What can I say. After five months of waiting for a new PowerBook, my new Apple 17" arrived just over an hour ago. While I'm not yet blogging on this brilliant expample of designa nd technology, I did want to share with you some of the excitement and anticipation as I greeted the FedEx lady through booting the machine. Take a moment out of your day, sit back and chill through a 30 second clip. Just click here. (it's about 3mb so may take a minute to download)
I'll share more of my experience with this over the next week or so.
1:20:28 PM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
Anil asks "If Google can index a couple billion pages and return the results in .03 seconds, why does a search of my hard drive take 30 seconds?" And has a good answer.
11:32:51 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
I've received a reminder from Userland Software: my Radio subscription expires in 43 days. This means just over a month till my one year blogging anniversary. Let's start the party planning now. I'm already thinking about the wine list. And the menu. Who wants to come?
3:29:17 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
I can feel it. My PowerBook is getting closer. I thought it might be here on Tuesday. But I've learned oh so well how to manage my expectations. Per FedEx it arrived from indianapolis in Los Angeles at about dinner time Tuesday. So bar the short 40 some mile journey from LAX to the FedEx Orange County dispatch, I should hear my doorbell ring today about 9am. Stay tuned.
Date/Time
Scan Activity
4/22/03 19:14
Arrived at Sort Facility/LOS ANGELES CA
4/22/03 15:49
Left FedEx Sort Facility/INDIANAPOLIS IN
4/21/03 20:20
Left FedEx Ramp/C.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW
4/21/03 20:15
Held at Sort Facility/INDIANAPOLIS IN
4/21/03 14:39
Left FedEx Sort Facility/ANCHORAGE AK
4/19/03 23:56
Arrived at FedEx Ramp/TA YUAN HSIANG TW
4/19/03 21:05
Left FedEx Origin Location/TAOYUAN CITY TW
4/19/03 20:56
Picked up by FedEx/TAOYUAN CITY TW
3:01:45 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
I love the 'new' Sony Ericsson T68is all in its Bluetooth glory. But the phone is too small. The screen is too small and when holding it up to my ear to speak (that is assuming I haven't plunked down $300 for a BlueTooth headset) I feel like a dainty English woman trying at afternoon Tea trying oh so carefully to hold my teacup in the 'proper' manner. I've been using the Kyocera 6035 SmartPhone with its built in Palm device. I'm often accused or observed of having a "big" one. Uh. My phone. But I'm quickly to point to those carrying dual devices or others who walk around like my contractor or PacBell phone guy with a hefty (read: big) belt with lots of things dangling.
So when Kyocera announced last year that it had in development the sequel to my phone: the Kyocera 7135. A web survey not long ago found this phone to be the most desirable converged device. The phone features a great color screen, integrated Palm OS, MP3 player, SD disk for storage and much more. And as a Verizon subscriber, this phone has not been unlike the new Apple 17" PowerBook -- announced long ago and sightings as rare as your favorite endangered species. Yet, I can't help but wonder where the BlueTooth is in this phone? Too long in development and at the design phase Bluetooth was still pie in the sky technology? The folks at Verizon are clueless about BlueTooth. Apparently Kyocera is too.
Sprint was the only other provider to offer this phone. And my friend Bryan recently reported to me that Sprint no longer carried the phone and was not planning on offering the 7135. They sold him a Samsung SPH-i330. He loves his new phone as he's as much bent on a converged device as I am. But I've got issues. Put simply, I want a keypad that's not the same as the LCD screen. Why? Tactile. I want to feel the keys as I dial. Other reasons? Fingerprints. Oil. Clarity. Granted, with voice dialing you can avoid some of these things -- but voice dialing still needs training and with over 500 contacts in my phone, I'm just not going to take the time to train more than a handful.
So when I read about Samsung's new SGH-i500 I got the tingle up my spine that only a techno-junkie gadget geek could get. This looks cool. As i grow weary of my grayscale screen on my Kyocera and experience true LCD screen color envy from my associates I wonder what waiting till Q4 2003 (which means I'd be lucky to see it in Q1 2004) will do for my mind given the recent PowerBook test that taxed my patience. One can wonder.
Cool thing is that the new Samsung phone features a form factor not unlike the Kyocera new 7135. This means that even Samsung realized the limitations of the LDC touchscreen interface versus true keypad tactile input. But where's the BlueTooth? Important to note is the integration of Palm's next-gen software: v5.2. Recently I've wondered about the viability of future Palm OS and Palm devices. With Windows CE, the Symbian operating system now found in many phones and the convergence of this and MP3 players, digital cameras and more into phones means stiff competition for Palm. Five years ago nearly everyone I did business with had a Palm device. Today? Hard to find.
Palm has a hard road ahead. It clearly has stagnated in innovation. Yesterday it released two new products. One with an integrated digital camera as well as a belated foray into WiFi (802.11) wireless. Another apparently targeted at the low end of the market. I'm not sure that's where Palm's future is. Price is never a good future for any company. It's competition today is Sybian and telephones. It had better ramp up its alliance and relationship efforts and stick to a streamlined hardware platform in order to ensure viability. Even this type of push may be too late.
2:32:27 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
You've probably read some of my comments and thoughts on NoteTaker in the past. Including my long lost mini-review of the product due to the previously mentioned computer nightmares I've lived with over the last thirty days. No worries. The good folks (read: Matt Neuburg) at TidBITS have posted an excellent review -- and he loves the product. I'm not going to go on raving about this, but while I'm on a bit of a technology/software product brain dump here, I urge you to download the trial version, read Matt's review and see what Joi has written about it in the past and even this Seattle Times review of the product.
1:35:27 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
John Robb points me to what looks to be an excellent and simple tool to quickly grab, resize, shape and otherwise copy and post images to websites, documents (I've been enjoying NoteTaker) and even your .Mac iDisk with grace and ease. If you're a Mac user and are tired of launching Photoshop, GraphicConverter or other similarly bloated apps to do simple image tasks you owe it to yourself to evaluate ImageWell by xtralean. Not only does it resize imags you can crop, add caption bubbles, captions, clouds and more with one-click ease.
12:59:10 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
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