Technology

Now My Mac Knows its Location

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My Macbook is getting smarter every day. With the help of some nifty new free software it now knows where it is. What is even better is now I can program rules based off of where the Macbook is. It is all because i tried out MarcoPolo. I have seen other products that do similar things, but this one is just so simple and cool. Based off of what IP, IP range, USB devices, available Airport or Bluetooth networks, etc MarcoPolo decides what location you are in. Once you train it to figure that out you can tell it to do things when you switch location. I for one have my default printer switch from my work printer to my home printer. I also have different applications i almost always open when i get home and when i get to work. Now i have MarcoPolo do it. That works out well when for example i have a different Skype USB phone at home than i do at work and each one has its own application that needs to run in order for the phone to work. Now based on the location the correct device launches.

This is some really cool software that just makes my computer experience easier. Isn’t that what software is supposed to do?

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Blackberry Pearl Hard Reset Update

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Apparently RIM is not as smart as other hardware vendors. When you do a hard reset of a Pearl you don’t actually get all the programs refreshed to the factory default. I would argue that it isn’t a hard reset, but whatever. It boils down to the fact that when you mess up an install you can’t fix it. It took me a while, but i was able to get the lost applications back after following the instructions from this forum post.

My issue isn’t even 100% resolved since i lost the new AT&T phone theme i had with my Pearl and instead have the older not as nice looking Cingular theme on the phone since the software I was able to get the restore to work from must have been older than what was on my phone. In any case I am all better for now.

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Skype Caller ID

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So close, yet not yet. That is what I am thinking about Skype’s new Caller Identification. This has been one feature I have wanted on Skype for some time. With it, I can finally think about using it as a true phone replacement for my current Broadvoice home phone. Now all I have to do is wait for them to enable the service for use in the US.

I also realized that it would be really cool if Skype passed through caller ID info from a caller when you use call forwarding. Right now I see the same crazy 0012345678 show up on my forwarded calls as people see when I call them. Maybe this Caller Identification resolves this also? I hope it does.

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Blackberry Pearl

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After being fed up with issues on my Treo 680 I went out and bought a Blackberry Pearl. This was an impulse buy, since it is a short term solution until work upgrades my Blackberry for me. Until then I am using the Pearl. My first impression is that this phone is small. It is the size of a regular phone. It fits in my pocket. That is nice. The call quality is good, and the screen is nice and bright and sharp. I am still getting used to the keyboard, so the jury is still out on it.

In the long term I will use the Pearl for my work email, and maybe get a larger screen PDA phone for my personal mobile. I know, why have two? Well I can’t port my personal number to my work account, and I don’t want to give up my personal mobile number. I really like it, and everyone knows it. Right now I have been forwarding my call from one phone to the other so I can keep one phone in my bag and not have to carry it all the time. But as good as the Pearl seems, it doesn’t do tasks very well. I like the Windows Mobile or Palm for that so I might get some other device. I just know the 680 is not that device. It crashes and is too dam slow just too often. I am eyeing the Apple iPhone, or the Windows Mobile 6 Treo with the newly announced Blackberry emulation software running on it that might come out this fall. I guess I am always on the hunt for the perfect PDA/Phone. So close, but not there yet!

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I am Not Addicted to my Blackberry

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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!

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H700

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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.

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Battle of the Mac Browsers

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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)

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Time For Vista?

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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.

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To Love & Hate a Treo

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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…

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