July 2007 Archives

I went and saw The Police at Fenway on Saturday with some friends. It was a pretty good time, despite the fact that we were pretty much standing in a puddle. There was a goofy guy in front of us who was just this side of moshing the way he was dancing around. It was kinda funny to watch.

Anyhow, I'm not a "fan" of theirs, but I do know some of The Police's material and I like it. The opening band was Fiction Plane and it turns out their front man is Sting's kid. I was woefully uninformed and wondered what the deal was with the Sting look-alike on stage. Fortunately I didn't make an ass out of myself by saying something before finding out. Guess the cat's out of the bag now.

I'm a little too tired to turn this into a quality review so I'll end with this: They were great. They were absolutely on, playing at a level that people half their age struggle to reach. The improv that they pulled in some of their songs was a lot of fun, too. And, if all else fails to please, there is no place in the world like Fenway Park.

Back in the days when SMS was new and exciting a lot of mobile phones were picking up a feature where users could specify a tone for incoming SMS by contacts. What ever happened to that? Even as recently as a few years ago, my old LG VX8100 had the feature. I upgraded to an LG VX8600 and discovered the feature was gone. It seems like this feature, which was common when SMS was not, is now uncommon when SMS is common.

I've spent a lot of time looking for this feature for my Nokia E70 and it just doesn't seem to exist. There was a $10 app called SMSAlert for Symbian 8, but the E70 runs Symbian 9. Reviews indicated that SMSAlert didn't work too well anyway.

There is an application called Ringo for Windows Mobile and Palm OS. I have heard mixed reviews about whether or not it works on Windows Mobile 6 yet, but these guys seem the type to make that a when, not an if, if not already. That's good because the only competitors for my Nokia E70 are the Nokia E90, again running Symbian (9.2), the HTC S710 which is a little weighty and hasn't got 3G support (T-Mobile is getting 3G support, but that's another post), and the rumored HTC S730.

The HTC S730 promises to meet the Nokia E90's feature set head to head, providing comparable functionality at what will hopefully be a good price. I really dig the form factor of these HTC phones, and if I do decide to replace the E70 it will be with one of these HTCs, unless something more interesting comes out in the near future or HTC drops some critical feature. Let's face it, I dislike all things Microsoft but they're doing well in this space and I think it's the right way to go right now.

I have not yet had time to play with this, but I did find it a few days ago and thought I'd share. XScreenSaver has been ported to OS X. It looks like you can get a version to run in X11, or you can get the screen savers themselves in a format that will run with OS X's framework. Pretty neat.

I'll be brief here, don't worry. It's strictly an opinion piece. That said, I'm tired of all you who are screaming that Apple was wrong to sign an exclusive contract with AT&T Wireless. I don't particularly like locked phones either - that's why I have an unlocked phone on T-Mobile, but look at what Apple has done here.

The iPhone isn't just a nifty device, it's a device with unique service-based features. Video voice mail, for example, requires service support. Apple could not hope to gain this kind of support from all carriers, so they had to stick to just one. And think about it - as these features become a standard, Apple will have more leverage to push their product to other GSM providers.

Oh, and one more thing before I go. T-Mobile was slated to start rolling out 3G support in mid-2007. Has that even started yet? I truthfully don't know the answer. The last I heard was the schedule, but nothing more.

So sit back and relax - Apple is doing their part in attempting to catch US mobile phone technology up to the rest of the world, and they're doing it in the only way they really can.

It never ends. We, the gadget geeks of the world, will never stop lusting over the latest and greatest technology. So let's talk a little bit.

Upon moving to the great city of Boston I found myself in mobile phone heaven - I can use GSM providers now! Sure, Vermont does have some coverage for GSM thanks to Unicel, but the pricing plans are not really usable. Vermont is actually the only state without AT&T support. Cool, huh? But enough about my departure from the middle of nowhere.

I immediately signed up with T-Mobile and have been very happy since. I feel that the pricing is significantly better than that of Cingular (now AT&T), and the coverage is easily comparable. Of course, I can't have an iPhone but I don't particularly like touch screens. I got my fingers (and immediately my finger prints) on an iPhone and I'll pass on it.

What I do want, however, is an unlocked GSM smart phone. Ideally this phone would be quad-band, but a tri-band with both US frequencies is acceptable. A QWERTY keyboard is a must, and a compact form factor is critical. A decent web browser is needed, and I'll need to be able to have multiple email accounts, separately, on the phone. Oh, and I need to be able to synchronize my calendar and address book with the phone from my mac.

The first solution I came up with was the Nokia E70. The phone is very nice. It runs Symbian for the OS and is supported by iSync. It has a standard candy bar form factor and splits open to reveal a tactile QWERTY keyboard. It has a quality web browser and it can handle email exactly as I want it to. But it's not without its issues. First off, it's sluggish. Sometimes I wonder if I've hit a button yet. I find that pretty frustrating. Second, there are very few external buttons for shortcuts to things like the camera (which by the way is pretty poor, and very slow). Third and arguably most important, when I flip the phone open to use the QWERTY keyboard, my signal goes down instantly. It seems like the keyboard blocks part of the built-in antenna.

The fourth issue is really touchy. I mentioned it before - this is a Symbian smart phone. Aside from being a tad sluggish, Symbian is not that popular and not really well developed for. A lot of software is designed for Palm and for Windows Mobile, but not for Symbian. That being said, I have my general dislike of all things Windows and that makes Windows Mobile hard to swallow.

Not being easily satisfied, I'm now looking at the HTC S710. This phone runs Windows Mobile 6, which I believe is the most recent. It's got a really cool side-slide design to bring out a tactile QWERTY keyboard with keys that are large enough to be fumbled with a lot easier than the Nokia's. I have not yet had an opportunity to play with the software, but it looks promising. The kicker is, of course, that this is Windows Mobile and the only way to sync it with my mac will be to use the new version (not yet released) of The Missing Sync.

Fortunately for me, a friend has an HTC phone that I will be able to try out. I'll try to update as I try other things.

So you've recently upgraded Gnome and discovered that they have decided to
replace xscreensaver with gnome-screensaver and you don't like it. At this
point it time it seems most likely that you've just upgraded to Fedora 7 and
seen the change. There are a few guides that talk about adding xscreensaver's
screensavers to gnome-screensaver. This is not another one of those.

Unlike the apparent masses, I don't think gnome-screensaver is more elegant
than xscreensaver. Quite the reverse, actually. I liked xscreensaver and its
functionality, and I decided to switch back to it entirely. It wasn't really
difficult, there were just a few steps involved. I did this with Fedora 7 and
Gnome 2.18. It's all GUI, so don't be intimidated. You, too, can have your old
screensaver engine back.

First I changed my Gnome session to kill gnome-screensaver and start
xscreensaver because I had difficulty finding a way to permanently disable
xscreensaver. Do do this I went to the System menu, drilled down into the
Preferences sub-menu, drilled into the Personal sub-menu, and selected
Sessions. Under the Startup Programs tab, click the New button. Name this
command killall gnome-screensaver and set the command to /usr/bin/killall
gnome-screensaver, then click OK. Now click New again. Make this program's
name Start xscreensaver and make the command /usr/bin/xscreensaver -nosplash.
The next time you log into gnome you will kill all gnome-screensaver processes
and start xscreensaver. Xscreensaver cannot run twice, so don't worry about
logging in multiple times prior to rebooting.

Second, I changed the Screensaver menu item to launch my xscreensaver
preferences instead of gnome-screensaver's. Go to the System menu,
Preferences, Look and Feel, and Main Menu. In the tree on the left, drill into
System, Preferences, and click on Look and Feel. In the right hand pane,
double-click Screensaver. In the Launcher Properties window change the command
to /usr/bin/xscreensaver-demo, then click Close and Close again. Now you'll
see xscreensaver's preferences when you choose Screensaver from your
preferences menu.

Finally, I added a launcher to my panel for locking my screen. The launcher
that comes with Gnome triggers gnome-screensaver, not xscreensaver, so I
created this instead as I like locking my screen when I'm not looking at it.
Right-click your panel of choice and click Add to Panel. Select Custom
Application Launcher and click Add. The launcher's type is Application. Its
name is Lock Screen. Its command is /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command -lock. For a
comment I put Lock the screen. Click the button that says No Icon and choose
your favorite icon. I liked
/usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/actions/gnome-lockscreen.svg. Click OK and
Close. You can, of course, move that launcher wherever you need.

The fun part is it actually took longer to write this than it did to do it. I
hope someone somewhere found this helpful, but most of my readers would have
already known and the rest wouldn't care.

I have been conspicuously absent on this blog for quite some time now. My one or two readers who I don't talk to regularly might be wondering why - it's because as of a couple of months ago I live in the Boston area. The move has gone smoothly and I am very happy to be here.

This move has opened up quite a few things to talk about, and hopefully I'll find the time to make some posts over the weekend and regularly over the next little while.