Just as I was reminiscing about the good ol' times of Web 1.0, Yahoo Chat, my email pen pals, and all the new people I met online as I entered college, here's another service that is biting the dust: Geocities.

Way back when, before I paid for my own website, I designed and published my website on Geocities. The URL was somewhat obscure like geocities.com/starTrek/Sector/7440/username. You essentially picked a town, a neighborhood and a street address and that's how your URL was determined (sadly I can't find backups of my website on archive.org)

As...the good ol' days of Club Admiralty version 1.0...

I haven't used Geocities since I got my own web hosting, but the service will be missed.

Tags: technology, personal, yahoo, geocities

Here's an interesting thought. Back in the early days of the internet, when Joe Shmoe wanted to have an internet presence, he needed to code in HTML, get some web space and have his website hosted. As that average Joe, I created my site first with Geocities's site builder, then through HTML, and eventually through RapidWeaver.

Of course the question now is do we need to spend money on a hosting service? Blogs can be had freely through services like blogger, wordpress, and vox. Without much fuss you can share your photos for free on flickr, you can share your files for free on Box.net, and you can add your microblogging status on your blog's page through twitter.

Was there something else I didn't cover? Now granted, having a provider that gives me a free domain, wordpress, plus PHP/MySQL webspace for $180/3 years is a pretty good deal, but it just dawned on me that I could give it all up, pay $20/year for a domain, and have my wordpress blog be the "homepage" and links on the sidebar can contain the rest of my content. I guess it's easier than ever for the layman to express himself online these days.

Tags: random, technology

I saw this on slashdot the other day

It's more than 10 years since people started making a living writing web page markup, yet the job title (and role) has yet to settle down. Not only that, but there are different types of people who write markup: those that approach the craft as essentially an integration task, and those that see it as part of UI design overall. The situation is further complicated by the existence of other roles in the workplace such as graphic designer and information architect. This is making recruitment for this role a real headache. So, how do you describe people who 'do HTML' (and CSS and maybe a bit of JavaScript and graphics manipulation)? Some job titles I've seen include: Design Technologist, Web Developer, Front-end Developer, HTML/CSS Developer, Client-side Developer and UI Engineer. Do you have any favourite job titles for this role?

So what do you call someone who does this? I always called them web developers simply because about ten (eleven? twelve?) years ago was when I first started this website and I didn't have a title (well I wasn't getting paid either). I called myself a geek, a web-enthusiast and a webmaster (since I mastered my own website I guess). But what do you call it when you do it for other people and you don't dabble in .NET or PHP, when you do old school HTML?

Tags: technology, work, HTML, coding

I was reading an article on Engadget a while back that said that the Sony MYLO is only available in refurbished form. I am wondering is Sony is going to just axe the line, or if they are going to really put some umph behind it, rework the OS, make it more developer friendly and add GSM/HSPA in it!


There is certainly precedent for this. Nokia is taking their Internet Tablet and it adding cell radios in them and reworking their capabilities. Microsoft is working on their SidekickOS now, and Apple is moving a step closer to the internet tablet model. Not to mention that things don't seem to be honkey dorey with Sony and Ericsson's partnership!


So does this mean the emergence of the PSP phone? Might be!!!!

Tags: technology, sony, mylo, Phones

I love old formats, but unfortunately data rot does set in

I guess I am an archivist at heart

CD's are only reliable up to 5 years? I guess I need to get some external Hard Drives!



Watch CBS Videos Online

Tags: technology, media, preservation

Well, do you flutter?

Tags: technology, humor, video

Well, a week or so ago Apple had their special event (sans-steve) to announce iPhone 3.0 OS. The good news is that this software release bring the iPhone up to speed, where it should have been on launch day!

Yes, some of these features like copy/paste, MMS, and push notifications have been asked for by the community, but others like GPS, peer-to-peer connectivity landscape keyboard and voice-memos seem like a "d'uh" to me.

So the good news is that we are now where we should have been to begin with (with the exception of full bluetooth, but anyway). Some people may bemoan that fact that as a platform the iPhone is behind other platforms. I personally don't think so - and that's the other set of good news.

Windows Mobile is aging. It's going to be a while before Windows Mobile 7 comes out to blow us all away.

WebOS and the Palm Pre are still being developed, nothing is on the market yet.

Blackberry is trying to figure out where it's going on the consumer front. Applications aren't completely there, and the Storm is a bit of a flop

The Symbian foundation has yet to launch their OS, and Nokia is trying to figure out S60 Touch.

Microsoft with Sidekick...well, I am not sure where that's going (I am wishing for some interesting developments though).

So that leaves us with a level playing field. Right now it's a mad dash to the next big thing with integrated mobile chat and unified messengers, and integration with the could (see the iphone blog link).

Keep your eyes peeled, this should be an interesting race to watch.




For more commentary, if you haven't seen it yet:

TUAW: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/17/iphone-3-0-feature-roundup/
The iPhone Blog: http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/03/17/iphone-os-30/

Tags: technology, apple, iPhone

at&t announced this week that they will be selling contract free iPhones,s o people can pay full fare ($700 for a 16GB iPhone) to get it without a two year commitment.

Seriously though, what's the point? You can't unlock it for use with other carriers and you still have to pay at&t the mandatory $30/month for data. The reasons to buy an iPhone SIM-free (or contract-free) are essentially nullified.

Way to make something out of nothing

Tags: technology, apple, att

Well, Nokia decided to pull the plug on MOSH. I can't say I blame them, the name was kinda silly to begin with (Mobilize and Share?! Seriously?) and from all reports it was littered with pr0n and w@rez.

I have a MOSH account but I got it to mostly check things out. There were a number of interesting games on there, free, but I guess they were warez and I didn't really catch on to that fact.

I think that with Ovi being launched, it provides Nokia with a better environment to not only provide new services, but also encapsulate the youtube/flickr/box.net aspect of MOSH into Ovi into one unified service.

Tags: technology, defunct

Well, another venerable web 2.0 service has bitten the dust.

I got an email this week that furl is being absorbed by diigo.

Honestly I didn't use furl that often. I signed up to test it out and then decided to go with delicious instead.

Oh well...

Tags: technology, defunct

I was catching up on news the other day, listening to the Engadget podcast, and I heard a reference to the eee Keyboard (or eeek! keyboard - OK bad pun). Anyway. I saw this and it reminded me of those all-in-one Amiga and Atari computer of the mid-to-late nineties. You remember the ones, the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 1200 that you just plugged into your television and off you went.


Those were the days... of course there is no floppy disk drive in the eee Keyboard, unlike those Amiga models, but everything else is there


I wonder if I can run a full speed amiga emulator on this computer and relive the days of Impossible Mission, The Chaos Engine and Eye of the Beholder

http://gizmodo.com/5124985/eee-keyboard-an-entire-touchscreen-home-theater-pc

Tags: technology, amiga, keyboard, eeePC

In the past I've experimented with many blogging platforms. I've used blogger for a long time, and wordpress too! I've experiemented with LiveJournal which isn't really my cup of tea, and recently I've tried Vox, which is nice but can't really import my posts from other platforms.

I've been looking to consolidate some of my blogs where I don't post as frequently with my main CA blog (what you are reading now), but I've been experiencing some issues.

I would like to be able :
to easily intergrate the blog with my rapidweaver site,
to easily take my categories and tags and easily import them
to easily take my existing posts and import them
to maintain images and formatting of my current posts

I know that there is a WordPress way of integrating a WP blog with Rapidweaver but it seems like it's too much work. The blogger plugin for Rapidweaver only takes categories and not tags.

I guess this is more or less a summer project (or a project for when I graduate and have more time).


Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Tags: blogs, technology, opinion

I enjoy finding cool mods for computers, be they Mac or PC.


I cam across this mod a few weeks back. Having used Apple ][ and Apple IIgs computers back in the day I thought that this was pretty cool!


There is just one problem with it, no access to ports! The mac mini appears to just be stuffed in the casing on an Apple ][ disk drive. There appears to be no effort in making the ports in the back of the Mac (USB and Firewire ports for instance) usable.


Good try though!


Now if we could only cram an iMac into an Apple IIgs casing...or into the 20th Anniversary Mac casing

Tags: technology, apple, appleII, macintosh, modification

I've added a number of podcasts to my RSS reader in iTunes. When possible, I try to get enhanced podcasts so that I can get the 'chapter' option that enhanced podcasts offer.

In the past five years I've grown to really like to listen to a number of people because of the news, insights and opinions that they provide. Of course, just like a newspaper, I don't want to listen to every topic that someone podcasts about, like things in the "news" section of podcasts because chances are that I've already listened to straight news about that industry that week.

One of my frustrations on the 2 hour long podcasts is that I don't have the option to look at the chapters, see the topics and then pick which chapter I would like to listen to based on the chapter's topic.

Most of these podcasts are post processed by audio engineers so why not create an AAC edition with chapters? This would be useful not only for joe-average, but also for people in education that want to use podcasts but want to skip to a particular section.

Tags: technology, podcasts, entertainment, education

One of my RSS feeds deals with all of the free apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Initially I looked at every app just in case there was something I wanted, but now this whole "FREE" and "LITE" bullcrap is driving me nuts.

Apple claims that there are a gazzilion apps on the app store. OK smartypants, how many of those apps are "FREE" or "LITE"...in other words DEMO versions of full apps? How many of them are useless fart apps?

When I see "FREE" next to an app, I ASSUME that it is free, as in "a free, fully featured app" not "a free demo".

I would seriously like to see *real* free apps, not just a boatload of //free demos//

Thus ends my rant for today

Tags: technology, apple, itunes, applications, rant, iPhone

A lot of people will consider what I am writing as heresy, but I do think that people should retire some of their blogs if they have multiple blogs going. In the past month a retired my two year old blog called Ενα μηλο την ημέρα (an apple a day) which is a Greek blog on Apple related news and tech. I also retired my first Greek blog called Είμαι φοβερός και το ξέρεις which I've had for five years now.

Now why retire those blogs? or any blog for that matter. For me it was both a maintenance issue, and and issue of inspiration. While I still do like (almost) all things Apple, I have neither the necessary income to buy cool new things, nor the time to test them out. Therefore the lack of content really killed this blog. Of course there's opinion and conjecture, but then you're a person on a soap box. This doesn't always build community, and one of the reasons to have a blog (other than telling people your opinion about things) is to find like minded individuals.

On the maintenance side, having four fully fledged blogs means a lot of writing, and when inspiration is an issue, maintenance becomes an issue too. One of the things that brings people back to your blogs (in addition to quality content) is the concepts of συνέχεια and συνέπια as an acquaintance of mine says. I guess I would explain these two words as continuity (συνέχεια )- do you add blog posts, and frequency (συνέπια ) - how often are these posts available. Do you post once a day? Once a week? Once a month?

With this blog, there is no issue of either. I write about video games, movies, television, school, books, personal stuff and work sometimes. There is always something to say. Both of my now retired blogs were thematic in nature and thus even though there was continuity, there wasn't always frequency - thus the audience isn't always there. So why throw out your opinion if you are not going to have someone respond back to you every now and then?

So using the rubrics of συνέχεια and συνέπια, blogs should eventually be pruned. Don't delete them, keep them in your archives, but do make it a point to retire them. Like a book, a thematic blog can have a good end.

Tags: technology, blog, opinion, thoughts

Here's and interesting (short) animated documentary on the history of the internet.

For most geeks among us this is common knowledge, but it's a good video to get those among us who don't know much about the origins of the internet up to speed

Tags: technology, history, internet, video

One more service to bite the dust - Yahoo! Briefcase

I started using it when it first came out but in recent years it's taken a back seat and I started using box.net, iDisk and google docs for the various cloud-drive requirements.

Tags: technology, yahoo, rip

It's funny to think that my PowerBook G4 is now obsolete...or vintage as TUAW puts it.

Amazingly, my PowerBook runs with few problems, and I can still do (almost) everything I need to do on it - if you exclude the brain aneurism it had a few years back and it can do WiFi, Accelerated Video and Audio.


I post this from my obsolete Mac. The funny thing is that an obsolete Mac is still better than an Obsolete Dell

Tags: technology, apple, computer, powerbook, obsolete

Not the iPhone 3G (meaning that it runs on HSPA),
but the 3rd Generation (3G) iPhone...in other words the third iteration of the phone.


I know it's just a model, but it's pretty cool.

Make the Camera a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and I'm game

Tags: technology, apple, iPhone, concepts

I had this realization the other day: Nokia is missing out on using Ovi on its lineup of internet tablets.

I've written in the past that I really don't like the fact that the internet tablets don't have any PIM functionality out of the box. Well, OK, you've got your GoogleIM contacts, but if you don't use Google as your contact manager you're out of luck (well the contact management on the device needs improvement too).

Of course the lack of a notebook, todo, and calendar apps just adds to the lack of PIM goodness on a device that could really use it. After all, you get emails with invites, why not be able to schedule them on your internet tablet and have it sync to the could?

Ovi has been available for a while now with S60 clients and S40 coming out now (if I am not mistaken). It would make absolute sense to have robust calendar, todo, and contact management apps on the Internet Tablet that allow you to sync up to the Ovi cloud!

As an added bonus, the Comes With Music should be extended to the NIT. It's got the storage, it's got the media playback capability, and it's becoming mobile with GSM/UMTS being added to it for the future iterations.

Tags: technology, Nokia, PIM, cloud, ovi

There are many services out there that offer you cloud based PIM+ (plus email, photos, storage, etc.) Some are free, some are for pay. I think that 2009 will be the year that we see more competition for consumer mindshare.

Yahoo has been in the game for quite some time. They've got Yahoo Mail, which has free 'push' to Apple's iPhone/iPod touch platform (last I checked anyway). They've got an OK addressbook, calendar, notebook, and photo management through Flickr. The problem is that they haven't put it all together. They do have Yahoo! Go but results do vary from smartphone to smartphone and it's not available for all platforms.

Google provides superior email service (in my experience) and their calendar is pretty useful - although lack of iCal sync (for free) makes it less useful for me. Their addressbook stinks - big time! I really wish they would fix it. They too have photo management through picassa. The one problem with the google verse is that is only available on Android devices -although I guess separate apps could be available on other platforms.

MobileMe is Apple's paid service (and sometimes I feel like a sucker for using it, but I can use my nokia phone and my ipod, and my mac to use it, so I guess it's valuable).

Ovi is Nokia's platform for all things PIM+ - haven't used it much, and the sync times out on my Nokia N80, so I guess I won't be fully using it until I get a new S60 phone.

Finally Microsoft has announced SkyBox, it's own version of PIM+ that is set to be unveiled sometime this month.

There is of course the Danger sidekick PIM+, but I am not sure if this is sticking around for very long (I think it would be better to integrate it with SkyBox...but what do I know?)

The one problem I've got with all of these services is that they don't play nice with one another. On my Mac I can sync my contact data with Google and Yahoo. Awesome! What about my ToDo and Calendar? What about an Ovi plug in? I don't mind having a different cloud provider for my PIM data, however it's imperative for this data to be interoperable with each other.

So what will happen in 2009? I think we will probably see an improvement of services in order to gain mindshare. I don't think we will see much cross-sync compatibility - as much as I would love to see this happen.

Tags: technology, PIM, Nokia, windows, apple, cloud

MFP, for the uninitiated, stands for Multifunction printer. It's one of those thingymabobs that is a printer, a scanner, a copier and sometimes a FAX machine. I have one at home, a USB more, and it's pretty convenient.

I've seen WiFi enabled ones on the market now. The marketing pitch: no cables! We are all laptop people these days, so you can send your print jobs to the next room wirelessly, and you can scan wirelessly as well (wow!)

Well OK, no cables is all good and nice (after all I do have a wireless mouse and keyboard), but how convenient is it? If you never (or almost never) scan, then it's somewhat convenient, especially if you've got lots of users in the house.

If you have to scan a lot on the other hand, it's not convenient at all! You have to get up each time you want to change the image. If you are scanning a magazine or book page you need to be next to the unit anyway to hold the lid down. On top of that WiFi speeds for scanning aren't comparable to USB 2 or firewire (from what I hear).

So why have an MFP that's wireless? Why not just have a wireless printer?

Tags: technology, printers, wireless

We've got a tech-gram from 1981.

I was simply amazed! It took about 20 years to make the internet newspaper more of a mainstream thing, but they got there. Now we just have to struggle with the stupid ads

Tags: technology, future, futurology, newspapers

This was the question posed in PHONE magazine earlier this month with the announcement of Samsung's 12MP phone.

My answer: Yes, we do need a 12MP phone, provided that its got appropriate optics and optical zoom. I do own a digital camera (although it's 3 years old and it's only 5MP), but I still use my 3.2MP Nokia N80 to take most of my photos.

Why?

Simple, the phone is always with me. The camera I only take with me when I consciously remember to do so. After all, does one expect to snap something awesome when doing something as mundane as waiting for the bus?

By having a good (enough) quality camera in your phone you are almost guaranteed to not miss out on any of those great moments that pass you by, and it ensures that those great moments can be printed, unpixelated, on a respectable sized photo.

Tags: technology, Phones, camera

It seems like Apple is going down the non-removable battery route.

Their iPods, iPhones and now the new MacBook Pro do not have removable batteries.

This is illegal in some countries that require it to be easy to recycle old batteries, but beyond that, does the non-removable battery really matter?


I've had a PowerBook for five years. Never bought second battery.

I had an iPod (original click wheel) for five years. Never replaced the battery.

I've had many cellphones. I never had backup batteries.


While I have a problem with non-removable batteries in theory, in practice in the last 10 years I've never had a need for another battery.

Tags: technology, apple, battery

Recently I came across and article called the right to read

It's not long, and it's a short sci-fi story.

With all the talk about ebooks this year being the in thing for 2009, and my own experiences with ebooks, I think that it's worth while to read.

Now while this story is rather bleak and it points to a possibility, an unintended consequence of DRM on our media and its effects on education.


Excerpt:

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.

And there wasn't much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.


To continue reading click here

Tags: technology, ebooks, DRM, education

Here's a third post in a series of reposts of interests from the NewtonTalk list. My commends are in Code format

Joe Riley Wrote:
This is a continuation of the iPod touch talk from the "[NTLK] [ADMIN] This is only a test" thread.

I just got a 1st Gen refurb iPod Touch from apple (looked brand new!) and I've been very amazed with it. I'm not a newton power user in terms of the calendar/contacts and the info linking the newt can do so I could see me using the touch as its replacement for those functions. I also can do without the HWR since I usually end up using the onscreen keyboard on my newt because most of my data to enter doesn't like the HWR (gear charts for race cars, web addresses, etc.). If you use blackberry, treo, winmo, etc, getting the hang of the touch's keyboard shouldn't be too hard. The first data entry might be a pain if you do it manually but the touch can sync with address book and ical.

I synced everything with my MobileMe account and al info was there. I found the only problem to be the iPod's auto-correct. I write in Greeklish (Greek in latin characters) on twitter and it keeps wanting to correct everything. English typing was no problem, even from the get-go.

Someone also mentioned the small screen, which I do agree is a little annoying but scrolling is easy with the touch screen and it keeps the device small. The multimedia and web on the touch is awesome compared to the newt. Some of the interface touches even remind me of the newt, like how the keyboard and some other boxes glide on/off the display and the clicky sounds it makes when you type (although it doesn't have the overall interface sounds the newt has).

It does have some serious flaws though. First and most important to me is the lack of a good notes app. The built-in notes app looks similar to the newts but lacks folders. I'm going to try some 3rd party apps but reviews I've read so far don't give me hope.

This is a serious problem (as is note sync). I've written about this in a previous post.
Second is battery life. The battery life of the touch really sucks if your punishing it with lots of web surfing, app downloading, or worse online gaming. It seems to do ok if you've got the wifi off but its still no where near the newt, you need to charge it atleast every night if not sooner. Maybe if they made it as thick as the iphone 3g we'd be set.

You know, I don't think that battery life is a problem. Yes if you keep using the web and playing games it's going to drain your battery fast. It's a cost balancing situation. I use my iPod mostly for media playback, and I keep it charged while at work. I never run out of battery. I also don't hop on the net with all the time. I check my email, check my twitter and facebook, and turn the WiFi off. You can't compare the newton battery life-span to that of the iPod. The Newton does not go online, and it doesn't do media playback. I know people have created apps to let you do just that, but if you do this, your battery will drain equally fast as the iPod Touch.


Third is the lack of copy and paste. This one really bugs me because I use C&P on my blackberry and newt all the time. And last it lacks the Agent and overall search funtions of the newt although it does have in-app searches for some apps. Lack of HWR may be a deal breaker depending on if you are really fond of it.


If the notes and copy & paste problems are solved this may be a decent 'new newt' for some. It does the web, multimedia, mail, contacts and calendar, its not a brick, it syncs easily with modern apps and its easy to use IMHO. I do wish it had a green backlight and could be put into greyscale mode, maybe an app could be made to give all the white on screen a green tint and switch the rest of the colors to greyscale? I guess I'm saying it needs theme support too

LOL, a green backlight and a Newton theme would be awesome (maybe the jailbreak community can help out). The fact that the iPod is not a brick and can accomplish so much (despite its limitations) is why I choose it over the newton for my needs. Lets not forget that the newton is 14 years old and it's been more than 10 years without official support!

Do you have an IPod Touch/iPhone? What do you think?

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, Nokia, N800, ipod, touch

In the last week, I've had many unknown people try to follow me on twitter.

Yes, my twitter feed is protected, so I don't know why people are trying to follow me. It's not like I've had a lot of people @admiralak me, and my club-admiralty analytics (the only other twitter link that comes to mind) doesn't show a ton of activity happening.

I wish twitter would allow people to put a description in the follow box - sort of how one adds a friend on facebook. This way I know how you found me. Most people's blogs don't tell me anything about why they are trying to follow me.

Tags: technology, microblogging, twitter, weird

Continuing my series of reposts of mailings that I find interesting about the future of the newton from the NewtonTalk list, here's one from Carlos Santiago. I've added some comments and personal views in code format

Carlo's Post:
I was prompted by the 2010 timeframe barrier I'd heard about but I made the switch after v2.0 of the system software which had abilities much better in regards to email than the earlier version; at 1.x it most mostly an ipod but the 2.0 software brought it close to a pda but 100% and no where, anywhere close near a Newton.But I then sold off my iPAQ and BT GPS unit as we also gotten a Garmin GPS which made the switchover possible.

It took a while for me to make the switch, mentally, everything important I had on my 2100 and PDA. Key apps there I vitally needed and used.

• cut-n-paste! poor man's inter-app messaging
• Newton notes; still no clear replacement
• Newton calendar; Pocket Informant on the PDA made that platform a good transition but the Newton was the gold standard so it'll be tough to replace
• Newton inter-app slip messaging; but things are slowly improving within key apps
• PDA Pocket Informant; a PIM that's coming this month!

I'm not a twenty something wanting a gaming only device (but not that there's anything wrong with that! - these folks in part fueled Apple in recent months and this platform after all) but needed a PDA which approched Newton status. My iPod isn't a Newton but I'm finding less is more in some areas.

What I like:

• speed; I now juggle 6 email accounts; evan google and yahoo along with work, etc.
• apps availability; I often buy apps I like hoping support will spur further advances; most feature 'free' subset versions which is vital since all sales are final - and tied to you; you can't resell.
• web browsing - full screen and fast; however in recent months some sites take to dumming down their site when then see an iPOD; wrong approach; some offer a choice of classic or iPod site view; much better
• GREAT - f-n-GREAT (so far) app s/w provider support; I think they see the future ahead of most users and are running in droves to the unit; I can only hope some exNewton titles make it here.

I have all of my email accounts (except for my Hotmail account) on my iPod Touch and it's great! On my N800 I don't have everything. The again, I purchased the device for web browsing, not email handling. I only have my mobile me account on the N800 since I can't use the browser to check the mail. Hotmail, yahoo and gmail are all easily accessible on the maemo browser.

What I dis-like

• small sceen resolution with BIG UI interface controls means display real estate is an absolute premium; most apps either waste space or feature too much whitespace. There are some PDA style apps which try to cram too much info but I think within the next year the UI and developers will come to terms and deliver great apps - my hope anyway.
• poor apps sometimes crash the unit; recent I took to emailing one developer on their latest update and was totally floored at the response; *GREAT* had a new, fixed, app in a few days. Oh, and this app was *FREE*

I really would like to see some category for gag apps. I don't care that people are making fart or bouncing boob apps, but it really makes it hard to look for good apps when the gag apps are taking up so much space.

And neutral items...

• it's not a PDA let alone Newton. In the 2.1 s/w release Apple heard first hand that some folks actualy rely on their units for something other than on demand music purchase and play. Given the wider, non-game app availability, I suggested they spend a bit more time in QA; they appear to be.
• yes there's no stylus; it's up to the app the make the UI transition to gesture based input. it's funny to see HWR attempts etc. on this unit. IMHO those apps just don't get it (aka those don't dogs won't hunt It's hard but you do need to rethink things from scratch.

Would like to see items

• Newton notes; folders, outlines, todo, style sheets, etc. partridge in a pear tree...
• universal platform issues; cut-n-paste, messaging, 'back' ability. Each app execution replaces rather than pushes current apps. You can return to the former app after pressing the home button and navigating to it but I'd like to see a 'go back' button or gesture to do this. That would go a long way to addressing inter-app slip passing as app design all feature a fast save state ability you pick up just where you left off.
• built-in camera
• speaker (2nd gen unit already has this)
• dump AT&T in favor of generic provider support; this is part of larger soap box to have all cell phone carriers compete by using a U.S. then world-wide cell phone network topology and technology; we'd then see real competition vs. the fiefdoms we have now.
• overall h/w improvements; 3rd party storage & batter upgrades - don't try this yourself

Overall I'm happy I made the switch; but miss my 2100.

I agree. I still have my 2100, I don't use it and I miss it. But I am happy to be using an iPod Touch and N800 instead

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, N800, Nokia, ipod, touch

Well, along with the Y2K10 issues, there's been a lot of discussion about redefining the Newton. I came across this post by Michael, and I have to say I agree with a lof of his comments.

This is very interesting because this is exactly what I have been thinking for a while.I have long thought, the future of the Newton was in becoming a series of enhancements and applications to assist a chosen platform to provide those features which the Newton had (and differentiated it) which no longer seem to exist. (Keep in mind that different users will see this as a different mix of items)

I agree. The features that the Newton had that differentiated it for me (beyond the Apple Geek factor) were the addressbook, calendar, mobile office suite and my multilingual dictionaries. Oh, the large screen too.

In my case, I have recently purchased an iPod Touch to use as my basis for this.

I went with a Nokia Internet Tablet (N800 Model), plus an iPod Touch more recently.

My reasoning for this is pretty simple:1. The iPhone / iPod Touch SDK is FREE!

I don't care about developing, so this isn't a factor for me

2. The Developer community is alive and kicking and considering the size of the user base I have a good chance that something will be developed which may deliver what I am after or that something I develop will be useful for other users and therefore make the development effort pay off.

This is true for both maemo on N800 and the Mobile OS X on the iPod Touch. I have almost more functionality than I had on my Newton!

3. It's from Apple and syncs well with my iTunes Library on my Mac ( and the Address book and iCal and MobileMe).

This was, and is, the most important thing to me. My Media syncs perfectly with my iPod Touch, and all my calendars and contacts are synced. Yes, even the ones in Greek! My major problem with the Newton was the lack of Greek support, even though the OS was fully unicode. Initially this was not a problem since most of my contacts were non-Greek. I could literally count on two hands who my Greek contacts were. With the rise of the internet and social networks I've reconnected with many of my old friends, and it is easier to keep in contact with new ones making Greek support all that much more important.

4. It already had FMTouch which is a 3rd party Filemaker Database Engine so I can take my existing Databases and Sync them to "MyTouch" ( yes I was lame enough to call it that and you can guess my iMac is called) and carry them with me. Something I always wanted for my Newton but never quite had

.

Now, I am far from 100% satisfied with the platform.I have some minor annoyances with the following:1. Address book:  It doesn't support Custom Fields ( which I'm not sure was a Newton feature out of the box or an extension ) so all my Custom Fields from the Newton were lost

The iTouch does not fully support Greek, so even though I can get my contacts on there, I can't easily get to them! The system is built for latin based alphabets
Custom fields don't bother me as much as I don't use them

2. Calendar: Seems to be missing a few things as well. I'm not sure I actually need them but I guess time will tell.

Having used iCal for the last 3 years, whatever is missing, I haven't missed

3. Notes:  This has to be the most useless Notes App ever made! You cannot set the title of the Note it is simply the first line of your Note so I am forever having to put the title there. There is no Landscape Mode. It doesn't support Checklists or allow you to put them in Folders ( or at least Groups like in Address book ) and I cannot seem to Sync them only Email them!

This IS a major annoyance. The Notes app is useless. I used my newton to take many, many notes. In meetings, in the classroom, at work. It was great! My iPod Touch is awful at taking notes. The N800 has a program that is somewhat comparable to the Notes app on the Newton, but it's slow.

There are of course features missing:1. HWR - There is a program called WritePad which gives you HWR via finger which works really well and I would love to work out if they are using Inkwell or a Home-spun HWR Engine; they are producing apps for this as well and their Notes App looks interesting but it is missing Checklists which I feel is a must.

You know, I would love HWR on the iPod Touch, but truth be told, I almost never used it. Initially I used it a lot, and it was great on the Newton. However as I met and recommended with my friends from Greece, I started taking notes in a mixture of Greek, English and something in between. The Newton did not recognize this. In class, I would take notes of words in German and Italian, but the dictionaries would not always recognize the words. The notes app on the newton worked well for monolingual people, but in my case it didn't fit my needs. Ink-notes were more useful.

2. Find - There is no Search feature so I can't simply search on a Clients Name and get a list of all my Visits from the Calendar and the Address book entry which I used quite a lot on the Newton.

Ditto!

3. Copy and Paste - Such a simply feature which could be implemented just like the Newton is missing. But I have yet to have missed it.There is probably a lot more that could be said.

I have missed copy/paste on the iPod Touch, but I always have my N800 to fall back on, so if I need to copy something to/from the web browser into/from another app, I use the N800

At this point I have gotten the touch to the point that for the first time since I owned a Newton it is actually sitting on my desk at home and not being carried to and from work each day. I think the potential is there but it will need some Apps built to provide the "missing" bits. For me, the first step will be the Notes App. I hope to start working on building such an App in the next few months.

One thing that I really miss from the notes app on the Newton, that I wish were implemented on the iPod Touch OS is the different kinds of notes. I want to-do lists (and have the synced with mail/ical). I was graph paper. I want plain paper to draw on. I want shapes and different size marker tips. Yes I can get all those in three separate apps (kinda), but the notes app on the Newton did all this.

Tags: technology, apple, Newton, opinion

Along with the Y2K10 bug I saw a lot of people playing the blame game concerning the cancellation of the Newton platform, and thus leaving this Y2K10 time bomb unfixed.

People are quick to blame Steve Jobs because the Newton was not his creation. Valerio Mitritsakis has a great answer to the steve-blame (and I agree with it):

A bit off topic here, still I've had a thought I want to share with  
you. Most people attribute the decision to kill the Newton to a  
revenge of Steve Jobs against Sculley.

However "colorful" (to put it mildly) Steve\s character is (from what  
we read here and there) he is no fool. What I believe happened with  
the Newton was that when Apple faced bankruptcy and called back
Steve Jobs in 1997 as a CEO it needed a few things in order to move on.
1st and foremost to focus on the key areas it was best at which were Creative
Pros (DTP, Design. Prepress) and Education. The next important thing it
needed was a commitment for the development of one of the most
renown application suites, Microsoft Office.

However the deal was something more than that as it included a patent
cross licensing plus some serious cash and more stuff.

This brings us to what I think happened with the Newton. Apple agreed  
with Microsoft to kill the Newton so that they would have the handheld  
marked to them selves.

In the light of saving the company, killing the Newton was a small  
price to pay and kept Apple out of the market for a decade until 2007  
when they introduced the
iPhone...

Of course it is totally possible that all of this exists only in my  
mind as I do not have any connection whatsoever to Apple and I could  
not have any insight on this matter.

Tags: apple, technology, Newton

Well, the NewtonTalk list has been buzzing lately about the Y2K10 bug that is going to plague Newtons come next year. So what is it? It's similar to the Y2K bug (or oversight depending how you look at it) that was a headache on our computers not so long ago.

Here is an explanation from Andrei:



The basic issue is that the time calculations that deal with time containing
seconds work with integers, and as of January 5th, 2010 the number of
secondsthat have gone by since January 1, 1993 is greater than an integer
canhandle.

The Newton uses two formats for dates, number of minutes since January 1,
1904 and the number of seconds since 1993. It appears that the problem lies
with the functions dealing with the date in seconds, the date functions that
deal with years, months, and days have plenty of space left.  It looks like
the value is stored in a 29 bit value. All hell should break loose at second
2**29 which would be January 5, 2010 at 18:48:31.

The system routine TimeInSecondsToTime() returns an unexpected value.
If you give it the largest 29 bit value it gives a correct answer, but if you give
it a 30 bit number it screws up.
But the routines that handle date conversions handle the later dates.

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, bug

Earlier this month I went to visit my dad, and per chance I picked up a box with old memorabilia which included old apple ads from magazines like MacUser, MacWorld and MacAddict (as well as a few full issues!)

I found this ad for an Apple Newton 2100 which is awesome (and it made me want a Newton even more, even though as a high school students I could not afford one).




for a larger image click here

Tags: technology, ads, Newton, apple, PDA, macaddict

I found this the other day in my RSS inbox - interesting read:

The UNIX shell has been around for more than 35 years now—through evolution and enhancements—and is still going strong! It all began in 1971, when Ken Thompson of AT&T Bell Laboratories created the first UNIX shell named (appropriately) the Thompson shell. Fundamentals of the Thompson shell, such as redirection of data, exists in shells used today, although the shell lacked some important built-in functions that UNIX users use every day, such as pipes (|), the ability to write shell scripts, and if conditional statements.

As a result, the Thompson shell was replaced with the Bourne shell, or sh, in 1977. The Bourne shell, created by Stephen Bourne of AT&T Bell Laboratories, became the default shell for UNIX version 7 (V7). The shell took a huge leap into the future for UNIX. Now, users could write shell scripts; store and export information in variables; control file descriptors; control signal handling, for loops, and case statements; and so much more. Even though the Bourne shell was created more than 30 years ago, it is still widely used by many current UNIX systems and is the default shell for the superuser—root—on many UNIX systems today.

Over the past three decades, there have been changes and improvements to the UNIX shell. As a result, several different shells have been created. Figure 1 illustrates the family tree of a few of the UNIX shells. This figure is by no means complete, but it shows the major shells from which other, minor shells have been derived.




Read more here

Tags: technology, unix, shell, history

Here's another time waster... Here's mine foverocity.myminicity.com - click to join my city

Picture of my mini city with 114 residents

Tags: technology, waste

Here's a funny Joy of Tech comic strip that goes into the subject

Tags: technology, humor, att, SMS, telephony

I saw the following mockup recently on a number of websites.

Of course it's a fake, but it's rather interesting.

What I like about it is the front facing camera for video conferencing, the keyboard and joypad buttons, and what looks to be a higher resolution camera with good optiocs on in.

Would I buy one of these? Well, if I didn't have to buy a data plan, sure!

As I've said before I agree that the iphone needs some game controls (a pad and buttons) because the touch screen + tilt control aren't always convenient (anyone try playing Cube?)

Tags: apple, iPhone, technology, telephony, gaming

I must say, I am REALLY disappointed!

Recently the 1UP network was bought by UGO. UGO went in and gutted the company! Got rid of the EGM publication and a lot of the excellent 1UP podcasts. There goes 80% of my video game podcasts that I listened to.

I am not a happy camper!!!

At least 1UP FM has been reborn as Rebel FM

Tags: entertainment, technology, annoying

Sad, but true!

Tags: technology, social, society, bigbrother

We've seen SNL spoofs of Mac products, but how often do you see a BBC spoof?

Here is the Mactini - the smallest mac in existence

Tags: technology, humor, BBC, apple, macintosh

Some New Year's PhD humor for you

Tags: phd, comic, humor, technology

I don't know if this is the same as 'ratified' but at least it means that people can start implementing it! This will mean more competition in our Market. In the US verizon will really compete with AT&T and T-Mobile because devices will be portable. Sprint is still doing their WiMAX thing - which isn't bad, but I won't be going to Sprint to my mobile needs.

In Canada this means that all carriers will be using the same technology, so Bell, Telus and Rogers will now see real competition because the handsets will have the potential to be unlock and brought with you to another carrier

The future looks bright! (now if data package prices were to fall...)

Tags: LTE, technology, GSM, telephony

Now in general, I don't follow etiquette books. I feel that some of the rules are antiquated. Maybe I am going through my rebellion stage. Anyway. I ran across this article on social media etiquette. I skimmed through it, and surpassingly I agree!

Have a look for yourself. My three biggest pet peeves:

Facebook
Using a fake name as your Facebook name.  I can’t tell you how many people have added me and their last name is “Com” or “Seo.”  I’m not adding you unless you can be honest about who you are.  Once upon a time, Facebook deleted all of the accounts that portrayed people as business entities or things.  I wish Facebook would employ the same tactics yet again, because I’m not adding a fake identity as a friend.

Tagging individuals in unflattering pictures that may end up costing your friends their jobs.  Avoid the unnecessary commentary also, especially on your childhood pictures that portray your tagged friends as chubby and not so popular.  Further, if your friends request to be untagged, don’t make a stink of it.

I don't want anyone posting photos of me - period. Doesn't matter if they are just me sitting and having a coffee. If I want that particular photo of me on facebook, I will post it myself.


Twitter:
Streaming only your blog’s RSS feed on Twitter.

Tags: technology, etiquette, annoying

I know, this news is a week or two old, but wow!
I was thinking that my next phone would be an iPhone but...Nokia REALLY upped the anti with this one! IF this phone has Triband HSPA (or even better quadband) I may go for it if I have the money.

I wish that people start working on S60 touch apps now so we can get all those iPhone like apps out . There is no capacitive touch display on the N97 (so no multifinger gestures) but that's OK. Maybe someone can get me one for my birthday

Tags: technology, Nokia, telephony, s60

Recently I started creating a wiki for a project I am working on. I looked over some of the wiki providers and ended up settling on using wikispaces. Now one of the things that I like about wikispaces is that it has both a WYSIWYG interface for people to use once I make it public, and I can use the wiki markup when I am going my own work.

This past weekend wikispaces started supporting Safari for the WYSIWYG so I decided to give it a try (again), and I remembered why I dislike the WYSIWYG so much: it creates unreadable code!

When I went to the plain text editor, after I had created some content with the WYSIWYG editor I was face with many silly and superfluous tags. I spent some time getting rid of these span tags and cleaning up the code, but wow!

I know that a WYSIWYG editor is easier for the lay person, but have you ever tried to troubleshoot something like this type of problem: "this font looks a little different than this one, I wonder why..."

No WYSIWYG until I make this puppy public...

Tags: technology, wikipedia, syntax

I waited 'till the 13th to post this even though I got the email on December 1st.

In two days, December 15th, one microblogging service is bitting the dust, Powce.

I liked Pownce, I liked it a lot. You could do things with it that you can't with other services, like attach media, show calendar events.

To the right are some of the last Pownce messages created on the service.


Here are a few thoughts on it from the Financial Times

Pownce, a social media service that has failed to gain traction, is to close down this month after its team and technology were acquired by the blogging company Six Apart.

Pownce caused an initial flurry of excitement among Web 2.0 aficionados when it launched in June 2007. It was given a certain cachet by Kevin Rose, who co-founded it and had already co-founded the popular Digg news site.
As recently as August, Leah Culver, another co-founder, was featured on the cover of MIT’s Technology Review, which said Pownce was one of 10 web start-ups to watch.

Six Apart said it would be merging the Pownce team with its Vox blogging service. The main Pownce website will close down on December 15.
The service allowed private messaging among friends and file-sharing. It was compared to the micro-blogging service Twitter, but was harder to grasp than Twitter’s simpler 140-characters-or-less messaging concept.

Om Malik, the well-known tech blogger, told The New York Times in July last year: “I love [Pownce] and use it constantly, I like it because it lets me share a lot of different things with the networks of people I really care about.”
Yesterday, he blogged on GigaOm: “I used the service for a few months but then lost interest, and so did many of my friends.”

It seems Pownce was just one service among many micro-blogging ones and lacked distinct features that could have helped it become mainstream, or even hold the attention of dedicated social networkers.

Commenters on another service, Friendfeed, pointed out on Monday that Kevin Rose himself had spent more of his time on Twitter than his Pownce creation.
“That’s like the CEO of Pepsi being seen drinking Coke, if you can’t stand behind your product, how do you expect us to?” said one.




Personally, I wans't sure about this, but I tranfered all my content to Vox for the time being...
Goodbye Pownce, you were a good service.

Tags: technology, pownce, rip

Well Linux is now on the iPhone (woohoo!)
I am not a crazy linux fan, but I think this is cool!
Now I wonder how long it will take to port android to the iPhone



iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Tags: technology, linux, apple, iPhone, android

I found this graphic on wewantapplegreece.com, and it's quite funny (but I am sure it's all Greek to you)

The iPhone was released in Greece last August, but there is neither an OS localization available nor a Greek keyboard for people to input text in Greek. This image makes fun of that.

The Mac asks What's going on here guys?
The PC responds: This guy had the bright idea of buying an iPhone 3G because he saw somewhere that "really soon" there will be an update of the firmware to enable support of the Greek character set, and we've been waiting for three months now...

I am warming up to the iPhone, but no Greek means no purchase for me

Tags: iPhone, apple, technology, humor

This is an oldie, but a goodie.
What would Microsoft do if they were in charge of designing the iPod packaging?



Of course, we can see from their Zune boxing that they have gotten rid of some of the extraneous information


Now if only they got rid of all those crazy versions of Windows Vista and just sold the 'ultimate' version as the standard version...

Tags: technology, ipod, microsoft, advertizing, design, zune

So, recently I got a new computer at work. It's not really new - the hardware is a year old, but it's new to me. I asked for Vista on it since I was using Vista before on my aging Dell GX270. All I have to say is WOW. It makes such a difference to run Vista on capable hardware. I had no problems with vista on my aging GX270, even though boot-up was slow so I was not a hater.

Thinking about Vista's problems, here is what I think Microsoft should do with Windows 7

1. Vista is partly a PR problem. People think it sucks because people are running it on inferior hardware. Those people talk, and influence the thought of others. The stupid "I am a PC ads" don't work. They are...well...stupid! I think the Seinfeld+Gates ads were AWESOME! Get some better ads, bring back Seinfeld.


2. Get rid of legacy shit and let people know that you are doing so! Look at Apple. They buried MacOS 9. They made a mostly compatible layer called classic and shipped it with all PowerPC machines. Now with the Intel transition MacOS 9 is gone. Microsoft needs to get rid of Windows 3.x and 9x underpinnings. Make a separate sandbox for the old 3.x and 9x based apps, and let people know, given them a firm date on when you are stopping support. Work with your developers to make the transition smooth. People who need those old apps will still run XP but at least they won't badmouth your product.


3. Be more ridgid on what runs windows! Again, look at what Apple does. No need to support a million configurations, and no need to support el cheapo $500 PCs with Vista. Force manufacturers to get rid of those crapola cheap PCs and design an experience just like apple does. There is no need for experience and utility to be separate and mutually exclusive entities.


4. If you REALLY need to have cheap PCs and webtops running Vista,build a microPC version of Windows that runs MOST programs. Dont taint windows's name my trying to make it all things to all people. Look at the various linux webtops like the eeePC. Their version of the OS is not the same as one you would find on the desktop and for good reason. Maybe you could assist your developers to create those webtop versions and have a way of marketing that it works with Windows-the-desktop-version and Windows-the-webtop-version.

5. Other people have said this, maybe this time you will listen. Get rid of those stupid and artificial distinctions between home basic, home premium, business and ultimate. Your BASIC BASIC sucks and it's more expensive than MacOS X (os x being $129 and home basic being $200). Just give everyone the Ultimate experience at the same Apple price of $129! If everyone has the same experience, everyone has the same basis for comparison. There should only be three versions of Windows: Server, Desktop (aka Vista/7 Ultimate) and Webtop.


Thus concludes my advice to Microsoft. Now go forth and stop shooting yourselves on the foot!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

Tags: technology, microsoft, windows, opinion, vista

With Apple's removal of FIrewire 400 from all laptops, and complete removal of the port from the MacBook line, I am wondering if the firewire port is going the way of the dodo. I hope not because it's an technology!

Tags: technology, apple, SCSI, firewire, extinction

Thinking of retro operating systems, I had a bizarre realization the other day: out of all of the original PDA operating systems, Windows CE is the only one still evolving! If you think about it, the original PDA operating systems were these:


Apple's NewtonOS
Palm's PalmOS
Sharp's Synergy OS
Sony's MagicCap OS
Microsoft's Windows CE


Now Apple, Sony and Sharp came out of the PDA market and killed off their operating systems. Now I know that the Newton community still keeps the Newton current, but there is only so much enthusiasts can do with what they are given as building blocks. Palm is pulling a Commodore on us and keeps messing with the release dates and updates to the PalmOS. For all intents and purposes the PalmOS is dead.


Now Windows CE is really the only one that has endured! Sure the first versions were awful, but ten years later, it doesn't stink as much, and some people like it! (well some people like S&M too but anyway).


I find it interesting that Microsoft and Windows CE is the 'old school' that won the "PDA OS wars" and Apple and Google are the new guys entering the market.

Tags: technology, windows, Newton, palm, magiccap, PDA

I had a random thought the other day spurred by an email I had received by a friend of mine with a minor complaint that I don't email my news to said person that often. This got me thinking. So my question is this In the age of social networks, twitter, RSS and blogs, who still uses email as the only method to keep in touch?


Thinking of my online habits, I don't spent that much time in chat services as I used to. My work/life balance thing doesn't allow it. But there is a lot of information about what I think and do online. I use twitter, I write in my blogs, I post photos on my Flickr account and update my status in various social networks. And to make it convenient for people, I use friendfeed.


With so much information about what's going on in my life, taking 5 minutes to email each individual person I know with the same news seems like a waste of time. I always thought of email as impersonal, and I would prefer to write a letter to someone to keep in contact, but is it really necessary for regular news dispersing communications these days?

Tags: technology, communication, web2, blog, twitter, questions

I stumbled upon this article about a month ago, and I just had the opportunity to read it (my google reader starred items is backed up to the wazzoo).

Anyway, the article talks about alternative operating systems to MacOS, Windows, Linux, and the various popular UNIX variants (BSD, Solaris). I think that alternative operating systems should be encouraged, but at the moment they are of limited utility.

Looking at this list I see THREE amiga OS based/inspired operating systems. AmigaOS 4.1, AROS, and MorphOS. While I would love to use these operating systems. AmigaOS and MorphOS (the two commercially sponsored operating systems) do not work on x86! So I am not able to install on my mac under bootcamp or parallels! An AROS is more of a hobby project so useful applications aren't available in large number.

The remaining operating systems are nice attempts, and I hope they gain more support, but at the moment I feel like they aren't ready to replace my main OS - just like I thought linux wasn't going to replace my main OS five years ago.

With a little community support - and having them run on x86 - these operating systems can flourish. If you see a free one that you are curious about, I encourage you to download it an try it out.

Tags: technology, operating, system, amiga, BeOS

I've been thinking of the OS space lately and I thought of the poorly supported AmigaOS. Yes my friends, AmigaOS still exists, and it is still mismanaged! So what does the Amiga holding company need to do? It's quite simple - get off the PowerPC platform and get on with Intel already!!!

Now at home I've got a Mac Mini. On this Mac Mini I've got MacOS 10.5. I also have Parallels and Windows Vista installed (I know, I am crazy). On this Mini I can also play around with BeOS, and various linuxes and BSDs. Thinking of the OS space, there are three serious contenders for our desktops.

1. Apple with MacOS X
2. Microsoft with Windows Vista (and soonish Windows 7)
3. Linux (with Ubuntu being my personal preference)

Amiga still develops an OS. Amiga still puts effort and innovation into the OS. The OS doesn't run on hardware commonly available to consumers and businesses. Thus the OS will not be used. Here's some food for thought.

1. Port AmigaOS 4 to Intel.

2. Create a 'classic' layer that uses common graphics cards and the powerful multicore processesors we've got in our machines these days to dot JIT translation of special chip code and motorola 68k code to have older apps run on new machines.

3. Create a VMware/Parallels easy install for people on Windows and Macs to easily try out your product and to easily have it as a second environment!

4. Make it consumer friendly, not geek friendly (but keep us geeks in mind)

Amiga needs to finally make a comeback!

Tags: amiga, technology, intel, macintosh

OK, so I wrote about why Palm needs Android. Now I am going to help them with their overall strategy while I'm at it.

I listened to an episode of the 1src podcast a few months back, and it was mentioned that Palms strategy is to have three tiers of devices:

1. Entry level - running PalmOS Classic. These devices will be cheap smartphones to get people into the smartphone word from the feature-phone world. These devices would be devices like the Palm Centro. They may even retain the Centro naming convention for these devices.

2. Mid Level - running PalmOS II (Nova) and focused toward a more advanced user group, but not quite up to the enterprise level.

3. Enterprise Level - Running Windows Mobile. These devices will be like the Palm Pro and aimed at businesses and super-duper-uber users.

Now is a previous post I had mentioned how Palm should go for android and halt development of PalmOS II. In addition to that, Palm should also completely eliminate PalmOS Classic and get in bed with Symbian.

If Palm continues to court Windows Mobile, they've got the business user. If they go with Android, as I said in a previous post, they gain from the many apps that will be developed, and they can tailor the android experience with their palm know how.

Where does Symbian fit in?

Well, symbian is the largest mobile OS in the world. It has a lot of apps already available! Palm is not a known brand in Europe, but if they run Symbian they can make a bigger splash in the market over there. Palm is a well known name in North America, so running symbian benefits them because they will be building upon the great library of apps already available for symbian AND moving forward.

PalmOS classic at the moment is stagnant and has no future. Why invest in an entry level line that runs an obsolete OS?

Palm should look into making symbian phones both for entry and mid level clients.

Tags: palm, symbian, technology, opinion

I saw this graphic the other day when I was browsing Danger's website.


Now I would love to try a sidekick out, but there is no way to synchronize my PIM data on my mac with the Sidekick OS - mark/space used to provide a Missing Sync solution but they discontinued it when the Sidekick 3 came out.


So browsing Danger's website, I was a bit happy to see the graphic depicted here because obviously that is a Mac! I decided to read the details of synchronizing and what do you know - No Mac solution! Still the old windows-only sync!


Graphics designers need to pay better attention to what they use!

Tags: technology, Graphics, design, sidekick, incogruity, macintosh, windows, sync

This is a screenshot from my google reader.
It just goes to show that our priorities are a bit messed up....

Tags: weird, technology, google, zeitgeist

Interesting question!

I've been reading recently of all the apps that are getting the axe from apple, and I've been reading all the commentaries on sites like Engadget and I can say with certainty that this is yet one more reason why I stay away from the iPhone.

Many defenders of Apple's actions either use incorrect logic or write off apple's action as something normal for a phone. People who use incorrect facts claim that it's apple's prerogative to protect their source of revenue because they created xyz - in the case of the podcaster application it was that Apple created and hosts all podcasts. What? really? Is this what you believe? Apple neither created podcasts, nor hosts them!

In the case of 'the iPhone is just a phone and you can't run whatever you like on your Moto RAZR"...well, no. Apple is positing the iPhone as a smartphone for the rest of us. Smartphones, no matter what brand - symbian, palm, windows, blackberry, have a wealth of apps and their distribution is not controlled by the maker of the device.

I can get a lot of apps for my Nokia N80, just as I could for my HTC Blue Angel. Neither Nokia nor Microsoft could tell me what to run on my device, and they could not tell their devs what not to make for those phones.

Now what IF apple took the same stance with the MacOS as they do with the iPhone? Well - quite simple, we would all pretty much give Apple the finger and tell them off. Application of value would be few and far between.

We would not have great applications like Rapidweaver because those would "replicate" the features of iWeb.

We would not have MailPlane because those features "replicate" the features of Mail.

We would not have Textmate because textmate "replicates" the features of SimpleText.

We would not have Transmission because that would be a bandwidth hog.

We wouldn't have open source apps, or apps ported over from Linux because those would violate the NDA agreements.

In other words, what we love about the Mac would cease to exist.

It's time for Apple to stop stifling the iPhone and the iPod Touch and it's time to let the Mac community do what they do best - support the platform!

Tags: WTF, apple, iPhone, applications, technology, critique, unforseen

A while back I got a free license for Nova Media's FoneLink. This software allows you to connect your phone to your Mac running MacOS X and it allows you to transfer files, perform backups of your phone, and synchronize PIM and SMS data.

The software is quite admirable in terms of its compatibility list. The phones include phones running Symbian S60, UIQ, Nokia S40 and whatever OS regular samsung and SonyEricsson phones run. Click here to see for yourself!

My phone, with which I have been testing this software, is a Nokia N80 purchased two years ago, with firmware version 4.0623.0.42. In general I like the software, however it does have some features missing which I would love to see in a future version.

I was planning on doing a looooonger review - but I decided to keep it short and sweet. Essentially the application does what it advertises which is pretty cool!

One of the features of FoneLink is Mobile Finder. This feature does what you think it does. It provides a finder interface to your phone's memory and to the attached SD card (if your phone supports removable memory). The mobile finder allows you to look at your music, photos, video and other multimedia, and transfer files between your computer and the phone.

One of the features that I really liked was the ringtone creator that is part of this media center interface. You can drag and drop any MP3 file, and cut it down to create a ringtone for your phone. I should mention that the MP3 file you are trying to cut down should be of reasonable size. I tried cutting a 64MB podcast down to get a small clip as a ringtone and the program crashed.

Another feature is called the Organizer and it allows you to view the notes, calendar events, tasks, the contacts and the SMS on your phone. It also allows you to send SMS messages and add notes in your phone's notes app right from the desktop - pretty convenient if you ask me. The application supports Growl (awesome, awesome app!), so when new SMS messages come in, you get to see them on your desktop.

Contacts and calendar events can't be changed from the app, but you can sync to make changes between your addressbook/ical and your phone - which brings me to the next feature - synchronization. The application is a replacement for iSync and it allows you to sync your phone's PIM data with your computer's. Personally I did not use the sync functionality because quite honestly iSync works perfectly fine for me.

Finally, there is a feature called Time Tunnel and obviously it is a play on Apple's Time machine. It allows you to go back to a previous backed up version of the phone's software to collect data. I used this a few times. As a matter of fact the default behavior of the app was to try to create a backup as soon as you connect your phone to it. I didn't use this feature a lot.

The backup seemed to take quite some time (although I think it's a differential backup so it should get shorter as you use it more), and it made my phone reboot. The backups seemed to be there when I checked them out, but I did not like having my phone reboot and the app being unresponsive - maybe it had crashed.

The one last thing about this app is that updates to the app seem to be fairly regular, so if you do end up buying it, you will probably get good support!


Now, here are some things I would like to have in future version of this app:

MMS import - Just like there is an SMS app, I would like to be able to see my MMS messages on the desktop, and I would like to send MMS messages right from the desktop.


Phone log - I would love to be able to see my phone log on the desktop, like I see who's SMSd me, who I SMSd and when.

Called ID flash on screen when someone calls - This is a feature of BluePhoneElite and I think that FoneLink would really benefit from the implementation. When someone calls, their name and number show on my desktop. Often at the office (and at home) my phone is on silent - I just don't like to have the ringer on - it annoys me - but I would like to know if someone is calling. Implementing this functionality would be great. It can be a growl message for all I care.


Growl for voicemails - A growl notification when you have a new voicemail would be nice.




All things considered, this isn't a bad app!

Tags: review, technology, macintosh, macos, Nokia, N80, fonelink, software

I remember a while back listening to the Digital Campus podcast and there was a mention of how Wikipedia moderators have been cracking down on uncited articles.

While searching for my name on cuil.com, I found a few copies on the MacAst article that I had contributed to.


**flashback**
Before MP3 playing software was given away with the Operating System (or as Freeware on the internet), you actually had to buy the software (circa 1998). I had purchased a program called MacAmp which was later renamed MacAst.

The program was nice, working under MacOS 9, it had a small footprint and the nice thing about it was that it had an extensible architecture which allowed people to create localization files called Phrasebooks. I had created and submitted those phrasebooks to the MacAst people for Greek, Italian and French (available in the download section and through archive.org).

Years later, when I stumbled upon the wikipedia entry for MacAst, I added some information about it, namely about it's extensible Phrasebook architecture, I mentioned the localizations that were available, and gave myself credit for the three that I had done.


**flash forward**

I clicked on the wikipedia link to go to the main article for MacAst and the article was not there!!! What had happened?

Well, There were two articles, one on MacAst (which seemed to me pretty balanced, despite the lack of references), and one for MacAmp (which the wiki people thought was one sided).

The wikipedia people merged the two articles and kept the one sided one, and edited the heck out of it. Now, I can go ahead, and cite archive.org and a few news released from various mac websites of the time to give the article a bit more meat on its bones, but this lead me down a thinking path: What happens when you don't have citations? How do you cite that?

There is another wikipedia entry that I contribute to, the entry for the village I grew up in Greece. Most of the knowledge I have of that place is either first hand - I grew up there, I roamed about, I know of the places, or second or third hand - my grandmother, or neighbor told me a history of the village, or told me of a story that has been passed down in the oral tradition from one generation to the other.

In these instances what do you do? Do you record these things on your blog or website before you contribute to the wiki entry or what? It dawned on me that what wikipedia is trying to leverage is the knowledge that is within all of us, and some of that knowledge is tacit. You know it's true, you just don't remember what the source was, or there is no written record, or you can't admit to knowing about it because you got just happened to find a 'beta' of an unreleased piece of software that never made it to market that you weren't supposed to have anyway...

Going heavy handed with the editing seems to be a detracting feature of current day wikipedia...

Just my two cents...

Tags: wikipedia, technology, citations, oddity

One of my problems with the iPhone is that it lacks an MMS client. Now I don't send MMS messages often, and I don't receive them often. Having unlimited data on the iPhone would encourage me to send out more MMS messages. Sadly, the iPhone does not support this feature.


Many fanboys will says that MMS is antiquated, we not have email so we can send photos over email - hooray for email! What these fanboys are failing to see if that MMS is so much more than just a simple photo sending application. The applications of email and MMS are different and are aimed at a different demographic.


To claim that you can do with email what you do with MMS, and you can do it better is to claim that can do with a mallet what you can do with a jewel's hammer. I suppose you can, but the end result is not the same.


An email is built for text, and attachments come second. There is no presentation layer with email, and there is no streamlining of the data for mobile phones. If you send a 5MP photo over email, it's going to be 5MP - overkill. In addition, there is no notification of whether you have email unless you constantly poll your email server, and even today not all phones come with email clients.


MMS on the other hand is available on all handsets, from the cheap handset you get for free when you sign a contract, to the most advanced smartphones (with the exception of the iPhone of course), so there is a layer of compatibility there.


MMS messages allow you to create slides with content, almost like powerpoint, but as a message platform. The MMS application takes that huge picture you took and scales it down for you to make sending and receiving faster and easier. When you send a picture message (MMS) to someone, the point is not that you want them to have the photo, you just want to show them something.


Finally, with MMS messages you get a notification that you have a new MMS, over the network. You don't have to poll a server to do this - it's just pushed to you.


I wish the fanboys would quiet down already about the superiority of email because they obviously don't get the difference.

Tags: technology, iPhone, apple, MMS, telephony, annoying, settingTheRecordStraight, rant

My second attempt to use what I have as an iPod replacement is my Nokia N800. On the surface it kind of looks like an iPod touch, so it should work, no? Well, yes and no. Compared to my N80 and the PSP the N800 requires the least amount of investment. It came with 4GB worth of SD memory, and I had 2GB from my now defunct HTC Blue Angel, so I have a total of 6GB to play with. It has been a bumpy road, but I am working with it.

So what are the tools of the trade? I use the built-in media player to play back my music and podcasts, I use gpodder to subscribe and download podcasts and the USB cable to connect the N800 to my PowerBook whenever I want to load more music on it. Just like most things, it's got its good, its bad and its ugly.

The good: I can play my MP3s, I can listen to my podcasts. The volume is acceptable - it compares equally to my 4.5 year old iPod but when I am on the train I sometimes have trouble hearing. I like that I can download podcasts directly to my N800, so if I run out of podcasts during the day, I can hop on to a hotspot and download a few more for my commute home.

The bad: gppodder lags a bit. There are times that the application is simply non-responsive and you need to just let it do its thing. This can be *very* frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that you can't do a partial keylock. You can either lock the touchscreen and all keys, or you can leave it unlocked. This is frustrating because there are times that I simply want to increase or decrease the volume and I have to remove the unit from my bad, unlock all keys, adjust the volume, re-lock, and put it back in my bag. The device is not very media friendly in this way.

The ugly: Well, there aren't many ugly things about it. The one thing that I would shoehorn in this category is the lack of adequate video support. I was looking forward to downloading video podcasts again and viewing them during my commute. Unfortunately the video lags A LOT, it's badly out of sync when it does start working and it's choppy. So much for video podcasts...

Now I know that it is an Internet Tablet, and not a media player, but the N800 is a great device! I really wish that Nokia had pumped up the video processing on this unit device and that they had created a media profile where the screen locks automatically after X time, the wifi/BT are turned off automatically and certain keys are mapped for media functions (next song/previous song/volume up/volume down)

All things considered, the N800 is a great media player IF you don't watch video podcasts AND you don't have the urge to keep skipping to the next track.

Tags: apple, ipod, Nokia, internet, tablet, N800, technology

I was reading on LISnews a short time ago about a critique on web4lib regarding the future or libraries (and librarians). I’ve noticed that every time there is critique of the profession (or the MLIS degree requirement to be a librarian), it’s like someone spills blood in shark infested waters. This isn’t the first debate of this kind that I’ve seen (or read through) and probably won’t be the last. Quite entertaining, and informative.

Tags: technology, work, listserv, web4lib, MLS

Well, Helio is going the way of the dodo! It’s being acquired by Virgin Mobile, and the brand will eventually merge into the Virgin brand. When Helio came out, I thought that their focus was a little too narrow. When they first came out they were going after Korean ex-pats, and people who wanted advanced Korean features on their phones. While the company did well (170,000 subscribers is nothing to scoff at), and their phones were pretty cool and had a great user interface, they just could not compete.

My problem with Helio was that it was not GSM. While I don’t change phones that often these days, I still like to pull out my SIM and put it in a different phone for the day or the weekend. CDMA phones just don’t have that and I just never got to use Helio because of it. Now if their network piggybacked off AT&T and T-Mobile for GSM/UMTS, I would most likely have given them a try. I keep hoping that Virgin will jump onto the UMTS bandwagon, but given that 40% is the company is owned by Sprint, that is most likely not happening.

Adios to Helio!

Tags: helio, technology, Phones, telephony, defunct

I was recently reading some commentary about the new iPhone. Some users (or perspective buyers) were commenting that they were really bummed about the new iPhone. Now granted, this is probably a figure of speech and it doesn’t really reflect their mental state, but when I read things like these I have to take a step back.

There are people out there that are genuinely bummed about ford not having X in their cars, or Dell not throwing in Y in their laptops, or Apple not including features A, B, C in the new iPhone, but my response to them is “get a grip!” Seriously! Think about it, it’s just a consumer product! If it doesn’t do what you want it to do, then don’t buy it! Wait for version x.x when they will incorporate what you want it to have!
If you want to be bummed about the financial crisis, food shortage, health crises around the world, the by all means be bummed, but don’t be bummed about something as insignificant as “no MMS on the iPhone!” Jeez!

Tags: technology, apple, iPhone, forums

While coming back from work a few days ago my iPod froze. It just stopped playing music! It was also quite an inopportune moment because my train had just come and I was trying to squeeze in. I reset the unit, and I got the folder icon. Darn!

I reset the unit again! Got the folder icon again. Darn! I reset it a third time and I got it working! Yay! I started listening merrily to my songs again.

Three songs later, freeze – no sounds coming out of my earbuds. Couldn’t fast forward or change song. I reset the unit again! Got the folder icon again. I waited until I got home.

I looked at the knowledge base, since the battery was full, and I was still getting the folder icon, I decided to do a restore. Plugged it into my mac, started a restore and went to get some food. When I came back there was an error, the restoration failed. Tried resetting the unit – sad pod, and that sound, that horrible, horrible sound – click, click, click. It’s dead Jim!

Tags: ipod, click, death, technology

Many of my friends know I am a technology geek, and of course their first question to me, after Jobs’ announcement of the iPhone 3G is to ask me whether or not I am getting a 3G iPhone. The answer at this point is ‘no’ and this perplexes very many people who consider me an Apple fanboy. There is quite a logical reason to my denial of the “jesusphone 2.0” and it has (almost) nothing to do with features.

Does the lack of a front facing camera, lack of copy/paste and lack of MMS bug me? Well to some extent yes, but not enough to deter me from buying the phone. What deters me is cold hard pragmatism.

My iPod (20GB click wheel) still works! I’ve never had any problems with it, never replaced the battery, it’s all original issue, it works, and I am still not using the entire capacity (I’ve got 6GB available). My Nokia N80 still works and it has a kickass camera on it, when compared to the iPhone’s camera anyway. I do take the train to work, but I still have schoolwork to do, so I read on the train, I don’t need the iPhone to keep me company. On top of that at&t’s $30/month data plans are too expensive for my tastes. I know that business folk pay that much for their windows mobile, palmos and blackberry plans, but they can also write it off, or their company pays for the device. $20/month for data+ SMS with the iPhone 1.0 was something that would entice me to get the iPhone and the data package but $30 and no SMS, gimme a break.

So when would I buy an iPhone? Probably around the third generation of iPhone when they add more features, if my current phone is busted, if my iPod is busted, if I have no other readings to do while commuting and if I am still commuting (although with gasoline going up up up, this is probably a given)

Tags: apple, iPhone, technology

Since the semester is over, and the customer traffic has died down for this week, I decided to do some spring cleaning on my Vista machine. Over the semester I had installed many applications that were one-use apps, or used them a few times when the same patron came back multiple times. Since the summer usually has different students coming in, and there is no guarantee that the Fall will bring the same students back, it’s time to speed up this old windows PC.

One of the applications that I uninstalled was Netscape Navigator. I used to use this browser since version 2.0 on my 68k Mac (and 96k modem!). Since Netscape killed it off last February, there was really no point to leaving it on my hard drive. If a patron calls and has a problem with the browser, the answer is simple: Upgrade.

Tags: technology, netscape, navigator, uninstall, vista, windows

OK it doesn’t exist yet, but that would be a cool app for phones and the Nokia Internet Tablet to have. Hellotxt is a web interface that allows you to log into your favorite microblogging services (if you have more than one), such as twitter, jaiku, pownce, facebook and so on, and it allows you to send the same status update to all of them.

The next level to this is the app. It’s local to your machine, you can log into all these services (just like a multiclient IM program), and you can not only send status updates to all your services, you can also receive status updates on your network from this client.

I wonder if they will ever make this app

Tags: twitter, technology, suggestions, hellotxt, pownce, jaiku

How’s this for a lovely Monday Morning Surprise?
I come into work, boot up my Vista machine, go get some water, and when I come back I get a little notice on the bottom right of my screen that says “This copy of Windows is not genuine.”

Microsoft is really screwed up! (not that you did not know that). Our campus has a Microsoft site license that covers Windows. I got the install CD and code from our IT department. For 10 months no problems, now I am no longer genuine? WTF? Microsoft, get your act together!

Tags: microsoft, technology, annoying

This is pretty retarded!
I started using my N800 with the “Open” network on campus (the one authorized users are supposed to use – more ports are open). While I can connect, and browse the web, nothing else works!

The mail client can’t connect (I guess IMAP is blocked)

Pidgin cannot connect to ANY service – I use it to tell me if there is new mail on Yahoo and Hotmail (I guess they’ve blocked all IM protocols)

The built-in GTalk client does not connect (see above)

Frustrating!
I don’t want to browse the net, I just want my mail pulled!

Interestingly enough, vagalume (last.fm client) still works.

I understand why it’s important to block certain ports, but gimme a break! Let us use our own email clients, not some PITA web interface!

Tags: technology, wifi, port block, port, firewall, IM, mail

The Parallels MUpromo is now all unlocked!
Get your parallels for $65! (at mupromo.com)

Tags: technology, promotion, mupromo, parallels

For a while now we’ve been hearing about Nokia’s answer to the touch-screen craze, trying to compete with models such as the iPhone, the LG Prada, the HTC Touch, and the LG Voyager. Some details were leaked today, along with some spyshots, and I have to say that I am impressed.

I was thinking that my next phone was probably going to be an iPhone (I will not go back to windows mobile, at least not for another five to ten years, it just sucks), but the spyshots have me impressed.

Imagine an N96 type phone (16GB flash, GPS, 5MP camera, DVB-H, WiFi, Quadband GSM, Bluetooth) with a touchscreen interface! (and hopefully triband HSDPA!). This sounds better than an iPhone to me

Tags: Nokia, touch, technology, Phones

My RSS feed reader has been going nuts today.
I don’t know if I am subscribing to too many feeds, or if sites are just going nuts with all of this BeOS related news. I have to say – very funny! You almost got me – but let’s move on, please!

Tags: technology, BeOS, parody

I used to have a friendster account, my first social network. I had about ten friends and after a few years a closed my account because I never went there and didn’t feel like hassling my friends who were already on facebook, myspace, orkut, or any of the other social networks to join Friendster. I joined other social networks, where most of my friends were, and I created a ‘ring’. I use linkedIn for my professional social profile, and I use facebook for my general social profile. Because I have friends on Hi5 and MySpace I decided to join those two as well and provide links to the my two main social profiles so that I don’t have to repeat information. My cardinal rule: Try the service, if you have less than 30 friends after a year – quit the service.

Now I get invites to other social networks, but why bother (other than geeky curiosity of course)? I will just have to re-invite all my friends from other networks, or search for new ones on the ‘new’ service, and then I will just put a pointer to my facebook and linkedIn accounts. What we need is a mesh service that allows us to join as many social network sites we want, manage our info from one central location, and not have to go to ten different sites! It would also be nice if our friends from one social network can connect with our friends from other social networks without the need to join that competing social.

I hope the DataPortability thing catches on…

Tags: social, networks, technology, overload, fatigue

Black Friday has come and gone... no worthwhile deals were found.
I checked on Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City and Apple.com.... some deals were OK, but nothing spectacular such as the $101 off MacBooks at Apple.com. I wasn't really interested in getting a MacBook, and MacBook Pros had no deals. On top of that, my educational discount probably gets me more of a discount than the black friday deals. Best Buy, Circuit City and Amazon really had no deals that were of interest. Sure, if you want to buy stuff just because they are cheap, you could buy a lot of things, but nothing I really wanted.

So what did I want, but no deals?
1. MacBook Pro
2. Nokia N810
3. Nintendo Wii
4. Good deals on PSP games
5. Great deals on LCD HDTVs

Oh well, maybe next year.....

Tags: purchases, black, friday, technology, disappointment

With the unfortunate breakdown of my mac, despite the fact that I can still get online with it, and accomplish much (if not all) of the work that I need to accomplish with my computer, the last four years I've been completely wireless. I've been using WiFi to get online, thus the notion that I would go and seclude myself to another room every time that I want to check out something on IMDb (or something else online) seems rather foreign.

I spend far too much time everyday looking things up, checking forums, responding to email - making it inefficient to have have to seclude myself when I need to do one of these things. I was thus considering buying a Nokia N800 internet tablet. I can browse, have my RSS, my email, my internet life all at the palm of my hand. There are a few things though that I don't like about it though:

1. No PIM! I know that it is not meant to be a PDA, but a device of such size, and abilities, should have both a robust addressbook and calendar application! I know that there are a number of open source programs that can be installed, but some of these utilities should be pre-installed on such a device.

2. Apparent lack of mac compatibility. I would like to easily import and sync addressbook, calendar, notes, music, videos, and bookmarks with my Mac. Even though this device is mean to be used by itself, without the need for a computer and synchronization, it would be nice to be able to accomplish these tasks!

3. No TomTom! I would love to get a software navigation package for North America. I already have a bluetooth GPS unit, but no software is available (just software)

Tags: Nokia, N800, internet, purchases, wifi, technology

I've been spending a lot of time lately reading various management books, how to cope with a difficult work place, crazy bosses, assholes, and a bunch of workplace etiquette books. I've been thinking of things, from quite some time ago, that really rubbed me the wrong way, and one of them was relating to the outlook calendar.

I generally use iCal on my mac (at home) to keep track of personal things like appointments, doctor's visits, people's birthdays, and so on. I synchronize my phone with iCal so that I can have this information on the go. Generally I do not use Outlook (at work) to keep track of appointments because the great majority of appointments are personal. My job is not one of those jobs where I have meeting after meeting and I need to keep track of it all in outlook.

Back when I had a PocketPC device, for some reason it synched with outlook and all of the daily events synchronized with outlook (and made me look unavailable for the day). These were events like birthdays, name days, national holidays, saint feasts etc. The department secretary (false title used to protect the not-so-innocent) attempted to determine a good time for a meeting between a number of parties at the library, including me. When she peeked at my outlook availability it looked like I was unavailable for the whole day. She then called my boss, who talked to me and we wasted a whole ten minutes on the issue.

Could this have been avoided? Of course! Instead of assuming that everyone schedules their time in outlook, just email the people you need to schedule a meeting with, and see what their availability is! If we all spent time making sure our Outlook calendar was up-to-date with up-to-the-minute information, we would get very little work done. Also, just because no meeting is scheduled in my calendar, it doesn't mean I am free.

Don't assume that just because party A uses technology X, that all parties use technology X.

Tags: technology, outlook, annoying

It appears that TUAW (the unofficial apple weblog) has gone ahead to claim that the release of leopard does not mean the end of support of G4 PowerPC machines (like my dysfunctional powerbook). Well that's good to know, even though I think I will be buying a new MacBook Pro in January....6 months to go!!!

Tags: apple, leopard, technology, powerbook

Some of my friends always bring up the fact that other mobile technologies, not just GSM, have SIM cards!
They are of course correct! CDMA (verizon, sprint, telus, bell, KTF,KDDI, etc.), iDEN (nextel), PHS (willcom) all either already use SIM cards, or have the ability to use them. Of course there are a few things to note about each technology (and why I stay away from it).

CDMA - CDMA has the RUIM, which is CDMA's equivalent to the SIM. In North America at this point, CDMA has quite a lot of coverage, however RUIM is not implemented, and companies are staying away from the RUIM because it endangers their walled garden business model. What would be the point of the RUIM if you cannot get unbranded phones to work on the network? There are a number of CDMA phones available, but they are generally not unbranded and not in numerous, like their GSM counterparts. CDMA is also not as global as GSM. The only CDMA networks using RUIM are the rural CDMA450 networks in eastern europe and russia, and Three in Hong Kong (with only two phones in their line up.

iDEN - iDEN has been using SIMs since day one on their system. There is only one carrier (nextel) in the US, so the number of phones are limited. There also aren't that many global carriers for iDEN, so it's not like you can go abroad and get a prepaid SIM for your iDEN phone . Motorola had made a couple of iDEN/GSM hybrids, but they haven't made any recently. It would be cool if all iDEN phones were iDEN/GSM hybrids

PHS - well...PHS is not available here It's also rarer than iDEN globally


So, yes! Other technologies have

Tags: CDMA, iDEN, GSM, PHS, SIM, RUIM, choice, technology, mobile phones

Some of my friends and family here in the US really scratch their head and wonder why I have such an insistence on using a GSM carrier. There are a number of reasons, but I think that the main reason is the SIM card. SIM is an acronym for Subscriber Information Module and its job is to keep your information on it; so your phone number and account number is on the card, no matter what phone the card is in! If you break your phone, you can buy a cheap phone, stick your SIM in it, and you're good to go! No need to go to the at&t (or t-mobile) store, get charged activation fees, and waste your time (and money) for nothing.
Way back when (in 1996) the SIM only had 8 kilobytes of memory, these days they come in 64k and 128k varieties which allow the use to store short messages on the SIM, store their phonebook, and they provide SIM application toolkits. SIM toolkits allow for certain value added applications, like mobile banking and on demand news by SMS, to be included in the SIM card itself. In short, this means that no matter what phone you put in your SIM in, you will have your addressbook, your provider's applications and your saved SMS messages.

Conversely, you can put any SIM in your phone. If you are traveling abroad, and you don't want to use your home provider with roaming (due to the insane roaming costs), you can easily get SIM-only prepaid packages. This gives you a SIM with a local number for that country. Take a country like Greece for example. You can get SIMs from eight different providers, this means that you can pick and choose which company you want to give your money to, based on the service they provide and costs associated.

Tags: GSM, UMTS, SIM, technology, mobile phones

I was at my public library last week, when I noticed a book called "Send - the essential guide to email for office and home." I thought to myself, eh, why not get it? After all it seemed like light reading, and like something that I would enjoy. I am glad I borrowed this book from the library, because not only did it give me insight into some aspects of email (and other non-verbal, electronic forms of communication) that I had not stopped to consider (even though they were in my subconscious...somewhere), but it also re-affirmed things I either knew to be true, or my gut was telling me were true. Here are a couple of things I learned or were re-affirmed:

1. At a previous workplace - my last few days in fact, we had a new director. His first decree was to give everyone a blackberry, because voice communication was inefficient, email will speed things up (i.e. make things more efficient). At the time, both I am my colleagues disagreed (and still do). Voice communication is not inefficient, email is. If you take your time to craft a well worded, properly spelled email that does indeed convey what you want to convey, you will spend more time than actually talking to someone. Email's perceived speed is based on the fact that you can type five words, click send, and believe that the recipient knows what you are talking about. I've had many of these emails where I needed to either ask for clarification emails, and there have been many times I had to call the sender to ask what they meant in their email!

2. The cover you own behind emails - also known as CC everyone (or even worse, put everyone in the TO line). Again, in a previous work environment, most emails were relevant to my work. They were emails from my boss, colleagues and vendors. There were of course a few 'ha ha' emails and a few 'delete this' rumor emails (both no-nos in send), but the great majority were relevant. At a more recent work environment, there are a lot of CYOA (cover your own behind) emails, where people send the email TO everyone at the work-site, even if they do not need the information. This has contributed to many emails just being tossed without looking at the information, which in the end causes a lot of confusion and disorganization. I've hated CYOA emails, and I tried resisting the CYOA type of email, but unfortunately it is being imposed on me...

All things considered, this is a good book to read whether you are a rank-and-file employee, or a manager (somewhere in the managerial food chain).

Tags: books, englighting, entertainment, work, technology, email, annoying, thought

Way back when, when I was trying to decide on what cellular service provider to choose, my two main concerns were coverage and ability to send SMS message abroad. I looked at Verizon, but they did not have text messages back then (from what I remember), I looked at sprint, but they could not send mobile email (aka SMS back then) to non sprint phones. I found a company called omnipoint - a GSM carrier, the only one back then in my area. I went with GSM since I could send SMS abroad. It later turned out that the networks that I was text messaging were GSM, so this might have been the reason for compatibility.

Text messages back then cost 10 cents to send, 10 to receive. It did not matter if they were domestic, or international - just 10 cents!
After a number of acquisitions (omnipoint --> voicestream ---> T-mobile), text messaging became 15 cents to send to international locations, and still 10 to receive! This meant that if you had a a 'bucket' of SMS messages, it was useless for sending international SMS!

When I switched to cingular, outgoing international SMS were 20c per message, 10c incoming (or 0c if you had a bucket). Now it is rumored that sending international SMS will cost 25c and receiving will cost 15c. WTF??? I am not charged extra for sending international emails, why am I charged more for international SMS? This is highway robbery! Unfortunately, carriers around the world have decided that it is profitable to charge these fees, so they do it. Unbelievable!

Tags: SMS, technology, annoying, rip-off, mobile phones, international

Japanese smartphones are making fun of our 'western' smartphones
I must say, it is quite funny, but what happens when your phone runs out of battery and you are locked out of your house, have no money to buy a train ticket to go to a relative's house where you might be able to charge your phone so you can get into your own house? I guess it would be 'boo hoo for you' too then

Tags: japan, mobile phones, comedy, technology, mockery