The laptop stand, a tripod and a treadmill - exercise for geeks

Andrew routinely violates Gordon's Laws of Acquisition.

This is good, and I thank his suffering spouse for her patience. Andrew is my one man research department. Today he brought me a great one.

Andy has assembled several pices into an obviously practical geek exercise solution:

1. The Laptop Stand from from Pfeffer Industries: $35
2. A camera tripod - thereby justifying purchase of a good tripod
3. Netflix video-on-demand
4. iTunes sharing (podcasts)
5. A laptop (OS X needs Parallels or VMWare and XP to use Netflix's evil XP-only VOD solution)*
6. A treadmills or eliptical trainer (Our ancient Nordic Track will, alas, strike the tripod).

* OS X users who are not current Netflix customers are probably going to substitute Apple video rentals, but note that the Netflix solution is a "freebie" for Netflix current subscribers. Apple video rentals cost money.

The key is the stand fits a rugged tripod quite well. Andy certifies it works in practice.

This might just cost justify our purchase of both an elliptical trainer and good tripod.

Google's Photos Screensaver

This is bundled in Google's "Pack", but I think you can now download only portions of the pack -- like this:

Google Photos Screensaver: "Google Photos Screensaver turns your computer into a digital picture frame that lets you:

• Display photos from your PC and photo sharing sites
• Stay connected to friends and family with photo feeds
• Watch cinematic slideshows with the new Pan & Zoom transition
• Flip through photos with easy on-screen controls

For years I've used an old version of gPhotoShow to display images (later versions had malware features). It adjusts to multiple displays, but the regular XP screensaver only puts an image on one screen.

I'd like to see how well this works. If I get a chance to try it I'll report back ...

Remote desktop control market improving

There's not much I envy from the Windows world, but Microsoft's (was it a Citrix offshoot) superb remote desktop protocol is on the list.

It was a work of genius. I don't have OS X 10.5, but I suspect the VNC dervied remote control features there are a pale shade of terminal services.

So, yes, I'm jealous. On the other hand, the good news is the remote desktop marketplace is expanding. Maybe news like this will convince Apple it's time to build a XP quality remote control solution for OS X.

In the news recently:

• WebEx PCNow: Costs $13/month, no per-use cost
  
• CoPilot is now free on weekends

I'd like to try out PCNow, but I didn't see any hint of a trial version.

Nokia 6555b: the pleasant surprise, and its iSync Plug-in

The euphoniously named Nokia 6555b was to be a brief engagement after my divorce from the Motorola RAZR.

Ahh the RAZR. A pretty thing, but beneath the smooth face a twisted psychopath with a borderline personality disorder. Mercifully the memories are fading.

The Nokia isn't angular and slim. It's a bit lumpy in the pocket frankly. And yet ...

It's warm. Comforting. Smart. Most everything has been well thought out. (Note to Nokia: The quick dial UI fails when two numbers for the same user are entered. You're missing an iconic indicator to distinguish the user-number relationship.)

And, rather to my surprise, I was able to easily sync the Address Book with my OS X Address book using the free Nokia 6555 iSync Plugin by Code Crazy (see [3] to obtain).

Even the Blackberry won't sync to the Mac using Bluetooth, though it DOES have a nice, standard, USB cable. I have to buy one of those $5 Motorola Micro-Mini USB adapters for the Nokia so I can travel without the charger. Yes, it will apparently charge from the micro-USB port. It even has a standard 2.5mm earset jack. A good alarm clock. Vibrate mode. Even some sample games for the kids.

You know, maybe I'll wait a bit on the iPhone. We've turned Emily's Blackberry Pearl into a proto-Android, and it works pretty well that way. So we have a data phone with Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Mail and some other odd Google things.

And ... EDGE on the BB, it turns out, is damned slow. The iPhone deserves better. I'll have to keep carrying my Tungsten E2 for a while anyway -- the iPhone doesn't do tasks or much of anything without a data connection.

The 6555b doesn't need an expensive data plan to be happy.

This could last until iPhone 2.0.

Or beyond. After all, GSM does facilitate polygamy ... [but see the March 2009 update! Evil.]

Update 2/4/08:

• The phone continues to work well, but at times the battery has drained faster than expected. I'm going to turn off bluetooth and see what effect that has.
  
• I installed an old 64MB memory card (2GB is $25, this was lying around) which enables mounting as a mass storage device via USB (below) on a Mac [1] (On a PC it's supposed to enable sync with Windows Media Player and to work with Nokia's desktop apps.).
  
• I ordered the Motorola micro USB (EMU) to mini USB adapter ($3.50 + $6 shipping from an Amazon affiliate). I found with this cable that while the phone does not display a charging icon, it does indeed appear to charge when connected to a Mac. [2] This cable also supported USB mounting [1]. It did NOT, however, support iSync connection via a USB cable. So my iSync connection is Bluetooth only.
• More on music and AAC support on this phone.

Update 2/18/2008: I really don't like the startup/shutdown fanfare; I've learned to palm the device to suppress them. Can't figure out a way to turn 'em off. There's more than a few things on the phone you can't do anything with, such as assign some useful function to the Push-To-Talk button AT&T promotes heavily.

Update 3/5/2008: From the comments: "To disable the startup jamboree, go to menu/settings/phone settings/startup tones and turn it off. easy!". A great tip. There's a similar setting on the same menu to disable the shutdown song. Now I don't have to smother the phone between my hands when I'm flying.

Update 4/24/2008: Contrary to my initial impressions, it doesn't charge via the USB port, at least when I use the Motorola adapter. I'm also finding more holes in the UI. Muting is pretty awkward, for example. It's also easy to end up in a UI state where you want to exit out to the primary phone screen, but there's no way to do that without closing the call (there's no universal "escape" button.) I continue to be annoyed by the hard-coded buttons designed for services I don't want, a sign that Sprint was too involved in the phone design.

Update 3/24/2009: There's a dirty little secret to all Nokia phones. They have a particularly evil approach to unlocking. I'm not buying Nokia again.

Update 4/15/09: I've made my copy of the Code Crazy iSync Nokia plug-in available. See [3], below.

[1] Settings:Connectivity:USB data cable:Date storage.
[2] In the past I've found that a Mac or PC won't power a USB device unless it has some device driver integration. It might be that installing a memory card, and then mounting via USB, is required to provide USB power. I have not yet tested with a USB charger.
[3] The Code Crazy domain is gone and the associated iSync Plug-In seems to have vanished. I've made my copy available, though of course if the author asks I'll remove it. A couple of people have tried this and it didn't work for them. I used it with a G5 iMac and 10.4, I no longer use it. It is probably not compatible with Intel machines and/or 10.5.

Missing sync for Blackberry on OS X vs. PocketMac

PocketMac's OS X sync software was bought by BlackBerry, it's a free download. Missing Sync for BlackBerry is made by the same team that produced Missing Sync for Palm -- which we've used for a couple of years. That software costs $40, but I'm eligible for a $20 side-grade.

Both require a USB connection, they won't work with Bluetooth. Both come with ominous warnings of known issues. Only the PocketMac product supports direct software installation, but most BB software seems to be "over the air" anyway.

PocketMac seemed cruder, and it doesn't use a standard OS X installer. That makes me nervous. Sync software is ugly stuff anyway, non-standard installers add risk to risk.

I paid the $20 to MarkSpace. First sync had lots of warnings and issues, but at least the address book sync worked. There's no way a non-geek could ever use these products.

BTW, Missing Sync for BB is not a very trusting product. You must register over the net, and it stores your ethernet card address. One machine only!

No wonder everyone's afraid of the iPhone.

ePocrates on the BlackBerry Pearl

Ok, so one of the factors in the big switch was that my wife needs a phone that does ePocrates, and we didn't want a modern (yech) Palm device. So we got the BB Pearl.

Turns out ePocrates on the Pearl ain't quite as sweet as on the Palm. You need a data plan for one thing -- no installing via the BB desktop. So no buying BB without a data plan in the hopes of having a relatively cheap ePocrates platform! I wonder if ePocrates gets a kickback from AT&T for doing it this way, or whether the BB platform really doesn't support desktop installation.

In this case we have the unlimited data plan, so I'm downloading as I type. There are a few other caveats around the 9MB install:

Software Options

From the BlackBerry device's main menu, tap on the 'Options' icon, then click on the 'Status' item on the list. In the Status screen, the File Free number shows how much free main memory you have. If you have nearly enough memory, we recommend that you still try the installation, as your BlackBerry device will automatically remove unused hidden files.

Memory cards are not supported on BlackBerry devices at this time.

Emily's Pearl looks like it comes with about 28MB free, and ePocrates will use 9MB. I have a cheap 64MB Micro SD card installed, but it looks like that's only used for media. Shades of the Palm.

The iPhone will be a different story. I've a hunch we'll be selling the Pearl in a few months ...

Update 11/28/08: Years later, still suffering. The Pearl is a toy. ePocrates on the Pearl is a train wreck. Do not do this. Please don't. If Apple were to get their iPhone app together I'd switch Emily to the iPhone immediately.

Update 4/23/09: We finally deleted ePocrates from Emily's Pearl. The phone is useful again. What a bloody wreck. A colleague of mine with a corporate BB (also EDGE) had a similar experience. Don't install ePocrates on a Blackberry.

Is it Firefox, or is it me? Something's wrong.

I've used Firefox for years, and it's never been as flaky on OS X as it's been for the past month or so.

Of course I don't know whether the problem is Firefox, Google's web apps, or OS X 10.4. All I know is it's getting miserable.

Firefox loses track of the cursor position in wysiwyg edit boxes. Firefox pegs the CPU. Firefox sucks memory. Firefox crashes.

If Safari worked with Google I'd switch. I may try Camino again, though it uses the Firefox rendering engine.

I don't see many other complaints, so if you're having trouble leave a comment or two. Maybe it's just me.

Update 2/28/2008: I had to go back to Firefox -- at least for Google properties. Safari has too many problems with Blogger, and it doesn't work at all with the page editor. Some of the problems, such as pasted text showing up outside Safari's rich text editor, have to be at least partly Safari bugs.

Update 3/4/2008: Now I'm trying Camino, which has gone through a few point updates since my last try. It certainly feels bloody fast, and so far Google is treating it like a first class client. It would be nice if it has fewer memory leaks and SPBDs than Firefox.