Tablet, Type, Things

Microsoft Courier Tablet Device

2010-03-26T17:20:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, as of right now, this device could still be a myth, but there are some references that say Microsoft admitted to this device and in fact it will be out later in 2010. I’m not going to hold my breath, only because the device seems too good to be true. If you haven’t seen the articles that describe this device in some detail, even with videos, then I recommend you take a look!! It seems to be the only device so far that would be able to truly give Apple’s iPad a run for it’s money.

Engadget ran a recent article on March 5th, 2010, that shows two videos of this device. It also shows a series of pictures of the user interface.

Some key points in the post are:

“We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected -- this new picture really puts it into perspective -- and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6.”

I think the use of a specialized OS is a good thing, and don’t take that as me contradicting my post about one of the cons of the iPad. What I said about the iPad/iPhone OS is that it is far too restrictive for a device like the iPad (or any tablet). I also said in that post that I understand the need for a specialized OS, and I welcome it. While I like the flexibility that a tablet with full Windows 7 might bring, it has its detriments as well, and the list is long. I would still like to be able to download a file and have an easy way to transfer it to another device.

The other major piece of this post is:

“As we've heard, the interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments. We're also hearing that there will be a built-in camera, and there's a headphone jack for media playback. Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft's e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading. It all sounds spectacular, but all we have for a launch date is "Q3 / Q4", and we have no idea how much it's going to cost, so we're trying to maintain a healthy skepticism until any of this gets official”

Here is a video from their site that I remembering watching last year (2009). It runs through a day in the life of an interior designer with the Courier as her electronic journal. It was got my juices flowing about this device in the first place.

Here is the latest video from their site that shows additional functionality that looks pretty incredible.

Gizmodo ran an article in September, 2009 that shows some photographs of the device from many angles. At this point, it’s hard to know what the finished device will truly look like and what features it will really contain, but it is exciting to think about the possibilities.

This post from November 5, 2009 by PCWorld.com lists out lots of details on how the device is supposedly going to function and it’s features. This is an older post, so it’s difficult to say what is realistic, but it outlines a VERY compelling UI and workflow/feature-set.

Wikipedia also has a page dedicated to the Courier.

Finally, Engadget found some evidence to support the reality of the Courier by an MS employee who actually linked to the Engadget post about the Courier. Hopefully this means it is real, and hopefully it is a *little more* than just an electronic journal. As cool as that is in and of itself, I want it to do a little bit more.

We shall see what the future holds.

While the iPad seems great…

2010-03-26T14:12:00.001-04:00

If you watch the videos and see the Apple hype on the iPad, it looks like a pretty incredible device. Couple that with inexpensive wireless internet that is NOT locked into a contract, and it seems like it is the perfect device to compete with a Netbook… but it’s not (in my opinion).

Here’s Why:

Um, no Flash support – Are you KIDDING ME?? Steve Jobs touts the iPad as having “a better web experience than your laptop”… and yet, there is no flash support (as seen in his live keynote when he opens “The Wall Street Journal’s” web site and you see the lego block in the middle where there *should* be Flash), and being that Steve Jobs “hates” Flash and says it is the only thing that causes Mac’s to crash, you can bet that you will never see Flash support on the iPad (or the iPhone for that matter). Heck, I could see Steve trying to banish it from Mac computers and laptops at some point.

Walled Garden – What do I mean by a walled garden? Well, I mean that Apple controls the entire experience for you, including applications (they decide what you can and can’t have on your device, not you). You HAVE to use iTunes to manage your device, including the media content you might want to consume on here. And while you can get this content from elsewhere and convert it to something that works on the iPad, it is a bit of a hassle and can NOT be done on the fly… which brings me to the fact that you can NOT download files or (incompatible) attachments to this device. So, let’s say you need an incompatible file for one reason or another (not to use on the iPad, but your laptop or someone else’s computer, etc.) and you are not around WiFi for your laptop to be able to get it… this iPad has 3G service, so you *could* get to that file, but Apple won’t let you download it. Back to iTunes, the fact that you have to physically hook up this ultra-wireless device to a computer to back it up or sync it is beyond me. It’s so 2001. With the proliferation of WiFi networks and the fact that this thing can be purchased with 3G as well, it makes no sense to me to *have* to physically tether it to a computer (same goes for the iPhone). This is yet another way they maintain strict control over the experience. I understand some of the benefits with having a walled garden, but not having any choice bugs me.

Limited OS – The iPad is not using full OS X, it is using the iPhone OS (a sub-set of OS X). While I understand having a more purpose built OS for a device like this, the iPhone OS seems to be far too crippled for a device like this. Where it may work well enough on a “phone”, it is my opinion that this will not be enough for a larger screened tablet device where you could do so much more than you would on a phone.

Conclusion – These are some of the major reasons I don’t think the iPad is the best device (for me at least). There are a slew of other more minor things about it that bug me, but that would be like nitpicking. ;-)

I’d love to hear other’s thoughts on the pros and cons of the iPad. I didn’t really list any pros in this post, but believe me I *do* think there are some serious pros to the iPad… I just feel like the cons I have listed here would keep me from buying one.

Let the public shaming begin! Opera Mini for the iPhone

2010-03-24T13:28:00.001-04:00

My Opera - When do you think Opera Mini will be available on the iPhone?:

"Status update: Opera Mini for iPhone was officially submitted to the Apple iPhone App store on March 23, 12:25 UTC."

Personally, I can't see Apple actually approving this web browser app for the iPhone... they will site duplication of functionality with their built-in Safari web browser as the reason. That's my prediction and I'm sticking to it. ;-)

Of course, my prediction and lack of faith in Apple to do the right thing is sad. But, they have proven time and time again that they are NOT fair in their application approval process for the iPhone... take Google Voice as an example... there was even an investigation about it... yet, still no Google Voice app for my iPhone.

If you haven't read about or watched the video for Opera Mini for the iPhone, then you HAVE to go here to watch the speed of this new browser!

And don't even get me started on the lack of Flash support on the iPhone... that's just stupid silly.

Use Gmail to Generate Unlimited E-mail Addresses

2010-03-24T13:19:00.001-04:00

Use Gmail Generate Unlimited E-mail Addresses:

"Gmail has an interesting quirk where you can add a plus sign (+) after your Gmail address, and it'll still get to your inbox. It's called plus-addressing, and it essentially gives you an unlimited number of e-mail addresses to play with. Here's how it works: say your address is pinkyrocks@gmail.com, and you want to automatically label all work e-mails. Add a plus sign and a phrase to make it pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com and set up a filter to label it work (to access your filters go to Settings-->Filters and create a filter for messages addressed to pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com. Then add the label work).

More real world examples:

Find out who is spamming you: Be sure to use plus-addressing for every form you fill out online and give each site a different plus address.

Example: You could use
pinkyrocks+nytimes@gmail.com for nytimes.com
pinkyrocks+freestuff@gmail.com for freestuff.com
Then you can tell which site has given your e-mail address to spammers, and automatically send them to the trash."

I found out about this at another site that was talking about using the + tagging to get emails to automatically forward to your Evernote email address by creating a filter in Gmail... this post (linked above) offers some additional ideas for using this feature in Gmail.

One of the commenter's on this post mention that you can ALSO use periods (.) in your email address and it will still get to your account, because many sites that offer subscriptions may not allow adding a plus sign to an email address.

Pretty cool stuff with nearly endless possible use cases!

Tablets, Tablets everywhere

2010-03-20T11:56:00.003-04:00

I can't even believe that I have a blog that I specifically started for tablets, and yet with ALL of the tablet talk and devices coming out, I have not posted on ANY of it!!

There look to be some game changers on the horizon, with the Apple iPad, some yet to be fully announced Android OS tablet devices, and the HP Slate running a full Windows 7 OS... then there is the Microsoft Courier that looked to be only a rumor, but is now looking like it may be released this YEAR!

I have been having a ton of trouble with my "BlogPress" app on my iPhone, where it can not seem to post to my blogs. Since I am not at a PC when I am not working these days, it is hard to find the time to post anything with any real substance. I hope to start posting more regularly though, so look for more from this site! ;-)

I even forgot to mention about Windows Phone Series! See... I'm slackin'.

Where's my Movie Data?? - Media Management

2009-10-21T14:43:00.006-04:00

I know it's been a while since I posted on here, but I have been busy checking out and learning all kinds of things. My biggest time suck lately has been a combination of Windows 7 (Win7) with its Windows Media Center (WMC), Windows Home Server (WHS), and XBOX 360 as a media "extender" of sorts. There are lots of pieces to Win7 and WHS that I have been spending time learning, but I'm going to mainly focus on media content for this post. Future posts will discuss the other, more geeky, features and functions of these two operating systems.

As you may have read in a previous post of mine, I purchased a Roku and have loved that device for playing back Netflix content. However, Netflix's library for instant play is pretty limited, so I wanted something more. I was able to talk my wife into letting me get a 2nd XBOX 360 to place in the living room (the 1st one is in the family room) as a replacement for the DVD player, Roku and then even adds gaming. She bought into it because it let her get the current DVD player for her bedroom and my daughter get the Roku (the other biggest user besides me) for her bedroom.

Now that I have my 360 as my media extender, I started to dig in to see what it is capable of. I have to say I was impressed! The Netflix experience from the 360 is, in my opinion, leaps and bounds better than the Roku experience. That's not to say the Roku experience isn't good, because it's great! That's just saying that the 360 is even better!! However, where my experience kind of fell short, again in my opinion, was browsing my video file library or even using the 360 as a Media Center Extender. This is because, while I may have hundreds of video files of movies, they only show up as names with NO details like box art, rating, actors, genre, etc. While this wasn't necessarily "tragic", it made browsing movie files more tedious and almost impossible for my kids. I figure it would be SOOO much easier to see box art for the movies because it's easier to discern what a movie is or is about by a picture... AND, having the rating information and possibly a description would be helpful in stuff I haven't watched yet to say yes or no to the kids watching it without me.

What I found interesting, or possibly what spawned my search for the solution to this, was that *some* of the titles in my library showed up with ALL of this information in Media Center... and I mean all of it (box art, actors, genre, rating, a description of what the movie is about, etc). My guess is that metadata was added in some way to those files (they all happened to be WMV files in this case), but I wasn't sure HOW it was added or how I could add it to other files I have.

I am still looking for the correct solution to this dilemma, so I will certainly be posting back with more info as I find it. Unfortunately I have nothing to report on this yet, because everything I tried thus far does not work.

I also do not have much to report on WHS and Media Center with the 360 in the mix because I need more storage space on my WHS server to put my many GBs of files on there. I *do* plan on adding more drives and moving my files off my PC to the WHS, so I will certainly reply with that info as well. I can say this... the WHS server is awesome and worth every penny, even if only just for the piece of mind it provides pertaining to PC backups and storage redundancy. I will definitely be creating another post specifically on how I am using it in my home network of 7 PCs and other network devices.

iPhone: Mobile Air Mouse - On Sale

2009-08-07T09:25:00.004-04:00

**UPDATE** - Forget about the Air Mouse, Logitech release a killer app that includes mouse functionality as well as a keyboard, and it's FREE! Grab it here.

iPhone : Mobile Air Mouse: **Currently (as of 9:20am EDT 8/7/09) on sale for $2.99**
"Instantly transform your iPhone or iPod touch into an air mouse, trackpad, and wireless remote for your computer! Sit back and surf the web, browse your photo library or control your music player from the comfort of your couch. Our air mouse uses the built in accelerometer to translate your hand motions into mouse movements on your screen. It can also operate as a trackpad, allowing you to control your computer with a single finger. Suddenly your iPhone has become an essential part of any home theater PC and a presenter's best friend. Using an innovative application notification system, the iPhone will always know what applications are running at any time and show the appropriate keys for that program, providing you with a single screen for controlling ALL your media and web applications.

Features:
- Accelerometer based mouse
- Trackpad (full screen vertical and landscape modes)
- Media keys & Web keys
- Application notifications - Remote keyboard with modifier, function and arrow keys
- Programable hotkeys (can be set to run a program or keyboard combination)
- Scroll pad
- Multitouch gestures (scroll & right click)
- Password protection
- Custom sensitivity settings
- Foreign language keyboards
- Supports Bonjour or static IP
- No screen size limitation. Works with multiple monitors.
- And much, much more. View our demo video to see all that Mobile Air Mouse can do for you"

You have to check out the demo video to see some of the features of this app. I do a lot of presentations for my job, so being able to have a remote built into my iPhone to control PowerPoint is great... BUT, to even be able to control the rest of my computer as well is AWESOME! You see, I run VMware Workstation with a full blown network of our software solution, and I always have to be sitting at the PC to man that instead of possibly standing off to the side running it and speaking *to* the audience.

I only just purchased this app and haven't had a chance to use it yet, so a review will be coming. But I figured I'd throw this out there while the sale is on so you too can get in cheap. ;-)

Cloud Computing Conundrum

2009-07-14T12:34:00.005-04:00

I am listening to the "Cranky Geeks" podcast #174 on 7/8/09 (here's the iTunes link to the MP3 audio only edition... they also have video podcasts as well), and they started to discuss the potential disaster of having your info in "the cloud", as well as the fact that you don't "own" your information in a sense, or at least that these services have access to your information (no matter what the privacy agreement states). One of their comments was that Google has more private/personal information than the NSA.

For the disaster part, they discussed the threat of someone targeting these "mega-hubs" where these datacenters and backbones are located, and the effect this would have on the country. I think there is some validity to this, but I feel like there is a decent amount of redundancy and fault-tolerance in this day and age. I see their point though. If you lose your internet connection, how do you retrieve your data?? If the company you have this data with folds, where does it go??

Because of my mobility and want for having my information everywhere AND always in sync (so one device doesn't have the latest copy when I'm not at that device but need that data), I have started to try and move ALL of my computing data into the cloud with services that allow me to get to that data on pretty much all the devices I want to use. So far I am using Google Apps (Standard Edition) heavily for email and calendaring, Toodledo for my Task Management Solution (which I'm loving more and more as I use it), Evernote for all my notes I want to track or recall at some point, SmugMug.com for my important photographs that I want safe and backed up (and it automatically creates beautiful web albums that I can use to share these photos with family and friends), and I also use JustHost.com (which has an AMAZINGLY low priced "unlimited" hosting plan, I personally chose 3yrs to lock the price in) and GoDaddy.com for my web hosting needs (other than Blogger for this and other blogs, which is another Google entity). I am even looking for MORE cloud based computing to move more data off a single device so it is available to me everywhere, on any device (not just ones that I own). Now that I think of it, I even have some books in the cloud via Amazon Kindle service, which I use on my iPhone to read them. It syncs the books and last page viewed, including bookmarks, to the Amazon cloud, and I can even get those files on another registered device and pick up where I left off (I tested this when I had to reinstall Kindle on my iPhone because I switched PCs for syncing... all my books were under "Archive" and selecting them downloaded them and all their details... VERY slick).

I think "cloud computing" is a huge buzzword right now, and I think it's coming into its own because the connectivity is finally here that allows this to work well (even when mobile). In each of these solutions, I try to have it cache the information locally in case I am in a situation where I am not connected (like on a plane, etc), but that is not always available for all of the solutions. I suppose I hadn't stopped to think about the what-if's enough, most likely because my drive for cloud computing was coming from wanting my data anywhere and NOT wanting to manage my own servers for this at my house (I've been there, done that, and it's a hassle... it's MUCH easier to have other companies with the infrastructure provide this for me... sometimes for no charge! Like Google).

I'm not sure if cloud computing is the right solution going forward, or for how long it will be the solution I want... but it sure feels right right now.

What about you? What are your thoughts on cloud computing? Any fears, faults, tragedy? I'd love to hear them!

IndyCar - Finally Refreshing

2009-07-11T19:08:00.001-04:00

Just watching the last IndyCar race on my DVR at Watkins Glen… how refreshing to see these cars have to turn more than left!!

I started watching IndyCar only this year. At first I was truly upset to find them only running on ovals ( I thought they would mimick F1, but on US territory)… I just don't find that much fascination in oval racing, but it was still a bit better than Nascar. I guess it stems from my affinity for motorcycle racing which has ALWAYS been about right AND left turns.

I got into Formula One racing this year as well, as I've found more time to watch recorded TV. I've always benn a *fan* of F1 racing, but couldn't fit it in my schedule. This year has been awesome with Jenaon Button!! Both my son and I try to watch every race(from our DVR).

So, to finally see IndyCar having to race both right and left… it was very refreshing. I like it a LOT!!

-- Post From My iPhone via Blogpress

Moving Notebooks to the "cloud"... trying to do this with Evernote

2009-07-08T10:35:00.014-04:00

***UPDATES AT THE BOTTOM OF POST***

I have been an Evernote user for a little over a year now, but I never really used it to its full potential. This may have been in part due to the fact that I had a BlackBerry for a while and there was no Evernote application for the BlackBerry (there is now of course). I recently bought an iPhone, and there is a pretty solid Evernote client for the iPhone. I also have been feeling the need lately for better organizing and mobilizing (is that even a word? - looked it up... it's a word, but not the definition I am using here) my notes. I suppose I have simply used email in the recent past, but that's not a great solution and is too cluttered (in my opinion), so searches tend to have a lot of junk I'm not interested in sifting through and wastes time. I have also used Microsoft OneNote for some things, but it's SOOO limited to a PC (or Windows Mobile device which I don't own any longer... and even that mobile app is lame for mobile notes access IMO). My main concern, similar to my Task Management Solution concerns, is that the solution needs to be ubiquitous and work on all of my devices... which dictates some form of web-based backend and syncing.

Evernote seems to fit that bill, and since I have an account and notes already in it, I am deciding to experiment more with it and see if I can make it work better for me. I am trying to find tips and tricks to make it work for me, rather than me working for it. ;-) I intend to list them in posts and revisit this one with updates.

Here is a tip I found on another bloggers site that explains how to create a "Send-To" shortcut to attach files to your Evernote default notebook. Simple enough... but what I found out today is that you can only attach certain files with a free account through Evernote. The premium account will allow you to attach any file to Evernote... but then I'm not sure what those attachments would look like in Evernote... especially on the iPhone app. Meaning: If I attach a MS Word document to Evernote, would I be able to read it and search it like any other note from my iPhone?? I don't know that I am ready to upgrade to a premium account, because I'm not yet sure it is the right solution for me. I still find the interface to be a bit of a kluge to use (more on this further down). Scrolling through notes on the desktop client has been painful to me so far. A premium account with Evernote will set you back either $5/mo. or $45/yr. Because they have a month to month subscription level, I *may* try it out for a month for $5 and see if it's worth it to me (during the course of composing this blog post, I exceeded my free account bandwidth usage and decided no time like the present to try it for a month... so I upgraded for the $5/mo. plan for starters. If I like it enough I will opt for the yearly subscription of $45/yr. If I don't think it's worth it, I'll cancel and go back to free). For now, pertaining to MS Word documents, I simply select all and paste into a new note. This is not a great solution, but it works easily enough. I am also curious about what any formatting would look like in the MS Word attachment in a Premium account... if it produced the same results as my copy/paste method, it would be a huge waste of money. However, if it maintained the formatting and graphics, etc, it may be worth the extra money.

Another nice thing about Evernote, even the free account, is the ability to email notes to your default notebook. Here is a bit of text from that same blogger:
"Email Notes - With your Evernote account comes a custom email address. Anything sent to this address automagically is added to your default evernote notebook (Login to evernote.com, under settings is your email address)"
This can be VERY useful to forward emails you get to Evernote so they can be referenced later. Combine this with a premium account, and I would think it would include the ability to have Word and Excel attachments in the email get into your notebook as well. Again, not sure how all of this would display on a mobile phone app (like the iPhone). May have to play around with this one a bit and report back.

I found this blog post about scanning things in and getting them into Evernote automatically that is specifically for Macs, but noticed in the comments that you can set the Evernote desktop client to monitor folders, so if you set it to monitor your scanning folder it will get the notes automatically. For work, I have to scan in business expense receipts for record keeping, etc, but this will come in handy for SOOO many things. I can see that a bit of management will be required to filter them into the appropriate notebooks and tag them... but the search capability is so good that this becomes less of a concern (IF you know what you are looking for... which sometimes you don't, so refining the number of things to look through is nice). I set it to monitor my expense receipts folder and it started pulling in all my receipts into Evernote immediately... which is what sent me over my bandwidth limit for my free account, so I upgraded to continue and will explore the other features (like attaching MS Word documents and the formatting of these). This post says the following "Choose PNG, JPEG as the format. If you would rather scan to PDF, keep in mind that images in PDFs will not be recognized by our image recognition" which I'm wondering if this is still the case with PDF documents since this post is about 7 months old now. My guess is it is... one thing I noticed on PDFs imported into Evernote is that you cannot select any text within the PDF (unless I'm missing how to do this). So I'm wondering if it makes sense to import these at all? It *does* allow you to search them and read them... but what if you want to grab some text off one and email it or something? If it is a scanned PDF, I don't think even Adobe Acrobat Professional will allow you to select text because it sees it as an image that is not editable... just checked and you can't, so no loss of feature there. ***update - I also tried opening one of the PDF notes on my iPhone... it has to download the PDF, which the one I selected was 2.6MB and therefore took a while to open even over wifi... on top of that, it was sluggish to view and pinch zoom, etc... but it did work. Not sure I want to continue to use PDFs and will look at trying out JPGs or PNGs and see how well that works - /update***

Pertaining to the UI of Evernote, I started using Evernote via the web interface only at first. The web interface seems to have a view option not available in the desktop client... that being the ability to display all your notes as smaller thumbnails, which I felt it seemes easier to quickly visually scan those for what I was looking for... but now, I realize this is pointless with the search capabilities of Evernote. In the beginning, I only had a few notes, so visually looking for the note I wanted seemed to make sense... but now that I have hundreds of notes, this doesn't matter as much. However, I still say this view would be welcome on the desktop client because, let's say, if you do a search and it comes back with 5-15 notes that contain the keywords you put in, if you could see all those as thumbnails with their titles, it would be easy to pick the one you are looking for without having to type more keywords to refine your search. Maybe I'm alone in this thinking.

Since I upgraded to a premium account during the sporadic composition of this blog post (they can sometimes take me days to complete) I tried attaching a MS Word document to Evernote. This worked just fine and, on the desktop, double-clicking it opens it in MS Word... convenient I suppose. I'm not sure what would happen if I tried to do this from a desktop/laptop where MS Word was not installed... but I don't actually have any PC without it installed so I can test this. I did check what this would look like on the iPhone, since MS Word is not present. Similar to the PDF notes, it shows that it is an attachment that needs to be downloaded. Once I did this, it showed the document fairly well. I did not have tables or images or other odd formatting in this specific example, so I'm not sure what it would do with those, but I was impressed with what it displayed. Perhaps the Premium Account in Evernote is worth it just for this feature?? Not sure just yet.

Well, I am going to post this as is and revisit it with updates appended to the bottom as I learn and find more. ;-) Cheers!

Update 1: Just posted and already found something. I just tried to do a search on some text within my attached word document and Evernote did not find it inside the attachment. I'm not sure if this is because I JUST added it and the Evernote servers have not processed it yet or what... but not being able to search inside file attachments would be a HUGE bummer and pretty much a waste. I mean, Windows Desktop Search and Google Desktop can perform this action for me! Hopefully it's just a timing issue... I'll post back if it starts working.

Update 2: I am listening to the Evernote Podcast #5 right now (from 6/5/09) and they said that they are writing a brand new Windows Evernote Desktop Client from the ground up and it will address many of the things that people have been requesting... such as thumbnails of the notes and quick view. WooHoo!! They said it should be out sometime later this summer (so maybe August??). Hopefully this will make the desktop client more user friendly for me.

Update 3: Thought I'd share this post about using Evernote for "Getting Things Done" (GTD). I saw this and gave it some thought before finally developing my Task Management Solution. My problem with using Evernote for GTD is that it doesn't offer me the ability to pop-up reminders or easily/structurally specify a due date to sort/filter on, etc. I think it's a great idea, and if someone can make it work for their needs, that's awesome! It just wasn't "enough" for me and my wants/needs. BTW, I think there are some things to be learned from this that could be helpful in organizing notes. One thought is to create a notebook called "Inbox" and make that your default notebook. Then, all notes get placed into this bucket by default, and you can schedule time each day or week to parse through the information and move it to the appropriate notebook or add tags... just a thought. Not sure it's worth much.

Update 4: This one's pretty cool... you can link your twitter account to Evernote so that you can send tweets to Evernote. All you need to do is go to http://twitter.com/MyEN and follow the directions. Once you link your account to Twitter, all you need to do is include @MyEN in a tweet and it gets added to your default notebook.

Update 5: If you are into GTD (Getting Things Done) at all, this one may be interesting to you for using Evernote for your GTD system. Darren Crawford posted what he does to use Evernote for his GTD system. The reason I kind of like his idea is that it's very simple. I may give this a try myself... but one thought is that you may not even want to use the contexts, and thinking about moving things around and changing tags, etc, could become too time consuming. Not only that, but the iPhone Evernote app is VERY different from the desktop or even web app... you cannot easily limit the displayed notes by notebook or by tags... so I'm not sure this design would work for my needs. Thankfully, the search capabilities in Evernote are second to none.

TomTom for iPhone en route | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld

2009-07-06T15:09:00.001-04:00

TomTom for iPhone en route | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld:

"There are also logistical issues. For example, because the iPhone doesn’t support background processes, any navigation app must shut down during phone calls, making real-time tracking difficult—something that doesn’t happen on a dedicated GPS unit, even one that includes telephony features."

This is the biggest drawback I've had with ANY phone based GPS application. I had the Verizon VZ Navigator on one of my phones in the past, and while it was a great GPS app, if you took a call or were on a call, GPS no workie. One time, I was on a conference call and wasn't familiar with where to exit on my trip. A while later I realized I MUST have missed my turn and had to hang up on the call and wait nearly 7 minutes for the GPS to reinitialize and find my location to then tell me that I essentially went 30 minutes out of my way... extending my trip by 1 HOUR!!! Ugh! I will never forget that mistake, and since have purchased a Navigon 2100max stand-alone GPS. The Navigon is truly awesome (none are perfect as far as I'm concerned) and has some incredible features. However, Navigon is pulling out of the US for both sales and map updates at some point in the not-too-distant future. They will be honoring the remaining subscriptions for map updates from their customers, but then that's it. What does this mean??? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing I still have about 3 years of (up to date) life left in my GPS. Past that I have no idea, but technology changes pretty fast anyway and something better may come along by then.

For now, I will be staying away from any phone based GPS system/app. I think the Tom Tom package looks promising... but if it still means taking a call stops the function of GPS telling you where to turn, I don't want any parts of it.

Going Greener (Electric Push Mower)

2009-07-06T11:44:00.006-04:00

My gas-powered push lawn mower started to give me problems recently. I got it for free from my in-laws a while back and it's served me well (nice and light). The wheel adjustments were a BEAR though, sometimes requiring a hammer to adjust some of the wheels. The throttle seemed to have some issues as well, but it worked at any rate. Recently it ran out of gas, sputtering to a stop (normal) and I went to refill it. I accidentally over filled the gas tank by a little, and when I started it up, it was sputtering... almost identical to when it runs out of gas. My guess is something (dirt, whatever) was in the gas tank and got into the line or carb and is blocking the flow of gas. I tried slightly to see if I could track down the problem, but had no luck.

My wife and I have wanted to get away from a gas powered lawn mower for some time now, and even went as far as increasing the landscaping in our front lawn to minimize the use of the lawn mower. So I saw this as an opportunity to possibly go greener (I was also thinking of getting the gas powered mower fixed). I started to look around to see what a new mower might cost in case it was not much more to buy new instead of getting it fixed. I saw electric mowers for hundreds of dollars (like $350+) and kind of wished we could get one, but just couldn't see putting out that kind of money. Then, I happened upon this Task Force Electric Push Mower at Lowe's for only $208!! So, I asked my wife, "What would you be willing to pay to go to an electric mower?" She started off saying we couldn't afford it... it would be great, but we just couldn't afford it. So I repeated the question with, "What would be your top $ we could afford?" She said, "$200." I said, "SOLD!" She couldn't believe it, and I couldn't either. So I went and bought it, and I have to say it's pretty slick. The wheel height adjustment is the envy of all my neighbors because it is literally ONE lever and all four wheels adjust at the same time and VERY easily! It also goes all the way up to 3 3/4"!! I used that setting on the backyard where we don't spend much time and gets direct sunlight pretty much the ENTIRE day.

I was a little worried about electric cord management at first, but it turned out to be a non-issue as long as you pay attention to the way you cut the grass. The best thing I say on this is, cut laterally up hills and away from the cord. Doing this completely made it a non-issue. There was one hill that I was cutting parallel down a slight grade (still away from the cord though) and the cord tended to get into the outer edge of the uncut grass so I had to stop every so often and swing it out a bit. Even that wasn't terrible.

The quality of the mower itself is fair. It's certainly not the best, but I also wasn't expecting anything incredibly awesome for $208! I would say it's "good enough". The fact that it comes with a generous bag (holds more than I was expecting based on looks and my old bag), as well as a side spout AND mulching plug... I was impressed. The motor seemed quiet enough... honestly I think the noise comes mainly from the spinning blade... but it was similar in sound level to my gas powered mower (a bit quieter though). Startup was a TOTAL breeze, and it stops almost instantly. I also love the fact that there is no gas smell or pollution coming off it, and my shed now only smells of cut grass. I bought the 3 year replacement warranty for $40 thinking that would make up for any lack of quality in the unit.

To go greener, I was thinking about getting the exact same thing our next door neighbor/friends have which is a Task Force Reel Push Mower (at about $140), which is pretty much as green as it gets since it is based on human power. The problem with it that my wife doesn't like is that it doesn't do well with tall weeds, leaving them in place and requiring you to then come back around with some form of scythe. Not that it's impossible to get a good cut, but it certainly doesn't seem to look as good/clean as the gas-powered or electric push mowers where the blade is spinning much faster. I would guess that I could possibly produce a better cut than my neighbor, simply because he doesn't seem to care as much about having a nice even cut and just does it so the lawn isn't out of control.

Now that I bought and used the electric, I posed the question to my wife on whether or not she is interested in going as far as a reel push mower or not. I await her response. Of course, it will be that is doing all the physical work... but it's her aesthetic requirement that I am asking the question for. Also, where my 11 year old son couldn't use the electric mower for fear of him running over the extension cord and properly managing that, he could certainly use the Reel Push Mower. We'll see on this one... I may be posting again soon.

As far as my gas-powered mower, I put it up by the street behind our house. It didn't even last 5 minutes up there before someone snagged it. In fact, I'm not even sure if I had a chance to start up the electric mower to make sure it worked or not! ;-) I gave my almost full gas can to another neighbor and my move was complete. I STILL feel great about making the move... but now I am thinking I may even want to go as far as the Reel Push Mower.

Are YOU doing anything to be more green? Share other things we can all do to help out our planet!

To Jailbreak... or not to jailbreak: iPhone 3GS jailbreak “purplera1n” tool released - SlashGear

2009-07-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

iPhone 3GS jailbreak “purplera1n” tool released - SlashGear:
"The iPhone Dev Team may have held off on releasing their ultrasn0w iPhone 3GS jailbreaking and unlocking tool, but that hasn’t stopped long-time Apple hacker George Hotz. He’s released a tool called purplera1n which, while not unlocking the iPhone 3GS, does at least jailbreak it so that unofficial third-party apps can be installed."

I have been contemplating jailbreaking my iPhone 3GS, but up until recently there was no tool available to do it. The "iPhone Dev Team" is holding off on their release of ultrasn0w until 3.1 so Apple can't shut them down, which I have mixed feelings about. I think George Hotz has a valid point here:

“Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week. Also your purplera1nyday files ensure that you can always get back to a jailbroken state, so if you have it it’s just a matter of tools.” George Hotz

One point of clarification on this article... from the purplera1n web site, it looks like there is a OS X utility now. My main PC is Windows, so I don't have a quick easy way to check it out right now.

Now comes the decision of whether or not I chance it with my shiny new iPhone 3GS... hmmm. It would seem to me that it is pretty safe since you can restore from a backup... but if I were to brick my phone, I have no recourse and not enough money to buy a new one without a contract. I'd like to know from someone I trust that this works without issue (but there's always a chance something could go wrong).

Any takers??? ;-)

Appigo Todo and Toodledo… a dynamic duo!

2009-07-01T14:38:00.015-04:00

I recently purchased both Appigo's "Todo" iPhone app (for $9.99) and Toodledo's Pro account (for $14.95/yr) which offers advanced features over the free account that were important to me. However, the free account itself is pretty spectacular, in the sense that every other web-based backend that works with an iPhone app charge you a yearly fee, and generally over $24.99/yr (which is what Remember The Milk charges for the account that works with its iPhone app or Appigo's Todo)! You, personally, may never need anything more than the free account from Toodledo, but I like what the Pro account offers in conjunction with what Appigo's Todo application offers with such grace and ease in their iPhone app. The most important to me being subtasks to create "projects" and "checklists", both which *require* sub-tasks (in all honesty, Toodledo can still handle this in the free version, but the subtasks show up as regular tasks. For you, it may not matter, but I like seeing where they are associated and also be able to hide them to remove the clutter). To demonstrate this, I suggest that you visit Appigo's site and watch some of the screencasts. It helped me better understand what the capabilities are, and is partially what sold me on this iPhone app over others. I also first downloaded the Appigo Todo Lite app, which is free, signed up for the free account at Toodledo and upgraded to the free 7 day trial of the Toodledo Pro account to check it all out together. The Todo Lite app only allows 10 tasks total, but it was enough for me to see the benefits over other solutions out there. By the way, checklists and projects seem to be considered 1 task for the limitation, but there is also a limit of about 5 subtasks for these in the lite version (NOT in the full version).

I suppose I should give a little background on my situation regarding task management so you can better understand what I was looking for in a system. I've read the book "Getting Things Done" (GTD), by David Allen, and think it has a lot of value. I never felt that it was 100% for me, and that it honestly felt like way too much work for my life (still VERY much worth reading to garner the wisdom it has and take away what makes sense for you). Maybe I'm just not that important, or have enough going on in my life to need its extensive system… but I'm also not the only one that feels this way. There are a LOT of great principles and ideas in GTD, so I took some of those and tried to create my own system. I also tried to incorporate some of Covey's principals as well. I tried to use the GTD plug-in for Outlook, but even that was way too complex, even when I pared it down to simply filing mail around from the inbox. Also, the "Tasks" system in Outlook is kind of lame, and trying to incorporate this into a mobile device is even worse. On top of all this, Outlook is confined to a single desktop where it is installed (without creating some convoluted sync strategy).

So, some of the features I was looking for pertained to the idea of being able to access my lists from ANYWHERE! This basically dictated a web-based backend that also synced with an iPhone app for offline use. Another requirement was the ability to create "projects", those being tasks with multiple sub steps/tasks in order to complete that major task/goal. GTD talks about the importance of "contexts", those being situations or places you might be in where certain tasks apply. For instance, "Fill car with gas" would have a context of @car, because you need to perform the action with your car. You get the idea. I use these to some degree, but not to the extent of what David Allen suggests… just what makes sense to my life and workflow (and trying to keep things as simple as possible). David Allen also talks about the importance of emptying your mind of the clutter/stuff that you have to remember to do. He talks about getting these into your "inbox" (real or virtual) to be dealt with and organized later. Then there is the mantra of, "getting IN to empty", which refers to the process of clearing out, or catagorizing your tasks into the correct buckets from, your inbox daily so that too is not a burden on your mind. -To add more later--

Toodledo offers all of this, and they even have an app for the iPhone for only $2.99 (on sale at the time of writing this). I thought about getting the Toodledo iphone app, but I thought Appigo's Todo app offered more, plus Todo allows me to attach to Toodledo's OR Remember The Milk's web backend. Also, there was no lite version of the Toodledo app for the iPhone to allow me to try it out. Just a couple screenshots and a short description. Basically, Toodledo's focus didn't seem to be on the iPhone app, which is perfectly fine, and Appigo seems completely focused on making the Todo iPhone app better. I think the screencasts alone speak volumes about the company.

Toodledo also offers a referral program to help out with the cost of the Pro account. Their program essentially is: if someone uses your referral link to sign up for a Pro account, they extend your Pro account's expiration 3 months... EACH time they renew! What this means is, if you get 4 people to follow your referral link and purchase AND maintain a Pro account, you would never have to pay to renew your Pro account and have it forever. So, if you are interested in signing up for a Toodledo Pro account, or any account, and found my review to be helpful, I sure would appreciate you using any of the links on this page because they are my referral link. ;-)

Some of the competition that I looked at and tried:

Remember The Milk (RTM) - The RTM iPhone app was actually pretty solid, but I really didn't like the web interface of it at ALL, and I spend a LOT of time at a desktop computer where I need to access and edit my tasks. Not only that, but I didn't like the idea of having to pay $25/yr to be able to use my iPhone app and sync between. Toodledo offers a free account that syncs with Appigo's Todo, so I could always stop paying for Pro on Toodledo and still be able to have a synchronized solution.
Nozbe - Nozbe offers a free iPhone application, and it looked to have some decent components to it, BUT... their web site account will cost you OVER $60 a year!! No thanks!
OmniFocus - OmniFocus is a full featured app and elegant, but there is no web backend... AND, they only have a Mac client (not PC) that will sync with the iPhone app over wifi (note, NOT wirelessly over cellular... you have to be on the SAME subnet as the Mac where OmniFocus is running). This also means that the synchronization is not "automatic", whereas I was able to setup the Appigo Todo app to sync every time it starts up automatically. This is still not perfect (would need sync at startup and shutdown), but it certainly helps. And there is a sync button always present so I can sync without navigating to do so.
Things - This, to me, is very similar to OmniFocus. I think it looks great a feature rich, but once again you have a Mac only backend that only syncs over wifi when you are on the same network as your Mac. No thanks. Too bad too.
Pocket Informant - I used to use, and love, Pocket Informant on my Windows Mobile phones. Back then I thought it was great and pulled everything together. So when I saw that it was available for the iPhone AND could sync with Toodledo, I was excited. But when I installed the lite version and tried it out, I was sorely dissappointed. It felt WAY too busy and cluttered to me now (having used the iPhone built in calendar app, etc) and it also did not utilize the built-in iPhone apps (like calendar and contacts, etc). So it only lasted about a day on my iPhone before I gave up on it.
EasyTask Manager - EasyTask Manager was a free iPhone app, so it made it onto my device quickly. However, it did not sync with a backend web site, and it wasn't incredibly elegant. It wasn't bad, but just not good enough. Unlike OmniFocus and Things, at least it has a desktop client for BOTH the Mac or PC to sync with. However, the client is kind of ugly, and don't make me repeat the wifi sync option. ;-)

So, if you are looking for a task management solution, I can highly recommend the combination of Appigo's Todo iPhone app and Toodledo web application. Being able to quickly empty those thoughts so I can organize them later is invaluable to me, as well as not being limited on where and when I can access my system.

-- Post From My iPhone via Blogpress

Fell off the grid for a bit... but got my new iPhone 3GS!!

2009-06-26T09:48:00.004-04:00

Hey All,

Sorry I sort of fell off the grid for a bit. I've had a bunch of things going on that really didn't allow me to easily blog... but I've had things I've wanted to discuss. First of all, I got the new iPhone 3GS on June 19th!! WooHoo! I new this model was coming out before my first 30 days was up with AT&T, and I made sure I would be able to exchange my 3G for the 3GS when it came out. I only had to pay a $20 "restocking" fee to do it. I am EXTREMELY impatient, so I couldn't just sit it out and wait for the new model to release. I'm actually glad I did, because it allowed me to experience just HOW different and better the 3GS is to the 3G. I'm also glad that I upgraded my 3G to OS 3.0 before turning it back in. This allowed me to see that OS 3.0 most definitely had some performance improvements on the 3G, let alone the new feature set.

Most recently, I have been trying to find a solid task management system that I could use on both my iPhone and my PC (Windows, not Mac... but my wife has a Mac and I wanted something that was universal for the desktop). I'm pretty sure I finally found the right solution for this, so I will have a post on this specifically (hopefully over the weekend). In the meantime, there is a box on the top right of my main blog page that lists what I am using, with a link that has my referral number in it. If you decide to sign up for it, I'd sure appreciate you using my link so I get the benefits. ;-) I honestly would be happy paying for the service either way, so that should tell you how much I like it. I tried some others, and none of them had everything I was looking for, or were too expensive... or a combination of the two. I will discuss my findings and thoughts on these other services/apps in my review.

I want to get back to my app review series because I have found a lot of apps that are worth their price. So look for more in that area soon as well. Hopefully my Task Management System will help me along in this area! ;-D

iPhone OS 3.0 - Upgrade now or wait?

2009-06-17T22:21:00.001-04:00

Not that I am extremely surprised, but my upgrade experience today on my iPhone 3G was less than flawless. This is classic Apple unfortunately, but we all (mostly) put up with it. I would actually guess that a bit of the problem truly stemmed from getting my phone re-activated by AT&T. However, downloading the update from Apple alone was somewhat trying. Both companies are to blame for lack of available bandwidth. Better planning could have certainly mitigated this stuttered experience for so many today.

Now, not everyone experienced the same issues as me, and by the looks of things, a ton of peoe were able to get the update quickly and apply it without issue. Good for them... Seriously.

My upgrade process started at approx. 1:15pm, and consisted of the 3.0 download timing out in iTunes about 4 times. When it finally finished and began to apply to my iPhone, the update failed leaving my 3G in "Recovery Mode"... Nice. Apple's web site suggested I look for iTunes updates, or reboot my pc if there weren't any. Hey, at least they routed me here upon failure, so good on them. So I rebooted.

After reboot, iTunes recognized my phone was in recovery mode and suggested I restore... Uh, yes please. This time it worked just fine, but it took a while to complete. After it installed the 3.0 OS, it had to deactivate my phone... Here's where it got exceedingly annoying. Over 12 times it timed out with a "communication error" trying to communicate with the "iTunes Store"... Seriously?!? I had NO problem browsing the store. I think this where AT&T came into play, and I wasn't alone as others twittered their frustration too. At one point, my phone was activated, but it was STILL trying to connect for some reason. It eventually finished whatever it was trying to do.

Once this completed, it asked if I wanted to restore from a backup... Uh, yeah... Duh!

The restore took quite a while, and I'm not sure what it did during this time, because I STILL had to sync all my shit back to it!! Literally, there was nothing but stock 3.0 shit pn there... WTF? so I tell it to sync... Now I was down to about 100MB free on my 8GB iPhone, so that's a lot of info to sync, but I can't even believe how long it took to sync. I even decided to drop a ton of apps to shorten the time it would take.

When all was said and done, it was 5:32pm!!! Are you kidding me? That was painful. That's 4 hours of my life I would like back. I guess that's what I get for wanting to get it ASAP. ;-)

I just hope it's not as painful when I get my 3G S!!

-- Post From My iPhone

FriendFeed has my attention

2009-06-16T09:41:00.004-04:00

I just started using FriendFeed, and I think I like it better than Twitter at this point. For one thing, it can pull updates from other services, such as Twitter, and displays everything from everyone I am following in one place... that's efficient. Another thing I like about it is the easy conversation view... so you can actually see what other people are saying about something... I haven't found a great way to display conversations in Twitter yet (though I haven't invested a lot of time figuring it out either... but should I have too??).

I currently have it pulling in blogger, FaceBook and Twitter content from people I am following. I am now seeing content from these people that I wasn't seeing before... so A+ from me!

iPhone App Review Series

2009-06-15T12:29:00.003-04:00

Being that I bought an iPhone recently (5/22/09 to be exact), I have been trying out and buying applications based on finding reviews from other various sites. I will attempt to share some of those sites as I determine them to be worth it (some I haven't found very helpful, or I disagree with the reviews).

This first post in this series will be a quick summary of some of the apps I've come to like/love. I hope to do much more in-depth reviews of specific apps as I use them and my phone more. So look for more in this series.

Games:
I want to lead this category by saying that I don't have a ton of time to game on my phone. Because of that, games that I find to be challenging and offer some life may not provide this to someone who has hours at a time to game on their phone. I've read some reviews from people saying they beat the game in 2 hours or whatever... If you are one of those people, my reviews may not be the best for you.

Real Racing, by Firemint (genre = Racing) - This came out a few days ago and looks to be the best racing sim game so far. I haven't had a chance to play it much yet, but the graphics and depth of the game appear to be second to none. I will review this in more depth at a later date.

Fieldrunners, by Subatomic Studios (genre = Tower Defense) - This is a more classic style Tower Defense gameplay model where there is a blank canvas for you to layout the path to force the AI to follow to their doom. ;-) This style of Tower Defense is a LOT of fun, and can play different based on how you lay out your towers. Tower Defense has become one of my favorite genres lately, and this game does NOT dissappoint. I started off on Medium and failed the first level. I like that, because it tells me it will challenge me and stay interesting! I should say that what I am calling level 1 has (I believe) 100 waves of "runners". These included helicopters that didn't have to follow my path of death, and it also included tanks which can take a LOT of firepower before dying. I got defeated by wave 40. Obviously, I need a better strategy for the choppers and tanks, since they are the only things that got through. One EXTREMELY nice feature of Fieldrunners is the ability to pause your game, even exit and resume a pauses game. This is a must have for any phone based game, but I don't believe most have it.

Star Defense, by Ngmoco (genre = Tower Defense) - This game has some beautiful graphics and great gameplay. You are at a 3D planet with a path that the alien invaders will follow, and in certain areas the path will loop and come near to the other side of it, so placing one tower can get both sides. I only played one world and on Easy, and I got through it easily... But I've been playing Tower Defense games for a bit and understand the strategy, so I should probably never play them on easy.

I think I'll stop here for my first post in this series. I will talk about other types of apps besides games... Like the app I'm using to post this to my blogger account, BlogPress. So far I really like it, but I want to use it more before reviewing it.

-- Post From My iPhone

Roku - STILL loving it to death!!! Honestly

2009-06-06T15:42:00.003-04:00

I am still completely in love with my Roku player... maybe even MORE so than when I bought it! I literally use it almost every single day.

From what I can tell these days, the XBOX 360 is as good a player as the Roku, and actually will be better shortly as they release some better feature set for the 360 and Netflix... but I am hopeful they also bring this to the Roku player as well. The feature I am referring to is the ability to browse the Netflix instant play library and add to your queue DIRECTLY FROM THE 360!!! That's huge! I actually bought an app for my iPhone to be able to add to my queue without having to visit a PC... but I'd much rather do it from my device when I'm ready to watch.

At any rate, if you are looking for a device like this and do not already have an XBOX 360 in the room you want this feature, the Roku for $99.99 is a KILLER DEAL! I highly recommend it to anyone, and am very happy I spent the money on it.

Another - Palm Pre review (Engadget this time)

2009-06-04T09:56:00.000-04:00

Palm Pre review:
"The Palm Pre. It's not just a phone, it's a myth, an idea, possibly a legacy... and a really, really long time coming."

I didn't read the entire review yet myself, so I may edit this post... just wanted to share.

Gizmodo - Palm Pre Review - Palm pre review

2009-06-04T09:41:00.005-04:00

Gizmodo - Palm Pre Review - Palm pre review:
"It's here.

One last effort. A slow, but firm, shove of the chips. All in. Palm's only hope to save a company once synonymous with smart handheld devices: the Pre. Their eyebrow raised, daring you to call. They flip. Full house. Respectable. Decent. Impressive even. But not the highest hand.

That's not to say that the phone isn't good, because it is. The software has quite a few interesting innovations that push the concepts of what people can do with smartphones, like Google Android when it debuted—only better. The market needs this. The industry needs this. We need this. But the hardware? Cheap. Flimsy. Dangerous even."

Before the actual launch of the Pre, this is a WONDERFULLY complete review, I think. I also think the Pre will be a decent phone, especially in its next release of hardware, but I'm VERY glad I bought an iPhone instead.

iPhone 3G Review - Part 1

2009-05-26T09:26:00.007-04:00

I want to preface this review with the fact that I am coming from T-Mobile where I had a BlackBerry Curve 8320. So much of my review will consist of comparisons because it's foremost in my mind. The devices are VERY different (in my mind) and I would say are directed at very different audiences. The BlackBerry models and software is more utilitarian and targets the enterprise user with a HEAVY focus on email, and in my opinion it is the best here hands down... no question. I don't think there is a close competitor for business type applications and usage.

With that said, the BlackBerry kind of sucks for internet and other personal goodness. Don't get me wrong, it is hanging in there with apps like Facebook and other things... and the Storm (as well as the Bold and Curve 8900 I believe) have a MUCH improved internet experience... but I don't think they are as good or as slick as the iPhone in this regard (or the Pre from the videos I've seen... the Pre is using the webkit, same as the iPhone, so the web experience should be identical... signal strength aside... more on that later). I had contemplated buying a NetBook or cheap laptop just to have around for web browsing so I had a larger screen, etc. I didn't really like this idea because I think I would eventually stop using it or it would become cumbersome (it CERTAINLY doesn't fit in your pocket).

My recent decision to go with an iPhone consisted of quite a bit of research that encompassed: AT&T as the carrier, so their signal strength in my area since that's where I am most of the time; The iPhone itself compared to other phones that I could buy (understanding a LARGE portion of what is getting fixed in the 3.0 software release for the iPhone and what that fixes); and finally the applications available to any phone I might purchase.

The Palm Pre:
The Pre shows promise because it has the ability to multi-task well (though it remains to be seen what the performance will be with multi-tasking... so let's assume it will be adequate... AND, there is rumor that Apple will be starting to utilize multi-tasking with the new model of iPhone because it will have a faster CPU and more RAM... but that's rumor at this point). Not only that, it is also using the WebKit for its browser (like the iPhone), and from what I can see the browser experience is pretty much identical to the iPhone (cellular carriers and signal strength aside). I, personally, like the idea of the slide out keyboard for several reasons: 1) I am coming from a line of keyboard phones (Palm Treo w/Palm OS, Palm Treo w/ Windows Mobile, finally BlackBerry), so I am more comfortable with a physical keyboard; 2) This allows the screen to display more info since it is not being filled with the keyboard on-screen (this is not a *huge* deal, but I personally think it would be nicer and have found the lack of screen real estate when the keyboard is up to be somewhat limiting on the iPhone... but not a big deal); 3) I always fear that the "touch" portion of the touchscreen will stop being responsive (this has happened to me on several touch only devices, some older Palm devices included). Some of the videos of its capabilities are impressive (here's a 26 minute video that provides GREAT coverage of it's features... at least what they'll tell us) ... but SO much is still unknown because Palm and Sprint are keeping very tight lips on capabilities, etc. They don't want any bad press before the launch is my guess. Not only that... this is a COMPLETELY new phone and operating system from the ground up, so it has NO proven track record (other than Palm's track record, and I've always been a fan of Palm). This also means that accessories and software (applications) for the OS will be very limited for quite a while I would think. Developers are going to have to get ramped up on this OS, and are they *really* going to spend on this phone/OS unless it takes off like gangbusters?? Me thinks not... not until it gets some presence in the market and proves it can hang with the iPhone. This finally brings me to Sprint. Sprint has some good things about it, but they are bleeding and the Pre is pretty much its last effort to gain back some ground in the market. So who knows what will happen to Sprint in the meantime... but I doubt they will be investing in new towers for a bit. And that brings me to the lack of coverage where I live. It's not EVERYWHERE around me that is a problem... but my house and the neighborhood I live in basically are not even on Sprint's coverage map (it's listed as "Roaming"). That pretty much clinched it for me... and the fact that AT&T's signal strength at my house is now stellar (as good as Verizon in my area, which is saying something).

As far as the iPhone goes, I am still struggling with getting all of my email accounts, calendars and contacts squared away. Don't get me wrong... if you have one email/calendar account and one set of contacts to sync up, you should be golden. I have several, and it seems you can't have them all doing updates at the same time... so I have to make some decisions on what to do. Don't worry, I will share my experience with everyone in case someone else is in the same boat. That will all be in Part 2 most likely, since that is currently my main focus.

One quick thing I found that bugs me. You can't create an appointment and invite someone else to it. This is what prompted my current project to get me and my wife on the same calendar and also simplify my workflow... more later.

HOWTO - Use MobileMe with Your Own Domain! - macosx.com

2009-05-24T23:07:00.001-04:00

HOWTO - Use MobileMe with Your Own Domain! - macosx.com:

****UPDATE****
I have since decided (I think) that I am NOT going to go with MobileMe (unless they release some serious enhancements and reasons to keep me) and am going to figure out a way to utilize Google for free (GoogleSync for the iPhone). I will post more on my solution as I figure it out.
****/UPDATE****

I actually figured this out on my own by playing around a bit, but then I found this post that confirmed my findings.

What this allows is all of the MobileMe push/sync goodness while still allowing you to send replies as a different domain email account. The Sent items become a bit scattered, but at least it's something.

Here's the post:

"HOWTO - Use MobileMe with Your Own Domain!
I really want to use MobileMe with my own domain and with a new feature in iPhone 2.0 I have managed to pull it off.

1) Setup your MobileMe account with all the push and syncing features so that life is good and jolly.

2) Setup your own mail account and setup, just as you normally would until your satisfied with it.

3) Go into Settings and Fetch Settings and turn your 'non-mobileme' account to manual. Go in and read any emails you need too to get your new emails down to ZERO.

4) Forward your emails from your primary domain account to your MobileMe service, most email providers provide this type of feature. Worst case, setup MobileMe to POP your mail account, but that won't be 'instant' like forwarding is.

5) When you get a new email in to MobileMe and reply to it, if it's an email you want to come from your own domain, just select the 'from' field, and a new feature allows you to choose which account to send the email FROM. Select the other domain account and send it.

Your SENT items will appear in your personal domain email account Sent folders, not MobileMe.

While it's not a PERFECT solution, its better than nothing."

Hell froze over...

2009-05-23T00:53:00.006-04:00

I'm still in shock, but I actually went and got an iPhone 3G 8GB from my local AT&T shop.

This wasn't an easy decision, and I *DO* have 30 days to return it, but some of the key features it has were just too compelling. AND, one of the biggest deciding factors of going with AT&T over Sprint was signal strength in my area. The other phone I was *seriously* considering was the Palm Pre, which I think looks like a great phone, and even has some better features than the iPhone... but the AppStore and the apps for the iPhone trump the Pre. I mean... they have a frickin' Kindle app for the iPhone!! So you get access to all the Kindle library and pricing!!!! That's killer! I used to read books on my BlackBerry (read Angels & Demons on it) and found it to be great... but the library was limited and pricing was nearly identical to physical books.

So, back to Sprint and the Palm Pre... my wife and kids are on Sprint for their phones, so I was thinking maybe it would be better to all be on the same account... and the Palm Pre was about to be released and it looks like a really slick phone. However, I've known for a long time that Sprint hasn't been very good where we live, and T-Mobile was in the same boat... but at least with T-Mobile and the ability to use WiFi for my phone was pretty killer. AT&T was never great in my area in the past... but that's a long time ago that I had them, so I decided to compare AT&T with Sprint as far as coverage. AT&T was showing full strength signal and 3G in my area, and Sprint was showing *Roaming*... seriously... not even 1 bar in the surrounding area of where we live... roaming.

There was NO way I could deal with that, and I think it may actually get the rest of my family out of their contracts without paying the fees to cancel (this is what got me out of T-Mobile and they were at least showing 1-3 bars for my area.

So, between the signal strength (and it IS good for me, by the way) and the iPhone AppStore... it won. I'm sure I will find things I dislike and can't work around... but I think I'm finally okay with that. And with the 3.0 update right around the corner (June 8th, 2009) which fixes a LOT of my initial complaints, I think I will be happy.

Roku Digital Video Player: First Impressions (Review)

2009-05-17T11:33:00.008-04:00

My Roku Digital Video Player arrived via FedEx yesterday (on a Saturday no less)! I have to say I am VERY impressed with this pint sized device. It is VERY small (as you can see by the picture of a hand holding it), contains output for HDMI, Component, S-Video and even composite. For audio out, it has HDMI, optical and plain old RCA R+L.

The TV that I hooked it up to is only an SDTV, so no HDMI for me yet. In fact, the TV is quite old (all things considered) and doesn't even have component inputs. Thankfully, it at least has S-Video input, so I went with that. The picture, I would say, is at least as good as my DVD player, and there are even HD videos through Netflix that look better than DVD (trust me, even though it's an SDTV, you *can* see a difference... even if it is slight. I first noticed the difference when playing HD channels from my Verizon FiOS TV set-top-box).

The Roku Digital Video Player was designed to work with a Netflix account and it's digital streaming videos. I've been a member of Netflix for a VERY long time, and have been a huge fan of the delivery model (mail-order video rentals; you pay a monthly fee and can have a certain number of videos out at a time; turn-around for exchanging videos has been 2 days for me). I hate having to leave the house, or worry about returning a video on time. The streaming video service from Netflix wasn't stellar at first, in my opinion, but since it's startup it has gotten MUCH better. And with faster home-based internet connections, and I'm sure storage costs coming down considerably since it's launch, the quality that I am experiencing is VERY good. I have Verizon FiOS internet at 15mbps down, 2mbps up. I test my connection fairly regularly and I get a pertty consistent 12+mbps. It all depends on where you are testing against, and the available throughput of the routes you take... but my connection has been very good.

The device has wireless built-in!! I actually wasn't even thinking about this when I bought it because I have network cable to many different areas of my house... but I set it up using the wireless and have to say that it is providing excellent quality with absolutely no stutter or apparent latency issues. So, for now anyway, I am skipping the wire.

The remote it comes with is very simplistic, and works just fine. I may be getting a Logitech Harmony 550 refurbished to control everything... but for now I'll use multiple remotes. Again, I am really impressed with the fit and finish of this device.

Once I hooked it up and turned it on, it starts up with a setup wizard that is VERY easy to follow and use. Once I got it hooked up to my wireless network, it downloaded and applied a firmware update (very quickly too). This update provides the ability to play Amazon Video On-Demand. I haven't messed with this yet, but from what I can tell, this provides you the ability to either rent or buy movies to be watched "on-demand" via the Roku player or your PC/Mac. This is a neat idea, and I could see renting a movie from here that isn't available via Netflix streaming, or that is a "long wait" through Netflix DVD, but I'm not sure I would "buy" a movie from this format... at least, not yet. Rental prices seem to be $1.99, however I'm not sure at this point what that gives you (e.g., do you only get to watch the movie once? Do you get to watch it as many times as you can over a 3 day period? etc).

All in all, I have to say this device is killer for me and my usage and only costs $99.99. A quick tip for you folks looking to buy one: If you go to Roku's web site and click "Buy Now", it will take you to an order page where there is a "Shipping Cost" listed. What I realized in discussing this with my friend is that this "cost" is not a static cost. For instance, mine was showing up as $14.99 for shipping, but his was showing up as $4.99 for shipping! At first I couldn't believe it... I thought he was messing with my head, but he sent me a screenshot of it. Then he gave me the idea of clearing my cache and cookies in my browser and trying again. I then started to see different shipping costs each time. The first time I did it, it came up as $9.99, then finally it came up as $0.00!!!! I stopped on that one and actually bought it! So, I paid $99.99, with no tax and paid nothing for shipping! They use FedEx and it actually arrived on Saturday around 1:30pm (shipped from California, and I live in PA... almost as far as you can get from CA. So, if you live closer, I imagine it would arrive sooner than 5 days).

For me, the ability to watch all kinds of classic TV shows and a bunch of movies, all without having to change discs in my DVD player, AND the fact that you get to see the box art as well as a description is pretty killer. I have a 400 disc DVD changer, but I have to say that it became more of a pain in the ass than beneficial. In fact, I've resorted to using my XBOX 360 as my DVD player in that room, and have a single DVD player in my other main TV room. Part of the problem with that beast is that any DVD movie data you put into it gets lost if there is a power loss (I didn't know this up front). So, originally, I thought it was great... there is a menu to browse your DVDs, and I hooked up a keyboard and spent hours inputting the movie titles and actors, genres, etc... then we lost power and all of that hard work was gone. I was furious and never did it again... so I had to keep a separate notebook of what DVD was in what slot. Needless to say, it didn't turn out to be all that it was cracked up to be. :-(

The Roku, on the other hand, gets all that data from Netflix and pulls info from my account. I only wish it could stream music and videos from my PC on TOP of Netflix and Amazon... but I'm okay with it not doing that.

[ubuntu] Can I install LAMP on my Ibex workstation ? - Ubuntu Forums

2009-04-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

[ubuntu] Can I install LAMP on my Ibex workstation ? - Ubuntu Forums:

On this page you will find the aptitude code to install all of the packages. This makes it VERY easy to install. ;-)

How to display your web site logo on the address bar and in the favorites list

2009-03-24T23:39:00.001-04:00

****UPDATE****
My friend sent me a link to this site (http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/) when I told him how much I struggled with created an icon that was only 16x16 pixels. I put in the original (much larger) image I was trying to recreate in a 16x16 pixel square and it resulted in almost an IDENTICAL image to my final from scratch!! I was blown away. It *was* too light, but I could have started with this and just added some darker colors where needed to make it pop and standout. I also realized I could have cropped the original image tighter to remove the surrounding white space which would have helped when it converted it.

I'm still glad I went through the process of creating one from scratch because it forced me to think differently graphically than having unlimited space to create (like the original image I created). But from now on, the above site will be where I start. ;-)
****/UPDATE****

How to display your web site logo on the address bar and in the favorites list:

I have been doing a bit of web work for my personal company and when I looked at my site in the tabs compared to EVERY other web site I had open in tabs, I realized everyone was using favicon's with an image. It honestly makes it easier for me to see which tab I want to open when I have like 20 of them open. ;-)

I figured it couldn't be that hard to do, and found this page that describes how to do it. The hardest part was trying to create a favicon I liked... I mean, you only have 16 pixels squared to work with here. :-D I'm happy with what I finished with. (http://realtwistedpair.com)

Instructions from the linked site:
"How to display your web site logo on the address bar and in the favorites list
Want to make your web site standout in crowded favorites lists in browsers and address bars? How about displaying your logo next to links to your site.

First, you have to create a logo for your site; a very tiny logo to be specific. The size of the logo should be 16x16 pixels and it should be saved as a Windows icon file (logo.ico for example).

Once you have an icon file with your logo, you're ready to take the final step. Following methods will work in Explorer 5.x and higher without having any negative effects on other browsers.

Method 1

This is the easiest method to implement and it will work regardless of the particular page on your site users choose to add to their favorites list. Don't worry if you don't have access to your web site root; take a look at the next method.

If you have access to the root of your web site, simply save your icon file as "favicon.ico" there. For example, if your web site is "www.chami.com", your icon file should be available at "www.chami.com/favicon.ico". The web browser will look for favicon.ico whenever your site is added to the favorites list and if it is found at the root of your web site, the icon will appear next to the link to your site.

Method 2 If you don't have access to the root of your web site, you have to add the following tag to your web page so that the browser will know where to look for your icon. Unlike before, this time you can save the icon under any name ending with ".ico" ****You'll have to go to the page to get the html code since the blogger post barked at me for a tag not being allowed (lol)****

Multibooters - Cloning Vista

2009-03-02T13:21:00.000-05:00

Multibooters - Cloning Vista

Good information on cloning Vista and potential problems/fixes.

Dell, Intel cut out Microsoft | InfoWorld | News | 2008-08-15 | By Mike Elgan, Computerworld

2009-02-09T14:23:00.000-05:00

Dell, Intel cut out Microsoft | InfoWorld | News | 2008-08-15 | By Mike Elgan, Computerworld:
"Dell Latitude ON
Dell announced this week a new feature called Latitude ON that enables the use of e-mail, Web surfing, basic PIM functionality, and document reading -- all without booting Windows. The idea is to enable basic use without having to wait for the main OS to boot, and also to extend battery life.

A more accurate name than 'Latitude ON' would have been 'Windows OFF.'

The codename was 'BlackTop,' a combination of 'BlackBerry' and 'laptop.' The original aim of the project was to give users the same basic functionality of a BlackBerry using their laptops' full-size keyboard and screen.

Are you ready for event-driven business? - watch this webcast.

What Dell is really doing here is building the equivalent of a secondary ASUS Eee PC into a full-featured, full-size laptop. The Latitude ON feature uses a low-power Intel Arm processor (just like the new Eee PCs), flash storage and Linux (Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10) separate from the laptop's main CPU, hard drive, and Windows OS. But unlike a subnotebook, the Latitude ON system won't allow you to install applications. It's essentially a 'cloud computing' device that depends on the Internet for much of its functionality.

As far as I can tell, none of the applica"
------------------

I only just read this, and this excerpt is from a broader post, but this Dell Latitude ON feature seems pretty frickin' killer to me!

I mean, I travel quite a bit (lately) and I see people pulling out laptops and waiting for them to start up or shutdown, or even hibernate, etc, while on a plane, and it seems like such a huge waste of time for little return (this is obviously my opinion... but I'd rather sleep on a plane or read a book for fun ;-). The other part that seems like such a waste to me is battery life. Granted, the laptops and batteries today are SO much better than just a few years ago... but batteries can and do go bad, which shortens the life you have to use them without power. I have a Dell Latitude D620 for work, and I have two extended life batteries for it. They are supposed to give me 4hrs each of life off the plug. Well, BOTH have dropped in capacity to literally minutes of battery life before going critical and the PC shutting itself down. I obviously need to get them replaced, but that would also mean I no longer hold the excuse that I *can't* work on the plane. ;-)

Anyway, I suppose this sort of turned into a rant about batteries, didn't it? Oh well. I think that anything we as an industry can do to lengthen battery life is key. I also am really interested in the slimming down of operating systems to the bare essentials for certain applications of operating systems. Like smartphones and other, what I like to call, "appliances". Normal multi-purpose desktop PCs should probably remain pretty fat, otherwise they start to lose their multiple purpose use.

I am still looking for the perfect inexpensive internet device for browsing, email and blogging. I think the EeePC, or something similar, could be it... but the price is still rather high and it lacks the full-size screen and keyboard I like so much. All in all, I want incredible battery life with very little heat generated and as little moving parts as possible (i.e., no spinning HDD). The EeePC with the (nicer) 10" screen seems to ONLY come with Windows XP. I don't know that I want something that bloated for that type of "appliance"... but if managed properly, I suppose XP would work.

Checking SQL Server or MSDE Version and Service Pack Level - Cisco Systems

2009-02-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

Checking SQL Server or MSDE Version and Service Pack Level - Cisco Systems:

"SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')"

The above SQL query string was all I needed to verify the SQL Server version, SP level and type (in my case, the type was "Enterprise Edition", but I *thought* it was only "Standard Edition"... so this was helpful in figuring out why my attempts to upgrade to SQL 2K5 Standard were being "blocked").

Pretty soon I'm gonna be a DBA!! (just kiddin)

Just Too Techy - Half Man/Half Geek: Lifesaver: Renaming a SQL Server 2005

2009-02-03T17:25:00.000-05:00

Just Too Techy - Half Man/Half Geek: Lifesaver: Renaming a SQL Server 2005: "This one has saved my bacon a few times.

I usually do test installs of whatever I'm doing at the tiem with VM - most of the time I am able to restore these installs to the client environment. But I always forget to change the machine name. Once I do I get weird issues with the SQL Server if there is one installed. I always forget the SQL format for chnaging the name of the default instance of the server which is based on the machine name. So here it is so I don't forget it and you can use it:

sp_dropserver
GO
sp_addserver , local
GO

To find out the existing name of the server (before and after) execute the following:

select @@SERVERNAME

Then restart the SQL Server."

This one saved me!!!

Linux for spare

2009-01-31T16:24:00.003-05:00

I have tried to use my little Nokia n800 tablet to blog in the past and find the lack of physical keyboard to be ultra annoying. I honestly haven't given the handwriting recognition a chance at all, so I may try that, but my experience is that it is never 100% and not easily edited/corrected like typing with a keyboard. Meaning, I don't type 100% accurate either, but it's a synch to hit and even hold the backspace button and re-type something.

The on-screen keyboard of the n800 is great, but you can't touch-type or type really fast with it because you have to sort of hunt and peck with the stylus. I've also tried the full-screen finger keyboard on the n800, and while this makes life better for typing, it is still less than perfect and has it's own flaws.

My desktop PC is by far my favorite device to use for everything having to do with computers, but it is a "desktop" and sits in my office in the basement. So, I'm essentially anti-social to the family when I'm down there. I have an old laptop that my mother-in-law was using and the HDD got fried... so it sat for a while until I figured I'd try it as a Linux install for blogging and internet browsing for upstairs. It has a really nice screen with higher than usual resolution (1400x1050) and lot's of other goodies. My one worry is that it may not be long for this world because the fan seems to be on it's last leg. At any rate, I dropped a 100GB HDD I had sort of lying around and got Ubuntu 8.10 installed on it in a snap. We'll see if it can last a while for me. If not, I may try and pickup a used one like this for cheap.

Hopefully, this will allow me to browse and blog with greater ease. I think I would love an Asus EeePC, but I can't see shelling out that much for an ultra-small laptop. If all I am doing is browsing the web and blogging/twitting with it, then it doesn't have to have a lot of horsepower... but screen size and resolution make all the difference in the world for those things.

Plus, I kind of wanted to keep Linux in my life in ways... so this can help with that.

Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically | H1DD3N.R350URC3

2009-01-16T15:17:00.001-05:00

****EDIT*****
Upon looking at the location described in the article, my registry information does not look the same. It is similar, but there are many of the values missing, and one that is not in the poster's image. That is "RatinsInfo" and has a whole mess of GUIDs and such. It would appear to me that MS may have changed this info in the registry with Vista SP1 possibly.
****/EDIT****

Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically | H1DD3N.R350URC3: "Vista Tweak 6: Adding Games to the Vista Game Folder that are not added automatically"

It kind of bugs me that some games make it in here, while others do not... and dragging the games EXE into this folder does nothing more than create a shortcut to it... the other information on it doesn't auto-magically show up like a "supported" game.

It's only a slight annoyance really, but when I was trying to figure out why I found this post on how you can kind of hack it to manually put that info in. I doubt I'll go through the trouble of all this because it's not that big of a deal, but thought I'd share if anyone really needed to do this.

Bottom line on what I found out is, only certain games will show up and download information and performance ratings in this folder. Not sure why it can't get any game that is reviewed by www.allgame.com since that's apparently what it uses for it's info.

The one that was bugging me is "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" not showing up. I mean, this game came out well after Vista and it is reviewed on www.allgame.com as well. It's also an extremely popular game! "Call of Duty: World at War" shows up, and that's what made me look.

FOXNews.com - Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive - FOX Car Report

2009-01-12T01:33:00.000-05:00

FOXNews.com - Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive - FOX Car Report: "Flying Car Prepares for Test Drive"

Sign me up!! Now I just need to get my pilot license. ;-)

Windows 7 Quick Launch - Where'd it go?

2009-01-12T01:13:00.000-05:00

Live Search QnA - Windows 7 Quick Launch?:

"Just add the folder '%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch'
as a Toolbar."

I started using the Windows 7 Public Beta as my main OS, and so far I have to say it is *really* solid. I've been going through the steps of installing all my applications I use, drivers, etc, and I noticed the QuickLaunch toolbar to be missing. A quick search found the above link and there was a gentleman by the name of Geoffrey on there who had the solution. For whatever reason, I still like to use the QuickLaunch bar for odds and ends. It's just so much easier to me to have a quick list of apps or things I use often.

My true test for whether or not Windows 7 will cut it for me was to try some gaming. I just installed LOTRO (Lord of the Rings: Online) and it played as well as on my Vista install. I will install and try Call of Duty 4 tomorrow and make sure that runs as well too.

My PC hardware is in need of an overhaul. My CPU and RAM are a bit long in the tooth and are proving to be my bottleneck in just about every case. I will hopefully be able to do that if I get a tax return... but we'll see.

Look back here for more updates and opinions on Win7... It's too late for me to try and capture it all now... need to get some sleep. ;-)

N800 tethered through T-Mobile Blackberry 8320 Curve

2008-12-23T15:32:00.000-05:00

The below thread was helpful in figuring out how to get my T-Mobile Curve to allow the n800 to use it for a network connection. The default setup that the n800 uses for this device would not work. I believe the only real problem is that the "APN" is entered with an incorrect name (at least, one that doesn't work).

It's not very speedy, but it works in a pinch. WiFi would always be the first choice.

Finally got N800 to tether through Blackberry 8700g with TMobile [Archive] - Internet Tablet Talk Forums:

"0) pair the bluetooth first of course

-- Connections
1) GPRS
2) wap.voicestream.com
3) *99#
4)
5) Finish"

Badass Vid of Bruce Lee playing ping pong with Nunchucks

2008-11-24T14:27:00.001-05:00

http://fliiby.com/file/126154/0ifky7lf8m.html

10 things your IT guy wants you to know

2008-10-23T12:02:00.000-04:00

The Java ME Blog: 10 things your IT guy wants you to know: "10 things your IT guy wants you to know"

This is a fun read, and there are a lot of truths here. :-D

750 Free Amazon Kindle MobiPocket Books from Diesel eBooks « Amazon Kindle, Books & Amazon News Blog

2008-10-06T12:40:00.000-04:00

750 Free Amazon Kindle MobiPocket Books from Diesel eBooks « Amazon Kindle, Books & Amazon News Blog: "750 Free Amazon Kindle MobiPocket Books from Diesel eBooks"

Just found this and didn't want to lose track of it. Hopefully this can keep me busy for a bit. ;-)

Windows Home Server in VMware

2008-10-05T21:39:00.001-04:00

How do I install Windows Home Server in VMware Workstation? | Virtualization Coach | TechRepublic.com: "How do I install Windows Home Server in VMware Workstation?"

I started trying to install Windows Home Server in VMware Server 2.0 and ran into a lot of issues. Even when following parts of the above link and then thinking I had the rest... nope. It bit me in the ass again. So I went back to the link and followed through again from where I left off... sure enough, I missed a step.

Thank GOODNESS TechRepublic and, more importantly, Steven Warren wrote this thing up!! Granted, it's for VMware Workstation, but it works just as well for VMware Server.

My whole thing, aside from the version I'm trying out being a 120 Day Trial, is that I have an older Dell Server that is pretty decent still. It has 4GB of RAM and a 2.26GHz XEON CPU with HyperThreading. So, from a server perspective... at least for my personal needs, it's pretty solid even if it *is* a little long in the tooth. So I was thinking I may need to install WHS in a VM in order to still use my server for other server stuff, especially running VMware for testing out other things.

Well, my install of WHS has finished and it turns out that it's essentially Windows 2003 Server and you *can* get to the console. I tried installing VMware Server on it, but I forgot you can't install VMware inside a VM. However, WHS didn't seem to care at all, so I'm thinking that I may actually be able to run WHS as my main OS and not lose the rest of my server's capabilities and resources.

I will certainly be posting more as I learn more and use WHS, but my thought was this: For my own personal needs, W2K8 Server is simply too much and obviously overly complex for the simple things I want to accomplish. WHS seems to do ALL of the things I want to do with a home server, but I was worried I would lose the ability to use VMware and test new operating systems, etc... after all, I *am* still a geek, and I *do* need to be able to mess around, but I didn't want to have to try and blunder through W2K8 to make it an unsecured file server... besides, I haven't found an easy way to attach a 360 to my W2K8 server to serve up media... and WHS supposedly does that in spades (we'll see).

See ya on the flip side.

8GB microSDHC card!

2008-10-05T20:57:00.001-04:00

I found a Kingston 8GB microSDHC card at Amazon this past weekend for $27! I had it overnighted Monday (with some other stuff, and I'm a Prime member, so that was only $3.99 additional) and got it Tuesday.

I then named it the same as my previous 4GB card and copied over the contents. I haven't been able to fix my desktop pc yet (where all my music is), so I haven't had a chance to put more music on it.

I'm actually in the middle of setting up a Windows Home Server where I will house my music (there will be another post on that whole thing), but until then I don't have access to it to add to my bb.

I also plan on using my bb for some podcasts, but I'll need to be pretty selective because I don't have many opportunities to listen to them. So, in the past, they have just taken up hdd space. I may even try some video now that I doubled my capacity, but I don't think I will enjoy video on the bb. Screen is too small (same went for my iPod video).

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

EBooks: MobiPocket is missing subscriptions and automatic download OTA

2008-10-04T19:10:00.001-04:00

As I've stated in previous posts, MobiPocket is a great application and possibly my current favorite (but not necessarily most used of course). I was also comparing it to the Amazon Kindle because of it's Over-The-Air store on the BlackBerry. However, that experience is currently lacking some needed (IMHO) features.

1) Why can't I set it up to remember my credit card info so I don't have to go through that process when purchasing a book from my bb? That is annoying to me and cumbersome. I think there should at least be a choice.

2) It would be great if I could subscribe to magazines or newspapers, and even RSS feeds formatted for portable devices. This brings me to 3...

3) It would be nice to be able to set it to automatically download new content I either buy or that is updated via a subscription.

So, that's my wish list to make MobiPocket even better. If those things came about, I would have very little desire to buy a kindle (other than the fact that the Kindle is still a better reading device and has size and clarity over the bb).

One last thought on this, the carriers could pickup the distribution piece with their data plans. I can't ever see them doing something like this (no strong business reason), but it's an idea anyway. ;-)

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Reading physical hardback books now sucks for me

2008-10-03T18:33:00.001-04:00

Well, I finished "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown as an eBook, which I purchased from my phone Over-The-Air from and through MobiPocket. I finished it Tuesday night, and I believe it's possibly the quickest I finished a book. Not only because it was a great book which made it easy and fast to read, but because having the book with me at all times in my phone, not needing any external light source to view it in dark areas/rooms and because the size of the BlackBerry along with how easy it is to turn pages, etc, allowed me to more easily read in areas I would normally never have my book or opportunity.

Since finishing Angels & Demons electronically, I returned to some physical books I have that I want to read. Laying down last night to read was frustrating. Not only did I need to have a light on, but it was also uncomfortable. It is a hardback book, so that has something to do with it I'm sure, but I don't know if paperbacks will be much better.

I doubt I'll "give up" on physical books, but I suppose this is more about me saying I actually enjoyed the eBook experience from MobiPocket on my BlackBerry Curve!! And that's saying something!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Windows Server 2008 Activation Failed

2008-10-01T10:51:00.000-04:00

markwilson.it » Windows Vista volume activation failure:

"Your computer could not be activated.
Error:
0×8007232B
Description:
DNS name does not exist"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The post listed above was actually for Vista, but it solved my problems for Windows Server 2008 as well. The problem turned out to be that I never entered a product key during installation of my server, and when it was forcing me to activate Windows, it was erroring with the above description (DNS name does not exist).

That message is not telling me the real problem for my copy, but I can almost see the logic after reading Mark's post. It's looking for an activation server internally because enterprises can now post a server to handle activations of their installs. But couldn't they have added "You may need to reenter your product key", or something along those lines?

Thank goodness I found this post by Mark Wilson. I don't know if I ever would have guessed that. Partly because there *was* a product key listed in System Properties... it's obviously just a generic one to give you the 120 days or whatever.

Oh well... life moves on, and my server is fine now.

Getting Things Done - For the normal human

2008-09-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Feature: Practicing Simplified GTD: "Practicing Simplified GTD"

I can't remember the first time I picked up David Allen's "Getting Things Done" book, but it's been quite a while. **Actually, I lied... I looked in the book and found the receipt! ;-) I bought it on March 11, 2005. So, while I didn't lie about it being quite a while, I did in fact know the date.

Anyway, I read through the book and was pretty fascinated by a lot of what he had to say. A lot of it makes sense... but the process he uses seems WAY too complex for me. Because of how complex his process was, I fell in and out of trying to use it, and eventually boiled it down to pretty much only email, and I even purchased David Allen's GTD Outlook Plug-in. I honestly still use it, to some extent, and using it to file things based on project has come in handy from time to time... but quite honestly I review items so little, that the up front work to file each item takes WAY too long for the VERY minimal return I get from it, if ever. Because I came to this realization recently, I have been trying to think of a way to still use some of the methods and ideas, but make things even more simplistic and, above all, EASY and fast to deal with.

I had grabbed a copy of the above post from Lifehacker, and I may have started to read it but didn't have the time right then (probably why I grabbed it for later). I just read through the whole thing today because I am feeling VERY much out of control and disorganized and vowed I would do something today to try and regain some control. I wanted to share it because I think I am going to try this method and adapt it to my needs.

Now that I have my BlackBerry and have been relegated to only my work laptop as my only PC (my personal PC is no longer booting up and I haven't had time to figure out what it is... but I'm betting dollars to pesos that it's the motherboard), I wanted to start getting my life in sync between the two devices. I will figure out the easiest way to do that across those two devices and make sure it translates to my other potential devices. My key reason being that, I have to be able to add or subtract or see items on a to-do list at all times... and I'd rather not do that all from my BB only... though, that is a possibility if "Tasks" through Outlook is too cumbersome. Currently, I do not have a wireless sync between Exchange/Outlook and my BB... and I don't hook up my BB more than say twice a day (if I remember) to sync data between them. So "Tasks" so far has not been a great method for me. I may move to something like "Don't Forget The Milk" on the BB only, unless I can find something I like that allows me to do things in "the cloud"... but I'd rather find something that syncs in case my connection is limited.

I'll try and post back with what I figure out for myself. I'm always interested in what others do if you're interested in sharing.

Headphones and Bluetooth Headsets

2008-09-23T15:06:00.000-04:00

I have two things on my mind as I sit on my flight to Dallas. The first is headphones, and the second, more troublesome and disturbing to *me*, are Bluetooth headsets.

I'll start out with headphones because I'm using them as I type this on my berry. With all the travel I've been doing, I've had a chance to try the various headphones I own. For a while I have been using my Sony Over-The-Ear Noise Canceling headphones. The sound is decent, but the bass is only good if you turn on the noise canceling feature, which isn't always wanted. Even then, it sounds more "boomy" then punchy (i.e., sloppy). I also should point out that the volume through the berry on them couldn't get very loud at all, but that's more an issue of the drivers in them not being very efficient. I tried the headphones the Curve comes with, and while they can get loud (VERY loud), they do nothing to block out background noise, which there is *plenty* of on a plane. They also have a *serious* lack of bass or fullness in their sound. So, they absolutely sucked on the plane, but they were okay in normal quiet environments (aside from the weak, less full, sound). I also have a pair of Shure in-ear headphones that I fitted with the sponge inserts (so they breath and don't create a suction in my ear while flying... before changing to this, on one flight, it caused me *serious* pain and an ear infection as it caused mucus to enter my ear canal from the pressure changes and the suction... it woke me from a sleep from the pain). These let in a tiny bit of background noise, which I actually appreciate, while still providing strong bass and full sound. They are what I am using right now to listen to music while I type, and they are proving to be mostly comfortable. Though I expect I will have some pain later... Nothing too bad. I also have a Motorola Bluetooth Stereo Headset that works really well for music and the occasional call interruption while listening, but it does little to block out background noise, and you aren't supposed to use BT on planes anyway. I guess my point is, the in-ear headphones are currently getting my vote for plane use, but I lean towards the BT Stereo headset for everyday (non-plane) use. They've been working well for me when in the house and yard work, even mowing the lawn, and the biggest reason I favor them is because of the lack of wires to get in the way. I don't think I realized how nice that would be when I first bought them, but now I would like even better BT Stereo Headphones. There are even some that include noise cancellation, but I don't know that I am willing to spend close to $200 for a new pair. I will most likely stick with what I have for quite some time.

Now onto Bluetooth Headsets (non-stereo) for everyday phone use on the go. It is nice being able to communicate handsfree, yet private, with a Bluetooth headset, but finding a headset that meets all of my requirements is proving impossible. The reason I'm even on the hunt is because my dogs literally ate my previous one that worked fairly decent for me. It was a Jabra Mono/Stereo headset that was essentially a standard mono headset in appearance and function, yet you could plug in an optional left (other) earpiece and get stereo sound. The sound quality wasn't as good as my Motorola Stereo set, but it allowed you to only use the single piece when not needing stereo music. This made it very pocketable, which is important to me, and the sound quality of the mono piece was generally better than most mono headsets... It also could raise the volume very loud so I could hear my callers in loud environments. It had a separate on/off switch that means it would only turn on/off at my will. It also had a vibrate feature that was great for alerting me of calls while driving with the stereo very loud, etc. I don't want to be that guy walking around with a BT headset in his ear even when not talking on the phone, so pocketability is key. I'm also not going to be that guy with a phone and headset perched on my belt... No thanks (so no BT Headset case).

I have been searching for the best option and was hoping to raise the bar in noise cancellation in the process. My Jabra was ok, but there certainly room for improvement. I had also gone through about 5-6 other headsets before finally settling with the Jabra. Too many headsets have a combination of the following problems: horrible background noise issues; horrible reception (though this is often the fault of the phones BT transceiver and not the headset) to the point that putting your phone in your pocket degrades quality; horrible fit; not enough volume for loud areas; battery life; etc.

Recently I purchased the BlueAnt Z9i because it got decent reviews and was supposed to deal well with background noise... It is also *very* tiny in length, but it was rather thick and stood off my face farther than I would like. In using it, it didn't fair very well. There was still an abundant amount of background noise, and the volume wasn't that great. It also seemed that people couldn't hear me that well. I returned that after about a day of use and opted for the Aliph Jawbone 2 because it was supposed to be the absolute best for noise reduction. I'm sure it works really well for some peoplean but I had several issues with it; 1) to power it on, you hold the talk button, but this "button" is essentially the entire front/outside of the headset. So putting it in my pocket would inadvertently turn it on/off when you weren't expecting it... So you try to answer a call unsuccessfully. 2) this same issue of the talk button being the entire face of the unit, and how easy it is to press, means that trying to adjust the headset better into the ear to hear better frequently resulted in ending a call... This was most frustrating. 3) the fit wasn't spectacular. 4) my callers still heard plenty of background noise, but they did say they could still hear me clearly. I would love for this headset to work for me, but I will be returning it as well.

I still don't know what the right headset will be for me, but thank goodness I can return them when they don't work well for me. I'd simply go without one altogether, but between driving or needing my hands free while troubleshooting something while on the phone with support, I have found it hard to not have one. Some I may try, there is a Plantronics Discovery 925 (I think) that seems decent, a Motorola H12 that may work and was recommended to me, and possibly some others. In the end, I may get the same headset my dogs ate, because at least that was "good enough" for quite a while, and the battery life was incredible at something like 8hours of talk time and 10hours of music!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

BlackBerry is proving a decent eBook reader using MobiPocket

2008-09-20T14:18:00.001-04:00

I wasn't sure at first if the BB would be the right platform for trying to read eBooks, and I'm still certain that a true eBook reader like the Kindle would be better than it, but after using it for a while now and actually enjoying it, I'm ready to say it works (for me).

I also was able to find a post on how to fix the OTA (Over The Air) MobiPocket book store on my new T-Mobile Curve (I will post that at a later time because it also made the Sprint Mobile NFL app work on my T-Mobile Curve and probably other things). Since I got the store to work, and I was looking for something new to read and wanted to read Dan Brown's "Angel's & Demons" and not finding it physically in the several places I tried to but it, I decided to buy it from MobiPocket for $7.99.

So far I've been able to read it more situations than I would if it was a physical book for the simple fact that I have my bb with me at all times and never really carry physical books with me unless I know I am going to be able to read (which isn't often). I'm already a slow reader, but add in the fact that I don't often have what I'm reading with me and it can literally take me months to finish a book. So far, using the bb, I have been able to get quite a bit reading in (comparitivly). It's also great for reading at night since it has its own light source.

Finally, the other nice feature about using the bb is that one thing serves two purposes for me at the same time. You see, I like to listen to movie scores that match the mode of the book I'm reading while I read. So the bb can serve as both my media player and my book. On top of that, it has Bluetooth Stereo (A2DP), so I can use my wireless headphones which I like while laying down (nothing to get tangled when moving around). Also, the device is so light that my arms don't get tired while holding it, and I find myself not having to switch my position much, if at all.

So far I am very happy.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Viigo Beta on the BlackBerry

2008-09-08T12:40:00.001-04:00

Today I realized there was a beta of Viigo for the BB that gives the same updated user interface as what I was using on my WM Treo. This made me very happy because I was missing the updated UI and features. I also have to say that I am happy with how stable the beta is on the bb as opposed to what I was experiencing on WM. I truly do not think the instability I saw on WM has anything to do with Viigo's development. Most apps on the WM platform had issues, which is why I switched to the BB.

One feature that is planned but currently unavailable (and I got a response from Viigo that a timeframe is currently unavailable) is the Audio/Podcasts feature which *was* working on the WM beta version I tested. I'm guessing the delay is a download issue since the BB goes through either a BIS or BES. I've found that several things that worked or pulled down one way on my WM device either do not work on my BB or react/display differently. I've been attributing this to BIS. I've also noticed and heard from my friend how some things do not work for him that work for me, or vice versa. I have to believe that this is due to how the carrier manages their BIS servers.

One instance of this is, on his T-Mobile Curve, the MobiPocket OTA eBook Store does not work, yet my Sprint Curve works with it just fine. On the flip side, true html web and html email work perfectly for him on T-Mobile, while not at all on Sprint.

I intend to post more comparisons when I get my T-Mobile Curve at the end of this week (hopefully).

One thing that was apparently just released by Sprint for the BB, and I just installed, is their mobile NFL app. I'll be semi-bummed to lose that switching to T-Mobile, but not enough to stop me. I'm not sure that app is all that good anyway, and Wi-Fi is much more important to me, as well as html email and web.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

GPS Navigation from a phone

2008-09-05T09:20:00.000-04:00

Now, as I hope you are beginning to see, I believe there's really no substitute for a dedicated device for most things. However, having a device that is spectacular at a couple things, while having the ability to do other things pretty well, is usually a good thing in my book. It may not be the best at that additional function, but hopefully it gets you by in a pinch. The BlackBerry is a stellar wireless email device, and a great phone. So far, I've found it to be a more than adequate music media player (video hasn't been a priority for me so far, so I haven't tested that), and I'm even starting to think it may be a pretty nice eBook reader (but I'd much rather have a Kindle). Now I'll discuss my thoughts on it being a GPS device.

First, I'd like to point out that I've never owned a stand alone dedicated GPS device up to this point, but I've used them many times and understand their strengths and weaknesses. This isn't a review of dedicated GPS devices, but I will tell you I will probably own a Navigon 2100 Max sooner than later, and the following are some reasons why I'm switching to a dedicated device...

The first GPS experience I "owned" was the Palm GPS kit for the Treo 650. It consisted of a dedicated Bluetooth GPS unit and Tom Tom Navigator software. I have to say that this combination was generally VERY good. The Tom Tom software was literally identical to the standalone units, and the GPS receiver was a REAL chipset being used in regular standalone devices. The feature set was great, and navigation was easily as good as a standalone unit. So you may be asking, what's the problem? Well, all was great until the phone rang and you took the call. During the call, any turns, exits to take, etc, would not be announced because you were on the phone and it basically was put on pause. Another downside was that, because the GPS was Bluetooth, you couldn't use a Bluetooth headset at the same time for calls... And I don't like to hold the phone while driving. The other piece that bugged me was the multiple devices and having to plug both it. The plugging in part was actually pretty ingenious on Palm's part, because they gave you a car adapter with two charging wires for both the phone and GPS. The last piece is that the kit cost about $250, which was cheap for GPS back when I bought it (VERY cheap actually), but map updates through Tom Tom are not cheap and are one off things.

My next GPS experience was through Verizon with their VZNavigator application. Now that I have a Sprint BB and tried their navigation software, I can say that VZNavigator rocks! ... For a *phone* GPS that is. Verizon also updated their software to include traffic updates, but that was less impressive and didn't seem to route you around it... Just showed you when you would slow down (weak). The nice idea about a GPS service like this is that map updates would happen automatically and faster (in theory). However, because of the nature of that service being that the maps/software was NOT on the phone, it 1) took longer to route the trip, and 2) would have to recalculate much more if you went off route, say due to construction or an accident. It certainly would recover, but it seemed it didn't have enough data and couldn't easily pick an alternate route. In fact, it seems you don't get any real choices in choosing routes at all. You have no way to say, "avoid this area because I know it's a mess". Though, not all standalone GPS units have those features either, but the Tom Tom and Navigon I know do. One great thing about the Verizon solution was that my Bluetooth headset worked, and in fact it spoke the directions into my headset, and allowed me to use it during calls (but I would often *not* take a call because the GPS would stop working during that time). So, in closing on the Verizon solution, I'd have to say the it is by far the best *phone-based* GPS solution I've been able to use.

Sprint's solution on the BlackBerry is weak. But I should start off by discussing my reasons for thinking it might be better. 1) The BlackBerry Curve 8330 has a built-in GPS chipset that is autonomous from the cellular transceiver. In theory, this *should* provide better response and ability (in practice, it felt worse than the Verizon solution without a real GPS chipset). 2) Sprint said the GPS was "simultaneous and autonomous", and this made me think that it would work even when I was on a call... It doesn't. I should say that in all cases of phone-based GPS, when you finish the call, the GPS does pick back up where you are, but it's not the speediest thing (in all cases except for the Palm Tom Tom solution which kept the GPS going the entire time), and if you missed a turn while in the call you are in for a lot of rerouting and trying to get back on track. Sprint uses TeleNav for its service, and I think it sucks compared to VZNavigator. I also tried the BlackBerry Maps application, and while it felt more like a traditional GPS centric app, it was one from 1999, and it also became apparent how often the GPS chipset was losing a fix.

I've seen some AT&T phone GPS solutions and wasn't impressed. I also don't think anyone should pick a carrier for a GPS solution, but rather buy a standalone unit.
This is one area where I DON'T believe a multi-use device is capable enough. However, having the feature could come in handy in a pinch, and I don't know that I would be upset because something is better than nothing. Also, I had too many times where I had to take calls while driving (it's part of my job) and got way off track. One time, I was on a conference call that I had to participate in and it was even running long, so it went on for over an hour, and I realized I was no longer on the right path. I actually had to hang up and wait for the GPS to get itself together which took longer than normal and then it had to go through calculating a completely new route. It turns out I went 30 minutes out of my way, so that phone call added an hour to my trip. So, while I was hopeful that the Sprint BB would offer better GPS features, I figured I'd be buying a standalone soon enough.

As it turns out, this post took me two days to complete (I'm busy) and I ordered a standalone GPS to arrive today in time for my week long trip next week. I will be posting my review of my new GPS soon.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Continued - BlackBerry as eBook Reader

2008-09-03T20:40:00.003-04:00

Okay, while I'm still skeptical of the format (meaning, such a small screen and not a dedicated reading device such as the Amazon Kindle), so far I am liking the idea of my BB as an eBook reader for the simple reason that I *always* have my BB on me, and therefore have found opportunities to read where I would normally not have a book with me.

One thing that actually concerns me slightly (slightly mind you) is that it seems the OTA MobiPocket eBook store doesn't appear to work on T-Mobile's Curve, which is what I'm getting shortly to replace my Sprint Curve. My best friend has the T-Mobile Curve and could not get it to work (and it's documented on MobiPocket's support forum as well as other various posts on the web that this is a problem). He also has a Sprint Curve that his work gave him, and he can get to it through that... but it was spotty for him (his Sprint Curve is going through a BES server from his employer, whereas mine goes through the Sprint BIS server... so that could account for the "spotty"-ness). I was likening the OTA MobiPocket store to the wireless service of the Amazon Kindle, and that seemed appealing to me. Now, I know it's not the same as the Kindle.. not even close really, but the idea that I could finish a book in an airport and purchase and download another right on the spot seemed cool to me. Honestly though, I can sync with my PC... and I could easily purchase a new book before I finish the current one so that wouldn't happen. So it's really no big deal.

I'd much rather have a Kindle, but in the meantime, while the price is still over $200 and I have a perfectly good BlackBerry, I may actually deal with this format for a bit. My biggest concern now is battery drain from the backlight being on for hours while I'm reading. ;-)

BlackBerry as an eBook Reader?

2008-09-02T20:41:00.001-04:00

Okay, I read some post about using the bb as an ebook reader. The rationale used was, "you use the bb to read email, why not use it to read books?" It also cited MobiPocket Reader as the best solution, in part because they have an over the air (OTA) eBook store for the BlackBerry.

I have to say I was skeptical since the screen is so small and I wasn't sure what the experience would be like... But the thought of finding yet another use for a single device has always interested me (though I have come to realize that one thing can't be all things well... There are often sacrifices too big to succeed).

I installed MobiPocket Reader and accessed the online book store. I downloaded a sample of Dan Brown's 'Angels & Demons' since I haven't read that yet, but want to purchase it. I figured it might be a decent way for me to see if the bb is a device I could see myself using to actually read a book. I have to say the OTA bookstore and its experience is pretty good.

After reading the sample of the book, I actually found myself kind of forgetting I was using a bb to read the book. This was after much tinkering to get the right font and font size so that holding the bb at a comfortable reading arms length was similar on the eyes to reading an actual paperback. I don't believe the initial font was good enough, but I may have run full circle on the fonts. Once I had that set, other than the limited amount of text displayed on the screen causing constant page turning, it seemed very natural (I was surprised). The process of moving forward and backward in the book is easy enough. To page forward, you can use the spacebar, which is nice and easy, but you can also use the trackball to go forward and backward, also very easy. The last piece of the pie, and I need to do some more testing on this, is how well it would display images in books. Angels & Demons has a picture of the word Illuminati that is pretty key to the story for you to see... It looked great. Very sharp and readable. And the ease in which you can page forward and back made it nice to go back and reference like in a regular paper book.

MobiPocket Reader also has some other abilities I have yet to explore. One of these is the ability to create annotations, and I believe bookmarks. This could make it easy and quick to get to and from various key places.

While I'm still unsure if I'm willing to drop upwards of $10 on an eBook, it's an interesting prospect. Time will tell if I make the plunge, but with my travels and the idea of carrying less, I like the idea. I'm already considering not carrying my iPod and using my bb instead. The fact that it has a standard headphone jack and takes high-end headphones without an adapter is great. Pair that ability with being able to also read a book while listening to music, which is all I do when traveling, it sounds like a pretty slick package.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Posting from my CrackBerry

2008-09-01T16:48:00.002-04:00

So, while I wish there was a native app for posting to various blogs, I suppose email is easy enough. I mean, there's not too much you need to do in a post other than type text, and I'm pretty sure I could post pix from email too.

Posting from my BB is great, because I don't get to sit in front of a computer for personal reasons much, but I pretty much always have my BB and can write my posts in pieces where I get breaks (like this post which has spanned many hours and even in the midst of a family party like right this second).

My brother-in-law is sitting next to me with an iPhone, and it reminds me why they frustrate me so. They are VERY slick on many fronts, but no hardware keyboard and pretty much only a touchscreen, on top of other things like no memory expansion, etc, make me glad I don't own one. But there is a slickness to them, and graphically they blow the BB away... But life isn't eye candy.

Anyway, I have some other observations on the BB I will post soon, like using it for various things.

Switching from Sprint BB to a T-Mobile BB

2008-08-30T16:09:00.003-04:00

This is for many reasons... I may name some over the course of time in comparisons, but here are some initial thoughts:

My current Sprint BlackBerry will simply go to my wife, so no loss on equipment and all that.
My biggest reason for wanting the T-Mobile Curve is because it has WiFi!! Pretty much all cell phone carriers signals suck where I live (except Verizon, but I've grown to hate them and am canceling my service with them... I believe I wrote in previous posts why I dislike them). With WiFi, I don't have to only rely on the carriers signal strength as I can simply use ultra speedy WiFi. This obviously goes far beyond just my house (hotel rooms, etc), but I work out of my house when not traveling and therefore spend probably 90% of my life in my house.
T-Mobile has seriously upped their signal game... it looks like I will have a better signal in my house than in the past, so that's a plus.
T-Mobile offers @Home for $10/mo. This is essentially making your house a T-Mobile HotSpot and allows your cell phone service to route through your home WiFi!! It provides unlimited calling @Home, and obviously removes the concern of signal strength. ;-)
T-Mobile is MUCH less restrictive on their network than Sprint and especially Verizon who is the most prohibitive, even disabling many features on phones.
T-Mobile seems to be keeping up with BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) software updates better than Sprint, as my friend & I upgraded our Curve's to the latest BlackBerry OS (4.5.x at the time of this writing) which offers many feature enhancements such as HTML email and real web browsing. Setting all the right things in my Sprint Curve, I just couldn't get those features to work at all (same old ugliness). The T-Mobile Curve worked with all of it (to get those features, the BIS server has to be on the latest version... or at least a version that supports those features).
While Sprint certainly created some great plans as far as pricing and features (passing Verizon for value), T-Mobile seems to offer even more for less. Sprint may have some services like the Sprint Music Store (ugh) and SprintTV (even worse ugh... why bother), and I'm betting their cell data speeds are ultimately higher in average (based on signal strength of course), the features that matter most to me are at T-Mobile.
Lastly, I found the T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve on Amazon for $25... BEFORE the $100 mail-in rebate!!! That means I will actually MAKE $75 by buying the phone (if I send in the rebate and after the 6-8 week delivery period). Buying the phone from Sprint or T-Mobile costs you $249 up front, then there is the $100 mail-in rebate. To get a phone that will work better for my needs for so little... I couldn't pass it up. The biggest downside, and it's killing me right now because I'm SO impatient, is that it's not in stock and my estimated delivery is between September 11-17... to top it off, I will be traveling the week of the 11th... so my new shiny phone could be waiting for me at home while I'm on the road. :-(

Anyway, these are some of the reasons... like I said, I will probably list more in comparison posts. For now, if someone is trying to decide where to buy the BlackBerry Curve from, I'd say buy it through Amazon and get the T-Mobile Curve. ;-)

BlackBerry to replace my iPod

2008-08-22T16:53:00.002-04:00

Well, that title has more sensation than reality. ;-) However, my playing with the media player on my BlackBerry today put it in a very good light. The sound quality is damn near as good as the iPod for songs in the same bit rate (if not as good). Because I only (currently) have a 4GB card in the BB, I decided to limit the quality of songs to 192kbps (I mean, it IS for *mobile* use, so I doubt I'll really hear a difference with so many other noises around me in those situations). I synced my BB through WMP11 (Windows Media Player), so it automatically converted the songs higher than 192kbps for me. I tried to sync a playlist from WMP, but it did not show up in the BB. This honestly doesn't bother me because I generally listen to whole albums at a time anymore. If you have a ton of playlists and really like that feature, you may want to try something different. I believe there is a sync utility from BlackBerry to allow you to sync with iTunes and all it's playlists. I stopped using iTunes a while ago and I'm not looking back.

As far as playlist capabilities are concerned, I was actually really impressed with the BB's feature set on creating playlists. It allows for both Automatic and Manual playlists. Like I said, this isn't a driving factor for me, so what it has is plenty good for me.

The fact that the BB Curve has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack is AWESOME! It allows you to use much higher quality headphones without having to buy or mess with an adapter. ALL phones trying to provide media playback should have this. Listening with some higher end headphones produced sound that (I believe) equals the iPod on the same exact file and bit rate. I also used my two Bluetooth Stereo headsets that have the ability to control the media player functions aside from normal call functions. Their sound was great through the BB Curve, but they are obviously no match for the higher end wired headphones. However, the fact that there are no wires and you can control the media player from them makes up for a lot in convenience. Good for several activities. Lastly, I tried the stereo headset the BB Curve comes with. Their drivers were obviously more sensitive, so had higher volume levels, but the sound really wasn't very good (as can be expected).

I had the Verizon LG Chocolate2 which was *supposed* to be like an iPod phone... no thanks!! The media player ABSOLUTELY sucked... and that's saying it lightly. It had proprietary connections and more. It didn't even have the ability to read the ID3 tags and determine the songs track number to play them in the correct order... instead it played songs alphabetically. WTF?!?!? The BB has no such issue. In fact, the only complaint I would have about how it organizes songs is that for Artist, it uses the individual song artist instead of the "Album Artist" value which is a better way to sort in my opinion. It's really not a big deal, and some people may prefer this way.

I don't see this replacing my iPod any time soon, mainly because of storage limitations. My iPod is 60GB, and the most you will ever be able to get in a BB Curve is 32GB when they eventually release microSDHC cards that high. For now, I will most likely get an 8GB card (I don't think I can wait for the 16GB ones due out later this year... partially because they will be much higher in price for a good while). When 32GB cards are available for reasonable prices, I could see me carrying my iPod less and less. The iPod will probably always be a "better" media player... but convenience and only carrying one device has to count for something. Being mobile and travelling taught me that.

Just couldn't take it... Switched to a BlackBerry Curve

2008-08-22T13:02:00.005-04:00

There were several things that bugged me to the point of deciding to switch from the Treo 700w and Windows Mobile devices in general to a BlackBerry Curve from Sprint. I'm not sure I can capture them all here, but I'll give it a shot.

OS and Apps crashing - I updated to the latest firmware for the 700w. It was still WM5, and I don't know if WM6.x solves these issues, but I didn't want to risk spending more on a new device to find out it's the same old same old.
Battery Life - The battery just wouldn't last long (not even a full day) and that's without push email working (more on that later). I did not set it up to automatically download email either because the battery would drain even faster. When traveling, there are MANY instances where there is no opportunity to charge... I also can't be without a phone when traveling.
Push Email not working - This was not the fault of the device or WM, but rather my companies inability to get Exchange ActiveSync working. HOWEVER, that would *only* enable push for work email, not any personal accounts... so getting those personal accounts emails still required manual intervention or no battery life. That's just not acceptable to me.
Beautiful Apps with great features/functions... that don't always work - I can say, after only a couple days of using the BlackBerry and the apps (some the same as the WM apps), that the WM versions are MUCH prettier to look at, and in some cases have better feature sets (Viigo as one specific example). However, these apps seem buggy and prone to issues. I don't think it was the application developers fault, but it is what it is. Maybe I'm even alone on this finding and those apps are working perfectly for others on WM, but my experience was not good... and this follows back through the history of Windows CE, PocketPC, etc. Some of the apps I'm referring to have a pretty long history on Windows Mobile through it's life stages... so with that kind of history, shouldn't they work better?
Multi-tasking and pitfalls - One thing WM had over the Palm OS was multi-tasking... but the BlackBerry handles that in spades now. WM seemed to have issues here if an app was posing problems, which happened frequently enough. I don't doubt that the BlackBerry could run into these same issues, especially bumping into a memory limitation, but if the apps are more stable, I have to believe it will happen less.
Touchscreen functions as opposed to hardware buttons only - I know there are WM phones that do not have a touchscreen, but I'm certain they are plagued with many of the same issues listed above. The problem with the touchscreen is that you have to change your input method, and in MANY cases need to pull out a stylus and use that because whatever you need to press or click is too small for your fingers. I set the touchscreen to lock when in a call on the Today screen... but then it displayed a lock message over some of the on screen buttons and I couldn't tell which was which to mute the call or put it on speakerphone. All of the touchscreen functions REALLY bugged me to no end. Any way I sliced it, I was getting a phone that did NOT include a touchscreen. (for those out there in love with their iPhone and touchscreen only input... good luck. I have a friend who's iPhone touchscreen stopped working in certain sectors of the screen, namely the unlock slide, and also the "one (hardware) button" eventually broke. When he went to speak to the Apple "Geniuses", they told him there was nothing they could do to fix it and he would need to buy another one... WTF?!?!?)

So, I am VERY happy with my choice thus far and plan on posting my findings about the BlackBerry. I also plan on detailing things I liked better on Windows Mobile than the BlackBerry and vice versa. I'll probably discuss apps for it and review them as best I can.

Obviously, everyone's mileage and opinions vary... this is just mine.

Viigo... acting funky on my Treo

2008-08-15T09:35:00.003-04:00

**Update** See the comments... you'll never believe this...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you missed my post on Viigo, check it out.

Well, I know this is still beta, so I'm truly not upset... but I thought I'd share something that has been going wrong with Viigo on my Treo. My guess, too, is that this is more an issue with WM than it is on Blackberry devices.

Because Windows Mobile has the ability to multi-task, or have multiple applications running at the same time and switch between them, I think Viigo is getting confused or something. If I run Viigo and do not leave that app, it seems to work just fine and great even. However, if I turn off my screen or try and switch to another app, it seems Viigo is actually crashing. I say "crashing" because it doesn't appear to close cleanly. The app takes up the full screen, so even the WM title bar at the top of the screen. When Viigo crashes, it leaves the Viigo app covering the title bar. So far, the only way I found to get the title bar back was to do a soft reset on my device (essentially rebooting it).

One other thing that I noticed, it's not the fastest app on my Treo. This could be for a couple reasons: 1) Memory?, 2) CPU speed, 3) The app is not optimized enough for WM?

Working on the theory that the app is not optimized for WM, I think this may be it because if I have Viigo running and go to the start menu and select it again, it starts another instance of that app. This may not be the best way to get back to an app, but all my other apps in WM will get me right back to the running instance if I select it from the Start Menu and it's already running. The reason I use the Start Menu is because it requires the least amount of steps to get to it (it has a hardware button and then select the app, instead of bringing up the task manager, selecting the app, then clicking "Activate").

Anyway, I'm not trying to take anything away from how awesome Viigo is, just throwing out a possible bug with the current beta version.

NoviiMedia... dud on my 700wx

2008-08-15T09:21:00.004-04:00

As I posted, I installed and tried NoviiMedia's remote application.

At first, I thought maybe I wasn't using the correct code bases for my electronics, but after everything failing from my couch, I decided to get up close and personal with my electronics and see if it was a distance thing (the NoviiMedia site showed the Treo 700wx having an effective range of 6-12 feet). Once I got right up to it, the remote did in fact work.... ummm, isn't the idea of a remote to allow you NOT to be within arms reach of the device you are trying to control?!? ;-)

Oh well, I wasn't THAT hopeful it would work. It would have been cool, but it's not that big of a deal honestly.

So, my advice to ANYONE with interest in this app: Try before you buy (I did and am glad).

I know they had SD card IR sensor add-ons for the Treo 650, but I haven't looked for that and quite frankly I don't think I'd go to all the trouble of pulling out my current SD card and inserting that thing just to get a semi-decent learning remote with limited macros. I'd rather spend the $99 and get the Logitech Harmony or the XBOX 360 centric Harmony since I have a 360 hooked up to my Vista Ultimate PC. ;-)

Treo 700wx bummer...

2008-08-14T17:07:00.003-04:00

I searched around for a SDHC driver for my 700wx and found one. The problem is, my 16GB SDHC card is being seen as only about 3.5GB (before it wouldn't recognize it at all, so I guess it's progress). My 4GB (non-SDHC) cards show the whole thing though.

I was really hoping that I could use my 16GB cards with this so it would be a better media player (without switching cards around). I don't think I'd try to have it replace my iPod since it really wasn't designed specifically for media player capabilities... but mobile Window Media Player is still a pretty solid performer. And my firmware update gave me stereo bluetooth support which works well.

Welcome | Viigo | Living Life Untethered

2008-08-14T17:07:00.000-04:00

Welcome | Viigo | Living Life Untethered

Once again, as with most things, my BFF turned me on to another very cool software/service. Viigo does so much I don't know where to start. For one, it's an RSS reader, but it can pull in sports scores live, subscribe to podcasts and vidcasts, provide weather and they are constantly adding additional features.

The fact that this is free blows me away!

Remember everything. | Evernote Corporation

2008-08-14T17:04:00.000-04:00

Remember everything. | Evernote Corporation

I couldn't find any screenshots of the WM Evernote client, but it rocks. Being able to capture thoughts and web pages, etc, then have them synced up to the interwebs is sweet. It syncs with my Windows PC's as well, and I can just go to the web page and get at my notes from anywhere!!

You should certainly give this a whirl.

NoviiMedia / Pocket PC Solutions / NoviiRemote Deluxe for Pocket PC

2008-08-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

NoviiMedia / Pocket PC Solutions / NoviiRemote Deluxe for Pocket PC

So, I think I already created a post that I'm getting back to this blog because of several reasons. The main reason is because I am switching phones, back to a smartphone.

Currently, I switched back to my Sprint Treo 700wx which has Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition. I have to say that Palm REALLY does a great job customizing the OS and Today Screen to make it more user friendly as a phone, since ultimately that's what this device is and needs to be. The PDA functionality is just icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

And speaking of the icing, I'm going to try NoviiRemote Deluxe to see if I can use my phone as a customizable remote with macro capability. It looks like there are limitations on how much you can do with the macros, but some macro ability is better than none. ;-)

I'll try and post my review soon.

Wow! It's been a while...

2008-08-09T23:05:00.002-04:00

A lot has changed for me, but I still use my n800. I have, however, stopped using Linux on my desktop PCs and switched to Windows Vista on my desktop and Windows 2008 Server for my server. I have been VERY happy with my change back to Windows.

On top of that, I am now switching back to a smartphone after having abandoned the idea and switching to a more standard phone. I'm switching back because I've started texting and the lack of a real keyboard was starting to piss me off. So expect to see some posts regarding that and other posts on how my outlook and computer use has changed.

So check back soon... maybe tomorrow I'll actually have a new smartphone.

Steam problems - Ubuntu Forums

2008-03-21T14:24:00.005-04:00

*********ADDITION**********
I just wanted to add the following URL (http://www.fsckin.com/2007/10/15/how-to-run-team-fortress-2-half-life-2-hl2-ep-12-in-ubuntu-using-wine/) that I found which talks about installing The Orange Box set, I assume some of these steps should also work for Steam as The Orange Box uses Steam.

*********UPDATE************
Non of the earlier suggestions lower in this post seemed to be working for me, but in searching I found the below post at ...
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-615763.html
" OK, here's the story:

Reinstalling wine worked. Also the 'install gecko' worked also.

On the original install, I did not 'wait' for the over 5 minute installation of
'winecfg' to work. I just renamed the wine.xxxx to wine and went from there.
A big mistake.

(copy Steam to another directory for safe keeping)
1. Removed .wine via cd home directory, rm -rf .wine
2. Full Removal of package via Synaptics
3. Reinstalled via Synaptics (must have new repo's in config for latest wine) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine
4. Open terminal, cd home directory, run 'winecfg', see multiple errors with
mixer/printer, etc, IGNORE.
5. Take coffee break, come back 10 minutes later
6. Wine installed
7. Moved my Steam directory back into Program Files.
8. cd to Steam, run wine ./Steam.exe
9. Steam opens up, asks for Gecko install, say yes
10. All is well, can't seem to keep video settings, but I'll work that out.

For Vitaliy Margolen/WINE, Thanks for the help with my noob mistakes .
I closed the BUG report."

I haven't tried this method yet, but I think it sounds like the next step for me. However, Nautilus is acting up as well as other things, so I'm going to reboot my PC and see if some issues clear up.

*********UPDATE************
This did not solve my problem, but my guess is because POL creates "bottles" for each game/application. As I understand it, "bottles" are autonomous WINE instances, so you can have different WINE settings for each game/app. So, while the below worked to install Gecko into WINE, it was not in the bottle containing Steam.

What DID solve my problem was running "wineboot" from a terminal, then running Steam from POL again... this time it came up to the Steam app window with no content in it. Switching between the tabs and back to "Store" made the Gecko install message show back up. The difference is, this time when I clicked "Install", it actually ran the install in this "bottle"... well, it's still "Downloading" the install... so this STILL may not be the answer, but I'm getting closer I think. ;-)
*********************

Steam problems - Ubuntu Forums:
"Re: Steam problems
Open a terminal and enter the following:
Code:

wine iexplore http://winehq.org

This will install gecko. Once installation finishes, run Steam again."

I had this problem when I would run Steam after installing it through PlayOnLinux (POL). This was VERY helpful and simple.

I will post more on POL, but right out of the box, after installation there was no icon to launch it. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but I had to browse to the installed location to launch it (it installs to /usr/share/playonlinux in case you are looking for it too). I will create a n icon for it... but I tried to use a steam install script off the web designed for POL and it would immediately exit... not sure why yet, but when I opened POL it had a choice to install Steam right from the app.. maybe POL needs to be running in order to run the scripts??

Les scripts - PlayOnLinux - Play On Linux easily

2008-03-21T10:40:00.000-04:00

Les scripts - PlayOnLinux - Play On Linux easily

This is a list of games that PlayOnLinux already has scripts for and therefore you know are supported. Thankfully, Steam is on there, so (in theory) I should be able to play ALL my Steam games (of which I own MANY). I wonder what the performance will be??

What I do not see are some of the newer games (I didn't really expect to see them) like COD4 and MOH: Airborne, etc. Looks like I will still need to boot into XP to play those for now (ho hum).

Wine HQ - Wine for Debian based distributions

2008-03-21T10:35:00.000-04:00

Wine HQ - Wine for Debian based distributions:
"Adding the WineHQ APT Repository:

First, open a terminal window. Then add the repository's key to your system's list of trusted APT keys by copy and pasting the following:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Next, add the repository to your system's list of APT sources:

For Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10):
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

For Ubuntu Feisty (7.04):
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/feisty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

For Ubuntu Edgy (6.10): *64-bit packages not available*
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

For Ubuntu Dapper (6.06): *64-bit packages not available*
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/dapper.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

For Debian Etch (4.0):
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/etch.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

Then, you can install Wine from WineHQ like it were any other package, such as by using the Synaptic Package Manager under System->Administration. Alternatively, you can install from the terminal by running 'sudo apt-get update' to update APT's package information and then 'sudo apt-get install wine'."

My friend turned me on to PlayOnLinux for a way to install Windows games on Linux. While I haven't actually tried it yet, in reading I realized that I did not have the latest version of Wine installed and found the above from the WineHQ which means I will automatically get any official Wine updates! (yay)

I will post more on PlayOnLinux and what my experience is with trying to run games on Linux. For those that don't know already, my only gaming consoles are the original XBOX and the Wii. While both are great, they do not run the latest FPS games I am interested in, so my PC was my main gaming medium. I'd much rather have an XBOX 360, but I just can't afford/justify it at this time. I will probably blog about my opinions on gaming at some other time, but the short story is that I much prefer the newer consoles (360 or PS3) over PC gaming because it is basically guaranteed to work with a game you put in without having to worry about updating drivers or hardware. PLUS, the performance is pretty much guaranteed, whereas the PC is a gamble with too many variables involved. I think the PC holds a higher level of graphics and such, but the cost to get there is SERIOUSLY prohibitive! For instance, my graphics card alone (nvidia 8800 GTS 640MB) cost $400, the same price (or more) than a 360 Premium!!! That's just crazy now that I look back on it. At this point, the rest of my PC is the bottleneck. :-(

Ubuntu LAMP Server Installation With Screenshots -- Debian Admin

2008-03-11T13:34:00.001-04:00

Ubuntu LAMP Server Installation With Screenshots -- Debian Admin:
"Configuring Static ip address in Ubuntu server

Ubuntu installer has configured our system to get its network settings via DHCP, Now we will change that to a static IP address for this you need to edit Edit /etc/network/interfaces and enter your ip address details (in this example setup I will use the IP address 172.19.0.10):

#vi /etc/network/interfaces

and enter the following save the file and exit

# The primary network interface

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 172.19.0.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 172.19.0.0
broadcast 172.19.0.255
gateway 172.19.0.1

Now you need to restart your network services using the following command

#/etc/init.d/networking restart

You need to setup manually DNS servers in resolv.conf file when you are not using DHCP.

#vi /etc/resolv.conf

You need to add look something like this

search domain.com

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

This is really simple and easy server installation for new users and who wants a quick server."

My server will not get an IP from a DHCP server... I'm guessing it is because I installed it as a DNS server as well, but not positive. Anyway, I previously set the IP with some ifconfig commands, but upon reboot that info disappeared. So I found this as a more permanent fix. ;-)

Google Browser Sync

2008-03-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

Google Browser Sync:
"Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. For more info, please visit our FAQ."

Okay, my friend pointed me to this (5 times he says... whatever ;-) and I don't want to lose it.

I have been using the Google Toolbar because I like the way it keeps my bookmarks the same across all my PCs and integrates Gmail, Google Calendar and Blogger stuff in one consistent package across my Windows and Linux OSes... even between Firefox and IE, the latter of which I am forced to use for certain things.

While the Google Toolbar serves most of my needs, it does NOT sync cookies and password management across PCs, so this browser sync is a welcome addition!!

redhat.com | Doing more with more: Dual-head display

2008-03-10T12:41:00.000-04:00

redhat.com | Doing more with more: Dual-head display:

"In startup.sh, set the first display and type in the applications you want to start there. Then, set the second display and type in the applications you want to start on that monitor. You may want to put the 'intrusive' applications (email, IRC) on the secondary monitor.

Here is an example start-up script for a dual-independent display (that is, on in which you specify either DISPLAY=:0.0 or DISPLAY=:0.1):"

Go to the page for the example. This page was written for Red Hat, but it should work on any Linux distro (possibly with some tweaking).

I have two monitors of different sizes on my main PC, and TwinView (one display expanded across both monitors) didn't work well with my different resolutions (there was "dead space" where the virtual desktop continued but I had no monitor to show that portion... so I would sometimes lose applications there).

I have certain apps I like to run on my smaller display so they are 1) always visible, and 2) aren't taking up my primary workspace. I tried to start one of these applications at "startup" on my secondary display, but it starts on my primary display. I found this post and will try this. Hopefully it won't take too much tweaking for Ubuntu.

Gain root on your N800

2008-03-08T23:23:00.002-05:00

In a previous post I talked about how difficult it was to find the package that allows you to gain root on the n800. I found links that talked about installing fakeroot and such, but could never find the package for os2008.

Well, I finally found it and installed it (a while ago), but i forgot to log it here. I also didn't have the command to gain root listed on 'my' blog, so when I needed it and couldn't remember, I had to follow a path to it. So I wanted to list the command here in case I forget again.

sudo gainroot

Seems hard to forget, but my mind is a sieve. ;-)

When I find the location of the package I'll post it in here as well.

XP: Small, Free Way to Use and Mount Images (ISO files) Without Burning Them - Tech-Recipes.com

2008-03-04T18:20:00.000-05:00

XP: Small, Free Way to Use and Mount Images (ISO files) Without Burning Them - Tech-Recipes.com

This post has a free utility to mount ISO files... it's not very user friendly, but it's free. ;-)

Nautilus scripts - Tag MP3 Files

2008-03-04T10:43:00.000-05:00

Nautilus scripts:
"This program adds a new entry to the contextual menu which allows us to fill the ID3 tags of mp3 files with its appropriate genre, artist, year, album, number of song and title using its path. For this program to work your music has to be stored using a path like /Genre/Artist/Year - Album/Number - Title.mp3

Also if you have an image for the artist at the 'Artist' folder and / or one for the album at the 'Year - Album' folder, these will be added too to their corresponding ID3 tags."

I know I already have a post about these scripts, but I wanted to point this script out specifically because of the method and filing system it is using. I have been struggling with my music library for a long time and finally started to reign it in. However, I was using a method that is somewhat haphazard compared to this. I have a directory where all my media exists, and then sub-folders for music, videos, movies, etc. Under Music, I have some genre folders, but mostly artist folders right at the root. Really, the order is one that makes sense to me, but the rules I make up are probably not rigid enough.

So I may start toying with filing my music like this. I'm still in the early stages of organization so it won't be that bad... and the stuff I already organized will be easier since I know much about it already.

Debian and Ubuntu Linux Run Levels -- Debian Admin

2008-03-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

Debian and Ubuntu Linux Run Levels -- Debian Admin

As usual, my friend sent me some more great info on Linux as I try to understand this OS and it's depths. This is some cool stuff here. I plan on looking at it in more detail later, but i didn't want to lose track of it.

Howto: Install VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 (Part 2) at x86 Virtualization

2008-03-03T21:06:00.002-05:00

Howto: Install VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 (Part 2) at x86 Virtualization:
"[Optional Steps]
Remove CD from repository list:
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Once inside of VI, hit i to be in insert mode, scroll down to deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ …. and add # to the beginning of the line. hit esc, then :x to save and exit"

There are other good tips on here, but this one is huge for anyone running a Linux server that you are not near to put in the CD whenever you try to do an apt-get that wants to pull something off the CD. ;-)

*********UPDATE*************
Okay, I have my Ubuntu 7.10 server installed without X11, and therefore could NOT complete the configuration of VMware Server!! I couldn't find anywhere that says X11 is a requirement of VMware Server.

Anyway, it would throw up a list of the libraries I was missing and it took me FOREVER to find a post that gave me some good information to go on.

FIRST, install "apt-file" by typing: sudo apt-get install apt-file.
Second, update apt-file by typing: sudo apt-file update (this will take a long time as it is reading the package contents of all the packages it can find from your apt sources.list locations).
Third, look for a library/file by typing: sudo apt-file find .
Fourth, run apt-get install and the name of the package/s you need.

Once I resolved all the missing libraries the config went smooth as butter. I'm guessing this wouldn't be a problem on a workstation or server install that has X11 installed and configed.

What a PITA!

***********UPDATE************* (3/4/08)
While the above worked for me, I figured there must be an easier way. I found this bit of apt-get code that may have worked for me if I had tried it. It's too late now, but for anyone else and for my future use.

apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` libx11-6 libx11-dev x-window-system-core x-window-system xspecs libxtst6 psmisc build-essential

The previous apt-get command that I kept finding and trying had a package that was not valid for my version of Ubuntu (7.10)... I believe it was for v.7.04 or even earlier.

How to Install Vmware Server in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) -- Ubuntu Geek

2008-03-03T20:39:00.001-05:00

How to Install Vmware Server in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) -- Ubuntu Geek:

I'm using this how-to to install VMware server on my Gutsy server. So far so good. ;-)

*********UPDATE*************
Okay, I have my Ubuntu 7.10 server installed without X11, and therefore could NOT complete the configuration of VMware Server!! I couldn't find anywhere that says X11 is a requirement of VMware Server.

Anyway, it would throw up a list of the libraries I was missing and it took me FOREVER to find a post that gave me some good information to go on.

FIRST, install "apt-file" by typing: sudo apt-get install apt-file.
Second, update apt-file by typing: sudo apt-file update (this will take a long time as it is reading the package contents of all the packages it can find from your apt sources.list locations).
Third, look for a library/file by typing: sudo apt-file find .
Fourth, run apt-get install and the name of the package/s you need.

Once I resolved all the missing libraries the config went smooth as butter. I'm guessing this wouldn't be a problem on a workstation or server install that has X11 installed and configed.

What a PITA!

Ubuntu Open Terminal Here for Nautilus - It Came From The Internet

2008-03-03T16:21:00.000-05:00

Ubuntu Open Terminal Here for Nautilus - It Came From The Internet:
"If you ever get tired of trying to quickly type in the terminal the exact path to a directory, there is an easier way. In Nautilus (your file manager) can use Open Terminal Here in your right click menu.

To make this work, just install this package by opening a terminal and entering:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Now you can right click in any directory in Nautilus and open a terminal that is already set to that directory.

One note though, if you want to use it for the Desktop, open Nautilus first, and click on Desktop in Nautilus. Don't try just right clicking on the Desktop directly or it won't work. ;-)"

This is a necessity as far as I'm concerned.

My oldest son is now a Trekky

2008-03-03T13:56:00.003-05:00

Last night my wife had to run out to help her family and our kids were still getting over a HORRIBLE bout with the stomach flu (lasting about 2 weeks off and on in each kid). The two middle kids (I have 4) were fast asleep on the couches, and the baby was face down asleep on the floor. So I told my wife as she was leaving that I would just sleep downstairs with all of them.

I had started to watch Episode 1 of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD collection earlier that day but didn't get through it very far. So I wanted to finish it and my oldest was begging me to watch it. So I agreed and put it on.

It's funny watching kids relate things that they know to things they are only just experiencing. My son said to me, "This reminds me of Galaxy Quest", to which I said, "Galaxy Quest is a play-off of the original Star Trek series." He said, "This is much better than Galaxy Quest." ;-)

So, after the episode ended, he started BEGGING me to watch the next episode! I told him it was a school night and he needed to get to sleep. So I put in Tron which he's seen a million times with me and could fall asleep because nothing about it was new and exciting keeping his interest. Now he'll be begging me to watch more episodes, so it's a good thing I have the first 3 seasons already. ;-)

I'd love for him to watch the movies too, but they can get a little scary for a kid, like the Borg in "First Contact" (one of my all time favorite movies by the way). We'll see how he does with the shows and then maybe I'll let him see some of the movies during daylight hours. ;-)

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) LAMP Server Setup -- Ubuntu Geek

2008-03-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) LAMP Server Setup -- Ubuntu Geek

I recently changed my home server from CentOS 5 to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Server Edition and installed it choosing "DNS server", "LAMP server" (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP), "OpenSSH server" and "Samba File server"during the software selection portion. I did NOT follow the linked setup guide, but found it later when I was looking for an easy way to install Webmin on it from a command prompt.

I plan on going through this guide now to see if I missed anything beneficial, etc. I will also try to go into more detail of why I switched to Ubuntu from CentOS, but the "straw that broke (this) camel's back" was the difficulty in getting Samba shares setup and usable from client PCs. When I got the same function working in only minutes from my Ubuntu desktop PC, I decided to make the switch. It was very recent and I haven't had any time to look at the Samba sharing, but I will provide and update with my findings/experience.

HOW TO: setup vnc4server - Ubuntu Forums

2008-03-01T18:11:00.000-05:00

HOW TO: setup vnc4server - Ubuntu Forums

Okay, I just set this up and quickly tested it... it controls my secondary display (dual-display configuration using two X sessions). ;-) I have to tweak this a bit to create a X display I'm not already using.

HOWTO: 5 button mouse working on firefox (back/forward buttons) - Page 11 - Ubuntu Forums

2008-03-01T15:51:00.000-05:00

HOWTO: 5 button mouse working on firefox (back/forward buttons) - Page 11 - Ubuntu Forums:
"Section 'InputDevice'
Identifier 'Configured Mouse'
Driver 'mouse'
Option 'CorePointer'
Option 'Device' '/dev/input/mice'
Option 'Protocol' 'ExplorerPS/2'
Option 'ZAxisMapping' '4 5'
Option 'Buttons' '7'
Option 'ButtonMapping' '1 2 3 6 7'
Option 'Emulate3Buttons' 'true'
EndSection"

I have a Creative Fatal1ty mouse (the higher-end model) and was having trouble getting the forward/back buttons working properly. Finally I realized that the "protocol" was set to something other than "ExplorerPS/2". Changing this fixed the problem for me (because I had already set all the other values properly and it still didn't work).

RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs - Community Ubuntu Documentation

2008-03-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs - Community Ubuntu Documentation: "Note : While Totem-gstreamer can play a DVD automatically when it is inserted into the DVD drive, it cannot navigate the DVD nor play it by selecting Movie → Play Disc 'DVD Name' (see [WWW] Bug #41335). If you use vlc media player you can navigate through the menu, forward in the movie and select subtitles. Just select open disc, probe Disc(s) and click ok."

Okay, so I *probably* should have seen this before when I viewed this page, but I think I didn't understand it even when I did read it. Still being a n00b makes life hard.

Anyway, it appears that Totem-gstreamer will not play back DVDs once you install libdvdnav4... I add this because I successfully played back an unencrypted DVD movie before installing libdvdnav4. It simply started the main title with no menu navigation. Seeing that DVD playback was working I decided to see if I could get navigation to work. After installing libdvdnav4 Totem-gstreamer throws an error and also wouldn't auto-launch upon DVD insertion like it did before installing libdvdnav4.

I glad I came back to this page and saw that little note. It was EXTREMELY frustrating me on my previous install. Yes, that's right... I blew away my original install. It wasn't for this, although it WAS something that bothered me. It was for a whole host of reasons and things not working right. I am certain I inflicted the issues on myself by not being careful about what I installed and looking for conflicts carefully. One of the things that plagued me was ALL video playback, be it DVD or mpg, avi, divx, etc, it ALL played back with a limited color palette. I honestly have no idea what caused this to happen because it was not always like that from the start after my original install. I plan on trying to be more careful and selective in my installs from here on out, and at a minimum keep track of what I install so I know how to back out when something goes wrong.

Anyway, this method, using Totem-xine seems to work just fine now, and I can even playback my newest encrypted DVD (Pirates of the Caribbean 3). So I'd say it's all good.

Create Your Own Cross-Platform Backup Server

2008-03-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

Feature: Create Your Own Cross-Platform Backup Server

This looks pretty cool... it uses the same concept as say Veritas BackupExec and other enterprise backup software solutions where they "pull" the files to be backed up instead of the client "pushing" them to the server/share.

As my friend mentioned, the problem with this solution is what if the IP changes on a client machine and there is no dynamic DNS registration taking place. This solution seems directed at consumers for their homes, and most houses do not have dynamic DNS registration setup on their private network. I personally do, but I'm not a normal consumer.

With that said, this is still a cool solution that seems to be pretty easy to setup for cross-platform backups. However, the one common thread across Windows, OS X and Linux (the most common OSes for consumers) is the ability to attach to a Samba (SMB) share. So, really, all you need is a Samba share that your clients can connect to and then you can easily push the files. This could even be accomplished over the internet from a laptop not on your home network quite frankly. There is more setup involved on the firewall side of things, but it's possible with a push solution where the pull will not be able to find the laptop if it's not on the home network.

Bug 2673 - N800 Power up Drama

2008-02-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

Bug 2673 - N800 Power up Drama

This will drop down to comment #47 which lists the new firmware that addresses the power up after shutdown issue.

Now that I'm running Ubuntu Linux as my main OS, my flashing experience was a little different. It was easy once I figured out one little necessity. I essentially followed the directions from here to the letter, BUT I had to add 'sudo' at the beginning of the command to run flasher-3.0. When I didn't, it couldn't grab the USB port.

So, here's the funny part... in order to run the update to the firmware, you HAVE to switch off the tablet. So, of course, it won't come back on to let you flash it. So I had to go upstairs to put it in the freezer for a bit. My wife happened to be there and saw me put my N800 tablet in the freezer and said, "Um, do you wanna explain why you just put a computer in the freezer??" LOL... needless to say, I had a hard time explaining WHY this worked, because I personally have no idea myself. However, after leaving it in long enough it started up.

Before flashing it this time I performed a backup with the integrated software. I must say that is VERY slick and easy. Bravo! So, after it was flashed and started up, it said it found a previous backup and would I like to restore from there. I said yes and it ran through it pretty quickly. It barked about some of the documents added by the firmware being newer on the device, etc. I selected not to replace them with the backup in case there are differences. I made the mistake of deleting my device off my phone because I thought I was going to have to go through it again, but it restored the settings from the backup. My guess is it would have worked perfectly, but being that I deleted the device on my phone I had to run through it again. It then asked me if I wanted to restore all my applications!! I was surprised at this and didn't think it would do this for me. I said yes and it proceeded (the best it could) to download and install all the apps. I say best it could because some of my apps were not pulled from repositories and required manual intervention.

After all my apps were on and I was satisfied with how it was setup I tested shutting it down and then turning it right back on... IT WORKS!!!! I'm so excited about this because it means I don't need to stay close to a freezer. Another funny thing my wife asked me, knowing that I am traveling to a week long conference in Florida next week, "So, are you gonna have to excuse yourself from the show floor to run back to your mini-bar so you can jump start your little gadget??" Ahhhh... she's funny.

Anyway, I'm just glad that it was able to be resolved with a software update and I didn't have to deal with returns and such. THAT would have been a pain!

The pain I'm finding for Linux, and why Apple is successful (so to speak)

2008-02-18T14:44:00.003-05:00

Well, it has not been long into my "30 day challenge" to use only Linux (not even a week) and I'm already feeling some pain. Basically, the pain I'm feeling seems stupid... it ALL revolves around PC hardware and driver issues. Well... not ALL of it... I still have some pain around apps I used on Windows and haven't found replacements I like yet, or, and this is another big one I'll try to tackle at some point, you have to compile the application from source to work on your distribution of Linux (I know there are "unsupported" packages for a lot of distros out there and they are great, but they aren't "in your face available" and you have to search around for them!). Like I said, I'll try to discuss my thoughts on the software subject in this post, but my first priority, that which relates directly to the title of this post, is around hardware drivers and stability because of this.

"Hardware Choices" and why that sucks for non-technical people trying to use Linux:
Hopefully I don't piss any *NIX loyalists off here, but I am trying to approach this from as neutral a ground as possible, thinking about a non-technical user's experience with Linux... someone new to Linux or not very well-versed in operating systems in general, let alone ever going to a command line. Let's face it, the command line is for geeks only. While I myself am a geek, I understand the complexities and lack of help that a command line brings users... just having a cursor sitting there blinking at you waiting for input, without it saying "type this to do that" can be intimidating. That is why GUI is SO important for regular users. It gives them things to click on... choices that they may not have known about.

So, my beef is that, as far as PC hardware is concerned, there are SO many hardware choices and configurations that it is basically endless. It doesn't help that Windows is the mainstream OS and that hardware manufacturers normally don't do a good job (or anything at all) in the way of producing drivers for Linux.

********************* 6/6/09
The above was as far as I got into this post in past... I don't remember exactly where I was headed with this, so I don't think I will finish it. I have since moved back to Windows almost exclusively and have really not had ANY issues. I have even been running Vista 64 for quite a while now and gaming a lot... NO PROBLEMS AT ALL!!!! That's saying something!

I think where I was headed is the fact that Linux trying to remain ambiguous and neutral is hurting it. Apple has an autonomous environment, and I think that's why it does as well as it does trying to compete with Windows... but Apple is FAR from perfect, and they actually annoy me (even though I willing decided to buy an iPhone 3G know all the things I know about Apple... it's the apps people).

Anyway, I personally think MS is doing most things right these days and am happy with using Windows. Seriously, things just work for me. I NEVER have BSOD's or viruses and I don't even run Anti-Virus software (I just make sure to backup my system every night in case... it's faster). I will even go as far as to say that things work better on my Vista 64 then they do on my wife's iMac 20" G5. This may be because she is still on a G5 and not Leopard... but I was having the same problems with that model when it was mainstream! I'll expand that statement by saying, "If you are using Apple and stay 100% inside Apple's world as far as software and hardware, then you should be just fine."

garage: Welcome

2008-02-18T14:39:00.001-05:00

garage: Welcome

I kept reading about the Garage for apps in development but didn't really understand. This is the main page where you can check out and download apps still in development. I'm sure this is somewhat dangerous to tamper with as there could be undesired outcomes from installing some of these apps.

Make sure to back up your device before messing with these.

mediautils: tablet-encode

2008-02-18T14:25:00.001-05:00

mediautils: tablet-encode

Just found this site that has an (cross-platform) encoder specifically designed to encode videos that work well on the N800. If this DOES work as advertised (haven't tried it yet) then this will be a very good thing for people who do not want to spend time figuring out what works and what doesn't.

While it is not a solution to the tons of h.264 encoded content out there playing natively on the N800, if it can re-encode those videos without losing too much quality, then it may not be THAT bad of a deal. I hate extra steps, but it is what it is until someone figures out how to get solid, fluid h.264 video to play on the N800. I also want someone to make it all happen (and I'm talking about from a copy protected DVD to an encoded file that plays well on the N800) with one click of the mouse on Linux! I have a WONDEFUL app for Windows only called DVDFab Platinum that can do just about anything you would want with DVDs whether copy protected or not. It is only ever one step (not ripping the DVD, then switching programs to encode or copy or even shrink then copy). It is truly a great application that works as advertised, but I am trying to do everything from Linux, so this is a pain for me.

How To Enable EVDO DUN on any EVDO capable phone

2008-02-18T10:35:00.001-05:00

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource - How to enable EVDO DUN on ANY EVDO capable phone in 10 easy steps!:
"How to enable EVDO DUN on ANY EVDO capable phone in 10 easy steps!"

Didn't read this yet, but have to run and don't want to lose it.

****UPDATE****
Okay, I took a couple minutes to look through this and it looks like some great info... not just for the N800, but for any PC->Phone tethering (via USB or Bluetooth... doesn't matter). You have to modify your phone, which can be dangerous, but if there is a problem and you backup your phones qcn, you should be able to restore it to the way it was. Obviously, if you lose connectivity while writing data to the phone you could brick it, but there's always some element of risk. ;-)

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I hope to over the next week before I go on my trip in case I don't have WiFi access and need something on my PC or N800.

Cheers!

Bluetooth to Verizon Phone for DUN Works - Internet Tablet Talk Forums

2008-02-18T10:34:00.000-05:00

Bluetooth to Verizon Phone for DUN Works - Internet Tablet Talk Forums:
"There are posts scattered throughout the Internet with the necessary info, but it's confusing as to what is actually required. (e.g. I didn't have to hex edit firmware or anything like that.) This is a summary of the key points (only one in particular was tricky):

* Only works if phone is in 1X network only mode. If EVDO network mode (or hybrid mode) is enabled on phone, it doesn't work.
* I used the Nokia cell phone wizard to setup the main parameters, but I could just have easily used the 'connection details' screens. I don't think the wizard does anything special.
* Username: <10-digit-phone-num>@vzw3g.com (Using @... didn't work for me.)
* Password: vzw
* Phone Num: #777
* The tricky part: I also had to edit /etc/ppp/options and uncomment the '-chap' option. Until I did that, it would say 'authentication failed' and disconnect immediately.

With all that, I'm now able to connect via Bluetooth and get ~115k speeds. It doesn't stay connected for a long (<10 seconds) if I don't use it, but otherwise seems to work as expected."

Okay, I have a Verizon LG VX8550 with the premium calling plan that includes unlimited VCAST (EVDO) and a bunch of features such as VZ Navigator, SMS messaging. I would rather connect via EVDO, and I'm on the trail of figuring out how to do that, but I didn't want to lose this post since this is better than nothing. I will either create a separate post on getting EVDO working, or update this post. Either way I will update this with my findings of this specific fix.

VIDEOPODCASTS.TV | The Video Podcast Directory

2008-02-17T21:01:00.003-05:00

VIDEOPODCASTS.TV | The Video Podcast Directory

In looking at the CBS feed that I entered into Video Center, I realized that it is just a simple Video Podcast feed. So, logic leads me to believe that any and all video podcast feeds should work. I'll test that theory and report back. The streaming video from CBS was decent quality with only slight hiccups.

*****ADDITION*****
In browsing through the various video podcasts, there is an adult section that is pr0n! That's too funny. Streaming pr0n... lol. Still haven't tried any of the feeds yet, but I had to post that. :-P

*****ADDITION*****
Okay, I chose a bunch of feeds and most of them worked. Some were apparently formatted to enter into iTunes, so they didn't work by copying them. I'm sure if I looked at them closer I could figure out how to get them, or perhaps they just have to be downloaded. Anyway, some of them view great on the N800 using the built-in Media Player which is what Video Center is coded to launch, but some of them are no good at all with only a frame change here and there. What I figured out is these seem to be m4v files designed for the iPod. In my previous video tests I found these to only display well using 'mplayer', and even then they weren't that great and tend to freeze up the unit. I may download one of these episodes to see if it plays better when not streaming.

I decided to start it from Video Center right after typing that. I'm pulling down a 37MB file and it is coming down quickly. It didn't ask me where to store it, but I think I remember Video Center creating its own folder on the 'Internal Memory Card', so I'm guessing it's there.

It finished downloading so I'm going to look for it... Yep, that's exactly where it put it. That's actually a really good place since it's where I would have told it to put it anyway. ;-) I have two 16GB SDHC cards in my N800, and while I have a lot of music and videos already, i still have about 4GB free on the card it put it on (I left room on that one for this very type of reason). Going to try playback using mplayer when it's on the card and not streaming.

Okay... that didn't go well at all. mplayer pretty much locked up, gave a squelchy sound and nothing. So, I'm not sure what that means entirely, but so far I haven't found a decent performing h.264 player for the N800. And that will be a pain considering how much h.264 content is already ripped and ready to view. I know you can re-encode it, but that kinda steals the thunder.

****ADDITION*****
The feed/shows for The Discovery Channel looks AWESOME, but... it seems all the files are m4v and REALLY don't play well on anything I've tried so far. If I can remember, I will look hard for a good m4v player for the N8*0 since there are so many m4v files out there. I even have a bunch since I also have an iPod and had encoded a bunch of movies in that format. If anyone knows of something that plays these well, please post what it is.

Videocenter - now with major channels - Internet Tablet Talk Forums

2008-02-17T20:19:00.001-05:00

Videocenter - now with major channels - Internet Tablet Talk Forums:
"go http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in706903.shtml

click mp4 to watch program on your 770/N800. Click Pod, paste URL to Videocenter>Tools>Services>Internet video, close (it takes several minutes), now you have CBS News on VC! Thank god, now you can take your eyes of those TeXtra, GeekBrief. There are 5 programs from CBS. They all work.

BTW, they all streamed, so 1) you see it right away, no dl; 2) does not cluster your precious MMC space."

I want to find more of these types of feeds. When I find them I will post them.

********ADDITION************
On that page found the link to the feed for The Discovery Channel
Copy the link location from your N800 and paste it for the URL of the Internet Videos in Video Center.

Nautilus scripts (including 'Send To Gmail')

2008-02-17T15:55:00.001-05:00

Nautilus scripts

Lot's of cool Nautilus scripts for adding right-click context menu goodness! ;-)

My personal favorites are the 'Gmail', 'mount-image' and 'rename-exif-date' for photos. The others are cool too, but I'm not sure I will use more than these two.

How To: Print to PDF in Ubuntu

2008-02-17T15:42:00.001-05:00

How To: Print to PDF in Ubuntu

I'm using Ubuntu 7.10, so my setup was a tad different, and some of what I needed was already in place, but this was useful as a starter.

Bottom line, it was a piece of cake once I knew where to look and how to start. I probably could have stumbled onto it if I tried adding a PDF printer myself.

Set Gmail as Default Mail Client in Ubuntu :: the How-To Geek

2008-02-17T14:45:00.002-05:00

Set Gmail as Default Mail Client in Ubuntu :: the How-To Geek: "Every Geek uses Gmail… it's pretty much required. And now you can set Gmail as the default client in Ubuntu without any extra software."

Sweet!

On my home PCs I don't feel the need to have an offline email app like Thunderbird or Evolution (maybe I will one day) since I'm always online... AND, using Gmail on all my PCs means they are all 'in sync' by default with no download times, etc. So this is cool (for me).

*****UPDATE******
I thought this could also work for 'Send To' from the file explorer, but it is not an option when you select 'Send To'. I will keep looking for that, as that is mainly what I'm trying to do here. This script seems to only be tailored to executing when 'mailto:' hyperlinks are selected. This is still nice, but I'm pretty sure I already had this setup for me in Firefox by the Google Toolbar.

Linux and Photography - Community Ubuntu Documentation

2008-02-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

Linux and Photography - Community Ubuntu Documentation: "My sparkly new Linux computer now runs a semi-different lineup of software than it did with Windows, instead of Adobe Bridge for editing RAW files, I use Bibble Pro 4.9.5, instead of running Nero to burn CD's and DVD's, I use a program called K3b. There are a few Windows based programs I still need to run for lack of better Linux based alternatives. Some notable examples being Photoshop 7, MemoriesOnTV, and Star Wars Jedi Knight II*. All of which I am happy to report are working very well in a program called Wine. The makers of Wine describe the program as a Windows compatibility layer that makes the Windows based program you want to run think it is running in Windows. Wine still isn't at the 1.0 level of completeness, but it is close enough now that Photoshop 7 and many other Windows based programs run very well."

My friend sent me this link. It looks like a GREAT resource for anyone looking to make the switch from Windows (or Mac) or make it stick and does photo editing.

Being that I am still in the process of getting my feet wet with trying to run only Linux, I have yet to find replacements for all my Windows apps (or even figure out what all of them are). For those that I cannot find suitable replacements for, I will first try in WINE, then will possibly look to Codeweavers, maybe even Transgaming (for games) and finally will possibly run a VM of XP. I still have a dual-boot into XP, but that's a hassle... I just want to stay on one OS and not boot between them if I don't have to.

I will start to log the various apps I 'switch' to in Linux as I figure them out and remember to do it. ;-)

HotHardware - Asus Z7S WS Skulltrail Motherboard Sneak Peek

2008-02-17T12:53:00.000-05:00

HotHardware - Asus Z7S WS Skulltrail Motherboard Sneak Peek: "The Asus Z7S WS features dual LGA771 sockets that support Intel Xeon 5000, 5100, and 5300 series processors of both the dual and quad-core varieties. The Z7S WS is built around the Intel 5400 and ESB2E chipset and supports 1600MHz / 1333MHz / 1066MHz / 800MHz front side bus speeds, it has six Fully-Buffered DDR2 DIMM slots, and a pair of Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit LAN jacks with teaming functionality. The Asus Z7S WS’ expansion slot configuration consists of two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, one PCIe x16 slot with an x8 electrical connection, and single PCIe x1, PCI-X, and PCI 2.2 slots. The dual x16 PEG slots are a differentiating factor for the Z7S WS because Intel’s D5400XS only supports PCI Express 1.1. The D5400XS, however, is outfitted with NVIDIA PCI Express switches which enable SLI, something the Z7S WS lacks. Also note that the Asus Z7S WS requires standard LGA771 heatsinks, whereas Intel’s Skulltrail mobo will work with a wider variety of LGA775 CPU coolers. We should also point out that the Z7S WS features a digital VRM, which significantly clears up the area around the CPU sockets and the PCB is 'only' 12' x 10.5', which is much smaller than the DX5400XS."

okay.... one question: What OS, in the enthusiast/consumer mass-market, is going to utilize all this horsepower? AFAIK, the only Windows OSes that will see this many cores are server editions not intended or truly suited for gaming... and I can't think of any other reason an enthusiast/consumer would need even half of this power. Sure, there's the (uncommon) science geek who wants to run through insane calculations in record time and has lots of money to spend... but that's not the masses.

I guess this type of board is not really designed for the masses. More to show potential of hardware, etc.

****Well, doing some quick digging around, it looks like I am somewhat mistaken (it happens a lot). Vista only supports two 'physical' CPUs, but the number of cores per CPU is not limited (by Vista, but obviously there are physical and scientific limitations until they are overcome). XP may even be the same in this regard, so I guess this isn't so far fetched after all.

With all this said, I am finding gaming on a PC more and more frustrating... not because of the format of that gaming, but rather the CONSTANT need to upgrade your hardware to keep up. I have to believe it is sloppy programing that requires so much horsepower, but I have nothing to back that up. However, my reasoning for this statement is based on what the XBOX 360 is capable of performing with so little in the way of hardware (other than the CPU, see this great comparison done by Paul Thurrott). While the CPU is a fast triple-core affair, the RAM is only 512MB GDDR3 shared between the system and the video card!! The Sony PS3 has similar specs and great gaming as well.

So, for gaming, I'm leaning more toward a console whose sole purpose is to provide great gaming. Moving away from thinking my PC has to be my gaming platform has made it feel SO much faster and not in dire need of an upgrade like it felt when gaming on todays latest titles. The money I would have to spend to upgrade it to handle the latest round of games could probably buy me TWO 360s or more... and the experience isn't that much better (if at all... that's really a matter of opinion and depends on the monitor you display the games on... the 360 hooked up to the PC LCD monitor will render basically as good as the PC, and your performance is a lot more stable since it's not trying to be a PC at the same time with all kinds of services running in the background). In fact, my video card, being no slouch itself (nVidia 8800 GTS 640MB) cost as much as an XBOX 360 Premium all by itself!!! Looking back, it was pretty much a waste. There are so many different parts involved for the whole package that my CPU essentially becomes the bottleneck.

7 Must Have Apps for the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablet -- Digital Streets

2008-02-17T11:53:00.001-05:00

7 Must Have Apps for the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablet -- Digital Streets

Found this post when I was looking around for a spreadsheet app. I have most of these apps already and am downloading the rest. The Maemo Wordpy app can post blogs to either Wordpress as well as Blogger (not both at the same time). I use Blogger, so I will try it for that.

I still haven't settled on a single media application, though I haven't spent much time yet trying them out, etc. I downloaded Canola2 and will try that out. I have a feeling I will use a combination of different players for different reasons.

****ADDITION****
I have to admit that Canola2 is pretty impressive as a media center app with slick looking graphics. I'm still trying to figure it all out (it's not entirely intuitive, there doesn't seem to be any true 'menu' function), so I'm not recommending it yet at this point. Just because something is pretty, doesn't mean it's good.

CompanionLink for Google -- synchronize Google Calendar with any phone, PDA or Microsoft Outlook

2008-02-17T01:31:00.000-05:00

CompanionLink for Google -- synchronize Google Calendar with any phone, PDA or Microsoft Outlook: "Sync Google Calendar with Outlook" Two-Way synchronization

Because I have to use Outlook for work (not that I mind at all, I think it's a great app) I keep ALL my appointments in one spot. However, now that I am thinking about multiple platforms and devices (e.g., my N800), I wanted to investigate using a central repository that I can synchronize with from multiple places.

I tried 'RemoteCalendar', which is a free open source effort. I think this is a GREAT app and idea... but it wouldn't work on my laptop running Outlook 2007. I know many people have gotten this to work, but i also found several people who were experiencing problems like me. I even tried multiple versions of it, but while the older version at least showed up in Outlook, it would not sync.

So, I tried 'SyncMyCal' which has a Lite version for free, but that would only do 3 days previous and 3 days in the future... lame. To get a larger date range and AutoSync you need to upgrade to the pay-for version for $25... I wasn't about to do that yet and continued to look around. By the way, SyncMyCal only syncs the calendar... not tasks or anything else. Not a big problem, but just throwing that out there.

When I found CompanionLink, I downloaded the 15 day trial which is FULLY functional. Not only that, but it can synchronize Calendar, Tasks AND Contacts! So I set it up, which was a total breeze, and synced my calendar. AWESOME! I set it up to do it every hour.

Then, having installed GPE-Calendar on my N800 (I'll write a post on the GPE apps) and also Erminig, which syncs GPEcal with Google Calendar, I setup Erminig which was also very easy. I'm really impressed with how well that app has been developed considering it's free. I ran a sync and crossed my fingers... it said success! I looked in GPEcal, which was already open, and nothing was there. What I also realized was that when you click on the 'X' to close the app, it doesn't fully close. So, after fully closing the app and restarting it, BAM, all my events are there! Sweet. I also enabled the GPE-Summary Home page applet and only needed to hit the refresh on that to have everything show up.

Very cool.

nWiki - mini-Wikipedia on your N800 - Page 2 - Internet Tablet Talk Forums

2008-02-17T01:13:00.000-05:00

nWiki - mini-Wikipedia on your N800 - Page 2 - Internet Tablet Talk Forums: "To mount directly on device, you will need two things installed (becomeroot or easyroot and penguinbaits cdrom driver) with those installed :
open xterm and in your /home/user directory create a subdirectory called wiki using mkdir wiki command.
You can then sudo gainroot and mount /media/mmc/kiwi.iso /home/user/wiki

And then you just browse file:/// in microb drill down into home/user/wiki and load index page."

Wikipedia for schools

2008-02-16T21:43:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia for schools

This is GREAT! Not only to download and have for your kids to browse instead of the live internet version (because it has been cleaned up to be suitable for children, they shouldn't be getting any inappropriate pr0n pop-ups, etc), but it's a version that you can have for offline reference/viewing. Like on an N800.

I am downloading the small version for the N800 with only thumbnail images, but I will probably download the large version for my kids/laptop viewing.

Repositories for Nokia N810, N800 and 770 Internet Tablets with maemo Operating System

2008-02-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

Repositories for Nokia N810, N800 and 770 Internet Tablets with maemo Operating System

List of repositories for the Nokia Tablets. Nice.

Applepeels: The complexity of computing, even Apple's world

2008-02-16T13:15:00.002-05:00

Applepeels: The complexity of computing, even Apple's world: "I didn't even know how to open a terminal window in Windows, but he fixed the Vista laptop in minutes."

Okay, I want to start off by saying I like to read this guys blog... BUT, while he is not a Windows basher, he seems to constantly reference that OS X is better than Windows, particularly Vista. Well, by his own statement, he wouldn't seem to be extremely well versed on a Windows environment. Sure, he may use Windows PCs a lot, but that doesn't mean he knows it as well as say, OS X, or any Apple OS.

Look, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I am no longer looking to argue with someone over a matter of opinion. I used to, sometimes at great length, but any of those efforts were fruitless and a waste of time... for both parties.

However, what I would like to say is, if you are not as familiar with something as you are of what you are trying to compare it with, at least make that clear. Being unfamiliar with something will ALWAYS make it more difficult... no matter HOW easy the OS may appear to be to some.

Let me give you a little background on my experiences. I was mainly a Windows user for my entire technical career (which basically started in 1996, but before that I had PCs, both Apple and Windows. I only used them for personal type stuff though). I dabbled in Linux back in '98-'99, and every once in a while thereafter. In 2001 I embraced Apple and OS X (pretty much became a fanboy). My best friend told me so many things about it that sounded incredible... the hardware was gorgeous, and the OS was beautiful. It was 'new' to me and felt great! Being that I was mainly a Windows user with only a little Linux experience, things weren't that easy to find. Stuff that I could do in my sleep on Windows eluded me on OS X. I KNOW I drove my best friend crazy always asking how to do simple things. When he would explain how to do something, I wold feel like an idiot. "That's so simple!" I would say. BUT, being that I didn't know it previously, it was seemingly impossible. Now, my friend will tell you that I think too much and over complicate things... and he's right. But that doesn't mean I'm unique in my approach. I still have Apple computers and use OS X along with my Windows PCs.

I'm now getting back into Linux, and my best friend and I are taking a '30 Day Challenge' so to speak where we are going to try to use only Linux for personal stuff for at least 30 days (both our jobs still require us to use Windows and MS apps). This experiment is two fold. 1) We wanted to see just how far Linux has come as a desktop OS for the masses, and is it conceivable for regular users to run Linux instead of Windows or OS X as their main desktop OS. 2) I have been getting frustrated with Windows and OS X and even bored. I also was recently given a Nokia N800 which runs Maemo, a tablet OS based on Linux for Nokia's small tablets (possibly other devices, but I haven't looked into anything else that runs it). So I wanted to learn what I could about Linux again to be able to get the most out of the N800. I KNOW Linux is a great and powerful OS, and I love the community aspect of the 'movement'. There are ALWAYS going to be things that you can only do on a particular OS, or some things that don't work exactly the same way across the platforms and you will have a preference of how you want that to work. Possibly, certain apps made for only one OS are better at what they do or require less steps, or both. For those instances, I personally can just go to that OS and perform that action. For the regular consumer, that option is normally not available or wanted. I personally have over 6 computers running in my house at all times, and that doesn't include some of my gadgets. I'm a bit of an extreme example and not the average consumer (sidebar: the number of systems I have is a direct reason why I can't STAND DRM, because I find it too limited on the number of devices you can 'register', and I tend to rebuild my systems too often which counts as a new registration).

So, at this point, you're probably wondering, "What the hell's your point St00pid?"... good question (I tend to ramble). My point is, anything that you are not familiar with will seem more difficult than what you are used to, or not seem to be set up logically. But that is more about familiarity than anything. Vista has a LOT of really great things going for it. It has a TON of features that Apple touts about Leopard having and 'breaking new ground' or making "PC" look stupid in the commercials. The reality is, Vista has most of the features that Leopard has, but most people don't know about them. I'm NOT knocking Leopard, or saying it is inferior to anything. All operating systems have great things going for them, ALL of them. The question someone should ask themselves is WHAT they are trying to do with a computer. Seriously. That's it. It will be different for every user. Because it IS different for every user, one users choice is not necessarily the best for another user, and no matter how excited that one user is about how well things work for them, they should NOT force feed it to others or assume that they have 'the best OS' or their's is better than others. It's silly. In fact, the best operating system is one that you, the user, doesn't even know is present. The OS should only be there to allow the applications to run efficiently. The APPLICATIONS are what should be the focus.

I look forward to the day when any application I want to use runs on any OS. When I don't have to think about how to install it or make it run. I know there are a lot of web apps moving in this direction. I'm all for it, but certain applications just don't work well from the web... especially when you may not be online at all times. There are also security concerns with web based apps... no matter how progressive a company is with their security, things can get hacked. So sensitive information should probably reside locally for the most part.

Well, this is getting kind of wordy, so I'm just going to stop here. Feel free to comment with your own opinions... this is just mine and mine alone. I don't expect anyone to agree with me, and I won't be hurt if someone doesn't. I'm trying not to be a fanboy anymore, and I would like to say that the person who writes Applepeels, thankfully, does not act as a fanboy. Bravo!