Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Verizon Smartphone Life
Last year when my Blackberry Curve fatally locked up on me while on the road, I went to a Verizon Store in Albuquerque and tried to get it fixed. The store was unable to fix it without sending it out for a few days. I decided that I would use my upgrade and get a new phone while I was there. I decided on an HTC Droid Eris.
Verizon had just come out with the Original Droid and the Eris was a smaller lighter phone that didn't have the signature "I'm a phone from the future and I'm here to kill you" feel.
So I decided to give up the physical keyboard of my blackberry and jump in to the uncharted Android world. It's been almost a year now and Verizon has since killed off my phone after 1 software update. Here are my impressions of living with this device day in and day out.
In no particular order;
Great internet device.
Really abysmal battery life.
lack of physical keyboard for me, was trying at times.
good form factor.
Android marketplace blew up this year. TONS of apps.
NOT great phone ( buggy phone software, laggy, pocket dialed constantly)
Soooooo, after finally getting fed up and very inpatient for either my upgrade or the iPhone to appear, I decided to give Palm a try again.
I used to carry a Palm Treo. Which was a decent but creaky phone due to lack of support. Palm kind of let the OS languish. When they came out with the Palm Pre I was intrigued.
The slide out keyboard is cramped but workable.
Here are the highlights of the phone. (which is about to be replaced with the Palm Pre Two.)
Good, Bad and not great.
Physical keyboard a plus
lack of feel for tiny keys not so much
Really nice touch screen if a little small
not great battery life
Touchstone charger lets you charge uses induction charging (no cables needed)
Free Verizon wireless hotspot lets you use the phone to get up to 5 other devices access to the internet
did I mention not great battery life?
The Palm App store does not have the depth or breadth of either the Android Market or the iPhone App Store.
Build quality on the phone is suspect, it creaks and feels cheap, like it will break easily if you don't treat it like a raw egg.
So I'm living with a phone I now like a little better. Hopefully Palm will continue to update their software and come out with new better built devices. HP bought Palm about a year ago so hopefully the money and ideas will flow and this underdog will get a bigger place at the table.
Verizon had just come out with the Original Droid and the Eris was a smaller lighter phone that didn't have the signature "I'm a phone from the future and I'm here to kill you" feel.
So I decided to give up the physical keyboard of my blackberry and jump in to the uncharted Android world. It's been almost a year now and Verizon has since killed off my phone after 1 software update. Here are my impressions of living with this device day in and day out.
In no particular order;
Great internet device.
Really abysmal battery life.
lack of physical keyboard for me, was trying at times.
good form factor.
Android marketplace blew up this year. TONS of apps.
NOT great phone ( buggy phone software, laggy, pocket dialed constantly)
Soooooo, after finally getting fed up and very inpatient for either my upgrade or the iPhone to appear, I decided to give Palm a try again.
I used to carry a Palm Treo. Which was a decent but creaky phone due to lack of support. Palm kind of let the OS languish. When they came out with the Palm Pre I was intrigued.
The slide out keyboard is cramped but workable.
Here are the highlights of the phone. (which is about to be replaced with the Palm Pre Two.)
Good, Bad and not great.
Physical keyboard a plus
lack of feel for tiny keys not so much
Really nice touch screen if a little small
not great battery life
Touchstone charger lets you charge uses induction charging (no cables needed)
Free Verizon wireless hotspot lets you use the phone to get up to 5 other devices access to the internet
did I mention not great battery life?
The Palm App store does not have the depth or breadth of either the Android Market or the iPhone App Store.
Build quality on the phone is suspect, it creaks and feels cheap, like it will break easily if you don't treat it like a raw egg.
So I'm living with a phone I now like a little better. Hopefully Palm will continue to update their software and come out with new better built devices. HP bought Palm about a year ago so hopefully the money and ideas will flow and this underdog will get a bigger place at the table.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Net Neutrality-infographix
This could prove to be a VERY important issue in our time.
The folks over at MBA online have provided some useful facts.
Prepare to write your congressperson.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Easy Way to Capture Streaming Video
There is a bookmarklet I’ve found called KeepVid which I’ve found helpful for those times when I need to capture video for presentations. Here’s how it works.
Point your browser over to www.keepvid.com
Highlight the web address www.keepvid.com and drag it into your browsers bookmark bar.
Navigate over to YouTube and find the video you’d like to download to your computer.
Highlight the web address for the video and drag it down to where it says “Keep It” in your bookmark bar
Keepvid should launch and lower down on the page, if it can be downloaded should be a few different choices of the video. Usually it’s the different file types YouTube offers.
Right click on the one you want and with any luck it will start downloading to your computer.
The only gotcha I’ve found is that some content can’t be downloaded but it’s worth trying!
Point your browser over to www.keepvid.com
Highlight the web address www.keepvid.com and drag it into your browsers bookmark bar.
Navigate over to YouTube and find the video you’d like to download to your computer.
Highlight the web address for the video and drag it down to where it says “Keep It” in your bookmark bar
Keepvid should launch and lower down on the page, if it can be downloaded should be a few different choices of the video. Usually it’s the different file types YouTube offers.
Right click on the one you want and with any luck it will start downloading to your computer.
The only gotcha I’ve found is that some content can’t be downloaded but it’s worth trying!
Welcome to TheDiff Blog
Hello!
I'd previously published a blog using WordPress. I found it very powerful but was having a hard time customizing it to look how I wanted it to look. So I've begun again and I'm using a program called RapidWeaver. It's a web page creation program for the Mac. I hope you will visit back here often and please leave comments.
I'd previously published a blog using WordPress. I found it very powerful but was having a hard time customizing it to look how I wanted it to look. So I've begun again and I'm using a program called RapidWeaver. It's a web page creation program for the Mac. I hope you will visit back here often and please leave comments.
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