May 26, 2006 | blog
So I’ve been thinking about mobility for a little bit today – I’ve been trying a few neat things to connect up and get online. Nothing radical or new really, just using my MDA, some free WiFi hotspots and my laptop.
I really don’t get a chance to go mobile too often with my job. Since my job is rally contained within one building, I seldom travel for work. Yeah, the occasional conference, maybe visit a remote site from time to time, but nothing in my day to day routine. But that’s ok, the work is really rewarding and challenging. I can’t say that I don’t get my share of opportunities.
But to be mobile and have other external influences while blogging I think could be beneficial. Today I’m sitting on a lake near Turtle Lake, WI – a very beautiful spot at my wife’s grandmother’s place. The setting sun is shining in my eyes creating quite a glare, and I need to move back inside for now. You don’t get that problem in the office!
The range of technologies that are available to us is amazing. The fact that a vast majority of them are reasonably priced for our consumption makes finding viable connectivity options fairly – even in rural areas. Can you remember back even just 3 years ago – yes GPRS was in deployment, and CDMA2000 had decent speeds, WiFi was in the process of its fantastic growth, and laptops were already widespread. But it was a real novelty to get connected on the road, I remember connecting up while my wife was driving and managed to perform a speed test at 70mph – the connection speed was about 42kbps.
In comparison, today, we have vast stretches of the country covered by some kind of wireless carrier. The options abound and the solutions are fairly easy to use. There are two of each GPRS/EDGE and 1XRTT/EVDO networks in the U.S., and each of the carriers have a wide variety of unlimited data plans. Some even include extensive WiFi networks in addition to their high-speed cell networks.
And mobile access devices – you can buy a PCMCIA card for a laptop, you can tether a mobile phone to a laptop, or you could get some version of a smartphone. With devices like BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC or Smartphone), Symbian, and Linux based solutions, there is likely something there for everyone.
So get out there everyone and blog, write, work, or simply converse when mobile. It’s a lot of fun, and is a great way to get yourself a fresh perspective. After all, there are thousands of great coffee shops with free WiFi and a great cup of coffee waiting for you.
May 25, 2006 | blog
Ok, there is this anonymous commenter on the ‘Activation servers overloaded at Microsoft‘ post on Scobleizer that really dishes it out, but fails to link back to anything of substance, or to give an actual name. I was going to post the following on the comments there, but decided I did not really want to start a flame war in Robert’s comments, so here is my post that I’ll trackback to that post.
Hi Mac User,
I’m glad you have passion for the OS that you prefer – it makes computing fun.
My issue with your long post here, is simply that you posted anonymously. Without any links to more discussions you may have had on the topic, or to back up your points with supporting data.
Your long-winded post falls on deaf ears if you don’t have the guts to mention your real name, or point to your site or supporting documentation.
Ugh, I really dislike anonyous posters, they don’t have any credibility, but obviously have a lot of time on their hands.
May 24, 2006 | blog
Boy they were not kidding… I thought that when I tried posting from Word 2007 that it didn’t actually post. Well it did – in 1969. Fantastic this new Microsoft technology, transported 37 years back in time just to post to my blog. Yeah I’m being snarky – and I really mean it in good humor, as I had read information indicating that many people were seeing incorrect dates when posting to blogs.
I’ll leave the ‘old’ posts out there for a little while, (though I will delete them evenually). Its kind of funny to see the Archive in the sidebar on the right list:
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- December 1969
Well have fun!
By the way – you can read a bit of info on Word’s blog-related need-to-knows here.
May 23, 2006 | blog
Well, I had written this post in Word 2007, but it didn’t publish to my blog… strange. Anyway, here was my post (at least written in Word ’07):
Yep, this post is going up from Word 2007 directly to my blog. If the blog-posting features of Word are enhanced a bit, I will definitely start using it for major post creation. The overall quality of Office 2007 so far is impressive. I’ve been testing Vista for awhile, but this was my first look at the Office 2007 betas. Neat stuff, though you can see some rough edges. Performance is ‘ok’ and should be improved as it approaches release. Currently, there are no extra features for blog-posting to WordPress, though I do expect that they will start to work on these soon. For example, categories are not supported directly from Word yet, and they claim that the post date is incorrect (I’ll check when I post). The last time I used an off-line tool to write and then publish a post, it would ‘break’ my page layout (theme), so I’m hoping that Word doesn’t do this; though I will risk it just to test the functionality. So far, I’m impressed with the current build, the new toolbars are extremely easy to understand and use right away – I think these are the single best improvement to the Office suite. More on the product later…
Ugh, in my haste I managed to forget to paste the Title in, so the post slug will be weird. Guess Word ’07 isn’t quite up to the task of blog posting yet. ‘Darn’.
May 21, 2006 | blog
I’ve noticed it – have you? There seems to be a certain lack of excitement overall right now. Yeah, there are some highlights here and there as events happen, and so on. But from my perspective, the last month has been quite a bit light on fresh conversations. Even right now, a number of discussions are just on blogging, maintaining momentum, and making the most efficient use of advertiseing. Neat stuff to be sure, and I’m learning a lot… but where is the excitement, the passion, the inspiration that seemed to be abundant just a few months ago?
Maybe its just the advent of spring in the northern hemisphere – more people getting out enjoying the outdoors, or getting started on spring/summer vacations, etc…
I guess I’m just curious if anyone else is noticing the same thing, or if I’m just in a ‘funk’ right now.
