Get a call from David Graves re San Francisco Chamber Orchestra business and discover the power cord (as opposed to chord[s]) for the soon-to-be-old cellphone awol. That, coupled with the continuing mild assault of the battered battery motivates a
trip with
Harriet to the
ATT
store, where we determine that replacing the cord makes little sense without an in-stock replacement battery. Add to this the byzantine billing of our previous arrangement, and it's time to start anew with last year's model (3G)
iPhone (as opposed to
I, Phone, or
iClaudius), which
beyond peak sales at its introduction, now sells for in the neighborhood of 4 times less than original price.
Low and behold, it slices and dices, makes phone calls on the touch screen, provides a quirky but nevertheless querty (quee -- whoops, sorry) keyboard that shifts to a numbered one (though a challenge to wide digits -- in some modes screen goes graciously into landscape mode), accesses internet including email via wireless phone -- no doubt a minutes-burner -- but also more, shall we say already, "traditionally," or so it seems from this perspective, from Wi-Fi, which, for the Wikipedia record
"is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance for certified products based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. This certification warrants interoperability between different wireless devices.
In some countries (and in this article) the term Wi-Fi is often used by the public as a synonym for IEEE 802.11-wireless LAN (WLAN).
Not every IEEE 802.11 compliant device is certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which may be because of certification costs that must be paid for each certified device type. The lack of the Wi-Fi logo does not imply that a device is incompatible to certified Wi-Fi-devices.
Wi-Fi is used by most personal computer operating systems, many video game consoles, laptops, smartphones, printers, and other peripherals. . . .
The term Wi-Fi suggests Wireless Fidelity, compared with the long-established audio recording term High Fidelity or Hi-Fi. Wireless Fidelity has often been used in an informal way, even by the Wi-Fi Alliance itself, but officially the term Wi-Fi does not mean anything.
The term Wi-Fi, first used commercially in August 1999, was coined by a brand consulting firm called Interbrand Corporation that had been hired by the Alliance to determine a name that was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'."
Interbrand invented Wi-Fi as a play on words with Hi-Fi, and also created the yin yang-style Wi-Fi logo.
The Wi-Fi Alliance initially complicated matters by stating that it "actually stood for" Wireless Fidelity, as with the advertising slogan, "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity," but later removed the phrase from their marketing. The Wi-Fi Alliance's early White papers still held on their website say: "…a promising market for wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network equipment." and "A Short History of WLANs." The yin yang logo indicates that a product had been certified for interoperability.
The Alliance has since downplayed the connection to Hi-Fi. Their official position now is that it is merely a brand name that stands for nothing in particular, and they now discourage the use of the term Wireless Fidelity."
Correct the arrangement of names in the imported contacts list (iPhone alphabetizes, thankfully, by last name, not as iTunes and Mail seem to do comically with first) and spend more than a bit of time on the weather (quite a contrast -- reading the highs and lows in a newspaper once a day, versus checking whenever on the phone to see the ups and downs of San Francisco, Sacramento, Swarthmore...).
Experiment more with Mail, Gmail, and Aol, re attachments and viewing/playing of images and sound files, sending wia one service and picking up in others (unlike the by-now-rarely heard term wysiwyg, apparently what you continue to see in one email enviroment is certainly not what you necessarily get in another to the present day). Oh, yes, and another orchestrated page of The Gospel According to St. Matthew: I. The Temptation.
