Clarifi iPhone case - must buy now ... cannot resist ...

This is just painfully brilliant ...

Griffin Technology: Clarifi

... Slide the Clarifi lens into place over the built-in lens of your iPhone.... ... With Clarifi's lens, your iPhone can image an entire business card with astounding clarity.... you can move in to 4 inches for crisp detail and great pictures.

And, of course, Clarifi is also a super-protective case, constructed of durable polycarbonate, with cutaways for access to power switch, headphone jack, volume controls, and dock connector. For use with Apple Universal Dock wells, Clarifi features Griffin's trademark EasyDock™ design: the bottom third of the case slides down and off to fit in standard dock wells.

I cannot resist. It's not on sale yet, but now I'm glad I haven't found a case I really like.

Evernote will do offline OCR of scanned and uploaded images. I assume they do something special for business cards especially if you pay for their enhanced service. I assume an OCR app for the iPhone is on the way ...

The Devil's Due: Qwest has been good

I've had a few nasty things to say about Sprint and AT&T.

So I was surprised when I recently realized that I've gotten quite good service from Qwest. It's been a year since I switched ISPs ...

Gordon's Tech: I switch to Qwest DSL Platinum

... The tech person was, again, very good. She promptly gave me my Qwest un/pw and, for what it's worth, my MSN un/pw (guess I need a mail forwarder there [1]).

So far it's been fine. I'll update with this post as I learn how well it works, and, most of all, learn how much it will really cost....

My DSL works, speed seems adequate, I pay my bills. Qwest doesn't even spy on me. They don't even spam me.

Weird.

Simple iPhone web app directory

iPhone Web Apps. A very simple list that renders well on the iPhone, from pure-mac.com. I had no idea Amazon had a web app interface.

Air Sharing: turn your iPhone into a file and web server

I have my copy:

Avatron Software: "Air Sharing's regular price is US$6.99. But don't miss this special introductory offer: For the first two weeks, Avatron Software will be giving Air Sharing away for FREE!"

So now my iPhone is a file server and and a web server. If you knew my IP address I suppose I could run my old web site off it.

Comes with a file viewer which did a fine job rendering a word doc.

This is a bit insane. Today I bought an HP41C emulator, got Air Sharing for free, and got a free upgrade to Apple's Remote app.

Ever since I found a fix for the "unknown error" on update bug the App Store has been my candy store. I'm already forgetting the suffering of switching from Palm to the iPhone...

The iPhone HP 41C emulator (i41CX) - because sometimes madness must be honored

An obsessed madman has created a full emulation of a legendary scientific calculator ...

i41CX

Advanced programmable and expandable RPN scientific calculator with virtual thermal printer/plotter suitable for a wide variety of scientific, engineering, mathematical, financial, and academic applications.

• RPN logic with 4 element stack
• Powerful rich set of numeric and mathematical functions
• Time, calendar, alarm, and stopwatch functions
• 12 character display with alphanumeric capability
• User definable keyboard with support for overlays
• Expandability: four module ports provide access to additional functions (e.g. matrix operations, programmer functions, equation solvers, etc.) beyond the standard built-in functions
• Ability to download module files from the internet
• Program features: automatic line numbering, labels, branching, subroutines, interactive alphanumeric input/output, loop operations, indirect addressing, flag operations, and synthetic operations...

Note the word "HP" does not appear anywhere on this page or on the screens. It's just an "scientific calculator". Nudge-nudge.

It cost me $8 to buy this. I might use the timer, and I might use the calculator every few weeks.

I bought it because sometimes glorious madness must be honored.

Update 12/23/09: There's a comprehensive (of course) FAQ on the AL Software site and a mini-manual. The original HP 41C manual is probably a bit hard to come buy, but, inevitably, another wonderfully insane geek has an online version and the i41CX manual points to PDF scans of the original manuals (252 pages!). Yes, and there's anHP41.org domain.

The only mystery remaining is who wrote this incredible application. The answer can be found on the HP-41 archive website emulation page. (Or you could just look at the author credits on the "mini manual").

I must add that I've recently scanned the "mini-manual" and "staggering" comes to mind. For example:

... Need to solve first- or second-order differential equations? Need to perform complex number operations and functions? Need to perform vector operations? Coordinate transformations? Number conversions and Boolean logic? Curve fitting? Solve time value of money problems? These are essentially the problems for which the HP-15C and HP-16C were developed. The Advantage Pac provides these capabilities to the HP-41CX. Thus, by loading the Advantage Pac and creating the appropriate key assignments, you can turn the i41CX+ into a virtual HP-15C or HP-16C!...

Oookaay. And let's not mention the GPS tools.

Wow, Safari for Windows is bad ..

In the course of closing out the last remaining RSS reader options for an unusual setting, I put Safari for Windows through some simple tests as an RSS reader.

Wow, it's bad.

No, the RSS stuff is pretty good. Much better than Firefox 3, and probably comparable to IE 7.

Problem is, the was very flaky and slow to process the Sharepoint and Community Server feeds I gave it. If it clicked too many times during operations on the bookmarks and feeds it would crash.

I can see why Safari gets so little attention on XP. On OS X it's a reasonably competitive browser (I prefer Firefox because Google builds for FF), but on XP it's kind of bad.

Really, Apple should kill Safari on XP and focus on getting Webkit based Chrome working with Apple products.

RIP Onfolio - the last of the standalone XP feed readers

In my workplace we live in a time warp of Office 2003 and IE 6 running on XP. I doubt we're the only ones.

So we need older solutions for Sharepoint 2007 RSS subscriptions; solutions with integrated Windows authentication. Products like Newsgator Inbox, Omea Pro, and Onfolio.

These are products that have been ground into the dust by Outlook 2007 and IE 7. (Neither of which are comparable to Google Reader, but we're talking corporate settings here. The IE 7 reader, by the way, is much better than the Firefox native reader.)

Newsgator Inbox recently failed my personal quality tests. Not their problem necessarily, Outlook 2003 is a terrible place to operate in.

Omea Pro is way too big and complicated to contemplate for our users and environment. It would be like using an aircraft carrier for water skiing.

That leaves old Onfolio

I have used Onfolio at work for years, and I've been happy with it ... but it was clear Microsoft didn't want a 3rd feed reader (after IE 7 and Outlook 2007).

Now it's gone entirely ...

Windows Live Gallery

... Sorry, there's nothing that matches your search in any item's title, description, or tags. Try using different or fewer search terms to get more results. If you still can't find what you need, share your ideas in Gallery forums so others can create it....

Here's the death warrant. Even the old Onfolio domain, www.onfolio.com, redirects there.

RIP Onfolio. Sniff. You were good software.

So that leaves ... nothing at all.

Update 9/17/08: Not quite nothing. Peter C, a colleague of mine, reminded me of Sage RSS reader for Firefox. I used Sage four years ago (Google custom search, my memory lives upon you) but had forgotten about it. It's come a long way, and is still actively maintained. Firefox does not use the Windows authentication framework, so users will be asked for their passwords the first time authentication fails on a domain. The password is stored for the domain. So with each password change our users will see this dialog once for our Sharepoint sites. Not too bad as a holding measure until we get to IE 7 or Outlook 2007.

Update 3/12/09: Sage really didn't work for us, far too weak a feed reader. I tried Omea Reader, but it's also abandoned. So there's still nothing out there ...