Is the iPhone 3G
worth waitingb in line for? Early reviewers of
Apple
‘s new smart phone are mostly positive, but they share some common gripes about battery life and two aspects of dealing with ATT: the service-plan costs
and the skimpy 3G coverage areas.
The New York Times’ David Pogue
, the
Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg
, and
USA Today’s Ed Baig
, the Holy Trinity of Apple’s marketing department, all received the phone about two weeks ago. (Most other reviewers, including ours, will have to
wait with everyone else to buy one Friday morning
.) All three reviewers liked the
first-generation iPhone
, and they all like the second generation even better.

(The folks at our sister publication PC World New Zealand
lived with a new iPhone 3G for a short time
; they also have slightly mixed impressions, but generally liked the phone.)

Pogue’s bottom line: “So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted.”

Mossberg

concludes: “If you’ve been waiting to buy an
iPhone
until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker
battery life.”

Baig is more effusive: “… this handheld marvel has no equal among consumer-oriented smartphones.”

Mixed in with the raves are a fair number of complaints, however.

The 3G network: Mossberg says downloads were three to five times faster on the 3G iPhone than on the standard iPhone. Baig accepts Apple’s claims that the
new phone is twice as fast as the old version; loading popular Web sites took 10 to 30 seconds, he says. But all three reviewers complain about holes in
ATT’s 3G coverage, despite the fact that they’re all based in and around New York. Imagine what the coverage will be like in rural Iowa.

Actually,
David Pogue
did more than imagine. He points out that, according to
ATT’s 3G coverage map
, “in 16 states, only three cities or fewer are covered; 10 states have no coverage at all.” And you guessed it, Iowa is one of them.

Mossberg says he found problems even in Manhattan: “In New York City, riding in a taxi along the Hudson, one important call was dropped three times on the
new iPhone. Finally, I borrowed a cheap Verizon phone and got perfect reception.”

Battery life: Mossberg’s tests found that the iPhone 3G delivered 4 hours, 27 minutes of talk time. “More important,” he says, “in daily use, I found the
battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20% by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day.”

As with the first iPhone, you can’t replace the battery in the iPhone 3G, meaning you have to charge early and often–or use workarounds. Mossberg says
he used Wi-Fi instead of 3G for data transactions, turned down the screen brightness, and at times turned 3G off entirely to save juice.

Cost: All three reviewers point out that despite a drop in the cost of the iPhone itself, having one will end up costing you more than owning a first-gen
iPhone. That’s a result of increases in the cost of ATT’s phone and data plans. Though you save $200 on the phone, you’ll pay $240 more for the service
over the life of the two-year contract you must purchase, Mossberg writes.

GPS: The bottom line on the iPhone’s new GPS capabilities is that they’re nice but limited. Pogue points out that they can’t provide turn-by-turn directions,
merely showing you as a blue spot moving along a map–and sometimes they can’t even do that. “The metal of a car or the buildings of Manhattan are often
enough to block the iPhone’s view of the sky, leaving it just as confused as you are,” he writes.

Business support: Apple has boasted that the new iPhone will work much better with corporate e-mail servers. Baig reports on connecting the iPhone 3G to
his company’s e-mail network, and he comes away impressed. “Messages and calendar entries are ‘pushed’ to the device, so they show up right away, just
as they do on other computers. With your employer’s blessing, set-up is a relative cinch.”

Mossberg points out a potentially serious problem, though: “While you can have both personal and Exchange email accounts on the new iPhone, if you synchronize
with Exchange calendars and contacts, your personal calendar and contacts are erased.”

Third-party apps: Mossberg and Baig tried a few early iPhone apps and liked what they found. Baig says Cro-Mag, a caveman racing game that uses the phone’s
accelerometer to steer, is “difficult but fun.” Mossberg believes “the iPhone has a chance to become a true computing platform with wide versatility.”

Audio quality: All the reviewers comment on the new iPhone’s improved audio quality. “You sound crystal clear to your callers, and they sound crystal clear
to you. In fact, few cellphones sound this good,” Pogue raves. Mossberg concurs, but complains that “the new phone produced an echo when used with the
built-in Bluetooth system in my car.”

What’s still missing: The consensus is that the iPhone still has some significant deficiencies.
list of 8 items
• No voice dialing
• No video recording
• A limited camera
• No memory-card slot
• No copy-and-paste function
• No MMS for sending photos to other phones
• No Bluetooth stereo audio
• No support for Adobe Flash, Windows Media Video, or Java
list end
None of those complaints, though, seriously dim the reviewers’ admiration of the new iPhone. “While not everything on my wish list made it onto the new
device,” Baig says, “Apple has raised the bar with iPhone 3G. To which I offer an enthusiastic thumbs up.”

THE prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination — pasty, geeky, male — has failed to live up to his reputation.Adam Strange
LAUREN RENNER, 16 On Agirlsworld.com, blogged about her daily life and worked on the site’s “My first prom” magic story that lets girls fill in blanks and
make a tale about themselves.
Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling
the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts
and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and
MySpace
pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet
Sodevious.net
, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than
boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent
of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent
of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely
as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage
matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than
a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an
indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek,
the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which
are posted every Sunday on
Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to
laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary
content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities
than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of
jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline
in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information
Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to
shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters
today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT
Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing
software and a desire to invent new technology.
LAUREN RENNER, 16 On Agirlsworld.com, blogged about her daily life and worked on the site’s “My first prom” magic story that lets girls fill in blanks and
make a tale about themselves.
Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling
the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts
and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and
MySpace
pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet
Sodevious.net
, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than
boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent
of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent
of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely
as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage
matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than
a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an
indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek,
the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which
are posted every Sunday on
Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to
laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary
content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities
than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of
jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline
in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information
Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to
shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters
today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT
Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing
software and a desire to invent new technology.
LAUREN RENNER, 16 On Agirlsworld.com, blogged about her daily life and worked on the site’s “My first prom” magic story that lets girls fill in blanks and
make a tale about themselves.
Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling
the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts
and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and
MySpace
pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet
Sodevious.net
, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than
boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent
of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent
of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely
as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage
matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than
a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an
indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek,
the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which
are posted every Sunday on
Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to
laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary
content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities
than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of
jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline
in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information
Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to
shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters
today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT
Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing
software and a desire to invent new technology.
Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading
and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or
sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times
MARTINA BUTLER, 17 Stars in her own indie music podcast on Emogirltalk.com. Last Sunday’s episode included music by Sequoyah Prep School and Death Cab for
Cutie.
Natasha Calzatti for The New York Times
SARADA CLEARY, 14 On Agirlsworld.com helped create an online game for National Spay Day and contributes craft ideas like how to decorate jeans.
“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate
professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been
expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at
Harvard
Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to
express themselves, particularly their originality.

“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive
director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”

That desire is never so evident as when girls criticize online copycats who essentially steal their Web page backgrounds and graphics by hotlinking (linking
to someone else’s image so it appears on one’s own Web page). Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing
the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said.

No wonder that girls post aggressive warnings on their sites such as “Do not jock, copy, steal, or redistribute any of my stuff!” or, more to the point:
“hotlink and die.”

While creating content enables girls to experiment with how they want to present themselves to the world, they are obviously interested in maintaining and
forging relationships.

When Lauren Renner, 16, was in fifth grade, she and a friend, Sarada Cleary, now 14, both of Oceanside, Calif., began writing about their lives on
Agirlsworld.com
, an interactive e-zine with articles written for and by girls.

“Girls from everywhere would read it and would ask questions about what they should do with a problem,” Lauren said. “I think girls like to help with other
people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”

Today Lauren and Sarada are among more than 1,000 girls who regularly submit content to Agirlsworld. They make a few extra dollars writing online articles
and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

“At school there’s just a certain type of people,” Sarada said. “They’re just local. Online you get to experience their culture through them.”

THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor
Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members
of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.

Zach Saltzman, 17, of Memphis, said content creation among his circle of male friends includes having a
Facebook
profile and posting videos of lacrosse games and original short films on YouTube.

“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class.

He hasn’t posted a video himself and doesn’t have a blog because, as he put it, “it really never interested me and I don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Zach does, however, have a Facebook profile where he uploads digital photographs.

“It’s really the only way I keep my pictures organized because I don’t make photo albums and stuff like that,” he said.

Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something
up and getting responses.”

About 3 weeks ago, I perchased my first sattelite radio. Its xm, which had the most channels. I was kind of disappointed, but it still pretty good. Through xm, I’m able to listen to all the large news challes like fox news, CNN, BBC, and of course, bloomburg radio which is kinda neat.
I also get nation hockey league games, as well as major league baseball. I don’t however get nfl, and NBA unfortunately, but its not to bad.
anyways, I gotta get to work.