Technology

I am Not Addicted to my Blackberry

by

The odds were against me. Heck I even thought I would be, but I survived the Blackberry outage with not issues. I actually didn’t know there was a problem with our Blackberry mail until about 2:30PM on Wednesday, and even then I didn’t ask about it until about 5:30PM EST. That timeline does sound weird to me since everyone said the Blackberry system was down Tuesday night and back on Wednesday but many of us at work were down most of Wednesday afternoon.

In any event I am officially (in my opinion) not addicted to the device. The jury is still out about the internet in general though!

Technorati Tags: ,

H700

by

I got a new bluetooth headset this week. I bought a Motorola H700. It is great for one simple feature that I cannot understand why others don’t include. When the boom is closed and a phone rings, I can answer it normally like I would without a headset, or I can open the boom to answer the call. When the boom mic is opened, I can answer calls by tapping the button on the side of the headset or on the phone and the call goes to my headset.

With other headsets, when they are on the call always goes to the headset. I like everyone else sometimes forgets that I have the headset turned on or don’t want to use it for that particular call but I have to fumble around since the call is already going to the headset. It is annoying.

Now all I have to do is stop my Treo 680 from crashing all the time and I would be happy with my mobile phone setup.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Battle of the Mac Browsers

by

I read a few reviews regarding performance showdowns between several browsers on the Mac. I was very surpised by the results. Both reviews I looked over said that OmniWeb was the fastest browser overall. I currently use Camino, and I like the general functionality of it, but I was not happy to see that it performed horribly compared to other browsers. Safari scored well, but one of the tests did note they used a “daily” build of the browser that is significantly faster and newer version of the RTM version currently going around. I personally don’t care about using some kinds of beta software, so that note didn’t really matter to me.

Late this week I decided to swich over to Safari to see if I could notice the performance difference. I used to use Safari but switch for some reason that I cannot recall at this time. That was until about an hour ago when I realized that last year when I bough OmniOutliner & OmniGraffle I purchased the bundle from the OmniGroup, thus I already owned a copy of OmniWeb. With a 5 second search using spotlight (really), I found the email with my key code. I downloaded the latest version of Omniweb and now I am going to give it a try for a while. If I don’t like it or don’t see a major performance boost I might switch back but I will give it some time for now. I just hope I don’t run into any sites that don’t like the browser since it is a non standard one, but I heard that it appears to sites as one of the more common browsers so I am hopeful.

(For some reason my blogging software ecto decided to crash on me as I was finishing up this post the first time, so I will hopefully be able to recreate what I wrote)

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Time For Vista?

by

This week I decided to install Windows Vista. Now hold on I know what you are thinking. Yes I still use a Mac as my primary machine. That is why I decided to put Vista on a computer or two. My work laptop has been sitting in my office barely used day in and day out for weeks and I figured I would play around with it. According to Microsoft Vista will run on it just fine. WIth nothing to lose since I do use my Macbook as my main computer for home and work I figured what the heck. As I am writting this post it is running windows update. So the jury is still out on this one.

At home I decided to put the Mac Mini I had doing pretty much nothing to better use and I setup a dual boot of OS X and Vista now that Boot Camp 1.2 is out and it supports Vista. I figured I might as well put my copy of the OS to use. I am replacing my current machine I have running my Beyond TV DVR and put the Mini in its place. I even read an article from the folks at Snapstream that showed how they tested the Intel Mini with their software. I also read and verified that the 4 products I use (Beyond TV 4.6, Firefly Remote Control Drivers, USB-UIRT IR Blaster, & the Hauppauge USB2 Video Capture device) on that machine to run the DVR are in fact compatible with Vista now, so I said why not. I have been having issues since day one with the MCE 2005 install I had been using on my old machine so I was up for a change. I have been using that machine less anyway now that I got an HD DVR box from my cable provider, but since I already own all the gear and it is free to use I am not getting rid of it just yet.

The install and setup of the DVR box was relatively painless. I put Vista on it earlier this week, and took some time today to swap the old machine I was using for the Mini, and then setup the software and all the drivers. The DVR setup is slightly better than the ld system, but it is a bit cluttered since I need to use an external Hard Drive for video capture. The Snapstream article explains why. Initial tests are showing me that the problems I had with MCE 2005 are resolved (for now) with Vista. Until There is an equivalent DVR for the Mac (EyeTV in my opinion is not anyway near as good as Beyond TV) I guess I will be using this setup. More information as I discover them.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

To Love & Hate a Treo

by

I have had a had a Treo phone since the Treo 270 came out for T-Mobile several years ago. Since then I have gone through several 270’s on and off for almost 2 years, then used a Treo 600 with T-Mobile for around a year. After that I upgraded to the 650, and then switched to a Verizon Treo 700P. I recently switched to the Cingular Treo 680. It is obvious by the number of devices I have had that I like the Treo. I like it because it is the best smart phone around. That doesn’t mean however that it is perfect. It is far from perfect. No one has made a better smart phone yet, but the Treo has huge issues. On some days I am ready to throw out my 680. It just freezes for no reason in any application. Then it starts up again and the UI goes somewhere I don’t want it to go since I was busy continuing to move the nav buttons around or type when it freezes. So annoying. The 680 also has a habit of just rebooting once a day or so. The 700P was allot better at not crashing or randomly rebooting, but the 650 did it almost every day.

Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with it? Then I remember the cool things I can do with it such as distinctive ringtones, wireless email, call recordings, etc. I just wish something came out that was stable, and consistently worked. As good as the 680 is, it isn’t that product yet. I got so frustrated recently that I thought that maybe the Windows Mobile 750 would be better. Then I came to my senses.

For now I will suffer live with what I have, but I am always keeping my eye on any device that will improve the situation. I am beginning to think nothing will come out since I have stuck with the Treo line for years. Maybe if I get a Blackberry at the new job I will just use that? it has allot less apps and functionality but my old Blackberry’s never crashed…

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Google Maps Rocks

by

I love the web based version of google maps. it is a fun tool to use. I can spend time just looking at locations satellite photos, or actually use the system to find locations. Since I live and work in Manhattan I don’t normally need directions to and from someplace. What I do need is to just see were some address is on a map. The satilite photos do that perfectly for me.

The really fantastic part about Google Maps is the new mobile version. I downloaded the Palm Version onto my Treo 680 (and previously my 700P). It is great when actually out and about and you are trying to find a location. Today it saved the day for me when I had some time to kill before lunch with friends. The only problem was it is freezing out and I am uptown on the west side no where near were I normally am. Out comes my Treo. I tell Google maps were I am and it shows me on the map. Then I say find a business, and tell it starbucks. I figured I could get a hot chocolate and maybe browse the web while I waited for my friends. Within seconds Google Maps told me there was a starbucks only a block away from my current location. I was out of the cold in no time. That is technology working for me!!!

Technorati Tags: , ,

Apartment Cleanup

by

I spent the past 2 days trying to clean up the mess that is my apartment. It is not going well. I see no improvement to the situation. That is what happens when I decide to rearrange some piece of electronics gear. Everything gets moved around and messy. I should try and finish up tonight, but I am just tired. The events of last week have still not sunk in. It will eventually, but not yet.

Well I stopped writing and got off my but for a while and I cleaned up decent amount. I still want to tidy up a bit more. I have also decided to wipe my mini, and remove the XP partition on it. I also brought back my dedicated DVR Windows XP machine. The Beyond TV Link software and the dual booting the Mini was not cutting it for me. I will use my regular DVR machine on my TV until the Apple TV thing ships and then I will plug that into my TV as well. My Mini is now plugged into my KVM. My main Windows box is not feeling too well after the moving of stuff. I think the power supply went. It is over 2 years old so I don’t know what I am going to do to it just yet.

Still cleaning…

My Mistery Trip

by

I am writing this on the return leg of my “semi” mystery trip. I say that because no one at work really was supposed to know what we were doing this week. Apparently others are not good at keeping things quiet. I told who needed to know in my group but they always are privy to corporate secrets. that is just the nature of the jobs we have, but the rumor mill is running rampant it seems. I wrote a post all about exactly what we are doing, but it is on my private work blog right now. There it will remain until I am long gone from my current employer. I feel that the smart way to write about stuff from work. I want to write about it but cant publish it.

I can say we were doing some research. It was a very busy 3 days, and then we took yesterday to relax a bit. On this trip we ate very well. Man the food was good. Traveling always lets you eat well and gain weight. I also got the chance to see some really cool technology in action.

We rented an Iridium phone for the week because we were concerned about mobile coverage and the price of service even if we had good signal. It turned out that the Iridium phones are huge, and only really work outside. On the flip side my Cingular GSM phone actually worked so we simply used that. I don’t want to look at my bill this month since the price per minute was very high, but when you need to make an important cal you need to make a call.

I went the almost the entire trip without needing my migraine medication. Right before I got on the plane I felt like I needed to take something. At least I had a good run without the extra medication.

The trip out was uneventful. our short mini trip was nice. I have to say even smaller foreign air carriers have better service than american carriers. In the US you would never see a hot breakfast on an hour long flight but we had one.

On the return trip I went from having an asle seat in the very back of the plane to a decent window seat in an exit row. And I actually did someone a favor with that change. Go figure. The leg room is nice, especially since the carrier we are on was cramped on the way down. Hopefully the remainder of the trip will be uneventful.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Parallels vs Vmware Fusion Update

by

Vmware released the public beta of its Fusion product since I wrote about the closed beta I had. In that time Parallels has come out with 2 more beta versions of their software. The last time I wrote I said that the Parallels beta had the leg up in features over the Fusion product. With the latest versions of each software now installed and running on my Macbook Pro I can say for now that Parallels still has the lead. I still think that VMware will eventually win the feature race, but for now Parallels is on top. Why you might ask? Coherence mode for one still rocks in my book. Also the new ability to create a shortcut on your mac that when launched will run a VM and then open the specified application. If that wasn’t enough Parallels now lets you see each application that you run in a VM its own dock icon. They also are on par with VMware now with there ability to drag and drop applications between VM and host.

VMware Fusion still works better in my opinion with USB devices. I cannot get my Treo to sync with Parallels but it worked with Fusion since day one. Unfortunately Fusion is still slow. Partly due to the mandatory debug mode they impose, but it is still slow. Hopefully the production version will be allot faster.

I will write more as I have more feedback to give.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,