Tag: Technology

Like other geeks, I downloaded the Pre webOS SDK and installed it. While I don’t have time (I’m not sure where all my time goes) to actually write code (I’d have to learn Javascript which shouldn’t be too hard, but lack of time is the problem), I did want to at least kick the tires.

I didn’t quite know what to do with the SDK, but reading the “homebrew” forums over on precentral.net, led me to a program in the SDK called novaterm. I hooked up my Pre, ran novaterm, and then got a big smile on my face. Here I was executing commands on the Pre as root. I was able to use top, uptime, as well as navigate the directories. For most users, this doesn’t mean much, but I’m a huge Linux/UNIX fan and have been for years. There are just some things that you can only do on a command line or things that are faster to do with a command line. (Luckily Mac OS X gives me the best of both worlds; the beautiful GUI and a command line interface.)

I’m at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on my way back to San Diego and watched the Southwest gate agent change the sign at the gate for my flight. She slid part of the sign out of the way to reveal a small keyboard that she used to key in the flight information. The LED sign looked neat and I had presumed it was hooked to some central computer to update the status along with the monitors. Well, it isn’t which potentially makes it inaccurate and frankly must be a pain to update when there are changes.

This was my first trip traveling without a dedicated charger for my gadgets! While I’ve known for a long time that I could charge my Motorola RAZR through USB on my Mac (using my MotoCharger program), I didn’t want to use it as I didn’t want to have to remember to launch it (I don’t like stuff running all the time that is only used every once in awhile).

For this trip, I found some USB charge only cables for my Pre and RAZR (the RAZR one I acquired almost on accident as it came with the Belkin portable surge strip I bought). I also got a small USB hub, so I plugged the hub into my Mac and then charged my devices from the hub. As my MacBook Pro puts out more than the minimum USB power, it can charge devices. In addition, several years back, the Macs were changed such that the USB ports remain powered when the Mac is asleep. So, at night, I plugged the Mac in, plugged in my devices and by morning, everything was all charged up and ready to go.

Now I have a different combination of things to carry when I travel; however, this combination serves multiple uses and only requires 1 power outlet which can sometimes be at a premium in a hotel or meeting room.

I’m not much of a social networking kind of person, but signed up for Twitter in October of 2007 to get the updates that KPBS was putting out for the fires. Since then my account has been pretty idle, except for the few “tweets” I posted to get free software (some call it spamming, but for my 1 or 2 followers, no one really cared).

I asked a friend of mine the other day how to officially report Palm bugs and he said to post on PreCentral or Twitter to @palm and I might get a response (turns out the correct way seems to be to post on the Palm forums). So now that I’ve posted a few “tweets”, I’m kind of drawn into reading some of the quick things that a few people have to say. It kind of seems like a waste of time to use Twitter, but it’s providing me with some useful information about the Pre and Google Voice (2 of the topics I follow).

Will I start using Twitter instead of blogging? Unlikely as my blog serves as a journal for me and I’m not usually that concise that I can put my whole though in 140 characters.

I still haven’t been sucked into Facebook, but the Pre’s Synergy could make it interesting. Just what I need, something to make me spend more time on the computer!

On Sunday, I went to SeaWorld with my family to celebrate my niece’s 5th birthday. My wife had mentioned SeaWorld’s entrance system as she has a pass and takes our son pretty often. It wasn’t until I went and saw the system that I understood how messed up it is. The line to get in wasn’t all that long, but took far too long to get through. The problem is that SeaWorld uses an optical scanner to scan in the pass and then a fingerprint to verify that it is your pass.

The optical scanner lets people put the pass under it in any direction and then reads the bar code. This takes about 30-45 seconds for each pass; so instead of using a standard bar code scanner that is faster, SeaWorld has to go high tech with very expensive pieces of junk. The fingerprint thingy is there to keep the honest, honest; it is just like software piracy that I’ve written about before where everyone is punished to combat a small number of cheaters. SeaWorld doesn’t want people to share the passes which I can understand, but their approach is flawed. We goto the San Diego Zoo all the time and the zoo uses a standard barcode scanner to scan in the pass and then briefly checks your ID. This process is much faster and accomplishes the same thing. Whether or not they’re actually checking the ID against the name and/or picture, it doesn’t matter; it is a deterrent that maybe SeaWorld should adopt.

I’ve had a long history with smartphones dating back to 1997 when I worked on the Qualcomm pDQ, the first Palm OS based smartphone. Later down the line, I used a Samsung i330, Palm Tungsten W, Treo 180, VisorPhone, Treo 300, BlackBerry Pearl, BlackBerry 8300 (something like that), BlackBerry 8830, Treo 755p, Treo 700W, iPhone, iPhone 3G, and now a Palm Pre. For me, the Treo 180 was a huge step forward in phones despite the black and white screen and cheap construction. When I started using an iPhone almost 2 years ago, I was blown away with how well it worked, but couldn’t make it my main phone that I carried with me all the time. It simply was too big to fit in my pocket and was on a network with mediocre voice and data service. My opinion of the iPhone hasn’t changed much since then; it runs an amazing operating system and can do amazing things, but it isn’t the phone for me. In addition to the network issues, I wasn’t a big fan of the on-screen keyboard.

Last week I got a Palm Pre and within hours, I was a convert and was ready to ditch the iPhone. So what made me so enamored with the Pre? A number of things including better voice quality, lightning fast data network, physical keyboard, small size, very easy to use multitasking (more on this later), and the integration of the multiple email, messaging, calendars, and contacts.

When the iPhone SDK came out and said it didn’t support background tasks, I said, who cares about background tasks? The Pre’s implementation of multitasking is simply amazing; being able to see everything running via cards is a great way to handle multitasking (messaging, calendar, and email still runs, however). In addition, last year I said that navigation on a phone was just awful; Sprint Navigation on the Pre has changed my mind (at least made me re-consider it). I used navigation today and the spoken voice was clear, had great pronunciation, routed quickly, and got me there on the first try. OK, I didn’t make a mistake, so I didn’t test how quickly it re-routed.

So having used the Pre for about a week, here’s my summary.

Pros:

• Compact size fits in my front pocket.
• Excellent voice quality.
• Fast data network.
• Multitasking with cards is easy to use and clear. (I listened to Pandora at the same time I had Sprint Navigation running on a drive today; something I couldn’t do on an iPhone.)
• Physical keyboard is ease to use.
• Connects to iTunes to sync music.
• No desktop sync for calendars/contacts needed. (Direct Google and Exchange syncing.)
• Multiple Exchange account support (iPhone does 1 Exchange account).

Cons:

• No voice control.
• Battery life could be improved.
• Device is a little sluggish at times.
• Some bugs with the software such as turning off GPS required a restart to get it going again and it is only syncing 1 calendar off our Zimbra server.
• Charging connector is a little tough to use (I need to get a Touchstone charger).
• No VPN support.
• No generic jabber client support (the messaging client is based on libpurple and supports jabber as Google Talk is jabber, but you can’t use a generic jabber account).

Is this the perfect phone? Of course not, there is no such thing as a perfect phone. Right now I’m down from 3 phones to 2 (I had my personal Motorola RAZR, a Sanyo Pro 700, and an iPhone; now I’ve the Pre and my RAZR). I know that there aren’t a lot of applications for the Pre, but I’m sure they’ll be coming along. The iPhone and Pre will be head to head for awhile. Everyone has a different opinion on phones; for now, I think that the Pre will be a good phone for me. What will next year bring? I have no idea.

My mom has been making movies for us from the pictures and videos we give her of our son and she is quite good at it. As we were viewing some of the videos lately, I noticed the image quality of the older videos was pretty poor. Just over 4 years ago, we got a Pentax Optio S5i to replace our Olympus Digital Stylus. The Pentax as a great camera for its time and was quite compact. However, fast forward several years and then we started to see that the 320×240 videos were pretty bad. After seeing a review of the Flip Ultra, I decided to get one just for video. That brought us up to 640×480. Wow, a 4x increase in resolution! We were still at 5 megapixel for still images, but video was better, not great.

After reading a review from another Mac developer, I decided to start looking at cameras. I remembered that my mom just got a new one and my dad had done tons of research. Turns out my mom got the Canon SD970 which is a step up from the one in the review. I did some digging on the differences between the 960 and 970, handled both (Best Buy had the 960, so I saw its size and I played with my mom’s 970) and decided on the 960. I’ve only had it for a few days, but already I can tell it is light years ahead of my Pentax. I tend to keep electronics for a long time if I like them; I guess I really liked the Pentax as 4 years is a long time in the electronics world!

I’ll post some pictures in some other entries.