This week at Mobile Tech Manor #13- it’s the Google

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Lucky number thirteen is the column this week, a week full of gadgets and software and ebooks, oh my.  It’s was Google week with the arrival of the T-Mobile G1 Android phone.  More time was devoted to getting familiar and productive with the new MacBook and I played a lot with the Lenovo netbook.  I spent a lot of time with some new software and even some old software as I worked through some issues I was having.  Join me for a few minutes as I share my week with you.

It’s the Google

T-Mobile began selling the first Android phone this week and shipping them to those who ordered them a month ago when they were first announced.  Mine arrived a day before they had originally stated and I have been playing with it this week.  I got the black one and my impression of the G1 was pretty good out of the box.  I will be offering some detailed first impressions soon.  The hardware seems solid if a bit clunky and the Android operating system is pretty decent for a first effort.  There are some activities which seem a little inconsistent as far as the interface goes but nothing that is aggravating.  I had some issues getting the Google stuff working for a few days that delayed me getting into the G1 properly.

The G1 is called the Google phone by many due to its roots and it doesn’t fall short in this area.  The phone interface and applications are tightly integrated with the Google functions of GMail, Calendar and Contacts.  The first time you log onto the phone, and you have to do that with either an existing Google Account or create a new one on the phone, it synchronizes your Google information online with the G1.  This is quick and painless as a rule and you can immediately start using the phone for your online Google work.  If it works, that is.

I didn’t enjoy my first few days with the G1 because I couldn’t use the Calendar app.  It would try to sync with the online Google Calendar and just hang up, eventually resulting in a force quit.  I researched it but apparently not many were having this problem.  I did a lot of troubleshooting and began to think that something was wrong with the Google Calendar data that it was bringing down to the G1.  I use Google Calendar online no problem and I sync my iCal on two Macs no problem but something in that data was giving the G1 fits.  Once I focused on the likelihood of the data as the source of the problem my troubleshooting began to pay off and I found a solution.

I have a lot of recurring events in my calendar data, birthdays and holidays and such.  My investigation turned up many duplicate events of this type far in the future, which is why I had never seen them.  Going forward into late 2009 and beyond there would be two or more Halloween holiday entries, for example.  My gut feeling was that the G1 syncing was not liking this, at least I hoped that was it.  Since the calendar data is being synced in real-time between the Mac and Google I found a free iCal Dupe Deleter utility.  I ran this on the Mac and it found over 400 duplicates in the far future!  The utility did a wonderful job of getting rid of those in just a few minutes.  Once that was done I went online and verified that the dupes disappeared out of Google Calendar.

That did the trick so I next fired up the G1 and told it to sync the calendar data and in just a few seconds it did so.  Now my G1 is working like it should and is happy to display my calendar data for me.  I have to say that I am really enjoying using the G1 now.  The integration with the Google stuff online is well done and using GMail on the phone is very sweet.  The phone has some quirks in the interface as it’s sometimes necessary to touch something on the screen to make something happen and other times you must touch a hardware button.  These are minor however and I think once I have used the phone a bit I’ll get used to that.

This Android implementation is very solid for a first effort, the phone has never crashed or hung up.  Errant apps I’ve downloaded from the MarketPlace sometimes misbehave but Android is great at killing the app without harming the environment.  It’s a pretty solid first shot by Google and the Android folks.  All in all I have to say I am enjoying the G1 and Android.  I can see great potential as the platform evolves and can’t wait to see that happen.  It will also be nice to start seeing other handsets appear with Android.

It’s the touchpad

I am getting more comfortable with the new MacBook every day that I use it and that is in large part due to the utility I get out of the large touchpad.  I won’t go into detail here as I’ve covered that ad nauseum already but it is making it easier for me to use the MacBook everywhere.  I am finding it extremely comfortable to use it in my lap in front of the TV, watching the World Series, and this is something I’ve not enjoyed in the past with other notebooks.  I attribute this solely to the touchpad and how I can interact with the interface without hassles and more importantly without thinking about it.  That’s the mark of a great intuitive interface.

I now have two Macs in the office for the first time and I am impressed with how easy that made it to get going full speed on the new MacBook.  The MacBook Pro was visible on the new MacBook from the first boot and getting the data over was simple drag and dropping.  I did turn sharing on for the pertinent folders on the MBP, like Documents, Pictures and Music, and they were instantly available on the MacBook.  I have a lot of playlists on iTunes on the MBP and getting those over on the MacBook was a simple copying of the iTunes database file over.  It couldn’t have been simpler.  Of course, I had already copies all of my iTunes folder with the music and album art over via drag and drop.  It all worked first time with no hiccups.

I have ordered a second battery for the MacBook, something I do for every notebook I use.  I am getting a solid 5 hours of battery life on the MacBook which surprises me as that is what Apple claims for battery life.  Usually I find such claims to be rather optimistic but in this case that’s what I am getting.  The second battery will thus give me 10 hours total which will get me though any day.  The battery should be here next week.

The clouds are lifting

My embracing of the cloud is getting more solid over time and this week I spent a fair bit of it clearing up the cloud and the way I work with it.  I have essentially dropped Entourage as far as working with PIM data goes and just use it to get my Exchange email when needed.  I made a concerted effort to only use iCal, Address Book and Apple Mail on the Macs to interact with my Google-based PIM data and that is working pretty well. All of my calendar and contact information is now in sync everywhere due to the Google cloud solution and it makes life much easier for me.  It was largely this work that pointed me to the G1 solution above.

This cloud solution allows me a freedom of choice in how I interact with that data.  I can use the dedicated apps on the Macs or I can work with it through any browser on any PC.  That freedom of choice is empowering and makes it easier to pick up any computer in Mobile Tech Manor and pick up where I left off, with no worries about syncing data or trying to remember at what stage something was the last time I used that computer.  It’s pretty heady stuff when you get immersed in it and as long as the cloud stays up and accessible it’s pretty powerful.  Using the client apps for access insures that even if Google goes down for a time my data is still there and I can work anyway.  That’s important and why I want client apps to augment the online approach.

Open Office 3.0

This week saw the release of version 3.0 of the free Open Office suite and since I am not even installing MS Office on the MacBook I downloaded it right away.  I am doing more of my document creation using Google Docs in the cloud but I still need the ability to work with the hundreds of existing Office documents.  So far Open Office is doing a great job with that task, I have interacted with Word docs and Excel Spreadsheets with no problems.  I’ll keep working with it to get more of an impression about Open Office but so far so good.  It is rather slow I find, no doubt due to the complexity of the features it offers which I am finding rivals MS Office pretty decently.

Netbook nirvana

I am still getting good use out of the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook.  The more I use this netbook the more I like it.  It is just so small and easy to carry around, the strength of netbooks in general.  I am finding it to be a no compromise approach to mobile computing and it is very easy to use.  The only nitpicking I can do is that battery life isn’t too good with just the 3-cell battery.  I am getting about 2 hours which is not enough to do a lot of running around without carrying the power adapter with me and that’s not something I am willing to do.  I am also finding the misplaced right shift key, a bane to Kevin, to be more annoying over time as I am constantly hitting the arrow key where the right shift key should be.  It’s not major but anything that interrupts my concentration when I work is a big deal, and this is becoming even bigger over time.  OEMs, please make netbook keyboards with the keys properly placed.  These keyboards are already shrunken somewhat so we users are already having to adjust to them and having to adjust to improper key placement on top of that is just not right.

eBook of the week

This week I have been reading Star Trek Next Generation: Greater than the Sun by Christopher L. Bennett.  I have not been able to really get into reading Star Trek books as the draw for me to ST has always been the visuals from the movies but I am enjoying this book more than I thought I would.  It’s typical Jean Luc Picard vs. the Borg and is pretty well done.

Program of the week

The program of the week is a free app for the T-Mobile G1 and it is ShopSavvy.  This program is just so darned useful and it’s really cool to boot.  Basically it scans the bar code for any product using the G1’s camera and then looks up the product online.  It quickly gives you a list of places online you can buy the product and the price for it.  It also gives you a list of local stores near you using location data that carry the product and the prices.  I am using this all the time in stores and finding how much cheaper most products are online.  Great program and great implementation.

Wrap-up

That’s it for this week at Mobile Tech Manor, as you can see it’s been busy and very varied in scope.  Thanks for stopping in for this visit and I hope to see you back next week.

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