Going Mobile in Boston - iPhone vs. Droid
September 21, 2011
By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
Recently I read this stat from eMarketer that estimates that the US mobile web population will be up almost 25% this year as 97.3 million mobile owners log on to the internet from their device. My husband and I just returned from a long-weekend trip to Boston in which we were both one of those 97.3 million people who did just that. We went to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and be tourists in a city that neither of us knew very well. We left behind the laptop and just took ourselves, some clothes and our mobile phones, Kevin having an iPhone and me a Droid. It turned out at times to be a bit of a competition between the two platforms.
At the airport I said there has got to be some apps out there to help give us tips on visiting Boston. Kevin found one, I found another and we both downloaded them. We ended up liking the one I found better, the Boston GuidePal, so he downloaded it as well. Apparently this app is available for most major cities in the U.S. It was great and we ended up referring to it throughout the trip. It told us the best of What to See & Do, Eat & Drink, Nightlife and Shopping. You can open each recommendation which provides more detail, address, phone, website, and "T" stop. You can click on the map which opens to show you exactly where it's located. The iPhone again proved its superiority because you could zoom and expand the map by your fingertips, where with the Droid I could only click to zoom in just one view closer.
Now I've never been a big Foursquare user. I'm there mostly because I'm in marketing and I wanted to try it out just like the other new technology so I could understand how it works. Being in a city that I wasn't familiar with I decided to use it throughout the trip. So I started to "Check-In" at all the places we visited to see what other tips people may have left. I started telling Kevin that Sara and Tony B are here as well and he looked at me like I was crazy. Who cares, right? This is from a person who doesn't even have a Facebook account, so you can understand his puzzlement at what I was doing.
That doesn't mean that he wasn't using his mobile phone though. He is hooked on the game "Words with Friends" that he plays constantly with our two daughters, who both have iPhones as well. Now even though we were on a romantic weekend celebrating our anniversary, it didn't stop him from trying to beat them. I guess it's one way to keep track of your college-age kids. I never have been great at crossword puzzles, but I now just downloaded this app and will give it a try.
Next came the big event, after years of being a Boston Red Sox fan I was finally at Fenway Park watching this past Monday night game against the Orioles. Don't even get me started on how badly the Red Sox have been playing. After going back and forth in first place with the Yankees all season, they are now struggling to even get the Wild Card spot! Boston fans are now routing for the Yankees to beat Tampa Bay who is just behind the Sox in the race.
But anyhow, I was at Fenway and what a remarkable ball park it is. The oldest in the U.S.! The Red Sox did win that game, 18-9! More like a football score then baseball. A big thank you to our friends and clients at Basement Technologies, who are proud sponsors of Fenway and the Sox, and gave me the two seats in the Green Monster! Kevin and I both took photos with our phones of the view from our seats and sent it to our daughters and friends. He beat me with delivering the photo messages just because I posted the photo on Facebook first.
The last day we decided to take the "T" across the river to Cambridge and visit Harvard. I can now officially say I "Went to Harvard" and hopefully answer some of those trivia questions about it. Yes, there is some resemblance to the dinning hall featured in the Harry Potter movies. After having a beautiful, sunny weekend, that day was cloudy and it started to rain while we were touring the campus. On top of that my feet were really sore from all the walking we had done covering the entire Freedom Trail and more. So I took out my phone, went to Foursquare and quickly searched to find what else was "Nearby". We found the Russell House Tavern and enjoyed a couple of beers and some oysters from their raw bar as we dried off.
Since it was our 25th wedding anniversary (and on top of it my birthday as well) it got me reflecting back to the day we got married, which actually was a bit rainy just like our last day in Boston. We didn't have mobile phones back then. Why the majority of us didn't even have access to the Internet. It was something I assume a few professors at Harvard were still just experimenting with at the time. Apple and Microsoft were battling it out between their two computer platforms and there wasn't yet a Google or a Verizon Wireless.
So where will we be in another 25 years? Hard to imagine. I just wish that I will be as happy and as healthy as I am today with as many of my family and friends around me helping Kevin and I celebrate our 50th! That's all that really matters. Everything else is just frosting on the cake. Thanks for being part of my special celebration.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.