Wow, another week has flown by and life has been hopping at Mobile Tech Manor (MTM). We successfully fended off Hurricane Gustav this week although over a million people lost power in other parts of the Gulf Coast. We saw Google play havoc in the browser space this week and while no new gadgets came through the door I had fun playing with some old faithfuls. There are some new things coming up in the mobile space that have me excited and there’s also something I’m trying to figure out what to do about. Come on in and let’s visit for a bit.
Personal stuff
Hurricane Gustav had the entire Gulf Coast concerned and there was a mandatory evacuation for New Orleans and several other areas in Louisiana and Texas. Fortunately Gustav never strengthened like they thought he would after passing over Cuba and the storm was far less damaging than authorities thought he would be. That was great news for millions but high winds still killed the power for over a million people in both states. Three days later reports indicated power companies were still getting power restored for these folks.
Gustav’s passing through the area had a cooling and drying affect for Houston and I have spent hours each morning working on the back porch. I have used a number of different notebooks for these outdoor sessions and it’s given me a good feel for outside screen resolution. I find that almost any notebook can display adequately outdoors if I crank up the brightness. This certainly has a negative impact on the battery life I get but I can view the screens fine for working. It is nice to work out in a cool morning breeze and I get more done than sitting at a stuffy desk.
This week I had my quarterly blood screening to track all of those chemical levels that play a huge role with my health. They do this major screening to track the normal things like cholesterol, glucose, etc., and they also check a number of items to make sure that the medication I take due to past health issues are not negatively impacting my liver function. I am happy to report that not only were all my statistics good they were extremely good and my doctor is very pleased. Needless to say I am pleased too and in very good health.
I penned my first article for the main GigaOM site this week, a look at the major OEMs who are producing touch screen phones competing with the iPhone. It was a lot of fun to do and hopefully shed a little light on who the main touch phone players are right now. HTC is definitely the big gun with the most phones produced so far with touch screens but Samsung is creeping up on them. LG is also continuing their push into the feature phone, or non-smartphone touch phones. They are all companies to watch in this space as touch phones are becoming the current phone of interest.
Revisiting old friends
No new gadgetry arrived at Mobile Tech Manor this week so I got to spend a fair bit of time getting reaquainted with some old friends. One of the side affects of having a lot of gadgets to test is that I am constantly having to shelf some gadgets to make time (and room) for the new ones. One of my favorite things to do is to take older devices off that shelf and give them a spin again for old times sake. I got to do that with the HTC Advantage and I am still convinced it is one of the best devices I have ever used. There are very few gadgets as versatile as the Advantage and it is a great example of a Windows Mobile device that can be used in much the same way as a netbook. I used it with the Stowaway wireless keyboard and mouse and that 5-inch screen is so productive for getting real work done. I still haven’t seen one of the newer models of the Advantage as HTC can’t bring them into the US due to the Qualcomm chip situation. This older version is still extremely good to use and I enjoyed my time with it. It’s now back in my gear bag on a permanent basis, at least until other gadgets show up.
Another device that has been languishing on the "later" shelf is my Blackberry 8830. I haven’t used it nearly enough since getting the iPhone 3G because I am not one for carrying multiple phones around with me like some do. It didn’t take me long with the 8830 to realize how great an email machine this little baby is and how much I missed it. RIM has optimized the OS for email work and picking it up again reinforced that realization. It was like riding a bike, you can put it down for a while and just get back on it and ride to your heart’s content. Playing with the Blackberry again has me excited for the upcoming Thunder or Storm, whatever it’s called. That’s the first full touch screen Blackberry and I can’t wait to play with one. Another new model, the Bold, is already available outside the US and it looks sweet too but it’s that big touch screen BB that I’m a-yearnin’ for.
It’s the software
I tried a couple of new programs this week and came to appreciate a third app that I have used extensively in the past. The big news this week was the release of the Google Chrome browser for the Windows platform and I spent a fair amount of time with it. It’s definitely a first attempt for Google but it’s already good enough that I can see the potential. It’s great the way it handles tabbed browsing and it is darn fast at rendering pages. There are some web pages that don’t work well yet but give them some time and I have a feeling that Chrome will become a major force in the browser wars.
Google Chrome aside my browser of choice is still Firefox. Firefox is good at what it does and when you add the extensions you want it becomes great. One of those extensions quit working for me this week though and that forced me to find another that I’m liking better already. The Mozilla Weave extension is a work-in-progress by the Firefox folks for keeping browser bookmarks and other settings in sync across multiple computers. I have been using it and really liking it as it makes all my Firefox installations look and work the same no matter what computer I use. It even works on both Windows and my Mac, at least until it stopped working this week. It stopped logging onto the Weave server to save and retrieve my settings and according to a Mozilla rep it actually booted my account by accident. When I tried to create a new account to carry on Mozilla informed me that they are full and are not allowing any new accounts currently.
That left me high and dry so I tried Foxmarks at the urging of several jkOnTheRun readers. This was fortuitous as Foxmarks is really nice and is working so well I am very pleased. It too is free and just works so thank you Mozilla for killing my Weave. I would frequently notice that Weave would have trouble accessing the server even before getting booted off and Foxmarks doesn’t have any trouble in this regard so a happy ending to this problem.
Picking up the Blackberry 8830 again led me to once again appreciate the program I use the most on that device and that’s PocketDay. This is an email/ calendar/ task aggregator that works very well and does those things marvelously. It executes all tasks speedily and presents a ton of information about my world on just that small screen. I highly recommend PocketDay to all Blackberry users.
Coming soon
A number of things are coming up that have me pretty excited. The first Google Android powered phone, the HTC Dream, is rumored to be offered by T-Mobile this month. I am getting more and more impressed with the Dream as information and photos get leaked out on the interwebs and I am pretty sure I’m going to pick one of these up when they are available. I even dug my little-used T-Mobile SIM card out of the drawer and dusted it off just to get it ready. One of the exciting prospects is that I think Google Chrome will be running on this phone if not from the beginning then at least shortly after. Google has developed both the Android browser and Chrome using the Webkit foundation used by Apple for Safari and I can’t see Google having two different browsers produced by the same developers. The thought of Chrome crossing the dekstop/ mobile divide is very compelling indeed.
Dell has released their first netbook and while there is nothing distinctly different about the Inspiron Mini 9 from all the other netbooks it is great to see them release their own version. The price was higher than rumors indicated and while some are not happy about that I think having the global Dell support infrastructure is a hugely positive thing in the Mini 9’s favor. I also think it’s significant that Dell named the 9-inch device the Mini 9 which paves the way for a Mini 10 (10-inch) and maybe even a Mini 12. Stranger things have happened.
The Mobilize 08 conference hosted by GigaOM is taking place in just a couple of weeks and I’m getting excited about attending for a number of reasons. This will be my first chance to meet a lot of the GigaOM folks I have been talking to for over a month and that will be fun. Kevin and I are both attending so it will be a good opportunity to chat face to face without having a web cam in the middle. It will also be a great conference with a lot of good speakers and panels. Ryan Block of the new site gdgt will be speaking and it will be good to see him again. One of the managers of the Google Android will be speaking too and I can’t wait to hear that talk. The Amazon VP in charge of the Kindle will be there too, and, heck there’s just too many good speakers to list them all but if you check it out you’ll understand why I am so excited about Mobilize. Maybe we’ll even have a jkOnTheRun meet-and-greet in San Francisco, who knows?
When to pull the Exchange Server plug?
Don’t worry, I’m too dependent on my hosted Exchange Server to pull the plug. I’ve said many times that the ES is the best way to keep all the computers and phones and PDAs I use in sync and that’s as true now as ever. But the primary function of my ES was hosting my consulting business information for years before joining GigaOM and that function is no longer needed. That got me to thinking that if I was going to pull the plug down the road how long should I wait? All of my activity including email, tasks, and past appointments are all archived on the Exchange Server so just shutting off the ES is not an option since it’s the only way to access that information. For those in a similar situation who want to get rid of their Exchange Server what is an appropriate amount of time to keep it around just in case? It’s a good question for sure and something that all ES users should be thinking about. Maybe there’s another way to access that archived information without the ES that I’m not aware of.
Book of the week
I finally finished Ancient Ship I mentioned last week. It was a great window into life in rural China and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This week I started Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs, the latest in the Temperance Brennan series. This series inspired the US TV show Bones and I love the books even though I don’t like the TV show at all. Devil Bones is typical Kathy Reichs and I’m whipping through it very quickly. Highly recommended for her fans.
Wrapping up
I hope you enjoyed this week’s peek into Mobile Tech Manor. I am loving writing this column and sharing my world with you each week and I hope you are finding them if not useful then at least entertaining. I know they are long and sometimes rambling but hey, that’s the way my life runs and I hope you like it. Let me know if there is something you want me to cover and I’ll do my best. Later.
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