Month: March 2009

Missing Sync

I just installed Missing Sync on my Mac. I’ve got it all set up to sync my contacts and calendars between the Mac and the BlackBerry over Bluetooth. Sweet. I encountered a few bumps while setting it up, but I think I’ve ironed out all the weird little conflicts, and it’s working OK now.

I’ve still got the BlackBerry Desktop Manager software installed on my Vista machine, but I don’t think I’m going to use it for anything except maybe software installs.

Overall, the Storm is working out pretty well so far. I haven’t had any random reboots, software glitches, or anything like that. I’m getting used to the touchscreen and virtual keyboards.

In terms of my overall “holy grail” quest for maximum syncing between all my devices, I think I’m actually doing a lot better than I would have ever expected. I’ve got my contacts & calendar on my Mac, on the web, on my iPod Touch, and now on my BlackBerry. On my Vista PC, I’ve only got my contacts, but I can always get to the calendar on the web.

On the random notes side, I have Backpack on the web, accessible through FrontPocket on the iPod Touch, and through the mobile version of the BackPack site on the Storm. It would be cool if I could directly sync Backpack to the notes app on the iPod Touch and/or the Storm, but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.

On the e-mail front, I have access to all of my e-mail accounts on both the iPod Touch and the Storm now. I think the iPod Touch is a little nicer to use for e-mail than the Storm, mainly because it has full IMAP support. The BIS solution on the Storm really just forwards mail to the device. Sometimes, it seems to be able to mirror read/unread marks and deletions back to the server, but I’m not sure if it’s doing that for all my accounts. I think I’ve figured out that, for my Lotus Notes e-mail, if I delete a message on the Storm and tell it to delete that message on the server, it *will* remove the message from my Notes inbox, but it doesn’t actually delete it. I’m not 100% sure on that. I think I need to mess around with it some more.

first few hours with the Storm

Stuff I’ve figured out in my first few hours with the BlackBerry Storm:

  • The free version of PocketMac that’s provided by RIM isn’t easy to get working with the Storm. I couldn’t quite do it, after playing around for a half-hour or so. I did see some indication on various forums that it was possible, but I didn’t want to waste too much time on it tonight. I did see some positive mentions of Missing Sync, which I may try out later this week.
  • On the PC side, the Outlook contact sync works fine. I didn’t try the calendar sync. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with the PC sync, or switch to the Mac sync. I’ll probably figure that out after I play with Missing Sync.
  • The Facebook app on the Storm isn’t nearly as good as the one in the iPhone.
  • Overall, the interface is a little weird, but I think I’ll be able to get used to it. I like the fact that you can switch between three keyboards: the SureType and MultiTap keyboards in portrait, and the full QWERTY in landscape.

recycling

I just packed up an old digital camera and my old Palm i705 to send in to Gazelle. I’m also going to toss my old MotoSLVR into the box tomorrow, after I get my new Storm. Gazelle will recycle the i705 and the camera, as they apparently have no resale value at this point. And they’re giving me $23 for the old phone, which I guess is more than fair. I haven’t used Gazelle before, so I’ll report back on whether or not I actually get the $23. Either way, I’m getting rid of some old tech that I really don’t need anymore!

San Diego four-day passes sold out

I saw this mentioned on a couple of blogs today. San Diego four-day passes are already sold out! I was thinking about buying one a couple of weeks ago, but I figured I didn’t need to be in a hurry or anything. It’s the hotel rooms that are usually the big problem, so I was going to wait until I’d figured that out before I bought my pass. Oops. I can still buy four individual one-day passes, but now I’m wondering if I should even go. Without the four-day pass, I can’t get into preview night, so that’s one thing already shot down. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to pick up the passes on Wednesday night, so I’d be stuck in the general chaos on Thursday morning, waiting in an undoubtedly long line. (And I’m assuming that I could pick up all four passes on Thursday, but I’m not sure about that.)

Hotel reservations open up next week, and, by the look of things, it’s probably unlikely that I’d get a decent room anywhere close to the convention center. I was hoping that the recession might put a dent in the ballooning of SDCC, at least to the extent that I could buy a four-day pass in late March, and get a hotel room at, say, the Embassy Suites, for a decent price, but it’s not looking like that’s going to happen.

Well, I’ve been going to the con for ten years now, so maybe it’s time to take a year off. I’m not sure what else I’d want to do for a summer vacation though. Maybe Tech Ed? What’s Los Angeles like in May? And does a programming conference count as a vacation?

BlackBerry Storm

I broke down and ordered myself a BlackBerry Storm today. I’d been vacillating back and forth between getting a BlackBerry or an iPhone, and I wasn’t quite convinced that the Storm was the way to go if I did get a BlackBerry. I’m not entirely sure I’ll like it, but I’m going to give it a shot. There is, of course, a two-year contract extension to go along with this, and an extra $30 per month for the BlackBerry e-mail & web plan. So, if I don’t like it, I’m pretty much screwed, though I might be able to trade it in for a Curve or something If I really hate it.

I’m optimistic though. Looking through various forum sites, it sounds like most of the problems with the early Storms have been straightened out through software updates. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

DreamSpark

Whenever I take a class at NYU, I always spend a little time looking around to see if I can take advantage of any student discounts on software or hardware, while I have a valid student ID card. In the past, I’ve picked up some random software from the NYU computer store, if there was something I needed, and they had it cheap. Right now, Microsoft has a great program called DreamSpark that allows college students to download certain developer tools for free. The authentication mechanism ties into NYU’s Net ID system, so you can authenticate yourself as an NYU student just be selecting “NYU” from a drop-down at the DreamSpark site, then logging into your NYU account. Pretty simple. I’m downloading Visual Studio 2008 Pro, SQL Server 2008 Developer, and Windows Server 2008 Standard right now. I’m not sure that I really need any of these things; I have access to all of them through my MSDN subscription at work. But, this way, I’ll have a set of licenses that are definitely mine, and not the company’s, just in case.

Kindle iPhone App

I downloaded the Kindle reader for my iPod Touch earlier this week. I don’t anticipate that I’ll use it much, since I do have an actual Kindle, but I wanted to play around with it. Given the limitations of the iPhone form factor, the app works reasonably well. I suppose I could manage to read a book on it, but I’m not sure I’d want to.

I think that releasing this app right now was a good move on Amazon’s part. There do seem to be a lot of people who are comfortable reading on the iPhone. A good number of e-books have been released as iPhone apps, so apparently there’s a market. Amazon might as well pick up some sales this way, and maybe the app will eventually drive some Kindle 2 hardware sales, as people get used to buying and reading e-books, and decide to step up to a dedicated device.

I’m a little surprised that they don’t support reading newspapers and magazines via the iPhone app. Maybe it’s a rights issue. If I was going to read anything on the iPhone, it’d more likely be newspaper and magazine articles, rather than full-length books though.

iPhone app store

There’s an article up on LifeHacker about the first year of the iPhone app store. Here’s a statement I heartily agree with:

The little things: We’ll keep saying it until it’s fixed. It’s ridiculous that a phone that can remotely control your computer and work as a WebDAV server can’t be made to monitor a folder full of text notes and sync its own Notes application to it.

I’m still looking for a really good note-taking app that allows you to use it offline, then sync it back to your computer and/or the web. FrontPocket is working well for me, but it still doesn’t allow me to do much offline. Actually, FrontPocket may be the “killer app” that finally convinces me to switch from the iPod Touch to an iPhone, just so I’ll have constant access to my Backpack data.