Quest Week 6

Hey, y'all, we had a great discussion. We missed those of you who couldn't make it but we had an awesome time. I'm not sure where we're meeting this coming week so check out the list on Google Docs. Here's our reading for next week.

http://spazbro.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Quest6.doc

Quest Week 5

Hey everyone! Thanks to the Roddens for their home and to Ben for leading. This week we'll be meeting at the Clevengers home (email sheenaclevenger@gmail.com if you need directions). Here are links to this week's reading. C y'all there!

http://spazbro.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Quest-5.doc

Palm Pre Review - Tyler

I can't buy every gadget. Sad huh? So I suck up to my friends who have the gadgets I covet. The following is my bud, Tyler's review of the very slick Palm Pre.

I am what you would call a power phone user…I wear my devices out with data access and use multiple applications all day long. I have for some time fought against buying an iPhone because AT & T has no 3G coverage where I live and in most the areas where I travel to, but I have used them and see there appeal. In addition, I have been consistently frustrated that Sprint’s smartphone lineup has left MUCH to be desired. Well no longer. The Palm Pre is without doubt the most fundamentally useful device I’ve ever owned. Not simply because it allows me to run my multiple applications simultaneously (avoiding the annoying Apple singularity) with excellent speed, but the way the applications are all integrated make it both  incredibly nimble and user friendly. Get an email with a link? Click it and a new window opens without closing out of your mailbox. Find a phone number in a text? Copy and paste it into your contacts. All of the phones functions are controllable through the intuitive gestures, so no matter where I am in any application, I navigate the same way around in it. The Synergy system is incredibly well put together (although it makes me all too aware of how many facebook ‘friends’ I have who I really don’t need on my phone – a way to selectively eliminate contacts on the device would be useful) and makes it very easy to find information when you use multiple sources to store information. Synergy also connects all messaging to the user - regardless of its origin - text someone and get a reply via messenger? No problem…they’ll be in one continuous chat box. I am generally not a camera phone user, due to the generally poor quality of shots, but the auto focus camera with flash takes incredibly vivid pictures with high enough quality to print and share. As an added bonus, the Palm boys figured out a way to convince iTunes that it is an iPod, so it will sync up to your iTunes library (assuming your music isn’t write protected).

The feel of the device is also outstanding, it’s ‘pebble’ shape fits perfectly in your hand or pocket, and while the screen is slightly smaller than the iPhone, it is vivid and functions perfectly well for youtube video playback or internet surfing. The inductive ‘touchstone’ charger is also excellent for the geek in your family (no more wires!), but I’ve found that despite Palm’s claims, charging time is a bit slower than directly connecting the device. The physical keyboard is a bit tight for my fingers, but it is only marginally smaller than the Treo’s and is still easy enough to use one handed or two. The ‘always on’ synergy also seems power hungry, and even on lighter use days I have had a nearly dead battery by evening (however the removable battery alleviates much of this, another of my iPhone issues). In addition, while the physical slide out keyboard is great, the edges when it is open are very sharp and make the device feel a bit unfinished when open. Overall the hardware is very nice but not fantastic. What makes the device is the OS which, in my humble opinion, out performs the iPhone in nearly every way. The one thing most associated with the iPhone tremendous appeal are the applications, which are not a quality of the device itself. While I doubt any phone will catch up in regard to sheer numbers, once Palm has WebOS devices on multiple networks (Verizon and AT&T both appear likely in the next year) they will have a much greater potential audience and should see a boom in options from developers.

In general, my praise is significant and my criticisms are few… and most are likely to be fixed on the next device to come out of Sunnyvale. Palm WebOS is clearly a platform that will attract both business users and social networking types...while Apple and RIM may own the market right now, when it comes to actual innovation, they have some catching up to do.

Man on the street interview for this weeks message

[flv:http://dailywiseguys.com/site/Portals/0/video/Become-Better-Person.flv 500 375]

This is what happened at Rite-Aid

[caption id="attachment_152" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="rite_aid_with_us_its_personal"][/caption]

Here is an audio clip from us getting thrown out of Rite-Aid.

rite-aid

HA gotta love celeb tweets.

Here is a Tweet (twitter mini-blog message) from Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek) to Wil Wheaton (the Crusher kid from Star Trek).
brentspiner
RT @wilw: Ok, here's what you do: grab your nearest science project, reverse the polarity,  Uh, maybe I should just do it for you.  Whew!

This is what is going through my head today...

NO IDEA WHY? What's wrong with me?

Lancelot Link Secret Chimp... They made the credits so long so they wouldn't have to work so much with the chimps.

Quest - Week 3 Wind Up

Again, an awesome group time! I know I say that each week but it just is soooo good to have friends to not only spend time with but also be able to talk about things that matter is so cool.

Thanks to the Sawmillers for hosting and also to Jeremy for facilitating the discussion. Thanks to the snacks too! And thanks to you all for reading and coming with questions and thoughts.

Next week read quest-4 and we'll be meeting at the Roddens home.

Have a great week!

The Current Roll-In

[flv:http://dailywiseguys.com/site/Portals/0/video/Txting%20Rollin%20Weeks%203-6.flv 500 375]

Something cool for Macs

I use a few websites very often. Our own site at work, a company intranet, facebook, my blog, and it's kinda cool to have an icon on the desktop or dock to go quickly to that site. Well Fluid is a cool little app that helps my day. Basically you just open Fluid, type the web address, the name for the icon, and then pick an icon for that website. I put the icon in a folder I call WebApps then I dragged that icon to my doc. So now I have all my sites handy on the dock. Check it out.

Oh, by the way if you use PNG files for icons, you get cool transparencies.

Here's what it looks like on my dock.


Fluid - Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

Ya Know…

Sometimes I come back here to my blog expecting new content. As I’m the only one who writes anything here, that seems too high an expectation. I need to develop a split personality who would write cool stuff here on the blog to entertain the other ‘me’.