Fila Skele-Toes 2.0 Review

     I've always been interested in the concept of barefoot running.  Of wearing a shoe with minimal support & padding, and altering your stride to work with the natural design of your body.  Most running shoes basically try to do the reverse of this, augmenting your body as much as possible.  They attempt to provide extra impact absorption, more rebound, reduce (or increase) pronation.  That's all well and good, but if you're really after some mechanical advantage why not take a bicycle?  Or go one step further and jump on a motorcycle?  I like the idea of running because it's just you that's doing all the work.
     There's a whole debate about whether "barefoot" running is likely to mean you're less prone to injuries as it's more natural and we've evolved over millions of years to get around without shoes.  I'm not sure I really buy into that, as a lot of our environment is no longer natural, but if it's true then I'll just take it as an added bonus.  I'm more interested in it because I like the thought of running with as little aid as practical.
     Because of this I've always been interested in the Vibram FiveFingers.  Here in Australia though, their availability hasn't been that great, and they definitely seem like something you'd want to try on before buying.  They're also reasonably expensive for something which I've regarded as a bit of a curiosity and novelty.  Then a couple of weeks ago in a catalogue I saw Fila Skele-Toes on sale, for all of $50.  I ducked into a store and tried a pair on to make sure they fit reasonably well.  (My toes aren't perhaps the most normal shape, and one foot is close to a half-size larger than the other.)  They did, and I walked out with a pair within a couple of minutes of trying them on.

Skele-Toes 2.0 (10km done and already holed.)

     I've worn them quite a few times now, mostly for some light hiking or trail running if you want to be generous about my athletic prowess.  I've got to say, I really really like them.  The first time I went out in them I found myself jumping from rock to rock just for the fun of it.  They really do provide a novel tactile experience around the feet.  You get a much more sure-footed feeling due to the extra feedback that you get over even the lightest of hiking boots.

     I definitely move around in them with a different stride as well, I seem to give my calves much more of a workout when I go for a hike in the skele-toes than my regular boots.  Part of this is definitely due to a conscious effort on my part to forefoot strike, but it really does become natural fairly quickly.

     It's certainly not all roses though.  The material of the sole is quite a bit more rigid than I expected it to be.  For instance, when I wiggle my toes in the shoes the upper material layer stretches and my toes lift off the sole.  I expected the shoes to be much more glove-like.

     The fit for me isn't ideal either, however it's only due to a poor strapping/closure system.  There's one strap which extends over the top of foot, along the outside edge and then over the heel.  It's held at both ends with velcro (or hook-and-loop closures, I don't recall seeing a brand anywhere) but the positioning of them only allows for minimal adjustment.  When I've got the strap tensioned up to where I like it on my smaller foot (I've got a little less than half a size difference between my left and right feet) the velcro is only attaching along a length of ~2cm at each end of the strap.  This isn't really enough to hold it firm and it tends to work loose.  Because of the construction, with the upper part of the shoe being all fairly stretchy, the shoes are actually pretty stable even with the strap loose - but they can start to rub a little above my heel if I don't stop to tighten the strap.

     I also managed to get a couple of small holes on the little toe pocket during my first hike, which was pretty annoying.  It looks like the material from the top surface has pulled away a little from the sole, maybe something to do with the way it's glued together.  However I've worn them a fair bit since then, and put them through the washing machine, and the holes haven't gotten any larger so they're not too much of a problem - they've never let any stones or anything in.

     The material of the sole is also scuffing up at a fairly high rate.  I.e. I don't expect the shoes to necessarily last all that long.  That kind of just meets with my expectations though, a flimsy shoe (which if you want to be negative about it, is all these are) is never going to be all that durable.

     Overall I'm very happy with them, but because of the few little niggles that they have I'll probably still be considering trying a pair of Vibram FiveFingers instead when it's time to replace my Skele-Toes.

Coffee Joulies Review

Coffee Joulies!

     My Coffee Joulies arrived a couple of days ago, and I think my hot beverage consumption has tripled while I've been playing with my new toy.  So, what are they?

     The promise behind the Joulies is that they'll bring your coffee down to a pleasant temperature for drinking more quickly than sitting around waiting for it to cool, and that they'll then hold it at a "nice to drink" temperature for longer.  Sounds good right?  Having your coffee (or tea) not too hot to start with, but staying warm for longer.

     So do they work?  The good news is yes, they do.  After making a hot drink, drop in all 5 Joulies and it'll cool down much quicker.  (I tend not to have milk in my hot drinks, so I'm used to having to wait a while for them to cool before being drinkable.)  They also do, as advertised, extend the time your drink will stay hot for.  Giving you a little longer to drink it.  Little is the key word here though - don't think that Joulies are going to be a replacement for your thermos.  I haven't got a pair of thermometers handy for doing any objective testing, but the effect is obvious enough subjectively.  It's just more subtle than I'd like.  That's when using them at a Joulie to coffee ratio that's around twice of that mentioned in the brochure, so it's not exactly an overwhelming effect.

     How do they work?  Well, the brochure and website talk a lot about Phase Change Materials.  Or in the simplest of terms, things that melt.  When a solid reaches its melting temperature, it absorbs an extra kick of heat energy to push it from solid to liquid.  This is the latent heat of the material, or the heat of fusion.  When it cools down enough to solidify again it will release that same amount of heat energy.  This is the reason why the Joulies are able to both cool down your drink, and then heat it later on.  While maybe not the best analogy when we're talking about a food product, liquid sweat evaporating off your skin as steam to cool you down is making use of a similar process.

     The Joulies themselves are shaped like large (About 5cm long) stainless steel coffee beans, filled with a "Plant-based Phase Change Material".  I'm guessing that the "Plant-based Phase Change Material" might be carnauba wax, used in everything from coating smarties to polishing your car.  Although it's got a melting temperature of ~80 Deg C, which is quite a bit higher than the 60 Deg C quoted as the phase change point of the material inside the Joulies.  If you want to cool your coffee to 60 Deg C and hold it there though, it makes sense to have a material which absorbs and releases heat above that temperature.  It could be beeswax though, that could be considered plant-based I suppose, and it has a melting point of around 60 Deg C.  Or it could be another plant based wax with a melting point closer to 60 Deg C.  I'm just speculating, and pointing out that the material inside the Joulies isn't especially rare.

     So the theory behind them is sound, why is the performance so ho-hum?  Well, honestly I'm not totally sure - the physics look fairly sound:

     I'm guessing that the phase change part of the Joulies can absorb around 150kJ/kg, and the 5 of mine weigh in at ~150g altogether.  That means that due to the phase change component alone they can store around ~22kJ of energy to release back to your coffee.  Your coffee cup probably holds ~250g of coffee.  It takes a little over 4kJ to heat a kilogram of water one degree, which means that it takes around 1kJ of energy to raise your entire coffee by 1 degree.  This is starting to sound pretty good right?  The Joulies should be able to raise the temperature of my coffee by 20 degrees?  Assuming that the coffee cools by around 10 degrees every five minutes, the Joulies should give me an extra 10 minutes of drinking time.  The effect to me seems, subjectively, around half of that at best.  You could probably chalk this up to inefficiencies in the heat transfer process - for example the coffee is shedding heat faster than the Joulies can replace it, meaning that the coffee drops to an unpleasant temperature before the Joulies have given up all their heat energy.

     Then there's the downsides of using the Joulies.  They take up a noticeable amount of room in your cup, meaning less beverage fits.  It's something else to wash.  There's the worry they'll slide forward and chip your teeth when trying to get the last gulp.  You'll look like a bit of a tosser if you use them outside of home.

     It's a shame that the upside of the Joulies is so small, because it's a product I really wanted to like.  I love the concept, but they need to fill them with something that has around 2-3 times the latent heat before I'd consider them as anything more than a novelty.  Mind you, given some of the coffee snobbery that goes around, the small effect they do have is probably going to be enough to sell a lot of them to a very select market.

     For me personally, even though I own some, I can't see them being used very often.

Joulies with Aussie 20c piece for comparison. 

iCloud: iOS vs. Mac, victory iOS.

     One of the features that I was really looking forward to in iOS 5 was iCloud.  Mainly because I've gotten quite used to using the iWork apps, Pages and Numbers, on my iPhone/iPad.  (Well, mostly Numbers really - but that's just because my interests tend towards me needing spreadsheets a lot more than page layout or word processing apps.).
     The file management for those programs though was a very weak link.  I eventually settled on a semi workable solution where I kept all of my iWork files on iDisk.  I'd download individual files of interest onto whatever device happened to be most convenient to use for viewing or editing.  Then when done I'd upload it back to iDisk if I'd made any changes.  It was a little clunky on the iOS devices but it worked seamlessly on my Mac, where a mirrored copy of my iDisk lived, and OS X did all the syncing transparently in the background.
     I was expecting that with the launch of iCloud, I'd simply get that same seamlessness extended to my iOS devices as well.  Once iOS 5 and iCloud and OS X 10.7.2 were all available and installed I eagerly migrated my MobileMe account across to iCloud.  I updated all available apps, grabbed my iPad and started up Numbers.
     Hmm, no mention of iCloud.  That's okay, I'll just grab a file from iDisk to start with and.....  Yep, it's syncing that file across to iCloud.  Cool.  Well, I don't want to do all my files one by one, I'll just jump on my Mac and move everything else across.  Errrr, there's no iCloud interface on the Mac!? Ok, a quick google and...  Oh, I have to upload my files through the iCloud website?  Well, that's a bit clunky but I can live with it for now.  After all, I only need to do this because I'm moving a bunch of existing files across.  Whenever I create an iWork document from now on it'll go straight to iCloud.  Right, let's start up Numbers and edit one of these new "iClouded" files.  Hmmm, how do I open my iCloud files from Numbers?  I guess I need to google that too, I thought it would've been more obvious.... You're kidding me.  I can't open them directly?  I need to manually download them via a web browser from the iCloud website, edit them, then upload them again?  Isn't that the SAME PROBLEM WITH iOS THAT iCLOUD WAS MEANT TO FIX?!??
     It was then that I realized that iCloud is a lovely integrated solution for syncing files across iOS devices, but its current Mac implementation is significantly worse than iDisk in MobileMe.  Apple have essentially taken a system that worked great on Mac and so-so on iOS, and made it work very well on iOS and terribly on Mac.  I'm more than a little underwhelmed.  It's such a glaring issue that I'm sure Apple must've aware of it.  I'm guessing there'll be an update to the Mac iWork apps very soon that addresses the problem.  But I'm going to be very grumpy about it until then.  With a workflow involving both iOS devices and a Mac, I think the old system worked better.

    On a side note, I saw that theres at least one game which is making use of iCloud to sync progress between devices.  Finally.  This seemed like a no brainier to me as soon as apple announced that iCloud was going to be open to 3rd party developers.  I hadn't seen anything in the press, or from any game companies, about planning to use iCloud in this way though, so I was starting to get nervous that it wasn't gong to be possible for some reason.

iPhone 4S not dual mode GSM/CDMA? [Update]

    Update:  Seems as though the hardware is dual mode, with two separate radios inside the phone.  The comment on the Apple site is purely due to carrier locking agreements, not a hardware limitation.


     Not that it really affects us much here in Australia, but it looks like none of the new iPhone 4S's are dual GSM/CDMA.  It's interesting that this is the case, as even after the Apple launch event people were expecting a single hardware version to be both GSM and CDMA capable.  There was lots of "world phone!" excitement from the press.  (Well, the US press....  I think everyone outside that country considers any GSM phone to be a "world phone".)
     How do I know that there's two separate versions?  Apple states it about as clearly as they can (without actually stating it) on their website for pre-ordering the 4S in the USA:

The unlocked iPhone works only on supported GSM networks, such as AT&T in the U.S. When you travel internationally, you can also use a micro-SIM card from a local GSM carrier. The unlocked iPhone 4 will not work with CDMA carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint.

     The positive side of it is that all of us GSM only countries aren't helping to subsidise the cost of the CDMA hardware.  From a geeky point of view though, I was really looking forward to seeing how they'd managed to combine the two separate analog/digital transceivers into the one unit.  Oh well, it's possible I'm wrong - iFixit will have the definitive answer soon I'm sure.
     I'm wondering if volume/mute buttons are in the iPhone 4 GSM spot, or the iPhone 4 CDMA (Verizon) spot.  Given the antenna design of the phone seems to match with the "Verizon iPhone 4" then I'm guessing they'll be slightly moved from the existing Australian iPhone 4 location.  Which means that existing iPhone 4 cases mightn't quite fit.

Speck ToughSkin for iPhone 4 Review

     A few weeks ago when I received an email letting me know that the Speck ToughSkin for the iPhone 4 was finally available, I was very excited.  I loved the ToughSkin for my 3GS, when I initially heard there was going to be an iPhone 4 version...  Well, see here for some of my raving about it.  Needless to say I ordered one straight away.  I've been living with it on my phone for a couple of weeks now, but I'm not nearly as happy with the iPhone 4 version as I was with the 3GS one.

     The "case" actually consists of three parts.  First up is a hard thin plastic shell case that clips to the iPhone, providing protection by itself, but also having some ridges moulded into it to give the main silicone case some grip.  This snaps on very easily, adding minimal bulk to the phone - which is a good thing as it's actually held on so tightly it's very difficult to remove.

     Next up is a silicone case.  The iPhone pops in and out of it easily, but not too easily as with the OtterBox Defender I had.  The silicone fits snugly and looks quite well integrated with the phone as a whole.

     Finally there's a holster/stand into which you can mount the iPhone either screen in or out.  (No pictures of this.)  It seems to hold the phone relatively securely, but I'm not the kind of person who wears my phone in a holster so I've not actually tried it out.

     So there's some good and some bad with the new iPhone 4 ToughSkin.  (I can't help comparing it against the 3GS ToughSkin.)  The first case layer is really quite nice.  It's just a thin shell with good clearance cut outs around all the switches and cameras - it doesn't cover any of the buttons.  The ridges and bumps that are incorporated to give the outer silicone case some purchase also give your hand some.  I was always vaguely worried about the naked iPhone 4 slipping out of my hand.  At the same time, because it's a simple hard plastic case, it's still very easy to slip in and out of your pocket.  I leave my phone in this layer all the time now.  Though I must admit, this is partly because even though it's a bit of a struggle to get the iPhone into its "jogging" case with that layer on, it's easier than getting that first layer of ToughSkin off.
     Overall the system used on the 4 version is much better than the 3GS version, where the inner "case" was really just a flimsy frame with some lugs on it to hold the silicon.  This new first layer is all good.  Unfortunately, its not why I bought the case.  Even more unfortunately it's about all the "good" that there is left in the product.
     The outer silicone case is really what the ToughSkin is all about, the rest is just there to support the silicone.  Either physically, or just to round out the overall "do anything" package that the ToughSkin is meant to represent.  My biggest gripe with the case is that's it's significantly less grippy than the 3GS one was.  You could throw the 3GS ToughSkin down on almost anything, at any angle, and it would grip and cling there like a spider.  It was fantastic.  (It also made it a pig of a thing to put in your pocket, but I was happy to make that tradeoff.)
     The ToughSkin for iPhone 4?  Well, you can put it in your pocket much easier.  If you throw it down on something it's more likely to bounce off than stick and grip.  If you leave it on the dash of your car it'll slide roll and tumble.
     I'm not that clumsy Speck.  I don't really need all that extra rubber around the phone because I drop it every three steps.  I want it there so my phone is super grippy and will stay where I put it, regardless of how precarious a location I decide to leave it.  It doesn't do this, so the case fails at the primary purpose I bought it for.
     Adding further salt to the wound, the case isn't flat on the back.  Another positive of the 3GS ToughSkin was that it took a phone with a rounded back and made it flat.  This meant that you could type on it while the phone was sitting on a desk without it rocking around crazily.  The iPhone 4 lies flat without a case, but speck have made the back of the ToughSkin 4 with 3 flat panels.  It's not quite a curve, but it still has enough shape that the phone rocks and moves side to side if you're trying to type on it while on a desk.  Very annoying and anti-utilitarian.  Worse still the "Speck" branding is right in the middle of the case, and slightly raised, adding more to the rocking abilities of the case.  Letting your branding interfere with your product is a massive fail as far as I'm concerned - it just associates a negative experience with your brand.  I look at the way the way the silicone portion of the iPhone 4 ToughSkin case is designed and shake my head sometimes.
     So overall:  Fit and finish is great.  The inner hard case is really quite nice (something I wasn't counting on).  The multiple inner plastic to outer silicone attachment points really help the silicone case to fit well.  To my mind the styling isn't as aggressive as the 3GS version - it's more stealth fighter than rock crawler tyre.  Functionally it seems as though it'd be very protective in a drop situation, but far far more prone to sliding off something and falling than the 3GS version.

     I'm keeping it on my phone for now, but I'm still casting my eye around for an iPhone 4 case that captures all the good qualities of the iPhone 3GS ToughSkin.  It's just a shame that the iPhone 4 version isn't that product.

Phone Bottom - Plenty of room around dock connector.  3 sided back clearly evident.

Nice amount of room around headphone jack.  Noise cancelling mike may be a little obscured.