I can’t believe another week has flown by so quickly. Mobile Tech Manor has been hopping with new gear coming in the door and lots of software testing. The BlackBerry Storm has been getting a good workout and the iKindle has appeared on the ebook front. Come on in and visit with me a spell, and I’ll share my week with you.
The Rest of the Story
This week saw the sad news of the passing of radio newsman Paul Harvey. Harvey was a fixture in my house growing up, and I still feel like the big events of the day takes place in his distinctive voice. He was a genuine American icon and will be missed. Paul Harvey, now we truly do know the rest of the story. RIP.
Issues this week – No Windows 7; Calendar won’t sync
I have been having a blast playing with the HP Mini 1000 MI netbook, as it is a sweet machine. I am taken with how small and light is is yet is fully equipped for a good day’s work. I wanted to put Windows 7 on it to see how well it runs compared to the Linux variant it ships with but that was not to be. I spent a lot of hours this week trying to get it installed but with no luck so far. The Mini MI can boot from a USB stick, but no matter how I prepare the stick I can’t get the MI to find a bootable partition. That’s what it tells me anyway. I’ll have to return to it when I have more time to figure out what’s wrong.
The RIM BlackBerry Storm has been my main phone/PDA/mobile computer and it’s working like a real trooper. It’s a great email/ messaging device without equal, heck it’s a BlackBerry. The only bit of trouble I had with the Storm this week was with Google Sync. I use Google Sync to keep the Storm’s calendar up-to-date with my Google Calendar and it worked great until one day this week.
I noticed that my BlackBerry Calendar data was not reflecting new events put into Google Calendar online, and when I checked the Google Sync log it told me that “Another sync client has been adding events to the Blackberry calendar. To avoid duplicates Google Sync will not keep these events up to date.” Nothing had changed on my end, so I went to the Google help forums for information.
I discovered this is a known issue; at least it’s affecting other BlackBerry owners too. So far, no one had come up with the reason for this suddenly happening nor how to fix it. I played around with it a bit and then uninstalled Google Sync and reinstalled it. This forced a new sync of all my Google Calendars (3 of them), and sure enough it’s been working fine since then. The only thing I wish the BlackBerry would handle better with the multiple calendars is if it would display them separately (and optionally) rather than put all events in the one big BlackBerry calendar. The iPhone does that, and I wish the Storm would too.
Software Juggling
I played with a bunch of new software this week in my never-ending quest to find just the right toolkit. Who am I kidding? I just like to try new things. I started out trying Mailplane for the Mac. This is basically a client for Gmail on the Mac and I installed the trial version of it. It adds some new functionality to email handling in Gmail and will handle multiple Gmail accounts with easy switching among them.
Mailplane is nice at what it does, but after using it for a few days it basically just feels like a client wrapper for the Gmail web interface. I mean, the mail window in Mailplane IS the Gmail web interface, so it seems like I am just using that rather than a special client. I will keep trying it for the remainder of the trial period (14 days I think) and then most likely will just delete it. I just can’t see it adding much value for me.
PocketInformant has been one of the best Windows Mobile applications for years. PI is a great PIM application that brings contacts, tasks, notes and calendar management into one totally configurable program. They are hard at work on a version for the iPhone, which will be great, and this week I tried the brand new version for the BlackBerry. This new version added support for the BlackBerry Storm, both for the large screen and with touch control improvements.
I have been pleased with using PI on the Storm, and it’s become a big part of my daily use. It’s so easy to get a ton of information about my schedule with a single glance, and I am still experimenting with the all of the configuration options to find what I like best. It’s a great program that I will certainly be buying when the trial period is up.
Another new BlackBerry Storm app I have been playing with is Where. Where is a location-based app that uses the Storm’s GPS so it always knows where I am and lets me do searches for things around me. There are a bunch of search categories that let me search for Starbucks, traffic conditions, weather, Yellow Pages, plus a lot more. It’s the fastest way to find specific things near me that I’ve found, and it’s a lot of fun to use. It’s free, too.
E-books and E-book Readers of the Week
I have been reading e-books with three different readers this week to see how well they work for me. I am still testing eReader for the BlackBerry and it’s worked pretty well. I have worked with the Fictionwise folks on a few last minute bugs, and they’ve been quick to fix them and get new beta versions out. These last-minute bug squashes are the reason the public beta has not appeared yet, even though it was due to be released last week. They promise me it will be out this week.
Yesterday Barnes & Noble bought Fictionwise, the company that owns eReader and Fictionwise ebook retailers. I am interested to see how that affects eReader going forward and what that means. I have a huge library of eReader books accumulated over the years and I admit I am concerned with the new owners. I wonder if this merger is also affecting the release of the BlackBerry eReader app. Time will tell.
The BlackBerry version of eReader is definitely a very early version compared to the iPhone version. The iPhone version is marvelous and has evolved into a very fine e-book reader, where the BlackBerry version is a good basic reader with no frills. It doesn’t even have themes: you must be satisfied with black text on a white screen. I miss the iPhone version’s “night-time mode” which is gentler on the eyes for reading at night. I am sure that Fictionwise will keep improving this version over time, Barnes & Noble willing.
This week saw the unexpected release of Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone application and I’ve been giving it a workout too. I must say that Amazon has done a stellar job with this app and it’s a joy to use. I can’t get over how fast it is compared to the other readers I use. It’s also downright spooky to buy a book on my desktop computer and find it right there on the iPhone the next time I run the Kindle app. Spooky in a good way. One thing you can’t miss on Kindle for iPhone: color. That’s right, book cover art and even comic books are in color on the iKindle, something not even the Kindle device can do.
The main e-book I’ve been reading this week is Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honor.” It’s typical Clancy: intricate, detailed and totally engrossing. It’s a Jack Ryan story, my favorite Clancy character by far. It’s pretty funny, but I now see Harrison Ford in my mind when reading Jack Ryan stories by Clancy. The power of Hollywood.
Wrap-up
That’s it for another week. Software, e-books, hardware, all the usual things at Mobile Tech Manor. Thanks for sharing this week with me and until next week…
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