 parody, oPtion$: The secret life of Steve Jobs.
Leander Kahney's new biography of Steve Jobs is built around insight into the Apple CEO's thought process.
(Credit: Portfolio )And now into the mix comes Inside Steve's Brain, by Wired News editor Leander Kahney, the latest attempt to distill the mysteries of Apple's enigmatic co-founder and CEO.
My quick takeaway from Kahney's book is that while it covers a lot of ground that has been well explored by others, it also picks up where Deutschman, Young, and Simon left off, and takes us into the present--the era of the iPhone, the MacBookPro, the backdating scandal, and much more. Essentially, as influential as Apple was when the previous biographies were published, it is now a more important technology company than ever before, and Inside Steve's Brain catches us up. And rather than talk about Apple and Jobs from an outsider's perspective, it attempts to tell the story from, well, inside Jobs' psyche--explaining his thought process and his motivations and culling lessons that can be learned along the way.
Does it work? I would say so. I came away from the book feeling like I had a better understanding of Apple's successes and failures of the past 30 years, as well as how the thought processes in Jobs' mind have directly influenced so much of what has gone on in Cupertino, Calif.--where the company is headquartered--and the lives of the millions of people who use Macs, iPods, and iPhones.
The book itself comes in an unusual form factor. It is small--about 7-1/4 inches by 5-1/4 inches--and seems almost bible-sized.
In fact, the book was originally titled Chairman Steve's Little White Book, Kahney told me, but his publisher's lawyers freaked out, worried that Jobs would sue, since that title implies that the book is an authorized biography. Indeed, Kahney said that Apple's PR department contacted him to say Apple wouldn't participate--even before he asked. And he also said that he had to sign a $1 million defamation and libel insurance policy as part of his book contract.
Ultimately, Jobs' lack of participation in the book is disappointing, though not at all surprising. It makes writing a book that purports to explain the Apple CEO's mental processes all the more challenging without being able to include direct and original interviews.
Instead, Kahney relies on numerous interviews with Jobs from previously published articles. And I must say, he uses these interviews to very nice effect. One trick of the book intended, no doubt to avoid getting the reader bogged down in attribution language, is that it uses copious footnotes. This allows Kahney to weave in many quotes from Jobs and others and have it all fit in seamlessly into the narrative.
As I mentioned above, there is a lot in Inside Steve's Brain that is familiar ground for veteran Jobs followers. But there is also plenty that is new, especially in the approach to telling the story.
One nice innovation of Kahney's book is to use the commentary of others, including some original interviews with former Apple employees and veteran Apple commentators, to draw informed conclusions about how Jobs arrived at a particular decision.
In one anecdote explaining the way Jobs rules by intimidation and fear--a common thread throughout the book and in other Jobs biographies and articles--Kahney relates a story from a 2000 Apple sales rep gathering. Using quotes from former Apple engineer Edward Eigerman, he shows how Jobs verbally dressed down a sales rep for losing a contract to Hewlett-Packard.
And while Eigerman said he was impressed by the sales rep having stood up for herself, Kahney wrote, "Perhaps most significantly, the public humiliation of the unfortunate rep put the fear of God into all the other sales reps. It sent a clear message that everybody at Apple is held personally accountable."
Kahney is a longtime Apple reporter and has written two previous books on the company and its products--The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod. And there is little doubt that he is both a fan of the company's products and fascinated by Jobs' machinations.
So while it is standard fare in books like this to devote endless pages to Jobs' well-chronicled strategy of inspiring great work by engendering great fear--something Kahney does at great length--it was refreshing to also see him mix his admiration with sections on some of Jobs' failures.
Among them is an examination of the doomed Mac Cube, a product that received stellar critical praise but barely sold.
"The Cube was Jobs' baby: a beautifully designed, technically advanced machine that represented months, maybe years, of prototyping and experimentation," Kahney wrote. "But aside from a few design museums, few were interested in it. At about $2,000, it was too expensive for most consumers, who wanted a cheap monitor-less Mac like the Mac mini that succeeded it...Jobs had badly misjudged the market. The Cube was the wrong machine at the wrong price. In January 2001, Apple reported a quarterly loss of $247 million, the first since Jobs had returned to the company. He was stung."
But Kahney doesn't leave it at that. Rather, he continues and explains how Jobs' mindset had led to this rare disaster, talking about how Jobs has always liked incorporating cubes in his work--the NeXT Cube and the huge glass cube that rises above Apple's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan--and that while Jobs tries to always focus on the user experience, he lost sight of how this particular product didn't really have a place in the market.
The user experience--and the ways that Jobs focuses on it--is a major theme of the book. Again and again, Kahney uses anecdotes and quotes to illustrate that at the core of Jobs' thinking is a committed, if somewhat maniacal, desire to give those smart enough to be Apple customers the world's best customer experience.
If you've read any of the previous Jobs biographies, or articles about him, much of Inside Steve's Brain will feel familiar to you. Yet, Kahney's approach to the subject matter is refreshing and provides new context to what has previously been presented as mere business fact.
By delving into the intellect and the thought processes behind Jobs--including his approach to hiring, firing, product development, marketing, and such things--Kahney gives readers a way to draw lessons from the storied career of Jobs.
In fact, most of the book's seven chapters conclude with a bullet-pointed cheat sheet of "Lessons from Steve."
For example, at the end of the chapter titled, "Elitism: Hire Only A Players, Fire the Bozos," Kahney culls these lessons: "Work in small teams. Jobs doesn't like teams of more than 100 members, lest they become unfocused and unmanageable; don't listen to yes men. Argument and debate foster creative thinking. Jobs wants partners who challenge his ideas; engage in intellectual combat. Jobs makes decisions by fighting about ideas. It's hard and demanding, but rigorous and effective."
Some of the lessons may be hard for anyone other than Jobs to employ with any effect. Those include: "It's OK to be an a--hole, as long as you're passionate about it. Jobs screams and shouts, but it comes from his drive to change the world; use the carrot and the stick to get great work. Jobs praises and punishes as everyone rides the hero/a--hole rollercoaster; become a great intimidatr. Inspire through fear and a desire to please."
I came away from those lessons wondering if the benefits of behaving like that is worth the downside. It's true that Jobs is one of the most respected people in business, but then again, how many people want to punch his lights out? Probably more than just a few.
Still, the point of Inside Steve's Brain is to give students of the technology business an--albeit unauthorized--insider's view of how Jobs and Apple have risen to the top of the heap. Some might argue that Apple isn't really at the top, given that its computers are still far outsold by Windows machines, but few could argue that Apple has not achieved amazing successes in business in the last few years or that with its digital lifestyle strategy it is not years ahead of everyone else and laying the path that other companies will follow.
And for anyone who wants to understand how that happened, this book paints a pretty good picture of the intellect and intellectual processes that got Jobs, Apple, and the many top-flight people who work there where they are.
I do feel that Kahney's publisher let him down a little bit with less-than-stellar editing. As someone who has written a book myself, I know that authors depend on editors to make sure that things appear just right on the printed page. And throughout Inside Steve's Brain, readers come across many sets of facts or anecdotes multiple times, something that will slightly annoy the alert reader. These kinds of things are the printed page equivalent, as a professor of mine once declared, of seeing a microphone boom sticking out of the top of the screen in a movie. And Kahney's editors should have done more to help avoid this.
But in the end, I found the book to be enjoyable, well-written, very informative and, most important, up to date. Jobs will no doubt always be a source of fascination to many people, and it's a treat to get a volume like this, with a unique approach, about him, from someone as steeped in Apple's culture and history as Kahney.
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