As a little diversion from the usual bicycle news I am diving into tech geekdom, another topic near and dear to my heart. One thing you might not know about Elliott and I is that we both worked in the tech world long ago in another life. He worked in K-12 and Higher Education inside sales, and I was a technician (or rather, some overblown title like “Service and Support Engineer”) in K-12 education and at an independent Mac store – remember those?
These days, though, we have diverged a bit. Elliott still uses Macs pretty exclusively and is a proud iPhone user. I don’t have any Macs at home right now, am using the Windows 7 Release Candidate on a cheapo Compaq and my phone is a BlackBerry 8900. Conflict! I like iPhones, really, they aren’t bad. I just can’t type any word with more than three letters without misspelling it on those touch screens. Especially with sweaty hands you get from things like, say, biking.
A couple of weeks ago I was browsing my usual morning news sites (courtesy of Viigo, naturally) and found this story on BerryReview about bicycle mounts for the BlackBerry Bold and Storm. Wow!
Image courtesy USBFever.com
So that’s great right? This must be what every bicycle riding nerd has been looking for. Way more useful than, say, a pocket. Confusing isn’t it? I’m glad these kinds of companies are thinking of us cyclists but I just don’t know what this is for. Obsessed texters who just have to get every second of typing in before the red light changes? Perpetually lost Google Maps addicts? Hmm.
The scariest part is actually this line on the product page:
This mount is not designed for use with aggressive or extreme bicycle riding. Decrease the risk of damage to your PDA from an accident by using a self made strap to further secure the PDA in the cradle is recommended.
Encouraging customers to use a homemade strap before they buy, huh? I bet USB Fever Customer Service has had some angry calls about this one, and I further wager that “aggressive or extreme bicycle riding” is probably not too far off from commuting to work on our pothole-laden Austin streets.
Fear not, iPhone users, you aren’t left out in the cold on this one either. Here’s your very own bike mount too!
Image courtesy USBFever.com
So there you go! BlackBerry and iPhone users rejoice! We can all join hands and share our experiences of mounting our $500 phones precariously on our bicycle handlebars!
I would actually like to hear some uses or experiences from these. Whoever posts the best use, or best harrowing phone on bike story in the comments will actually get one of these – your preference!
Related posts:
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I’ve ditched my Zen Micro for the Blackberry as an Mp3 player. The builtin speaker is reasonably loud, so I have considered using it on the bike (w/o headphones of course). But that mount doesn’t look secure at all.
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’ve shopped around for a gadget like this, not for telecommunications on the road, but for watching podcasts while using a trainer. One of those reading racks works OK, but I presume that a dedicated handlebar mount might improve visibility and cut down on how much the gadget slides around.
A use case while on the road would be to take advantage of the iPhone’s “Maps” application, and I think I’ve seen some Blackberry devices that have GPS functionality. Why buy a Garmin when you already have similar functionality on your phone?
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I thought of the maps use but who gets lost *that* much on a bicycle? I would think that just pulling the phone out of your pocket every half hour or so works a little better than this…and much safer.
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Maybe not the most creative use, but a legitimate one. I have downloaded the training videos from http://www.thesufferfest.com/ to my iPhone and watched them while riding rollers. Since I don’t have the fancy mount I rigged up something with a 50-cent iPhone case off eBay and some velcro1 ;^)
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 10:21 am
The best integrated use of a product I’ve seen you could actually use on a bike is the blue tooth heart rate and phone with maps combo from Nokia (I use sports tracker for all my rides):
https://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/main/n79_polar.do
Maybe would work well with this product? Get me one and I’ll let you know : )