Ramblings Of An Old Geek

So the other day I was reading the Evernote blog and saw this really cool program called Nozbe which is a web based application that is a full blown implementation of GTD.   One of the best I’ve ever seen so I signed up for the trial account. Since it is a freemium service, you need to go to a paid account to unlock additional features.  I always look at these web based companies before I give them my money and found that Nozbe is based in Poland.  I know that Poland is not normally a country that is full of hackers, but I worry about giving my financial info to a company that far away.   So I canceled my account and moved on.

I came across this the other day when I was doing my daily reading of blogs. This is a great article on how to protect yourself if you use Google services:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-and-google-apps-hacked/11799/

Several years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.  I started reading the book on business trips and frequently remember having several people staring at me in airports as I was laughing hysterically.

I read all four books in the trilogy (Douglas used to joke about this); “The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe”, “Life, The Universe And Everything”, and “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish”.  I couldn’t put them down.

Douglas left the earth early in May of 2001, he was 49.  A couple of years before that, he wrote a marvelous essay on the subject “How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet“.   This essay is 10 years old and still makes sense today.  Take some time and read it, but also go out and get yourself a copy of the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and let me know if you laughed at the same things I did.

Later,
matt

I spent a good part of the day a couple of weeks ago at a local event where various companies such as Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc. talk about what they are up to and what they will be releasing in the next few months.   It doesn’t seem that there is any next big thing on the horizon that we can get excited about.   Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of cool little things, but no OMG moments.

What is a big thing?  I remember back to windows 1.0 (I AM the old geek) and how that was an OMG moment.   I even remember the first Mac and how that was an OMG moment.  Windows 95 had that feeling after running 3.1 all of those years.  And how about Cello after all of the time spent in gopher?

We really don’t have any next big technology market turning events on the horizon.   I don’t think it is the economy, but everyone likes to blame anything negative on it’s state.

later,
matt

There are many options to adding an iPod to a mini.   The most expensive way is to install the iPod kit from mini for several hundred dollars.   That wasn’t an option for me.

The mini car stereo has an aux input which allows for direct connection of the iPod to the car .  I could have gone simple with just a male to male cable but that wouldn’t have charged the iPod as well.

My first attempt was with the Griffin Tuneflex Aux.   What a miserable product this is.   After a week it could not hold the iPod up straight and after a month, the left channel disappeared.   Run away from this guy!

So a few weeks ago I bought a Monster iCarCharger 1000 for iPod and iPhone so far I’ve been really happy with this device.   I’ve tried it in a couple of cars now and the only problem I can see with it is that I cannot figure out how to adjust the output level.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how this turns out.   If you have any suggestions for me, please let me know.

Thanks,
matt

I’ve been an avid iphone user for over a year now and always have 10 pages of apps on my phone.   I find that unless you download and try them, you have a hard time finding the really good ones.   Here are a few of my often used favorites:

Amazon Mobile

This is an incredible application.   I was doing some shopping last weekend at Cabelas and ran across a lock you could use to secure the tailgate on a pickup.  I took a photo of the lock in the Amazon app and in about 5 minutes, a person at Amazon looked it up and presented it in the app with pricing (10 dollars cheaper).   If I so desired I could have clicked on the item and ordered it.  This is wild; expect merchants to start banning smartphones in their stores very soon.  By the way, it’s free.

Evernote

Where would I be without Evernote?  I have mentioned this before here on my blog, but Evernote is one of the very best note taking applications ever written.   One of the coolest things it does is support multiple platforms; you can write a note on your iphone and then modify it on your Mac or PC in a native client or even on your Linux box using the web interface.   Absolutely amazing and it’s free.

Facebook

Okay, we all have to have guitly pleasures and Facebook is mine.   I’ve connected with several old high school friends and keep in touch with my current friends vis this application.   The iphone version is very well done and allows mobile uploads of pictures you may take with the iphone camera and it’s free.

Tweetie

If you use Twitter, this is becoming the standard for iphone Twitter apps.  It has every feature you may need including automating the mobile picture upload process.   It is $2.99.

Maps  (Google Maps)

I know that this is a native iphone app, but it is still one of my absolute favorites.   And they have enhanced it on the 3GS phone with compass integration so you can turn your phone and the maps will orient correctly based on your position.  Very cool.

Accuweather (webapp)

The iphone has spawned a whole new class of web based applications that are build to function and look good on the iphone.  One of my favorite ones is Accuweather.  It has a really nice interface for radar and long range forecasts.

Craigsphone

Craigslist has built a klunky yet usable iphone application for searching their site.  It has few issues, but all in all it makes the process fairly painless.  It is free.

Sportacular

This app was one of the first real time sports score reporting applications for the iphone and I am still using it today.   It provides updates for all major sports including pro and college.  It is free.

7 Chords

This has been a guitar playing lifesaver for me.  It has about every chord you can physically play on the guitar listed with easy lookup.   I’ve tried a bunch of these iphone apps and this is my favorite.  It is $1.99 and is well worth it.

1 Password

Now if you are not a Mac user you may not be excited about this application but if you are, it is one of the very best password vault applications I have ever used.  It does a great job of syncing your passwords between your mac and iphone as well as even completing web forms on the iphone with the passwords.  It is $4.99 on the iphone, and $39.95 on the mac.

Later,
matt

Very rarely do I run across some new technology that I can recommend to my friends without any worries and I know it will make them happy.

That is the experience I have had with Eye-Fi. My son was getting married a couple of months ago and I needed a new SD memory card for my camera. I’ve heard about the Eye-Fi card and I really didn’t believe it could do what it’s advertising promised, but I thought now would be a good time to try. It ended up being absolutely amazing!

This card actually uses your or any other configured wifi network to upload the pictures stored on it to your favorite web picture site (Fotki, Shutterfly, dotPhoto, webshots, phanfare, Picasa Web albums, flickr, TypePad, Wal-Mart, snapfish, VOX, smugmug, facebook, photobucket, Kodak Gallery, and Sharpcast). It can also use it’s built-in wireless to use a wireless network to upload to your laptop or PC if you so desire.

A funny experience I had the first time I used the card happened on my son’s wedding day. The girls were getting their hair done upstairs at my house and I thought it would be cool to get pictures. I gave my wife my camera with the Eye-Fi card installed and off she went. I was sitting in the den on my laptop watching the pictures magically appear on my Picasa site. It blew me away.

So if you have a digital camera that uses an SD card; run, don’t walk and go get one of these cards.   You can find the one I bought on Amazon Eye-Fi Share Wi-Fi Wireless 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-2GB

Later,
matt

Last Saturday in a bit of geek hastiness, I went and upgraded my iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS.  Why did I do it?  Well, my son was looking at buying an iPhone and this gave me a good excuse to upgrade and I am a geek .  I didn’t have to wait in line at the Apple store for two hours like last year, only about 45 minutes this time.   I think it took that long because the store wasn’t dedicated to just selling phones like they did before.

Things you notice right away with this iPhone is it is truly faster.  Much faster.   No more lags when launching apps and even surfing the web seems faster.  Email, everything, is much faster.

But the camera is why you will want the upgrade; it is great.  I finally have a nice slim auto focus still and movie camera in my pocket.  My normal camera is a Canon Powershot SD that I have almost worn out and the pictures I get out of the iPhone are pretty good compared to the Canon.  I may not even carry the Canon anymore.

Voice control is wild as well.   My old Kryocea palm phone had voice dialing but the iPhone has voice commands; you can tell it “play songs by alison kraus” and off it goes playing those songs.   Real cool.

But the biggest hangup I have (pardon the pun) is the way AT&T is so sloooowww to adopt the new phone features.   This phone has MMS, but AT&T won’t commit to it till the fall.   This phone supports tethering, but AT&T just says they plan on supporting it.  Thank God that the Apple-AT&T exclusive arrangement is over next year because we all know that competition is a good thing!

Later,
matt