My Mobile / PDA / eReader / tablet 9

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

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 – How do you make art that will last for a hundred centuries? it’s not easy.
1960s ad for rice – Mmmmm … rice.
Seven Facts About Our Internal Body Clock | Newsweek… – Good to know.
Free Realms: Free Realms – The Best MMO At E3? – Keeping my eyes on this one for Kitten.
Radley Balko: A Few Questions for Barack Obama – As much as I am an Obama supporter, I think these questions are perfectly legit.
Obama on Firewalling Time to Think – On the other hand … fatigue means mistakes, great and small. We can’t afford that with a president.
Freakazoid on DVD — yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! – Yes!
A Safer Gmail With Https – Seriously considering this.
…because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely. – Hearts! Brains!
PRELUDIUM: All I want for Christmas is two tablets… – I would so accept these as a gift.
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

Respectful Insolence: Oh no! My cell phone’s going… … to kill you? No, really … it’s not.
The Hoax Photo Database – Always useful to know.
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.
Fox TV news anchors enjoy plastic coffee – To go with their content-free news.

The Ugly

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!
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Of all the stupid policies whose time has come and gone …
Brides demand breast-surgery for their bridesmaids – Mercifully, most bridesmaids are rejecting this particular insanity.
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.
Why is the TSA taking out nipple rings and pantsing… – Why? Because they can.
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.
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.

Ping!

With my old Blackberry, I had P1 messages being signaled with a bell, so that whenever an e-mail came in from my boss, it would ring. I soon got…

With my old Blackberry, I had P1 messages being signaled with a bell, so that whenever an e-mail came in from my boss, it would ring. I soon got to where I was dreading the “gong of doom.”

So with my new one, I changed it to a sonar ping sound (it’s a “ping,” get it?). It seemed like a calmer sound, no Pavlovian twitch when the bell rang.

Only now I feel like I’m in Run Silent, Run Deep, trapped in a submarine below, hearing the destroyer criss-crossing above, searching for me on sonar, readying the depth charges …

It’s been a long week. 🙂

Back in business

Got my replacement Curve, so I’ve yanked the SIM chip out of my loaner model and gotten my new one more or less back up and running. Yay! (And…

Got my replacement Curve, so I’ve yanked the SIM chip out of my loaner model and gotten my new one more or less back up and running. Yay!

(And only posting this with a picture of the other phone to Prove That Works. Yay.)

Re-tethered

Got a substitute Blackberry while my Curve is being replaced — expect it some time Tuesday or so. The new one is an older, clunkier model, and I don’t know…

Got a substitute Blackberry while my Curve is being replaced — expect it some time Tuesday or so. The new one is an older, clunkier model, and I don’t know if all the BB bits will work — but at least I’ll have a cell phone on me.

UPDATE: It appears at least the standard Outlook integration stuff is in place. Some of the extra bits aren’t — I’ll have to see what I want to actually tailor on a temporary system.

Down side — looks more like it will be Friday before the replacement Curve gets here.

Another downside — changing from using the Curve pearl/trackball to using the traditional trackwheel and button. (And then, of course, changing back.)

But upside — I can make (and receive) cell calls. Yay!

Back at home

After a whirlwind three-day-ish tour of New York City, we’re back home. I have a ton of pictures to finish labeling — and, of course, a ton of mail in…

After a whirlwind three-day-ish tour of New York City, we’re back home. I have a ton of pictures to finish labeling — and, of course, a ton of mail in my in-box. I also have to get my Blackberry fixed or replaced. That latter is the real PitA right now.

More as I get word in edgewise.

Sync Sink

Ran across a reference to a new tool from Google, Sync for Mobile, which lets you sync your Google Calendars with your Blackberry calendar. So I start pondering this as a…

Ran across a reference to a new tool from Google, Sync for Mobile, which lets you sync your Google Calendars with your Blackberry calendar.

So I start pondering this as a way to get my work Exchange calendar synced onto a Google Calendar, which would make keeping track of items there a *lot* easier than either firing up Outlook outside of working hours or poking through my Blackberry to look at it.

Alas, after reviewing the help forums, it looks like it’s not quite ready for this setup. In particular, there are issues with synchronizing to GCals other than the default (which is not what I want, even as an initial step), and there are even more serious problems with GSync deleting old events on the BB (and recurring ones more than 6 months out), which then Exchange treats as deleted, too. Yikes.

So … maybe something to wait for a while before installing.

Keeping me smiling

My phone’s desktop, taken at the Botanic Garden last weekend. Keeps a smile on my face and gives me something to brag about….

My phone’s desktop, taken at the Botanic Garden last weekend. Keeps a smile on my face and gives me something to brag about.

Jott!

Okay, this is either going to be really useful, or one more way of cluttering up my life. Jott is an online service that (in its simplest form) lets you…

Okay, this is either going to be really useful, or one more way of cluttering up my life. Jott is an online service that (in its simplest form) lets you call their number, dictate up to a 30 second message, then forward that message (as text) to an e-mail or SMS address. It serves as a cross between scribbling notes on paper and stuffing them in your pocket and carrying around one of those little mini-recorders to dictate notes (and it does the transcription for you).

You can also set up Jott to send messages to others (Margie: “It had better not be ‘be sure and pick up the milk’ kind of messages”) or even to various services — there are options to Jott messages to Google Calendar, Blogger, and a host of other sites and services.

For my purposes, this lets me use Gmail as a To Do list. I can send Jotts to it (via a speed dial on my cell phone), create a filter/label so that they all bundle together, etc. I’m playing with it right now, but even as a remote note taking tool, I can see the value.

At the moment, it is free (in beta).

(via PC World)

Untethered

A few weeks back, realizing I was going out of the country, and that another guy in my company had done so recently and discovered his Blackberry was not configured…

A few weeks back, realizing I was going out of the country, and that another guy in my company had done so recently and discovered his Blackberry was not configured for international calling, I asked our telcomm folks to make sure that my BB would work while I was in Europe.

Thursday or so, I realized that my BB wasn’t connecting to the BES server (which provides all its data network connectivity). So, no Outlook mail, no Google Chat, no browsing, etc. Hrm.

Turns out now that, in turning on International Services, they managed to unplug the data services. Oops! And so the techs have my phone to get it working again, and I am wandering about with a curious lack of weight against my left hip …

If there’s an outage and you don’t notice, was it really an outage?

Apparently I missed the Great Blackberry Outage of 2008. One of the advantages of being sick, I guess….

Apparently I missed the Great Blackberry Outage of 2008. One of the advantages of being sick, I guess.

Mobile browser goodness

I’ve been very happy with Opera Mobile on my Blackberry — it stands head-and-shoulders above the two browsers that came packaged with my Curve. And a bit of fun news is…

I’ve been very happy with Opera Mobile on my Blackberry — it stands head-and-shoulders above the two browsers that came packaged with my Curve.

And a bit of fun news is the announcement of Opera Mobile 9.5 real soon now. And, of course, Firefox Mobile is due to come out later this year.

Mobile browsing is never as fun or easy as PC-based — but it is, of course, well, mobile, and anything that can make it easier is a definite good thing.

Intextication

Why you shouldn’t text and drive. Yes, you do get distracted, more than you think. Yeah, I know, sounds like a no-brainer. But, y’know, you get that little beep on…

Why you shouldn’t text and drive. Yes, you do get distracted, more than you think.

Yeah, I know, sounds like a no-brainer. But, y’know, you get that little beep on the mobile, you think, “Hey, I can type out a few letters and hit enter,” and it’s easy to do. And, really, the only problems come when something unexpected happens — like a signal changing, someone swerving into your lane, etc.

Which happened to me yesterday. Some idjit started pulling right into me. She was slightly ahead, so I could see her (and slam on the horn when I realized what was happening). If I had been texting, or otherwise distracted — she would have hit me, and I would have been bumped into the center median … at best.

Not worth it.

Blogging categories

Unlike all the Cool Kids, I’ve never gotten down with using Tags for my blog entries. I don’t trust myself enough to tag things consistently, frankly. So I use categories…

Unlike all the Cool Kids, I’ve never gotten down with using Tags for my blog entries. I don’t trust myself enough to tag things consistently, frankly. So I use categories to group things together for those times I want to review a subject (vs. searching for individual posts).

I’ve added a bunch of new subcategories today for several categories that had grown unwieldingly large. In most cases, these were categories I’d been pondering for a while, but which I finally got around to building. I’ve done them as subcategories of the parent categories I’m trying to break up.

Now, in theory, I should go back through those parent categories and reassign things appropriately. Alas, with over 12,000 entries, that’s a herculean job that I’m saving for when I have a week with nothing else to do. Perhaps when retire …

So for the most part these categories are starting off as stubs that will build from this point, with possible backfilling if I reference back to an earlier post. Let’s see how that works for now; in another 12,000 posts, nobody will remember the difference.

Sub-categories being added:

Blogging – Technical (to track posts about MT and technical issues with my blog, vs. other general Blogging subjects)
Family (broken out from Personal)
Health – Science (to distinguish from “I am down with the grippe” Health posts)
Media – Art (to make various reference to the Tate Modern, etc.)
Media – Sports (for the occasional obligatory sports post)
My Mobile / PDA (for stuff having to do with cell phones and PDAs and combos thereof)
Religion – Episcopal Church (broken out from the general Religion category)
Religion – My Parish (my local church activities)
Religion – Me (my own musings on the subject)

And I’m doing this post as much to note these changes as “starter” posts for those new subcategories than as anything I figure anyone would be interested in actually reading. We now resume my regular blather, normally scheduled for this time.

And the Kitchen Sync

Okay, I have a Palm. And a Motorola V.60t cell phone. What I really want is to be able to beam my phone numbers from my Palm to my Motorola,…

Okay, I have a Palm. And a Motorola V.60t cell phone.

What I really want is to be able to beam my phone numbers from my Palm to my Motorola, so I don’t have to re-enter them.

And according to one scrap of paper I can find in the Motorola box, there is a connectivity kit between the V.60 series and the Palm.

But what I got/can get instead is Starfish TrueSync software. This allows me to sync between my Palm, Outlook on my desktop, and my phone.

Which is great except …

It’s slower than molasses.
Outlook’s latest security patch now force me to manually allow programs access to my mail system for X minutes, which dialog does not automatically pop up to the top (this is a problem with the normal Palm sync, and now even more with TrueSync).
I inadvertently synced my calendar to my phone, which I did not want to do.
Various synchronizing incompatabilities keep creeping in.

I think it will still work, at least until I get an answer from Motorola about the direct Palm connection. But it’s going to be a pain in the patootie.