It’s A Small World!

This evening I got to meet Reggie Suplido. Reggie is the man behind two very key mobile computing Web sites that I’ve visited in the past – 1SRC: which was a blog I regularly visited when I was a Palm Treo owner, and Internet Tablet Talk: the premier Nokia Internet Tablet forum that I visited every single day when I was an N800 user. I had no idea he lived only a few miles from my house here in WV!

Reggie also did a brief write up of our meeting on his /mobility Web site.

LapGenie Laptop Desk

I originally bought the LapGenie laptop desk for my wife during her battle with cancer. As she became weaker it was more difficult for her to hold up heavier books she might be reading. We did a lot of Bible study during her illness (which really helped both of us!) and such books as concordances, study Bibles, etc., can be quite hefty. The LapGenie worked great for supporting them while Barbara was using them and it could be easily set up to hold them at the best height and angle for easy reading.

Since her death I found that this device also works very well for me when using a laptop. I’m using it very much like the above picture of the young man shows – to support Chocolate Shake (my Asus Eee 1000h) when I’m sitting on my couch using the computer. It’s just about infinitely adjustable and allows me to get the height and angle perfectly set up for most efficient use of the laptop. It also keeps the all the cooling vents open, unlike what happens when I actually put Chocolate Shake on my lap. Chocolate Shake doesn’t really run very warm, but obviously if you have a laptop that does run hot the LapGenie can also protect you from being cooked by it!

In any case, I’m really appreciating  this gadget and have found it to be well worth its price.

iPhone 3G Telescopic Lens

Yes, you read that right, a 6-power telescopic lens for the iPhone 3G’s camera. All for only $22, including shipping!

I’ve bought lots of items from Brando of Hong Kong in the past and they have never failed to please me with the tremendous value they give for my money. When I saw this Rube Goldberg 6X lens for my iPhone on their Web site I couldn’t resist buying one.

The device actually consists of a heavy duty clear plastic case for the iPhone that features a screw-in receptacle on the back where the lens is attached. Since I already have a case on my iPhone, the first thing I needed to do is take it off and put the new case on. The Brando case easily snaps on or off of an iPhone. Next I screwed on the 6X lens and fired up the Camera application. Then it was just a matter of focusing the lens and snapping pictures.

Now the optical qualities of this lens aren’t exactly phenomenal, but for $22, including the case, it’s quite an amazing deal. The picture above was snapped using this lens on my iPhone. The apartment house shown is almost 1/4-mile from my house!

Sure, it’s kind of a toy, but for a very reasonable price I can now snap pictures normally impossible to get with my iPhone. I’ve got to admit that I’m extremely pleased with this little toy!

24 Hours with an Asus Eee 1000h

Well I’ve been using Chocolate Shake (the name of my new Asus Eee 1000h netbook) for an entire day now, so I’m ready to give some first impressions of this computer.

The Intel Atom processor is very zippy. It offers very good performance that should satisify anyone, unless you try and use it for serious gaming or graphics processing. I do neither, so this machine really has all the horsepower I need for my key work applications – Office 2003, Visio 2003, and Project 2007. Firefox 3 also works superbly on this machine.

Battery life seems excellent. I have yet to do a detailed battery discharge test, but it appears as though I’ll be getting around 5+ hours with WiFi on and LCD brightness at 50%. I’ve also noticed that the battery recharges quite quickly, in contrast to my Asus Eee 900 which takes forever to recharge.

The keyboard is superb, about as good as any I’ve used.

The screen is large, bright, clear, and pretty much glare-free.

The multi-touch trackpad actually works better than the one on the Asus Eee 900. The 1000h’s is very smooth, while the 900’s is kind of jerky and sometimes a little erratic when used for two-finger scrolling.

It’s HUGELY HUMONGOUS compared to the 900. You wouldn’t think that a screen size difference of 10 inches vs. 8.9 inches would make that much difference, but the 1000h seems like a beast compared to the little 900. I actually prefer the 900’s size. If the 900 would only come with its SSD configured better (blast that screwy 4GB C: drive!), I would happily use that machine as my work computer. I find both the screen and keyboard to be quite large enough, and the 900 Mhz processor to be suffciently powerful to run the applications I commonly use. I’ll definitly continue to use the 900 as my home netboook, while the 1000h is going to be my work machine.

Just Got an Asus Eee 1000H

I’ve been playing with Vanilla Shake, my Asus Eee 900 XP PC, for almost two months now. I have  regretfully decided that it’s just not going to cut it as my work machine. I like everything about it except for the bloody 4GB C: SSD drive it comes with. I find myself constantly fooling around with cleaning up the contents of this tiny drive. Every time I get an update from Microsoft for XP, or any of the Office software I’ve installed on the machine, I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up the Software Distribution and/or $PatchCache$ directories, engaging in a never-ending battle to keep from running out of disk space on my C: drive.

So, since I like just everything else about the machine, I’ve gone ahead and purchased an ASUS Eee PC 1000H 80G (10-inch Display, 1.6 GHz Intel ATOM Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Fine Ebony PC from Amazon – the bigger brother to the 900. It just arrived today. The 1000H gives me a real hard drive, slightly bigger screen and keyboard, a processor almost twice as fast, and over twice the battery life. All of this for slightly less than I originally paid for the 900! I’m pretty sure this is going to turn out to be a much more satisfying machine to take with me on my consulting assignments. I’ll be reporting on how well it works out right here on this blog.

Oh, by the way, I’ve named it Chocolate Shake!

Vanilla Shake is going have all the Office software removed from it and just be utilized as a home netbook. It certainly works great in that role.

The picture above shows Vanilla and Chocolate Shake side-by-side. Chocolate Shake seems huge compared to old Vanilla Shake!

aSleep for iPhone/Touch Updated

A few days ago I wrote about the aSleep application and since then it has received a major update. Now instead of just 6 sounds and musical pieces it has 50! It also has a volume slider specifically added for iPod Touch users, who will need to use earphones or an external speaker with this application. The sounds are now categorized as Nature, Life (which include a bunch of sounds I don’t find particularly soothing!), Noise, Instrument, and Sounds (actually musical pieces). Right now my personal favorite for helping me drop off to sleep is Nature: Rain with Thunder.

Disappointed with Loopt

Location-based social media services are becoming all the rage now. I’ve used Brightkite on and off for quite a few months, but with the GPS-enabled iPhone 3G it looked like even easier ways to share information about where I was and what I was doing had become available. With Brightkite I had to enter my current address manually, or through its somewhat arcane location search function. With the iPhone 3G’s GPS feature location should be automatically determined.

So, I was quite excited to try out one of the first, and most well-known, of the iPhone-specific location-based social media applications: Loopt. Alas, I have been very disappointed with it so far.

Now for me, one requirement of any such program is the ability to integrate well with Twitter. Most of my Internet-friends follow me on directly via Twitter or indirectly via Friendfeed. Brightkite does a great job at that integration. If I post location information on Brightkite that includes a photo, Twitter gets a link posted to a page that includes my text, a map of my location, and the photo.

Loopt doesn’t do so well. First of all, any uploaded photos are ignored in its Twitter postings. Second, sometimes it posts a link to a map of my current location in Twitter and sometimes it just posts text alone. I haven’t quite been able to figure out what causes this inconsistent behavior. Also, Loopt seems to really struggle sometimes to find my current location, even when the built-in Map application is able to quickly do so. Finally, Loopt seems to be plagued with “network errors” during updates that I never see with other applications.

So, I’ve given up on Loopt and am just waiting for Brightkite’s purported upcoming iPhone application. In the meantime I’ve found that Twittelator is currently the quickest and easiest way for me to get information out to my Internet-friends with a map of my current location, along with a photo and some brief text.

Jawbone Bluetooth Headset

I recently purchased a Jawbone Bluetooth headset to replace my old Blue Parrot headset, which recenly stopped working. I’ve got to admit that tiny little Jawbone seems to work just as well as the giant Blue Parrot headset, so I’m extremely pleased with it. It works great with my iPhone 3G with excellent quality sound coming through the earpiece, and it has a terrific microphone that filters out background noise amazingly well. If you are looking for a high-quality headset that works well with the iPhone, I recommend you check it out.

On The Road Again

I’m off on a three-day trip to NJ, this time for pleasure instead of business. I’ll be attending an annual picnic with friends, one that I haven’t been able to attend since I moved to WV. I will also be visiting with other friends while I’m here. Right now I am headed for a soak in the hotel’s hot-tub after an 8 hour drive here!

Charleston WV Tweet-Up

I am at the first annual Charleston, WV tweet-up. As you can see there is quite a good turnout!