This Week In Mobile Tech Manor #63: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Mobile Tech Manor Large 2Ah, Friday, my favorite work day of the week. Not because it is the last work day, although that certainly is a factor. No, it is the day I get to share my week with you. My home office, aka Mobile Tech Manor, has been quieter than usual. This is in large part due to the weather we’ve been having, rain every day of the week. It’s like being in Seattle. It was a week of upgrades, breathing new life into some gadgets. It was an unusual week for me in the e-book department, as I read two non-fiction books for a change. Step into the Manor and let’s visit.

I am writing this on Thursday evening, sitting in front of the big screen with game 2 of the World Series going. I may be stationary in the comfy chair, but I am making full use of mobile gear to do so.

This week has been unusual due to the weather we’ve had in the Houston area. It has rained every day, with frequent torrential downpours. The TV weather folks have reported 2 – 5 inches of rain in the area every day this week, along with the street flooding that always brings. The nearly constant rain has kept it dreary in the Manor. I know my friends in the Seattle area are used to constant rain, but I don’t know how you tolerate it given how it’s been here this week.

Right now there is a horrendous thunderstorm overhead as I write this, with lightning flashing in a strobe-like fashion. I am expecting a power outage so I’m on the notebook, using the MiFi for connectivity. If the power goes out, I will not be totally in the dark. I’ll have the laptop display for light, and still be online with the 3G from the MiFi. Mobile tech is often a great backup system, even in the home.

Gadgetry

There weren’t any new gadgets that appeared in the Manor this week, but a couple of gadgets got a new lease on life due to firmware upgrades. The MiFi I am using now had a firmware upgrade that I applied this week. Novatel released the upgrade for both the Verizon model that I have and also the Sprint model.

The MiFi is an unusual gadget as it is almost always used over Wi-Fi. That’s the beauty of the MiFi but it has one drawback in that users are not notified when an upgrade is available. That notification is only given when the MiFi is plugged into a computer via USB, and that’s not something most users ever do.

You have to plug in to make the upgrade, though, so I first plugged the MiFi into the MacBook. The MiFi works with the Mac using the Verizon Access Manager (VAM) program, just like it does with Windows PCs. Unfortunately, upgrades to the MiFi cannot be done from a Mac, so owners with only a Mac are out of luck when it comes to upgrades. That’s not acceptable, especially since there is a Mac version of the VAM. There’s no good reason that this version can do everything except apply upgrades.

Once I verified the upgrade wouldn’t work on the Mac version of the VAM, I decided to cheat a little. I plugged the MiFi into the MacBook while running Windows 7 under Parallels Desktop. I fired up the Windows version of the VAM under Windows 7, and upon connection the program told me a firmware upgrade was available. I told it to proceed, and it downloaded the upgrade and started the install procedure.

That’s as far as it got, as during the upgrade process the MiFi is power cycled a couple of times. This would break the USB connection which was being made through the virtual machine, and Parallels was having trouble reconnecting the MiFi fast enough to continue the upgrade process. I futzed around with this for a while and then gave up.

I moved the MiFi connection over to a ThinkPad notebook running Windows 7, and the process went as smooth as butter. The upgrade was downloaded, the MiFi’s firmware was wiped and replaced with the new version, and the device was reactivated on the Verizon network. It then updated the PRL, the table that defines the 3G coverage.

Once the process was complete, I tested the ability to connect to the 3G network and that worked just fine. The update fixed international roaming stuff, and the main fix that affected me was the MiFi no longer hibernates while it is plugged into a power source. It originally would do so if dormant for a few minutes, making it take a bit to reconnect when activity dictated. Now it will just stay connected if it’s plugged in, as it should.

The other gizmo that got an upgrade is the BlackBerry Storm. This is the original Storm from Verizon, and the firmware upgrade brought the OS to version 5.0. What a difference the new OS version makes! It literally has given new life to the Storm in so many different ways.

Most noticeably, the overall performance of the Storm is greatly improved. Everything happens instantly, from menu popups to screen autorotation. The onscreen keyboard is vastly better too, and while I was fine with the way the keyboards worked originally, I really like it now. There are a lot of other little improvements, too many to list here. I’m sure there are some i haven’t discovered yet.

This update was a true delight. It brought a tremendous improvement to the device, but it may end up shooting RIM and Verizon in the foot. The update to the Storm coincided with the release of the new Storm 2. The Storm 2 is only an incremental hardware upgrade, most noticeably the addition of Wi-Fi to the phone. Otherwise it is a minor hardware update. The primary change in the Storm 2 is the bump to the OS to version 5.0.

I have seen a number of video reviews of the Storm 2 this week, and from what I’ve seen my older Storm now works just as well as the Storm 2 due to the new OS. There is absolutely no reason (other than the Wi-Fi) to upgrade to the Storm 2, as far as I can see. RIM should have made a bigger improvement to the hardware in my view.

Software changes

The Storm upgrade led me to finally try the new BlackBerry Desktop Software for the Mac. This is the program used to control connecting a BlackBerry to the Mac for maintenance, syncing and for upgrading the OS. The Mac version was only recently released by RIM, and I tried it for the first time during this upgrade.

I am impressed with the BDS, and I think RIM has done a good job with it. It’s about time they released this Mac version, but at least they got it right when they got around to it. Using the program I was easily able to perform the OS upgrade. I also backed up the phone to the Mac for safety purposes.

Turning web pages into apps

I tried something this week I’ve been meaning to try but had not gotten around to. The Prism add-on for Firefox makes it possible to save any web site and run it like an app. It’s designed to turn a web page into a standalone program for ease of use.

I added Prism to Firefox on the MacBook with one thought in mind, to turn Google Voice into an app. A simple menu selection created a Google Voice application that in effect turned GV into a program in its own right. The program window is optimized for GV and I can leave it running on the desktop, or minimized to the dock, without having it affect my main Firefox window.

This is important because I like to have GV running all the time and I have occasionally closed Firefox out of habit, only to remember that GV thus closed too. Now I have a GV program all its own, and I even have the icon sitting in the OS X dock for instant access anytime I need it.

e-Books of the week

This week was a non-fiction reading week, something very unusual for me. Normally I like my fictional stories, but the two e-books of the week were books I wanted to read for educational purposes.

I mentioned last week that I had started On Writing, Stephen King’s practical guide for the fiction writer. I finished it this week, and it is no question the best practical guide for writing I have read. His advice is so straightforward, and something every writer should give a good read.

Something I wasn’t prepared for in On Writing turned out to be pretty cool. While I’ve read the book before, I had never read the afterword King included in the book. In the afterword King recounted the near fatal auto accident he experienced, along with his recovery process. What I realized as I read this account was that it was similar in style to my chronicle of my own life-changing health episode. It was rather cool to find that similarity in style. Of course, I am biased and may have imagined the whole similarity.

The other e-book I read this week was an inspirational book by Mark McEwan. McEwan was a weatherman and co-anchor on the CBS Early Show for 15 years before he was let go by the network. He then moved to local TV news in Orlando, where he had a major stroke. After the Stroke is his account of having the stroke, and the arduous rehabilitation process. It’s a good story to read, and one of particular interest to me given my own experience having a stroke. I enjoyed this book a lot.

Wrap-up

That was my week, and now that I’ve shared it with you that means you’re as smart as me. That’s an old saying my Dad used to say when he was with us, and I still find it amusing. Until next week, take care.

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