This Week at Mobile Tech Manor #50: Updates and Tasking

Mobile Tech Manor Large 2It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to share the busy happenings at Mobile Tech Manor, my home office. It’s called MTM because there isn’t a form of mobile technology that hasn’t crossed over the threshold. This is column number 50, a huge milestone as it has almost been a year of sharing my work with you. This week has been a busy one as I have been getting back to a normal routine after my recent trip to the west coast. I have also been getting ready for a happy event; my oldest daughter and her family arrived last night for a visit. I am so excited to see her, her hubby and my two grandkids! Come on in and I’ll share my week with you.

I had a great trip to California but sadly it was all too short. That meant I had to get back in the swing of “normal” life this past week, whatever that means. I spent some quality time with my favorite UMPC, the Viliv S5 Premium. The S5 has been with me for weeks now and I felt it was time to seriously try one of the utilities that Viliv supplies with the device.

Updating the UMPC the easy way

The iViliv utility is an update tool that helps owners keep the UMPC up-to-date, but I have to admit I haven’t run it as I should. I tried it when I first got the S5 but of course it simply told me that everything was up-to-date because it was new. I then forgot about iViliv and haven’t tried it since then. I wasn’t even sure what exactly the program updated, whether it was the Viliv utilities that were preinstalled or the system software.

I firmly believe in keeping computers updated so this week I fired iViliv up and got a gander at how it works. It turns out that it is much more comprehensive than I thought. I was surprised to see that iViliv updated hardware drivers, some programs and all of the special Viliv utilities that were installed on the UMPC. When I started it up it scanned the entire system to see what version of each of the above was currently installed, and then it checked the Viliv database to see if there was new versions that needed installing.

The scanning process took a few minutes due to the sheer amount of information it was checking. Once it had compared my installed versions with the ones available from Viliv, it determined that I needed quite a bit of updating. The iViliv program showed me a list of everything that it checked, with needed updates ticked off for my convenience. Once I hit the Install button it began what turned into a 30 minute update process.

On the hardware driver front it installed a new Intel Graphics driver and the BlueSoleil Bluetooth software. The latter was a 78 MB download which took a good while given how slow the Viliv server was running. Each of these updates downloaded and then installed back to back, a painless process.

Once the hardware drivers were done it then updated some programs such as Adobe Air. I was surprised to see that iViliv was keeping tabs on non-Viliv software. I expected it would only update the Viliv supplied utilities but that was not the case.

The Viliv utilities presented the final update category and it found new versions of all of them. Viliv is obviously continuing to improve their utilities and thus new versions were installed. These updates included the iViliv utility itself, the Cube interface, the soft keyboard and the Viliv Manager.

Once the update process was complete I rebooted the S5 and was then running a totally updated system. The inclusion of a comprehensive update utility was welcome as it gave me a one-stop update process. I wish all OEMs would provide something like this. Many do but not all and it was very helpful.

Task solution

I have been happily using the Palm Pre for a while now but one thing that has been bugging me is the lack of integration with Google Tasks. The Pre has a simple task app but it doesn’t sync with Google or anything else, I don’t think. Since the Pre is not the only device I use I have not been using Tasks.

I am very task oriented and I desperately needed a task solution that I could use on all of my devices. I have used Remember The Milk (RTM) on the iPhone in the past, but had stopped using it because I needed it on all of my devices. I decided to try it again, since I had paid for the Pro version way back when. I am glad I did because it’s working out pretty well.

The first thing I did was make sure it was working well on the iPhone, since that’s where I originally used it. There was a new version so I updated it and found that while pretty simple it was adequate for my needs.

The next step in getting a good solution was to get it integrated with GMail. This would make sure I could access my Tasks no matter what computer I might be using. I have all of my other information in the cloud for this reason, and it made sense to have my tasks there too. Happily, RTM has a GMail gadget that can be installed within GMail which adds a sidebar for working with the tasks. It was easy to install and works well. I can always see my task list while in GMail, which I am running all day. I can add tasks, edit task details and mark tasks complete (my favorite thing).

So at that point I had RTM working well on the iPhone and on all of my computers, so the only thing left was the Pre. There is no native RTM app for the Pre, something I hope they produce, but Kevin recently pointed out a good way to get it working on the Pre. There is a web version of RTM that is optimized for the iPhone, and it turns out this web page works well on the Pre too. The only thing I can’t do on the Pre in RTM is mark a task complete, but I can live with that.

So far this week I am pleased with the RTM method of working with tasks. I can interact with my task list no matter what device I am using, and each of those devices has a version of RTM that is optimized for the particular screen it’s running on.

Grandkids are coming

My oldest daughter Misty and her family got here last night for a week’s visit and I am excited to see them again. They drove in from South Dakota and did it in a single day, with few stops. It must be great to be young and tireless. :)

I will be spending a lot of time with them as I don’t get to see them nearly enough. My two grandsons, Grady and Beau, are getting so big already. We’ll be doing a lot of fun things the week they are here so my work time will be sporadic and truly mobile. It will be like the old days, me working in different places all day.

E-books of the week

I read two e-books this week, and if you’ve followed my reading list over time you are familiar with how varied my tastes can be. These two books were very different but each pleasing to read. The first one I read was Relentless by Dean Koontz. This was a disturbing story of a couple of authors who get on the bad side of a critic. A really bad, evil critic. The story kept me turning (swiping actually) pages for hours, the mark of a great story. I was sad to see the book end, the definitive trait of a great story. Koontz is one of those rare authors who can tell a story that starts out light and happy, yet gets very scary quickly. I enjoyed the heck out of this story.

The other book I read was one I’ve read many times over the years. I felt like revisiting my friend Bilbo Baggins, and I read The Hobbit again. It never ceases to amaze me how I discover something new every single time I read through the Tolkein tales. It’s been a few years since I read The Hobbit and it was like picking it up for the first time, I was quickly engrossed in the story.

Wrap-up

That was pretty much how I spent my week. I got a lot done and felt very fulfilled in doing so. Next week I will be working all over the place, and I look forward to sharing it with you. Until then, take care.

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