Polluting The Blogosphere

This week’s issue of BusinessWeek magazine has an interesting article about PayPerPost systems. It is a short piece.

Polluting The Blogosphere:
“You can’t believe anything you see or read,” complains Ted Murphy. “You think those judges on American Idol want to drink those giant glasses of Coke?”

I am indifferent about these systems, I see both the bad and the good of them. To keep some of the very best bloggers going, many have to start getting something in return for the time that they are spending writing posts. Whether it is through advertisements or by mentioning a product in a good light, does not matter to me. I can also see the bad in this, where bloggers stop being trusted, and you can’t take anything they say serious, because you don’t know who is paying them to say it. I think that sounds much scarier to most people, but it is not well thought through.

Getting more out of iCal | 43 Folders

Merlin Mann has a great post up today about Getting more out of iCal | 43 Folders. I would highly recommend you read it. Especially if you have adapted the GTD system it is a great look at using iCal for that.

New .Mac learning center

I just saw today on the .Mac blog that they have launched a new learning center for .Mac members. It is nothing revolutionary, or even that intriguing. Bit given my current rants about the .Mac service it is nice to see them upgrading something, even if I will not use it. I must say though that the information is nicely organized. My main problem exists with the simplicity of the information, none of it is really helpful for me.

Review: Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard.

The first thing that is hard to get used to about this keyboard is the size, not because it is overly small, but because it has nothing sorrounding it, it feels small and therefore I get confused about the location of some of the keys, and find my hands sitting much lower on the keyboard that they normally would. I was worried about the stability of the keybord at first when I opened it up, both sides sit up off the ground, and I am a rather hard typist. But you really have to push hard on on side or the other to get it to wabble. Overall it is a very stable unit, the sand is nice, works easily attached and detached, but I have yet to figure out why you would want to detach it.

Another nice feature are the programmable hot keys that launch applications for you. I only changed a few settings and added a couple mor hot keys, but find them very useful. The keyboard itself is small, and easy to open and close, it is pretty light as well. But it is still something more to carry. They claim that it fits in your pocket, but probably only my back or a cargo pant pocket (I don’t wear those though). One thing that is nice is the case that it comes with, nice leather and very padded. But it adds a lot of bulk to the unit, not sure if I will be using that or not.

That is all I can tell you at this piont about the keyboard,, oh and of course I did type this uing the keyboard and Word To Go by DataViz.

Note Taking: The Series Pt. 1

Only my first day out with my Treo 650 yesterday and I found myself at a meeting needing to take some notes. Unfortunately this was not a normal meeting, it was a walking meeting (site visit). I had installed Pennovate’s Notes program for just this purpose.

The program looked very cool on the video demo and screenshots. You can set the page size you want to work with (8.5×11 11×17 and so on) then it gives you a graffiti style area to write, and places it on the page accordingly. This is not hand writing recognition, just a sketchpad type application.

I took only minimal notes, but found it very difficult to use. The website depicts very easy data entry, mine was sloppy looking and hardly looked like my already poor hand writing. This is what I had expected though, I typically have a difficult time writing on things like this. With a little practice hopefully this will change. I am going to get a keyboard to use with this device stayed tuned for that, and a more in depth look at how I use the Treo.

.Mac syncing fixed?

Apple today released an update to Tiger and in the documents stated these things (among many others) were fixed:

Syncing

Improves support for Motorola cell phones that sync via iSync and Bluetooth
Addresses issues that could cause iDisk syncing to fail without alerting you or with a “Last sync failed” alert.

iDisk syncs in progress are now more responsive to cancel requests.

Shortens the time for cancellation of an iPod contact-and-calendar sync, if cancellation requested shortly after sync.

Improves certain .Mac connection failure alerts that included misleading error messages.
Resolves an issue in which the initial .Mac sync would fail if all data classes were selected to be synced (but future syncs would succeed).

Addresses a number of issues related to .Mac syncing of tasks, bookmarks, and contacts.
Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.4.6 in which you might not be able to sync via iSync 2.2 with Sony Ericsson k700i or S700i phones.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303771

One can only hope that .Mac syncing is improved, and hey you never know, maybe now it will be really fast, and more reliable. That would be FANtastic.

VoIP Cell Phones?

C|Net News is reporting that Wi-Fi VoIP Cell phone combinations are going to dominate soon, and there are already many on the way. This is all very exciting to me. I would love to be able to use a Wi-Fi connection when Wi-Fi is available and Cell when not. What is still unclear is whether the number would hop connections when the device does. I do not want two numbers coming into one phone. I am sure they wouldn’t do this to us, right?

Well regardless I cross my fingers for this to come out soon, it would be nice to be able to get good reception in my house (WiFi) and Office (WiFi also).

First Impressions: Treo 650

I have only been using my new Treo 650 for about 12 hours now, and there are a few things that I can already report. First this is an incredibly useful device, I am mad at myself for not getting one sooner. As a phone it is very functional and as a PIM it is just as useful as any other PDA. As for Mac syncing it works flawlessly through iSync.

Some initial things I like:

• Mac Syncing
• Text messaging finally makes sense.
• Email is functional with .Mac
• Great for helping kill time.

Some initial things that bug me:

• Cannot delete somethings, such as the Quick Tour
• No Wi-Fi SD card support.
• Delicate – I would not toss it like i did my RAZR
• My thumbs are simply to bug for the keyboard.

I have yet to try taking notes, but will report on that when I do.

UPDATE Note Taking

Ok so as I mentioned my cell phone was not water proof this weekend. I just bought myself a Treo 650. I am going to try to use this for notes as well with a combination of software and perhaps a keyboard, we will see.

I will post an update in a few days about my experience when I get a better handle on how I am using it.

Water vs. Cell Phone

This weekend I spent my time out on two lakes in Washington State, it was a beautiful Washington weekend, sunny with 85 degree weather, not what most people think about Washington weather. Overall I had a very good weekend away from my computer for most of it.

Saturday turned out to be quite the clumsy day for me, I started it by getting sun burnt (I cannot remember the last time I actually burned) then I followed up later in the day by damaging the Boat’s Prop on the boat lift…and finished off by dropping my Cell Phone in the lake.

This means my previous post about buying a note taking device is not really relevant, as my budget will now be going towards a new cell phone, most likely a Treo 650 (I am on Cingular, and want the Palm OS (mac user) and the 700p does not yet work on the Cingular network).

Hope your weekend was better.