https://buy-zithromax.online buy kamagra usa https://antibiotics.top buy stromectol online https://deutschland-doxycycline.com https://ivermectin-apotheke.com kaufen cialis https://2-pharmaceuticals.com buy antibiotics online Online Pharmacy vermectin apotheke buy stromectol europe buy zithromax online https://kaufen-cialis.com levitra usa https://stromectol-apotheke.com buy doxycycline online https://buy-ivermectin.online https://stromectol-europe.com stromectol apotheke https://buyamoxil24x7.online deutschland doxycycline https://buy-stromectol.online https://doxycycline365.online https://levitra-usa.com buy ivermectin online buy amoxil online https://buykamagrausa.net

Category: My Mobile / PDA / eReader / tablet

Technology is great, except when it isn’t

So for the last 48 days, I’ve been getting my company email via GMail. On my Blackberry, that’s meant another GMail client account for the mail, and using Google Sync for Mobile to populate the BB’s calendar. The native email client on the BB was left unused.

That’s worked pretty well, all things considered. I’ve liked the GMail client on the BB, and the calendaring, after some initial hiccoughs, went pretty well. 

Well, testing moves on, and the next step was volunteers to use the GBES setup. This is a Google add-on to the normal BES server that does the normal “push” of mail, etc., from Exchange to the BB. Okay, well, that’s fine. 

One problem. Though the BB Google Sync for Mobile scenario caused some folks problems because of delays in the sync (up to 15-30 minutes), the BES solution for calendaring is one-way — calendar gets pushed to the BB, but changes on the BB are not pushed back to the company calendar.

But, what the heck — this is a Pilot, not Production, so I should endure some inconvenience for the cause. “Well, Fred, you knew this job was dangerous when you took it.”

One bigger problem. The instructions start with “how to Wipe Your Blackberry.”

Hrm. Wow, that sounds like something I don’t want to do.

After some poking and prodding and Googling, I was assured that I could do the Wipe process and not lose any third-party data and applications. Indeed, the wipe (unless you tell it otherwise) just cleans out the device’s Blackberry data stores, so it shouldn’t be a problem, right?

*sigh*

First off, the wipe, even with explicitly leaving the little checkbox about third party apps unchecked, still takes an ungodly amount of time. Not only is it deleting the files, it’s overwriting each bit X times to keep it safe and unreadable.

Second, the Enterprise Activation process also takes forever. It also aborted the first time out.

After which, it simply produced (when trying to restart the Activation) “An error occurred. Please contact your System Administrator.”

So I did another wipe. Insert ungodly amount of time (again) here. Like, two hours this time watching it go through its wipe routine. And then the same thing happened.

I am not amused.

So off with a message to the support folks to find out WTF.

More on Amazon’s Orwellian erasure of … Orwell

So much discussion and kerfuffle over Amazon deleting from Kindle accounts (with refund) some books which they’d sold to people (copies of 1984 and Animal Farm). People were rightly upset to discover that Amazon could just take away books that they “owned.”

Amazon’s explained itself a slight bit further, and is also changing how it handles such matters:

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

This doesn’t look to be the first case this has happened. Harry Potter and Ayn Rand books have been similarly disappeared.

Interestingly, it’s not clear that Amazon was even allowed to do this, based on its own rules.

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

And for those who take advantage of all those cool features the Kindle gives you?

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

Yeah, still an issue.

Shifting from Outlook to Google Mail (et al.)

As noted before, I signed up for a pilot in my company, evaluating GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Apps as potential replacements for Outlook and Office.

After much behind-the-scenes maneuvering about, the project team kicked off the pilot today with an hour-long presentation by Google.

Well, that was something of a waste, as I am already well-familiar with GMail and Google Calendar, and passingly familiar with Google Apps (though new to Google Sites). But the fact is, nobody (including Google) really thinks we’re going to give up Office for Google Apps (except for some extreme field setups, but that’s it). GMail and GCal, though — those remain possibilities.

So for me, I just wanted someone to walk me through (or point me at) the data conversion. Listening to the Google folks explain GMail worse than I could was just painful. Plus, unlike most software evaluations where we’re usually struggling with the vendor to give us more features than what they have, with Google we’re (officially) pushing back a bit to restrict this, that, and the other thing, based on Official Company Policy and Security Stuff and IT Dictates and the like.

*sigh*

After the presentation this morning, we were told we’d be sent something telling us about how to do the conversion. In the meantime, I verified that I could access my company GMail account. In order to keep it from interfering with my normal GMail login, I actually downloaded Chrome and am running the office stuff there, my home stuff in Firefox. And, as long as I can avoid it, nothing in IE.

Also while waiting, I started playing with GCal to be able to see my home calendars (mine, Margie’s, Katherine’s, and the Consortium). Now that’s integration, baby.

Finally got the documentation shortly before leaving the office. And I noticed that they had started mail forwarding from Exchange to my GMail account already. Woot!

The conversion doc basically pointed at two tools. The first is the Google Email Uploader. Woot! Where have you been all my live, baby? This is the tool I needed when I moved to GMail in the first place, as it can migrate stuff from Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird. In fact, using it, I plan to both migrate my old-old-old Thunderbird mail (thus letting me clean that off my hard drive) and (now that I am gradually getting Margie onto GMail) Margie’s mail, too.

Well, maybe. See, I had spent several hours yesterday and into last night cleaning my Outlook account to have just a few weeks of mail in it. That left me with a mere 2,000 messages or so to migrate. The uploader worked fine with an offline Outlook setup, by the way.

Still, with 2,000 messages, it took about three hours to migrate. I note that the Uploader told me I had about 60K messages in Thunderbird. Yikes. That’s a lot of uploading.

Nevertheless, the upload was successful and relatively painless. The Uploader optionally creates labels (tags) based on the folder in Outlook the message came from, which is handy as a foundation. I still had to create filters for each of the labels. That took quite a bit of time (as I have lots of folders / labels), and I’m sure it will be an ongoing process.

Contacts were brought over cleanly, too. Does make me wonder, though, about doing Christmas Card labels come December … 

The calendar conversion is separate from mail, and depends on my old bete noir, the Google Calendar Sync tool. It’s a bit better than the last time I struggled with it, though still a bit flaky for some private and repeating appointments.

One area of concern I had (and still have, some), is that my account in Google Apps is dave.hill@mycompany.com. But I’d already created, at one point, a calendar, etc., using that login name (and, in fact, it’s still out there). Fortunately, Google seems to be smart enough to distinguish between a private account by that name and a corporate / Google Apps account. In one case it’s warned me of the duplication, but let me proceed with the correct one. In other cases, it’s done just fine based on the password I’ve given it. In still others, it simply hasn’t made a difference.

The one case where it did was that I ran through a calendar sync … to the wrong dave.hill calendar. So I had to rerun that to the correct (corporate) one. And, as in previous iterations, it somehow doesn’t pick up a bunch of recurring meetings I’ve been invited to. Takes a comparison between the two systems to spot the deltas, to be followed by several emails to folks asking them to resend invites to stuff.

Meanwhile, the other twist in all of this is my Blackberry. I’ve had GMail on there previously … but how will the new arrangement work, esp. since I’ll be turning off BES pushing of Exchange stuff to the Blackberry mail and calendar?

Well, so far, so good. GMail on the BB has a pretty easy toggle between accounts, so I can shift between office and home email with just a few menu clicks. 

The calendar stuff is a bit more problematic — the out-of-the-box for GCal is a web setup that provides minimal functionality — a list of calendar entries for the next few days, plus a box to create a quickie new appointment. Pretty crude.

But there’s a recommended Google Sync for Mobile that will sync up my Google Calendar and Contacts to the actual Blackberry calendar and contacts info. Sweet, if it works properly. There is, supposedly, something similar (in beta) to sync between GMail and the BB’s mail app — but then you lose a lot of the keen GMail goodness (e.g., search), so no thanks.

There are things I already miss about Outlook. Among them:

  • Google is barely, barely getting into the Task list business. I will miss the Outlook task / to-do list functionality (though its translation onto the Blackberry sucketh mightily, making it less useful than it might have been) (though Google doesn’t even support any sort of task stuff on the BB).
  • GMail’s ability to provide customized (standard) formatting, vs. Outlook (both custom font setpus for messages as well as for the sig line) is pretty limited. So far as I can tell, you can have a standard sig line in any color you want as long as it’s black and Arial. Harrumph.
  • Our company’s 90-day email retention policy creates problems. In Outlook/Exchange I had a monthly ritual using MessageExport to pull email/attachments out that I wanted to save. I have a reputation for being the go-to guy for mail archives. Getting mail exported out of GMail, though, is a lot more problematic. I must ponder this.
  • I liked being able to color-code groups of calendar appointments (phonecons vs meetings, personal items, must-do items). GCal uses a single color (saving color differentials for other calendars you can view in parallel).

On the other hand, I’m finding the inclusion of GCal info on my GMail window and in invitations that I receive to be delightfully functional.

Overall, pretty darned happy about this, and looking forward to using it. My biggest concern at this point is that we’ll have to roll back to Outlook eventually …

Okay, can we borrow this from the Presbyterians?

(via Ginny)

Vacation and the Well-Connected Guy

Magic Kingdom 

We’re hopping in the car for the airport shortly, thence to Walt Disney World! Woot!

I’m not sure of what connectivity I’ll have there on my laptop (or how much I’ll be willing to pay for). But my plan is to use my Blackberry most of the time to get stuff onto my blog — for photos (via Flickr) and for text (via Twitter — or by email if need be). The Twitter part has some particular promise (and potential for annoyance to people who follow me by Twitter). 

We’ll see how it works (well, you will, too, I guess). See you (virtually) later!

Weight check, software changes, and zero-basing for the trip

Walking

: So I’m still doing the pedometer thing, “1500 Miles to Nowhere.”  I’m averaging about 4 miles/day, a scosh below where I need to get to hit the goal.

I’m zeroing out the pedometer this morning, and we’ll see what sort of walking we get done at Walt Disney World. If I’m diligent, I’ll take some daily notes, to see what sort of walking we’re doing at various parks.

Calories: So I’ve shifted everything over to using the LiveStrong.com site, which should work out well as a replacement for my beloved (but out-of-business and non-Blackberry-enabled BalanceLog).

I don’t care for the LiveStrong “Daily Plate” web interface (waaaaay too busy), but the database of food is pretty extensive and it has a spiffy BB tool that syncs up with it. I may be making a lot of use of that while at WDW, as I’m unclear what the WiFi situation is at the lodge (pretty certainly available, but not sure of the cost).

As part of my “transparency” initiative, I tracked at below max calories all week — sometimes significantly so. LiveStrong says I should be consuming 1,966 calories/day net in order to lose a pound a week. I’m doing a fair amount less than that. Hence …

Weight: It’s not the officially the end of the month, but as a base point before we head off to WDW, I’ve been below 200 for a week and a half now, and on Friday morning weighed in at 196.

We’ll see what life at the park is like. On the one hand, big meals and snacks. On the other hand, a lot of walking. It will be interesting. I’ll let you know next weekend (which is the end of the month).

Diet check

About 3300 calories (!) under for the week. Weight on Friday was 197 and change, which was pretty cool.

Doyce twittering about the Weight Watchers widget for Blackberries got me looking around for that sort of thing again, too. And I may have found what I was looking for: Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong site not only has a reasonably decent calorie/exercise tracker (Daily Plate), but it also has a Blackberry version that syncs (yay!) to the online system. That is so what I am looking for.

So I’ll be playing with it a bit more this week to see what I think of it. 

Tether restored. All hail the tether.

Okay, so, let’s face it — 5:25 a.m., with everyone in the house asleep, only a few minute before I have to leave to get to the train station this morning, and, honestly speaking, only half awake myself … well, it’s not the time to either think clearly, nor to tear the house apart. I tried texting my phone, I tried calling it, but didn’t hear anything, and that was all I had time for.

So I headed for the office, sans mobile. Which, given the amount of goofing off I do on it during the train ride, was annoying. Once at work, I sent a note to my directs, peers, and boss that my cell phone was being sequestered by gremlins, and did my job for the day.

Margie was working from home, and she looked around, but to no avail. She made the suggestion I might call my phone company to see if any calls had been placed with it, confirming that it had been stolen.

Me? I had one ace in hole. I knew I had put it back in my holster while walking back to the car at the train station. If not placed fully back in, it might have fallen out in the car. I’d looked in the car this morning, but only cursorally, looking to see if it was sitting on the seat. I hadn’t done a thorough job …

And, hey presto, there it was, slid cleanly to the left side of the driver’s seat, covered with seatbelt. Huzzah.

At last … my hip is complete again! 

Untethered

Somehow or another, my cell phone has gone missing. I’m pretty sure I had it at home last night, and my case is sitting empty on the breakfast table — and I would have noticed had I taken the case off my belt and it was empty.

But, mysteriously, no phone.

Which means no Google Reader work, or office email work, or home email work, or Twittering, or anything like that while I’m on the train ride home. Or at Katherine’s karate practice.

Irksome.

Leave a message at the tone?

Interesting article last week on voice mail and how it is steadily falling out of favor — and use — by all those young whipper-snappers out there.

Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication. Data from uReach Technologies, which operates the voice messaging systems of Verizon Wireless and other cellphone carriers, shows that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer and that more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them, said Saul Einbinder, senior vice president for marketing and business development for uReach, in an e-mail message.

I’ll note that the problem here may be folks who are, um, uncomfortable with the technology, don’t know how to check their voice mail, or aren’t in the habit of doing so. That’s as much a generational problem in the other direction. 

By contrast, 91 percent of people under 30 respond to text messages within an hour, and they are four times more likely to respond to texts than to voice messages within minutes, according to a 2008 study for Sprint conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation. Even adults 30 and older are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text than to a voice message, the study found.

There are no definitive studies of how many voice mail messages American leave compared with earlier periods, but if the technology is heading toward obsolescence — as many communication experts suspect — the trend is being driven by young people. Again and again, people under 25 recount returning calls from older colleagues and family members without bothering to listen to messages first. Thanks to cellphone technology, they can see who called and hit the Send button to reply without calling their voice mail box. “Didn’t you get my message?” parents ask. “No,” their children reply, “but I saw that you called.”

I’ve been known to do that, esp. when I think the message just says, “Hey, call me at ….” Which, in turn, discourages folks from leaving detailed messages and instead just leaving messages saying, “Hey, call me at ….” 

Jack Cathey, 20, a college student in Lewisburg, Tenn., said his parents and grandparents continued trying to leave him voice messages despite his objections. “Do you know your voice mail’s full?” a family member asked him recently, failing to comprehend that, for his generation, that might not be a problem.

This is pretty interesting stuff, both in private life and professional. 

  1. People may expect that a message is being heard when it isn’t. It’s tough playing telephone tag when one person doesn’t feel the touch (which some might consider a benefit, not a drawback).
  2. Voice is much slower and serial to listen to than text is to read and reread. It is also transitory — unlike IM logs, voice messages vanish quickly.
  3. Voice is much easier to use (albeit with delays for long greetings in voice mail), especially for folks with mobility or dexterity problems (who may not easily text on cell phones or even use a keyboard).

The complication is uncertainty of how to best reach (or be reached) by different people. Some colleagues always call my cell. Others IM me first. Still others try email; if it’s urgent, it goes to the cell. At home, most people use the land line, many catch me on email or GChat, but a few text my cell directly first. (So far, nobody is relying on direct messages in Twitter. Yet.)

Then there are boundaries. I have my (company) mobile number in my office voice mail for people to call “if it’s urgent.” I could add my email address, or even an IM addy — but not only does that mean that folks are going to be listening to a greeting longer, I’m not sure that I want most of the folks who call me to also be emailing me.

Yet many see the shift away from voice mail as part of a generational divide, in which younger people are substituting text for talk, while older folks yammer on. Text messaging has increased more than tenfold over the last three years, according to CTIA — the Wireless Association, the trade group representing the industry. Young people have overwhelmingly been the most enthusiastic adopters. According to Nielsen Mobile, users 13 to 17 now send or receive an average of 1,742 text messages a month, versus 231 cellphone calls, and they spend nearly the same amount of time on their phones texting as talking.

And, as a techie, I’m in an odd netherworld, much preferring text to voice communication, but still used to using voice with a lot of people.

For Charlie Park, 30, a Web developer in Williamsburg, Va., a text message is more efficient and — equally important — more respectful of the recipient’s time. “You never send an e-mail that says, ‘Hey, e-mail me back!’ You’re always sending information,” he said.

Will this settle out in a few years? Or is this an area where we’re going to have ongoing disruptions in communication as technology and fads have people trying in too many different ways to communicate? Are services going to start bridging some of these things, where people will have a single way to reach you, and you can (dynamically) determine how best to be contacted?

Interesting times ahead.

Why electronic books are not ready to play a big role in my life

De writes a fine review on the limitations (at present) of electronic books.

The revolution currently depends on getting people to read for entertainment on their computers, because the best traditionally-formatted self-published books can aspire to be is…books. And sitting in front of a computer gets old. I get my RDA of repetitive stress injuries at work, thanks. And Kindles are so meh.

It’s not that the book format is the ultimate format, but until the alternatives are better for me, why bother with meh?

The mighty book:

  • Does not require a power source except in instances where humans require power sources anyway (i.e., lighting, the ability to move).
  • Can be replaced cheaply if damaged (usually); thus, can be read in the bathtub.
  • Can be explored rather than searched for.
  • Can be interacted with physically (smelled, touched, listened to, riffled).
  • Can be collected.
  • Can be illustrated in color.
  • Can be loaned.
  • Can be borrowed.
  • Can be entrusted to a baby (board books, rubber books).
  • Can be produced in different sizes (comic books).
  • Can have a “total package” for marketing purposes – in fact, have covers for just this purpose.
  • Are reliable

De leaves one one aspect of conventional books that Kindles and the like cannot (as yet) match: ubiquity. I have books everywhere in the house. I have a book in my briefcase, one on the breakfast table by my computer, one in the bathroom, one in my closet, one on my nightstand, one in each of our cars. I may carry a given book I’m reading and really into to various places, but if I forget it, I can very easily just pick up one of the other ones I’m reading.

At the moment, I don’t think I can afford that many Kindles, esp. since I can’t easily have all my books available on each one. And being upstairs and realizing I left the Kindle downstairs, or off at work and realizing I left it at home, etc. … that’s just not fun times.

The only thing I carry around with me that reliably is, probably, my cell phone. But cell phones are too small a form factor for easy reading (at least as currently designed). And I can’t afford to carry around anything bigger than that.

Hmmm. Maybe if we had e-readers that tied into a heads-up display on my glasses …

But of course, the other limiting factor is what De also identifies. battery life.

I’m prepared to buy a cell phone when it’s my:

  • cell phone
  • laptop
  • e-reader (and can display graphic-novel-level illustrations)
  • music and video player
  • and I can throw it in my backpack for a month-long expedition into the desert, with a few stretches in the ocean, and not have to worry about how I’m going to charge the thing.

I can carry around a book indefinitely.

The people, the people are ready for a revolution. But the batteries, the batteries aren’t ready.

Yup.

But in ten years, we may all be singing a different tune.

Your Tech Tip for Today!

Your Tech Tip for Today! Cell phones actually ring much more loudly and reliably when they are not left in “silent” mode!

One ringy-dingy

I’ve had a problem for the last week with my Blackberry (Curve) simply … not answering calls. I could see (by the in/out signal icons) that it was detecting…

I’ve had a problem for the last week with my Blackberry (Curve) simply … not answering calls. I could see (by the in/out signal icons) that it was detecting something going on, and it would immediately give me a Missed Call message when it rolled to voice mail, but it would neither ring nor vibrate. (And, yes, I verified in the profile that it was not set to Do Not Disturb.) Which was rather embarrassing last week when I missed multiple calls from my boss because the phone was not ringing.

For my own future reference, I solved the problem by taking out the battery and SIM card for 10 seconds or so, then putting it all back together again. That forces the phone to go through a real boot-up sequence, which fixed whatever was causing it problems. Evidently this is not an uncommon problem, nor an uncommon solution.

Resetting an iPod

Recorded here so that I can find it in the future. We have an iPod Classic 80Gb, and it’s not uncommon for the eject sequence to not quite work from…

Recorded here so that I can find it in the future. We have an iPod Classic 80Gb, and it’s not uncommon for the eject sequence to not quite work from iTunes or the PC, resulting in a perpetual “Do not disconnect” message.

I’m told this works on more than just our model.

  1. Make sure the iPod switch is not on Hold.
  2. Hold the Select and Menu buttons down for 4-5 (or maybe 10) seconds.

Voila. Reboot.

More info, and for other models.

Potpourri for a late Tuesday night

BAIL-OUT TO NOWHERE! Disaster Capitalism – The key take-away from the discussion here is that this $700bn Bail-out to Nowhere was (it is claimed) not something slapped together as a panicky…

BAIL-OUT TO NOWHERE!

  1. Disaster Capitalism – The key take-away from the discussion here is that this $700bn Bail-out to Nowhere was (it is claimed) not something slapped together as a panicky response to the crisis, but a considered contingency plan that was analyzed and discussed and planned around for months now … but not among anyone who would have to, you know, actually approve the giant blank check. No, no, trust us, we’re from the Bush Administration, and we’re here to help.

DARK AND DREADFUL FORCES LURK!

  1. An Islamic assault on human rights – Ideological Authoritarians — religious or otherwise — are always willing to discuss freedom and liberty, but only in the context of their maintaining control over what is proper to talk about, express, dissent form, or live. Consider the unanimity of conservative Christians, Jews, and Muslims objecting to a gay rights parade in Jerusalem.   So that some Muslim clerics have cobbled together an alternative to the UN Bill of Human Rights is hardly surprising … what’s surprising is that other reactionary religionists haven’t jumped on the bandwagon to come up with their own self-serving definition of “rights” under religious law.
  2. The Religious Right’s Odd Definition of “Endorsement” – Despite claims that they were going to defy the IRS and its paltry “charities can’t be tax-exempt and still endorse candidates,” most of the Religious Right has made efforts to stay on the right side of the Revenooers … but aren’t letting that stop them from nudge-nudge wink-wink making it clear who they do endorse.
  3. Can “Showing Love” Be a Hate Crime? – I like the term “bias crime” better here, as calling this “hate” seems to assert motivation that’s not obvious. That said, I don’t think Jesus would approve (I don’t recall him defacing the Temple in Jerusalem, nor any Roman shrines), and the religionist yahoos who did this, for whatever reason, should be prosecuted to the full extent of college regulations.

AND NOW FOR A MUSICAL NUMBER!

  1. Colour me amused… … that the Proposition 8 forces in California are stymied because their lawn signs haven’t arrived yet … from China. Yes, it’s the All-American Traditional Values Coalition, buying their electioneering materials from the People’s Republic of China … where, by gosh and by golly, they know how to address taking away rights …
  2. Teaching Kids to Roleplay is Only Natural – Must … get … D&D game … with Katherine … restarted …
  3. School House Rock Election Edition Rediscovered – Katherine has gotten seriously into the Schoolhouse Rock, and we’ve been spending a lot of time singing the Preamble song (“We the People … in order to form a more perfect union …”).
  4. Get public transit directions in New York with Google… – We didn’t have a lot of problems maneuvering around Manhatten … but this is still cool.
  5. Mario’s Mistake – Ha! (And I say that as someone who’s developed a grudging respect for the TMNT cartoons — most of them, anyway.)

Ringtones

Doyce and Les both linked to this XKCD, which sent me to thinking about ringtones. My two cents: I’ll confess that I am not as purist and virtuous as…

Doyce and Les both linked to this XKCD, which sent me to thinking about ringtones. My two cents:

I’ll confess that I am not as purist and virtuous as the narrator of the cartoon. Nor am I the sort of person who tailors a different ringtone for each possible caller, or who blares out their favorite tune-the-week, regardless of its suitability as a ringtone.

Suitability Factors:

  1. It must be audible. No point in having a ringtone that’s too soft, mellow, or low volume to be heard.
  2. It must not destroy all conversation around it (that’s a matter of selection as well as volume).
  3. It must not (via lyrics) offend if inadvertently played in the workplace, church, your kid’s school, your folks’ house, etc. “I Want to Bump Nasties With You” is probably inappropriate.
  4. Some people who hear your ringtone probably react badly to some genres of music. That’s their problem, sure, but it also redounds to you. 

Indeed, on some level, ringtones are sort of like dress styles (and codes). They are a personal statement, sure, but they also draw a reaction as to both taste and propriety from those about you. After all, it’s not a ringtone going off just in your ear alone, but audibly to everyone around you. Personal taste needs to be tempered by the public intrusion.

Lyrics are dubious; either they are inaudible, or they make everyone stop to hear them.

It is suggested, but not required, to not choose the default ringtone on your phone, if only because when it goes off everyone else in the room will be fumbling for their purse / pocket / waist.

I’ve tended toward TV theme songs, usually with enough of a driving, insistent beat to provoke action (answer the phone, idiot!) while not being aesthetically objectionable, and trying to avoid ones that are too subtle or geeky. Currently I’m using the “prelude” music to BSG which fits most of my criteria (I think).

Using a “ringer” ringtone is a nice, retro idea, too. I might switch over to that once I get tired of what I currently have.

End of two cents.

 

Potpourri on a Dusty Tuesday

STUFF THAT MIGHT MAKE YOU FROWN Pentagon researcher unveils World of Warcraft terror… – Of course, terrorists could be plotting on Club Penguin, too … but that’s not scary enough. Scanners -…

STUFF THAT MIGHT MAKE YOU FROWN

    1. Pentagon researcher unveils World of Warcraft terror… – Of course, terrorists could be plotting on Club Penguin, too … but that’s not scary enough.
    2. Scanners – Yeah — wait’ll the TSA gets hold of these puppies. “Your brainwaves indicate you were intrigued by the idea of something happening to your plane. You are under arrest.”
    3. British study finds bacteria are all over your car… – Bacteria! Germs! Plague! Pestilence! Run! Run! Run!
    4. Nuclear power stations on the Moon? – Because nuclear power and the Moon never goes wrong.
    5. Reengineering Earth to stop climate change – Boing Boing – Because hugely elaborate engineering projects to pursue a particular macro environmental effect always work well (cf. Army Corps of Engineers).
    6. The Bubble – It’s remarkable that the Christian groups who want to keep any possibly unholy or belief-contradicting word away from themselves, their kids, their families — and, by extension, all the rest of us — are no better than any other media-controlling, information-restraining organization, such as the government of North Korea. Ah, but they’re not Saved …
    7. The short – but eventful – life of Ike – The Big Picture… – My company has both offices and project sites in and around Houston, so looking at the devastation in the area — and hearing about it from colleagues — has been amazing.

 

STUFF THAT WILL MAKE YOU SMILE!

  1. Official Google Mobile Blog: My Location: smaller is better! – The quasi-GPS abilities of some mobile phones and Google (triangulating location by cell tower reception) is actually pretty keen. I’ve made use of it on my Blackberry with Google Maps. If they’ve improved it further, that’d be keen.
  2. blog-a-dog humour special – Well, I thought it was funny.
  3. Star Trek Online is Game Informer’s October cover… – More news on the Star Trek MMO. I can’t decide if I am disdainful or intrigued.
  4. Phony Excellence – I enjoy good wine (and even not-so-good wine), but while I appreciate a large wine list, it’s hardly what drives me to a restaurant. This story is, though, quite amusing.

Potpourri on a lazy Friday night

WARNING! POLITICS! McCain Ad Is Valentine to Obama on Big Day – Well, at first, I was impressed that the McCain camp were gracious enough not to get all political on…

WARNING! POLITICS!

  1. McCain Ad Is Valentine to Obama on Big Day – Well, at first, I was impressed that the McCain camp were gracious enough not to get all political on the day of Obama’s big speech — and, in fact, were congratulatory towards it. Then I read M.S. Bellows, Jr.: Crazy McCain Flip Flops In Response… and realized that not everyone in the McCain campaign got the message.
  2. McCain Veep meltdown – he’s unqualified to serve – Is Palin as bad as all that? The more I read — pro-life, anti-gay, Young Earth Creationist … it does make me wonder. And Battered Base Syndrome makes me think that it might have been a serious strategic error beyond the obvious. We’ll seen.
  3. Obama’s Posse Heads Out For The Weekend [Party Unity… – Okay, it’s just plain fun.
  4. Watch politicians age – It’s hard to actually detect any aging in the series of photos … but it’s sort of mesmerizing to watch.

WHEW! POLITICS-FREE ZONE!

  1. Stardock proposes a “Gamer’s Bill of Rights” at PAX. – It’s inconceivable that this would get any significant traction, but it does enumerate some very legitimate gripes that gamers have toward a lot of gaming companies.
  2. Comcast limits customers to 250 gigs a month – I have no idea how much bandwidth I use, or how to find out. Hrm.
  3. The English language in 3000 AD – Wildly speculative, and fascinating for all of that.
  4. Photoblog devoted to century-old piccies – I love a lot of these photo sites. Beautiful Photography is focused on Siberian wooden houses. Bridges shows … well, some amazingly keen bridges.
  5. Fighting Zombies – I will give $500 to any accredited major network (cable or broadcast) journalist who asks Obama or McCain how the US armed forces would deal with a zombie outbreak.
  6. Your genes are not yours to know about – Thank goodness that the government, and doctors, know best.
  7. Plane evacuations – I always check out the closest exits. But I suspect I would be a bad evacuee and bring my notebook with me.
  8. What If the Kindle Succeeds? | Electronic Frontier… -The concerns raised in the article are why I haven’t gotten a Kindle. But that said, I think the day is finally getting closer.

GPS Evaluation

… or, “Sheila, Revisited”  So we (I) bought a portable GPS while in California, as I was fed up with a dearth of GPSes available from various car rental…

… or, “Sheila, Revisited” 

So we (I) bought a portable GPS while in California, as I was fed up with a dearth of GPSes available from various car rental companies out of San Jose. We picked up a Garmin nuvi 260w, which …

… doesn’t play music.
… doesn’t act as a wireless BlueTooth telephone receiver.
… doesn’t recommend places to eat.
… doesn’t automatically track traffic (for a hefty monthly fee).
… doesn’t hold, out of the box, street maps for the Seven Continents.
… doesn’t turn down my bed, toast my bread, or pick up my child from school.

But since that’s not what we were looking for from a GPS, that’s fine. Granted, all of those things do seem to be what everyone on the market is looking for, based on what the higher-end models provide. But … not us.

So, for $250 or so at Best Buy, we got a GPS that …

… has a wide screen.
… is portable, fitting pretty easily in a shirt pocket.
… has street maps and feature points for North America.
… speaks the names of cities and streets (sometimes with amusing results)
… does many different languages and three English accents (US/Canada, Australia, Britain) for both genders.
… knows how to find the nearest ARCO, Trader Joe’s, In-n-Out, or rest stop.
… knows how to guess ETAs (based on minimal traffic, but extrapolated as you start to be slowed down).
… tracks for trips average speeds, max speeds, stopped time vs running time, miles covered, etc.

And, by and large, it works.

Good points:

  1. It does all of the above.
  2. Battery life is actually very reasonable. On the drive down from NoCal, we did not use her continuously, but we did use her quite a bit, and the batteries lasted well. She comes with a car charger, and I bought a home charger as a separate item.

Bad points:

  1. Sometimes the pronunciation is a bit off (esp. when you choose the Aussie or Brit accent and then give it Spanish-based names or names with hard G’s — e.g., “Geyserville” was pronounced with a “Jee” at the beginning, and “In-n-Out Burger” was more like “merger”).
  2. The lack of traffic knowledge means that Sheila (our pet name for the standard Aussie voice) will gleefully send you down I-5 through LA and Orange Counties at rush hour. (On the other hand … hefty monthly fee on units that do have such knowledge; reasonable if your business requires it, superfluous if not.)
  3. Like most GPSes, she does run into problems losing satellite lock in tunnels, in skyscrapered cityscapes, or next to tall hills. She also occasionally gets confused as to which street you’re own when streets criss-cross in parallel. You get used to this quickly, though.
  4. The speaker is pretty good volume-wise (though an exterior volume dial would be nice, rather than menu/touch-screen driven). But it’s tinny, making the female voices much more practical.

Our current choice of voices are Sheila (Aussie), Sarah (English), and Suzie (American). We sometimes change between them, but Sheila’s voice carries best. There is also a very sexy (we are informed) French-Canadian Male voice, but he’s a bit harder for us to understand.

We found Sheila very handy in plotting out routes to places we didn’t know where to go, aside from an address. She was also great for spotting upcoming gas stations, specific stores, etc. 

We will probably not carry her with us in the car all the time, but any time we might have gone to MapQuest to print something out to take us somewhere, we’ll likely instead bring her along. And I’ll probably bring her on business trips, etc. We haven’t figured out if, or how, we’ll mount her in one car of the other, or if we’ll simply keep her loose and free (and slightly less convenient to use).

Supposedly Sheila lets you store pictures, convert currency, know what time it is around the world, etc., but we haven’t (and likely won’t) use those features.

Garmin provides updated atlases for $90. At first I thought this would be an infrequent (like every few years) purchase, but the Points-of-Interest database would seem the most time-sensitive, and has proven to be pretty useful, so we’ll see.

Overall: good purchase, glad we got it, and I’m sure we’ll get our money’s worth out of it.

Potpourri on a warm Monday night

The Good Font conference – This is just kinda good geeky font-loving fun. Popular boat names – Many boat names are imaginative. These are not. Art to last 10,000 years…

The Good

  1. Font conference – This is just kinda good geeky font-loving fun.
  2. Popular boat names – Many boat names are imaginative. These are not.
  3. Art to last 10,000 years – How do you make art that will last for a hundred centuries? it’s not easy.
  4. 1960s ad for rice – Mmmmm … rice.
  5. Seven Facts About Our Internal Body Clock | Newsweek… – Good to know.
  6. Free Realms: Free Realms – The Best MMO At E3? – Keeping my eyes on this one for Kitten.
  7. Radley Balko: A Few Questions for Barack Obama – As much as I am an Obama supporter, I think these questions are perfectly legit.
  8. Obama on Firewalling Time to Think – On the other hand … fatigue means mistakes, great and small. We can’t afford that with a president.
  9. Freakazoid on DVD — yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! – Yes!
  10. A Safer Gmail With Https – Seriously considering this.
  11. …because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely. – Hearts! Brains!
  12. PRELUDIUM: All I want for Christmas is two tablets… – I would so accept these as a gift.
  13. The Sarah Jane Adventures DVD news: Announcement for… – I enjoyed the ones of these I watched, and I think Katherine would enjoy them, too. DVD set sounds like a fine idea.

The Bad

  1. Respectful Insolence: Oh no! My cell phone’s going… … to kill you? No, really … it’s not.
  2. The Hoax Photo Database – Always useful to know.
  3. A Tale of Two Press Biases – This actually makes sense. Yes, the McCain camp is correct that Obama gets a lot more press coverage. Yes, the Obama camp is correct that McCain gets pass after pass on his gaffes and inconsistencies.
  4. Fox TV news anchors enjoy plastic coffee – To go with their content-free news.

The Ugly

  1. Elderly woman prohibited from photographing empty… – I feel safer knowing that elderly women photographing empty playgrounds are being forbidden from doing so because they may actually be pedophiles. Yup!
  2. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Of all the stupid policies whose time has come and gone …
  3. Brides demand breast-surgery for their bridesmaids – Mercifully, most bridesmaids are rejecting this particular insanity.
  4. MPAA wants to randomly break your home theater depending… – Because I want Paramount and Sony deciding which pieces of my home theater should be able to interact with their content. Right.
  5. Why is the TSA taking out nipple rings and pantsing… – Why? Because they can.
  6. Report: Former Justice Department officials broke… and Report confirms politicization of the Justice Department. – It’s not so much that there was at least some political bias in the selection of federal prosecutors and immigration judges. I mean, that sort of thing just tends to happen. My objection is that it was so shameless and blatant and stupid, with no pretense as to trying to do the right thing. 
  7. John McCain tries very hard not to answer question… and McCain Caves To Right Wing On Gay Adoption, Says Orphans… – It’s unclear in this coverage whether McCain is trying to maneuver away from an impolitic answer, is trying to pander to too many constituencies, or is just too confused about his own stand on the subject to be coherent. None of these is a good thing.