Over the past few months, I’ve had the chance to give AT&T’s GPS service a test drive.  Navigator is a free download for the iPhone, but costs about $10 a month to use, added to your AT&T bill.

For my first test, I let Navigator pick the quickest route from Orange Beach to the Grand Hotel in Point Clear.  Given the iPhone’s short battery life and since the battery-draining “Location Services” must be activated for Navigator to find its way, I selected a relatively short route.

I typed in the street address for the Grand and off we drove. Navigator took me up Highway 59, then north on Highway 98, and west on Gayfer Street in Fairhope. According to Navigator, the Grand Hotel was located on Gayfer Street, east of North Section Street – not exactly the waterfront property folks have learned to love over the years.  Luckily, I knew where I was going.  When I did arrive at the Hotel, I found Navigator had placed me in the middle of the Lakewood Golf Club across the street.  Its accuracy left a little to be desired.

The next test pitted Navigator against the “NeverLost” GPS system, hardwired into the Hertz rental car I was driving from the Pittsburgh airport to southwestern Pennsylvania.  Like the first test, I was familiar with this route as well, but there was an en-route challenge to both GPS systems.  Part of the trip involved a toll road that was still under construction. Would they be able to cope?

Leaving the Pittsburgh airport was routine with both systems, though I appreciated the timely reminders from NeverLost about upcoming turns.  The two female voices used by NeverLost were crystal clear as opposed to the sometimes-muffled voice coming from Navigator through the mini-speakers on the iPhone.  When it came to the map display, there was no contest between the two.  NeverLost looked like PacMan versus Navigator’s 3D street imaging.

When I drove onto the toll road, Navigator pulled way ahead in the competition.  Because Navigator downloads maps as needed along the route, it recognized the new stretches of highway and the detours needed to guide me to them.  NeverLost turned into EverLost as it tried desperately to keep me from driving through cornfields, or so it thought.  It finally gave up and warned me to return to the paved road.  In this case, Navigator knew exactly where I was, and how to get where I was going. It also offered to check for traffic along the route.

To its credit, AT&T has come out with several refinements to Navigator in the past few months which are available free via the App Store application on the iPhone. Neverlost didn’t show evidence of that flexibility.

The next time I really need to find where I’m going, I’m bringing my iPhone, Navigator and, for a long trip, an extra battery. 

BTW, I stopped in an Apple Store on my way back to the airport to lust after check out the iPhone 3GS.  The “S” really does stand for speed.  It booted faster, wrote pages faster and shot some really great looking video.

From left to right: Christina Leavenworth, Pamela Long Wiggins

Fox 10 News reporter Christina Leavenworth and I were in Circuit Court Judge Frank Bell’s courtroom in Pensacola Monday, sitting right in front of suspect Pamela Long-Wiggins as we waited for her hearing to begin.  She is charged with being an accessory after the fact in the murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings.

Wiggins, who moved ahead of me at the defense table,  maintained her neutral to pleasant expression as the state asked for her bond to be increased to $500,000.  The only change in her demeanor came when a woman who identified herself as Long-Wiggins’ best friend testified for the state.  As the woman tearfully explained that Pamela had asked her to take care of Pamela’s child because Pamela was afraid she would be going to prison, Pamela’s face turned red.

There are still plenty of twists and turns to come in this case, many found in the hundreds of documents released after Wiggins’ bond hearing.  Fox 10 News will be there to cover them all.

The Business Council of Alabama organized the only gubernatorial forum to include all 8 candidates for governor.  I was happy to serve as a moderator along with Kim Hendrix of WSFA in Montgomery.  These pictures are courtesy the Business Council of Alabama. Other photos are available by clicking here.

I was fortunate enough to meet and actually interview Walter Cronkite in the late 1970s.  My co-anchor Glenda Webb and I traveled to New York City to record promotions for the CBS Evening News (as if he needed promotion!), and for our program.

We arrived at his studio on West 57th Street and were warned by a member of his staff that he wasn’t in the best of moods, because of chronic back pain.  To his credit, we could never tell.  He was charming, helpful and above all, professional.  You could tell by the way everyone acted in the studio that he was “Mr. Cronkite”.  He commanded respect and he got it.

After the promotional shoot was over, I had the chance to interview him about current trends in local news.  He wasn’t fond of many of them.  Even at that time, he thought stations spent too little time covering the local school board or city hall because they were “dull”.  He had particular distain for news consultants, whom he felt were ruining local news by depending too heavily on market research rather than the judgment of people who had roots in their community, and whose job it was to gather the news on a day-by-day basis.

If you look back at some of his old newscasts and judge them by contemporary standards, they do look old fashioned.  He favored content over form; there were no flashy graphics or quick sound bites.  His writing was tight and focused, and he demanded the same from his correspondents and reporters.   With the exception of Charles Kuralt’s weekly features from around the country, his newscasts were focused on hard news that occurred in the Washington to New York corridor.

He had the luxury of working in a television universe that involved only 2 other competitors, NBC and to a much lesser extent, ABC.  Families would gather around their television sets and watch, really watch the network evening news.   And when they did sit down, they watched Walter Cronkite more than anyone else.

When folks outside Alabama hear about our state, they often think about names like George Wallace or Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Conner.

Maybe, just maybe, when they think about Alabama now, they will think instead about people like Dr. Regina Benjamin.

The country doctor from Bayou La Batre won unanimous approval from the Governor, our Senators and Representatives, not to mention her patients when President Obama nominated her to become the nation’s Surgeon General.

Just read the summary of her career from the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded her $500,000 in one of its “Genius” grants:

Regina Benjamin is a rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites. She has established a family practice that allows her to treat all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region. Benjamin is skilled, as well, in translating research on preventive health measures into accessible, community-based interventions to decrease the disease burdens of her diverse patient base, which includes immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, who comprise a third of Bayou La Batre’s population. A committed local physician, she also plays key roles statewide and nationally, helping others establish clinics in remote areas of the country and serving in leadership positions in such health-related organizations as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians. With a deep, firsthand knowledge of the pressing needs and health disparities afflicting rural, high-poverty communities, Benjamin is ensuring that the most vulnerable among us have access to high-quality care.

Regina Benjamin received a B.S. (1979) from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received an M.D. (1984) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; she also holds an M.B.A. (1991) from Tulane University. She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia (1987). The CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic since its founding in 1990, Benjamin has also served as the associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama’s College of Medicine and as president of the State of Alabama Medical Association (2002-2003).

Dr. Benjamin represents the Alabama of today.  I hope those inside and outside of the state think of her when they think of Alabama.

Hope you had a great Fourth of July weekend!

The highlight for my family was our outing to Hank Aaron Stadium, to enjoy some hot dogs, baseball and fireworks with a group of friends. It was the perfect way to celebrate an All-American holiday.

——–

It has also been a tradition for us to watch the Fourth of July spectacular from the Hatch Shell along the Charles River, featuring the Boston Pops.  A&E used to do a tremendous job with the broadcast, and it just hasn’t been the same since it moved to CBS.  Its broadcast begins with, what is actually, the end of the live performance—the last few measures of the 1812 Overture.  It’s just not the same.

When it came to announcing the death of pop icon Michael Jackson, TMZ.com was not only first, it was right.  As we waited for the Associated Press to carry word of Jackson’s fate, TMZ.com was the first to announce he had been rushed to the hospital, was in cardiac arrest and finally, that he had died.

During an interview with Shep Smith on Fox News Channel, a producer from TMZ.com talked about breaking the story.  It came down to old-fashioned journalism.  She explained the TMZ staff knew the city (Los Angeles) and heard the radio transmission about paramedics being called out.  That’s all it took to get the staff in motion.

We had been monitoring all the traditional news sources, as well as hitting the refresh key over and over again on TMZ.com.

We started posting news alerts here on fox10tv.com, but as it came close to newstime at 5 p.m., we still didn’t have confirmation that Jackson had died.  I chose to say there were conflicting reports about his health–that some sources were saying he was in cardiac arrest but that TMZ said he was dead.   We kept updating the story throughout the newscast as additional information came in–first from the Los Angeles Times website and then finally at 5:27 from the AP:

BC-US–APNewsAlert,0015

FLASH

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A person with knowledge of the situation says Michael Jackson has died.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

AP-NY-06-25-09 1827EDT

By then, though, it was old news, thanks to TMZ.com.

It comes from David Pogue of  The New York Times…

To me, the dramatic speed increase is the best selling point of the new iPhone.  I’ve seen side-by-side comparisons with the vanilla 3G and it’s impressive.  When you combine a faster iPhone with better battery life, that’s a winner.  Add video recording and editing..well..it raises the bar for all the other wanna-be iPhones out there.

The only negative?  I have to wait until next April to upgrade.  ;(

If you ever tried to use a wireless card to connect to the internet, you know what a pain in the laptop it can be.

The card I’ve been using has a small, plastic antenna that tends to fall off at the slightest touch.

Now, Verizon Wireless has come up with a device that makes the wireless card obsolete; the MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot.  It’s a 2 ounce piece of plastic the size of a thick credit card that connects to Verizon’s 3G network and creates your own personal, secure wireless mini-network.

As many as 5 different wireless devices can connect to the internet within about 30 feet of the MiFi.  Your network is password protected, so you control access to it.

The rechargeable battery in the MiFi provides up to 4 hours of active use, and 40 hours of standby time on a single charge.

It’s reasonably priced.  With a 2 year contract, the MiFi is 99 bucks after rebate.  Access is extra; about 40 dollars a month for 250MB of data or 60 dollars for up to 5 gigabytes.  If you don’t want to sign up for a monthly plan, you can pay $15 for 24 hours but you’ll have to pay $150 for the unit.

Because the MiFi interacts with your WiFi-enabled device, there is no software to set up, and it’s Mac-friendly.

To use the MiFi, you just press the power button, wait a few seconds for it to connect to Verizon’s data network, and enter the password listed on the back of the MiFi.  That’s it.

How fast is the connection?  That’s the other reason to use this.

I used the iPhone app called Speed Test to compare the speed of the AT&T 3G network to the MiFi network connected to Verizon’s 3G network.

Let’s say it wasn’t a fair fight. Look at the screen shots. On the left is the AT&T network; on the right, Verizon.  A series of tests confirmed consistently higher speeds for Verizon.

If you need to connect to the internet with your laptop, and you are on the road, the MiFi should be something to consider.

Saturday was a beautiful day on the campus of Spring Hill College.  I had the chance to put on a cap and gown once again and walk with the rest of the faculty for the commencement exercises on the Avenue of the Oaks.

The most memorable moment for me came when retiring President Rev. Gregory Lucey choked up a little bit as he asked the new graduates to “stay in touch”.  It had to be a bittersweet moment for him, as he prepares to turn over the presidency of the college to someone new.

To illustrate the importance of community, he told the story of a rabbi who learned a longtime member of the congregation was no longer attending services.  He went to the woman’s house, and sat with her in front of her coal-powered fireplace.

Neither said anything for a half hour.

Finally, the rabbi reached into the fire with a set of tongs, pulled out a single piece of coal and set it apart from the others.  Within minutes, the coal ashed over and died.

A few minutes passed, then the woman finally spoke.  “I see your message,” she said.  “I will return to services”.

Yes, it is important to “stay in touch”, no matter what you do.