The Similarities between the WordPress and Drupal Communities

Before I began using Drupal I was a longtime WordPress user. I still use WordPress to power my personal websites (including this one). I love both of these open source projects and often get asked which one to use and the answer is still the same it was back in 2007. It depends on what your site is for. For most people who just need a blog or a very simple website I still often recommend WordPress. But if you need a website that requires deep permission levels, commerce, sophisticated caching, and more complex functionality, I recommend Drupal. This is just a high level recommendation and by gleaning more into a sites’ requirements it becomes easier to recommend one or the other.

The evolution of WordPress and Drupal have gone in somewhat similar directions. They both started as open source projects. The founders of both of these projects have created for profit company’s based on their open source software. Matt Mullenweg of WordPress created Automattic and Dries Buytaert founded Acquia. Both companies have also created free hosted versions, as well as fully managed business service versions of their software. Automattic created WordPress.com and Acquia created DrupalGardens. Both projects also host “Cons” and or “Camps” throughout the year were users gather together to share information and help further their respective projects. I just wanted to point out some of these similarities between both of these companies and how their for profit arms have also been instrumental in helping insure the health of their projects. Both Automattic and Acquia also do a great job of contributing back to their open source communities.

Acquia’s Mission and Roadmap Towards Improving Drupal

So back to DrupalCon. I went into this year’s DrupalCon focused on the ways that I can extend the platform to help enable people to more easily create and publish content across our websites. The areas that specifically have been challenging are setting up simple wysiwyg interfaces both for page creation and media asset management, publishing workflows for multiple members on a team, and the ability to publish content between staging and production environments. Our current methods for these have pain points and I was on a mission to find ways to improve them and look to what the future of Drupal had in store to address these issues. Beyond my needs in these areas, I also feel that they are obstacles for other people who are potential users of Drupal.

The first keynote at DrupalCon by Dries spent time focusing on weaknesses in Drupal and specifically 3 things the community needs to focus on what he referred to as “A rudimentary authoring experience”. In a nutshell this referred to to several elements that require work to improve the usability of Drupal for content creators and site publishers. Some other key takeaways from the talk are that Symfony will be used for the framework in Drupal 8 and mobile needs to be addressed much better. This seems to already be in motion as there was no shortage of talks on responsive web design at DrupalCon. Dries’ keynote was the beginning of a pattern I saw emerge from many Acquia employees that spoke on panels at DrupalCon.  They continued to echo and elaborate on Dries’ thoughts about what they need to work on to ensure the successful future of Drupal.

Click the slides below taken from the keynote

Acquia Employee Talks at Drupalcon

The first talk I saw along this theme was with Angie Byron and Chris Strahl titled “Five things we need to create an awesome experience for content creators” which focused on the following issues:

• Authoring and editing for multiple (mobile) devices
• Media management and content repositories
• Content staging and publish / subscribe models
• Page layouts and authoring tools

The talk covered how they had done research around usability among competing CMS platforms from a content creator standpoint. They showed how many of these features are handled on 4 competing systems including Squiz, Plone, CQ5, and Squarespace(v6 beta). They demo’d each of these 4 competing systems and showed where they excel over Drupal with the features and ease of site content creation and editing. In the end they plead their case to the development community to look at these systems and find ways to implement many of the usability improvements within Drupal in the near future as they ready Drupal 8 for release next year.

Another talk I attended was with Kieran Lal & Barry Jaspan. The approach of their talk was from a startup perspective on how Acquia was born and they provided many insights. They discussed the challenges encountered along with the multiple pivots from the original Acquia business model concept. They began by providing simple Drupal hosting solutions and evolved over time into a much more robust managed hosting platform for Drupal. What I liked about this talk is how Acquia has been nimble in learning what the needs of the customer base they’re trying to attract and how they’ve shifted their business model to accommodate them. Many nuggets of wisdom here for startup entrepreneurs can be gleaned from their talk. Acquia now has a very impressive list of clients that they can service much better.

Then I went to see Jay Batson do a talk that was similar with regards to the first one by Angie and Chris except it was done more as a first person view from the eyes of a site publisher. You can learn more about the profile of the “advanced content creator” role he describes here. He explains how the term “Web Engagement Management” is starting to trump CMS and is now being used to describe the overall feature-set associated with the users that fill these content production roles. These features are now essential to people who continually create and manage the content for websites. More and more it’s the marketing department that owns the responsibility of websites and are now the decision makers for web platforms. This is a switch from years ago when IT would own that decision making process. So the critical motive behind all of this is to make sure that the marketing and site content departments needs are met by Drupal moving forward.

The sum of all of these talks by Acquia left me very impressed. They are uncovering the major issues potential clients are stating as they try to sell Drupal and formulating a plan to solve them. By rallying the community around these issues, I feel that they are focused and have a plan to continue being competitive and mature based on the needs of today’s site publishers.

Other DrupalCon Highlights

The “How to build a scalable platform for today’s publishers” talk by Dick Olsson was another stellar talk I found to be extremely helpful with my goals of learning about better methods for content and site publishing. Dick provided a case study and recipe for the modules and methods he’s been using to build out sites for Al Jazeera. He needs to accommodate massive traffic and the ability to publish content quickly in a very intricate caching environment. You can watch his talk regarding those issues, but my focus was more on how he uses Workbench, Deploy, and Panels modules  to effectively manage content workflow and publishing. It was a good talk that showed how these tools can all be used in conjunction very well. I also saw a talk on Panels showing some great new usability features coming soon.

I attended several of the BoF (Birds of a Feather) talks along the content publisher theme and got a lot out of the “Support the Content Creators” talk that was run by Melissa Anderson. Lots of great discussion and sharing of tools and practices which were captured in a great notes doc by Kat.

I love watching case studies from the ground up where an agency covers every step of a web development project with a client. The folks at Treehouse Agency are excellent at telling these stories. I really enjoyed how they provided the under the hood details of their approach and tools used to rebuild the Zagat.com website. They also did a talk on their work to relaunch Energy.gov on Drupal which I didn’t see at DrupalCon but was able to see a more in depth Drupal implementation of the Energy.gov project at BadCamp last year. Here’s the slide deck from that presentation.

Well there you have it. I see nothing but clear blue skies ahead for Drupal.

While I still maintain my feelings from last year, I feel that logistics are now a major concern with SXSW that will be a tough one to overcome. The block of hotels reserved for this year were sold out months ahead. I had to book in January and let me tell you it was slim pickens. Beyond hotel accommodations, my experience last year was that panels have spread out considerably since my first attendance. They now cover fairly long distances that aren’t short walks (or quick shuttle rides due to congestion) and can be challenging to navigate in between panels. Also, if you do make it to your panel there’s a chance that it may have already reached capacity and you’ll have to wait outside with hopes of people vacating so you can enter. There’s no doubt that these issues will be even greater this year. In any case keep this in mind as you plan your schedule for the conference. If there’s a panel you really want to see, make sure that you’re there 20 minutes before it starts.

Don’t go in Blind. Have Your Comprehensive Schedule Ready!

Speaking of planning, this year I’ve setup and tested 3 different web services to do just that. There’s the official SXSW site that offers you the ability to create your own schedule and also has an accompanying mobile app for iOS or Android. I’ve also setup Sched.org which I’ve happily used in previous years. A newcomer I’m trying out this year is Lanyrd. Both Sched.org and Lanyrd have a nice social component where you can connect it to your Twitter account and it will then show you the panels your friends are attending within the service. This can serve two purposes. Both giving you the ability to identify some panels you may not have considered which they’ve shown interest in, as well as a chance to find a location where you can stalk connect with them. So using both services is a good way to let your friends know where you’ll be. Another good reason to use all 3 is that I’ve seen panels, parties, and events that are unique to each of them appearing. So between the 3 you should have the best overall picture. Oh, and I forgot to mention I’m also using Plancast just in case.

When using the above scheduling services I highly recommend that you select at least 2 if not 3 panels per each session during the conference.  The first year some of the panels were hit or miss. In later years I got smarter by planning ahead and giving a panel 5-10 minutes to determine if it was worth remaining or whether I should find another one. By having 2 or 3 selections you have backups in case of a bad panel, congestion, or logistics issues. By having these selections readily available on your mobile device you’ll be ready to act quickly in the event of a bail. Speaking of mobile for a second, make sure you’re more than ready to supply juice to your device to make it through rigorous usage. I bought a Mophie Juice Pack last year for my iPhone which more than provided enough power for me to make it through every day. You don’t want to lose your bloodline to navigate the conference so make sure you’re prepared.

Great All Day Lounges at the Convention Center

There are several areas within the convention center that have on-going activities which make for a great place to network with like-minded folks. I highly recommend the Blogger Lounge which I’ve been attending since my first SXSW. This is a great place to pop in and out of in between sessions or during breaks while at the convention center. You are bound to meet some great folks there. If your work or interests are in the non-profit / philanthropy space then you should head over to the Beacon which similarly will have a dedicated space for the duration of the conference with a schedule of events and ability to network with lots of good folks.

Don’t Do it Wrong

Most of the mystique that revolves around SXSW is based on the surrounding events and parties that occur outside of the convention and panel schedule. Once again your best bet to find these are using the services I’ve already mentioned. But how do you know which one of them are worth going to? Well prior to the conference you’ll see people and friends that have shown interest on those services. But the real proof in the pudding is in people’s actions. Here is where having the right tools to monitor real-time streams becomes invaluable. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of larger than life parties but I have found that many of the big ones aren’t worth attending. There’s long lines, once you get in they are super crowded, and my biggest pet peeve is that the music is blaring and you can’t hold a conversation with anyone. I do make some exceptions here but my goal is always to connect and communicate with great people. My strategy on parties is similar to panels. There’s tons of them going on concurrently so if you’re not getting anything by connecting with people at the one you’re at within 10 minutes it’s time to plant your head back into your phone to find where to head to next.

There are several things I recommend doing. Make sure prior to heading out that you have befriended people who will be attending on Foursquare. One year I realized that I had many friends on Twitter that I hadn’t connected with on Foursquare. That was a mistake. It has become the defacto standard for location at this point and will help you determine where the people you want to hang out with will be. Speaking of Twitter you should also create a list of attendees you want to connect with and have that list at the ready on your mobile device. Every year there seems to be an app category that gets hype leading up to the conference. Strangely enough and in a meta sort of way, it’s one that you can utilize at the conference. Twitter and Foursquare were born at SXSW and last year it was group messaging / texting that were hot. I successfully used these last year to get a hotel room which I was without upon the plane landing in Austin last year.

This Year’s Breakout App Category

This year’s app category that I”ve gleaned having the most hype around are what I would call passive or ambient location apps. These apps will track your location and then passively push alerts to your mobile device based on your proximity with other people near you. The trigger for the alerts are based on factors that could include one degree of separation friendships (A person that’s a friend of a friend on Facebook) or common interests (Also based on Facebook likes). So the point here is that instead of explicitly checking in or monitoring your friends checkins you can be somewhere and have a very serendipitous encounter with an existing friend or someone new you may want to meet. Before you go all crazy with privacy or stalking concerns you both have to be using the app and opt-in for this magical human collision to transpire. Robert Scoble who’s always on the pulse of top apps at SXSW wrote a good post on the two top contenders in this space called Highlight and Glancee. I’m trying both of those as I’m curious to see the results. You can find other recommended apps Scoble recommends to use at SXSW over on Google+ here.

I can go on and on and this post has already gone on for too long and an area I didn’t cover much of (besides being prepared to torture your mobile device) is other “survival guide” tactics. There are plenty of them out there if you just Google them but I came across this pretty cool one this year which even has an innovative design based on this year’s social darling Pinterest. Well there you have it, my ramblings trying to provide some experience to help you out. I hope that SXSW is as magical for me this year as it has been in the past. I’m worried about logistics and am curious how we shall all fare regarding that once we’re there.

Hope to see you there and here’s a guide to what I recommend and where I’ll be:

My SXSW App Essentials

My Sched.org
My Lanyrd
My Official SXSW schedule
My Plancast

Path’s apology has been received in a mixed way. Many have applauded them on the quick and swift action, while others felt it was disingenuous and only resulted because they got caught. The truth of the matter is that apparently this was a standard practice that was being used by many more apps besides Path as Jennifer Van Grove covered on Venture Beat today.

But this story has taken another turn as well. It has spurred a volley of blog posts that attack tech blogging in general and have me likening the situation to something of a cross between conspiracy theories and a comedy roast. Ben Parr has done a good job curating these posts and trying to put some perspective behind the rhetoric which while in some cases has been amusing, has made my head spin a bit. Interestingly enough, Jennifer’s post illustrates everything that’s right about tech blogging.

This situation that has unfolded sparked me to create this.

Neither of the fires behind these two stories are flaming out just yet. While Address Book (gate?) continues to burn, I think there’s still more fuel that will be sprayed on the tech blogging credibility argument. This will be interesting to continue to watch.

*gets popcorn*

1. You can stream your own videos, music, and photos on it I feel that this feature is a must for any home theater today. We have all now amassed personal collections of photos, music, and home videos. Some of you may have setup other boxes you already have such as an Xbox 360 or PS3 for streaming these files. I was streaming using my PS3 and the PS3 Media Server. But as you may have found, this method isn’t ideal. The Boxee was built for sharing your own media from its inception. They also offer you several different ways to get the content from external sources to it. I’m using the built in SMB sharing to access the files from my NAS. It’s nice not having to have a program running on a computer that needs to be on to share content. So while there isn’t a native way to do this on the Roku, if you’re willing to hack a bit there are several third party apps (private channels) to do this. Probably one of the best options is Plex which is also based on the same XBMC software that powers the Boxee.

2. The remote has a keyboard I feel this is a very important feature that shouldn’t be underestimated when considering a streaming box. I have experienced the frustration of the single letter hunt and peck process of virtual keyboards on enough systems to know that I don’t want to continue wasting time using that process in the future. You will need to type words more often than you think on these boxes. Whether you are logging into a service, or trying to type in search words for a movie you want to find on Netflix, or if you need to type in the url of a website into the browser. You will need a keyboard to do this without losing your hair. And speaking of browsers…

3. It has a web browser So you have a box connected to the internet. Might as well offer the ability to browse the web too right? Well with a Boxee Box you can do this and with the keyboard on the remote you can rest assured that it won’t be an awful experience like it is on other devices without one.

4. You can bookmark videos on the web to watch on it Boxee offers a bookmarklet for your browser that provides a feature called “watch later” which allows you to be on any web page and when you click on the bookmarklet it will add any videos on the page to a view later area of the Boxee box to watch next time you fire it up on your couch. These videos can also be accessed via the iPad app. Wait what? They have an iPad app?

5. They offer a full featured iPad app add-on for free There’s an iPad app that provides access to some of Boxee’s features. This includes the “watch later” videos you bookmark functionality I mentioned above as well as accessing your personal movies, photos, and music. Another feature offered here (and also on the Box) is the ability to see all the videos shared by your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. You can also start watching something on the iPad and easily resume where you left off on the Boxee Box or vice versa.

6. You can send video to your Boxee Box from an iOS device using AirPlay This is an experimental feature and I’ve had some mixed results but it’s pretty cool. I’ve successfully sent videos from apps that support AirPlay to the Boxee box and this is a great feature that I hope improves over time. I also am not sure if they’ll support the mirroring function that came with iOS to send content to a TV but that would be great too.

7. You can watch live broadcast TV Boxee just announced their LiveTV $49 add-on which adds the ability to watch local broadcast stations (like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC) for free. This feature will go a long way to attract cord-cutters whose primary concern for eliminating their cable subscriptions is the loss of being able to watch live news and sports programming.

There is one major feature on the Roku that the Boxee doesn’t have. The Roku 2 XS comes with a remote that includes a gyro built-in accelerometer for gaming. Included with Roku is the ever popular Angry Birds. It was lots of fun to kill the piggy’s on my big screen. Roku also aims to bring many more games to utilize this remote. So if this is appealing to you it may be something to sway you into the direction of a Roku.

So there you have it. A little deeper dive into the unique features of these devices. One thing to keep in mind when comparing them is that the Boxee does require a little more work to setup and access all of these features. The Roku is almost half the price so you need to determine whether these features offer enough value for you. Also, If your household has children or slightly less tech savvy users, the Roku may still be a better choice.

One thing I began doing was trying to determine if I could sell, donate, or throw out many physical objects that I own. I started by focusing on the tornado of strewn things that lived on my bookshelves. I took a look at my books and donated a large number of them. I then started going through all the other non book objects that occupied them. I threw out some of the souvenir and other cute trinkets that lined some shelves. I read on one of the many resources that I frequent that helps with this behavior that we get attached to the memories of many objects and that one way to maintain those memories without clinging these items is to take a photo of them. That’s good advice. I moved on to many other areas throughout my office like cables and old pc gear I had in boxes and many other items and was able to clear out a good deal of wasted space. This is still a work in progress but things now look more organized and neater which I believe also help me reach a calming state without so much chaos strewn around me.

Some of the things that survived operation goodbye

I don’t know about you folks but the file libraries that occupy my multiple hard drives across my network are also an area that can grow pretty unwieldy. I’m actually pretty good at this now but it took some time. I have a dedicated folder where all new content I download ends up. From there it gets distributed to various other directories that are provide organization methods. The same goes for all media (photos and videos) I create. They end up in a holding zone when transferred from my camera and then I go through this raw dump and delete what I don’t want and then distribute to proper directories setup by year and month. Then nightly my local media gets backed up to my NAS as well as an offline backup service I use.

Then there’s the active software and web services that we use. I always determining whether I need to use all the memory resident apps I use and keeping an eye on alternatives. I look to web services that can help me save time and optimize my life. Mint.com has become one such example of such a service. I tie all of my financial accounts to it which make end of year taxes and monitoring of cash flow and investments in a single location a breeze. I was also a very early adopter of online baking services. I remember the days of sitting down for a half hour to write checks to pay bills and put them in envelopes and mail them out. Now I pay bills in less than five minutes. I’m always looking for existing things that I can do which can be optimized. Time has a huge value in life for me and the more I can do to reduce the amount you waste, the happier I am.

So those are just some examples of methods I’ve employed to try and streamline things in my life.  Another area that I can often get lost in, and have had to work on, is the distraction of consuming online content. This takes many shapes from the firehose of daily generated social content and all the link journeys that I’m taken on, to all the great blog and editorial content generated as well. I’ve recently seen posts that discuss the distractions described above.

• Finding Focus by Chris Brogan
• Apparently it’s called Social Network Fatigue by Luca Massaro (with wisdom from Brian Solis)
• The above story is also based on the Attention Crash concept coined by Steve Rubel that has been around for a few years now.
• I also recommend taking a look at the book Focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distaction

The article showed a few photos of the process and described how it has gained a resurgence over the last year. I found this pretty interesting so I decided to dig a little deeper to learn more. I was able to find this video that shows each step of the detailed process to take these photographs.

Alien Skin B&W Filter settings

This looked very interesting to me and so I decided to keep looking a bit to see if I could find any ways to simulate this digitally in photoshop. I was able to find this link to the Photoshop fine art effects cookbook that provides a tutorial on how to manually create this effect in Photoshop. So that’s a great tutorial for creating the effect using a manual process within core Photoshop but dug a little deeper.

I then came across some pre-built actions for Photoshop by Totally Rad that creates a very similar effect which you can see here. These looked pretty interesting but then I also discovered Alien Skin’s Exposure 3. So I downloaded the free trial to test it out. It’s very simple to get an initial effect using their “B&W – Vintage” filters which offer several varying Calotype presets with the ability to tweak the settings using color, focus, tone, grain, IR, and age. So I played around a bit and was able to get some pretty nice effects as you can see. I didn’t choose the most applicable photo, but you’ll get the point.

Original Photo

Alien Skin - Calotype Sepia - Scratches & Vignette Square (no edits)

Alien Skin - Calotype (with various custom modified settings by me)

As you can see the Alien Skin filters do a pretty nice job. In an age of Instagram I have become fascinated with filters and the various methods to modify photographs to try and get an artistic look from them. I’ve stated before that HDR is the auto-tune of the photography world. I’m sure the purists are notably pissed by all these new wannabe photographers that are sprouting online nowadays but photo manipulation is fun and I only see it getting bigger.

I live in Los Angeles and my commute includes what has been ranked as the #1 worst freeway bottleneck in the whole nation. It’s amazing to me as a geek to watch the advancements in technology from my Atari 2600, as a kid to my first brush with a computer the Radio Shack TRS-80, to how online has changed from the single line BSS’s when I was a kid to where we are today.

How is it though that ground transportation hasn’t really gone anywhere in that same timeframe? It’s amazing how much of our lives are consumed moving from point A to point B nowadays at a speed that is even slower than it was 10 or 20 years ago. We’re actually going backwards.

The only saving grace to help with this antiquated non-innovative transportation issue are the technology innovations like, GPS, realtime traffic, and mobile phones which provide some comfort by letting us listen to podcasts or frikkin audio streams beamed over the air.

Being a geek I’m amazingly happy to have grown up during the emergence of computers and the web but I find this lack of innovation in transportation logistics or technology amazing and don’t see how it’s going to improve anytime soon. I think what this all boils down to is that I’m pissed that Back to the Future was a lie. There’s no way in hell we’re going to have hover cars in 2015.

Tummelvision is a weekly salon-style podcast about the art and science of engaging and collaborating in a networked age. Each week we explore how to connect and create a world that puts people at the centre of business, technology and culture with the smart folks creating this new world.

Each week they invite a guest from varied areas to discuss how they “tummel” and share other interesting information about their roles for work, personal projects or other areas. They have varied guests from different fields which make for an eclectic show that both stays fresh and offers interesting topics to learn about. The hosts always make for a very engaging discussion around the topics that surround the guests that often go on welcomed tangents that branch off to other areas surrounding their discussion. It’s definitely a source of delicious brain food that is fed in different tasty chunks each week. I highly recommend it.

When I joined them we covered quite a few varied topics during the first half of the show including higher education, name spaces, and influence. The second part of the show I peel back the curtain to offer some insight to what we do at the X PRIZE foundation. You can visit their website and listen to my show here and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

The Sharp is a great TV that costed less than every 65″ LCD that was on the market when I purchased it and is fully LED backlit as opposed to most that are only LED edge lit. I’m really happy with it and highly recommend you research it if you’re in the market for a large LCD TV. Here’s a great thread on the very popular AVS Forum if you want to learn more about it.

This week I was given the opportunity to test out the new Samsung Droid Charge [Disclosure: I'm being given one to keep] which is their first entry on Verizon’s LTE (4g) network. I was very excited to read this favorable review over at Slashgear on the day I was to pick it up. When I finally got one in my hands the first impression that smacks you on the head is the beautiful 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display which is the same one they use on their new Galaxy S II. I know that this is either a plus or minus depending on personal needs, but this is my biggest complaint with the iPhone. How could Apple double the resolution of the iPhone’s display and not increase the screen size? It’s not just about having some more real estate, but I have some big hands and I can type much more comfortable on the Samsung. The image produced by the display is stunning and viewing photos and videos are gorgeous on it.

My iPhone connected to 3g vs. Samsung Droid Charge hotspot on LTE (4g) vs. Wifi on my Time Warner Cable

The next biggest feature difference on the Samsung vs. my iPhone is LTE. In the short time I’ve been able to test it thus far I can tell you that the speed is nothing short of awesome. It reminds me of the first time I upgraded from DSL to Cable. The speed at which apps that connect to the network and the browser operates is addictingly fast. Not only do you get that speed out of the phone, but you can also create a mobile hotspot to share that fat pipe or even tether to your computer to tap it. I get impatient now and it feels so slow when I revert back to the iPhone. The iPhone 5 better offer 4G on either AT&T or Verizon because it will be a huge handicap and seem antiquated out of the box without it.

I feel that the Samsung Droid Charge’s screen size and speed on Verizon’s LTE network are the 2 major standout features when comparing this to my iPhone without even getting into any of the Android vs. iOS differences. I feel these 2 issues require serious merit in general if considering a new phone on Verizon or anyone else’s network for that matter. Beyond those two clear distinctions I’m also re-evaluating Android from my last experience with the Nexus one. Unfortunately the phone is running Android 2.2 Froyo and not the newer 2.3 Gingerbread. I do like the Samsung TouchWiz UI which doesn’t get in the way and works better than the app scrolling on the Nexus. The built-in cameras (both front and rear facing) seem pretty good although I haven’t A/B’d them to the iPhone. I also like all the built in photo effects available natively in the OS, especially the panorama mode (see below). Another huge plus is the native android ability to share photos from the camera app or gallery to other apps like Twitter, Facebook, Picplz, Seesmic, Tweetdeck and others. I wish that iOS had this feature. The other feature I need to investigate more is AllShare which on the surface seems like Android’s answer to iOS’s Airplay.

One of the biggest concerns having both the 4.3″ display and using the LTE network is battery life. Since I’ve only had the phone for 2 days I don’t have enough experience to comment much on this except that I haven’t noticed it to be terrible. Day one I ran out at the end of the day and on day two I still had 26% left at midnight but in both cases my usage was moderate and didn’t involve heavy usage of the mobile hotspot which I’ve read is a battery killer.

Here’s more info on battery life from the Slashgear review:

Having seen the HTC ThunderBolt chew through a full charge in short order, we were more than a little nervous about the DROID Charge’s appetite. Happily it seems Samsung has managed to balance performance and power – impressive given the size and brightness of the Super AMOLED Plus display – with us managing 6-8 hours of heavy use before it died. With more casual use, and some tweaking of things like social network updates and other power settings, you could comfortably get through a day. Still, using the Mobile Hotspot app for any length of time chews through the battery in relatively short order.

So I still have some more testing to do and need to see if some of the Android issues that have bothered me in the past have been improved or overcome but overall I’ve been very happy with this phone. My goal will be to see if I can upgrade my Verizon plan to add LTE and Hotpotting so that it can support my usage of both the iPhone and Samsung Droid Charge simultaneously on one plan. That way I can switch between both phones as my daily usage dictates. We’ll see if that’s possible.