Apr 2, 2006 | blog
A week ago, my manager pulls me aside and shows me a list of all the web sites that I had hit the previous month, since I was in the “Top 10” users of the ‘net that month. What makes me laugh about this is that I was not in the Top 10 for the previous few years! Also, the way our company “measures” Internet usage is inaccurate – the number of web hits in a month is meaningless – and this seems to be the only measurement they are using. What about amount of data transferred per site, or the amount of time per site?
Anyway, the gist of all this is that after explaining why my usage is “up” and why I expected it to go much higher, is from the use of RSS feeds. Once she understood what RSS was, she asked if I would present an overview at our next team meeting at the end of April. So I’m going to start reviewing low/no cost RSS readers over the next few weeks. The emphasis will be on ease of use, features, cost, performance. I’ll try to be impartial, but I’ll admit up front that I’ve been using RSS/ATOM/XML aggregators for over 2 years now and have found what works for me – though I’m always looking for something better.
So watch over the next several weeks, I’ll have some reviews up for your review!
Mar 30, 2006 | blog
FlexMail 2006 is an email application for Pocket PC devices. WebIS had released previous versions under the name Mail, and I purchased a copy of Mail 2.0 awhile back. Since the new version was released earlier this month, I thought I’d try out the new version and see how it has grown.
Now WebIS has done some substantial work on this product for compatibility with Windows Mobile 5, to support for SSL on both inbound & outbound POP/SMTP mail accounts. Support for IMAP is here as well, though I have no IMAP accounts to try it with. Other new features are support for VGA and square screen devices, integration of SMS messaging on phone devices, and various other small though important inprovements.
My main thing I was looking forward to was manageability of my mail. Since I have 5 separate and distinct email accounts that I use and monitor, I have a need to keep the accounts separate. I was not able to do this in FlexMail. The built-in Messaging application in WM5 has the ability to have separate folder structures for each mail account – FlexMail does not. This simple difference negates all the features of FlexMail for me.
The built-in mail client for WM5 is surprisingly flexible for multiple accounts and this is what I need rather than the ability to view HTML email (though that is nice). Until FlexMail adds this kind of functionality, its getting removed from my MDA until the next version.
Mar 30, 2006 | blog
Don’t know if I had posted about Clipmarks here yet – I know I had on my old blog. Clipmarks is a neat service that lets you “clip” a section of a web page and archive it to your account on Clipmarks. It also allows you to tag the clip with information useful to you for future reference. You can then search on that information at another time.
The service also allows you to share and save your clips by email or by directly saving a file to your computer. I mainly have been using it for research, where I can later go back and reference the information I’ve found while browsing the web. Its really easy to use, and does require a plug-in for either Firefox or Internet Explorer.
Mar 22, 2006 | blog
So who out there hasn’t heard that the consumer release of Windows Vista has slipped again?
I’m not going to rant on Micrsoft about this – I’m one of those people that belives that any product destined to reside on hundreds of millions of computers worldwide should be as close to perfect as possible.
Kudos Microsoft!
The important thing with an OS upgrade with the scope of Vista is stability. As both a corporate IT architect and a home consumer of MS producs, I have an expectation of technology. Usually I’m the one that accepts the glitches, the anomolies, the problems with most software. I simply either work around them, or understand that that is how the program simply “works”, or don’t even notice. To be precise, I understand how it works and accept the faults as a matter of course.
This outlook of mine has started to change in the last few months or so, and with Vista I’ve changed my expectations more than I thought I ever would. More and more, I am using technology for a reason, not simply because technology is cool. There are tons of cool things out there, electronics, software, golf clubs, whatever… but this time cool isn’t going to cut it. I am anticipating not just “the most stable version of Windows yet” (which incidentally I’ve already had several times – NT, Win98, W2K, XP), but the most usable system as well.
Well here is looking forward to the future – it’ll be closer to a year from now to walk into the store and pick up a retail version of Vista, but it should be worth it.
As an aside – when the public preview comes out, you should try the new OS out. It is definitely different, though not radically so, and will take quite a bit of getting used to.
Mar 18, 2006 | blog
So I’ve been using SBSH’s Pocket Weather (PW) for about a year and a half now – from way before SBSH picked up the product and its creator Adrian Oliver. While I’ve always been fond of the app, it has recently been even more useful then ever.
From its roots as a simple app that grabs the current conditions and forecast off the ‘net, to the current version that is highly configurable with custom radar & satellite maps, animated maps, and large number of locations to configure. The community has embraced it as well with numerous skins, themes, icons, buttons, etc… to help mesh with the overall look a person may be going for on their PPC.
Since I have the T-Mobile MDA, it has become very useful – simply because PW now does not have to connect to my phone over bluetooth and dial the ‘net, the data connection is built in. This of course applies to all such applications that access the Internet, but I’m talking about PW right now. The current conditions now update every 15 minutes, the weather maps every 30 minutes. I can whip out the MDA at any time and give everyone a quick full-featured weather report when needed. Talk about awesome!
This application alone has driven a few people to consider a PPC Phone like the MDA or other HTC Wizard based platform. And don’t forget the integration with SBSH’s PocketBreeze program that allows multiple Today Screen plug-ins to use the same screen space – highly recommended! There is much more but I’d recommend reading a review on Pocket Weather, and visiting the exceptional SBSH support forums for this and all their programs.
Reviews:
