Technology

Greetings from being on the road in New York. I’m up here for a big family event and enjoying my first vacation of the summer.

On Thursday we went into New York City for a brief visit.  We ended up covering a decent amount of ground over one day: starting off at Grand Central, then going up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, then off to the World Trade Center site, up to Times Square, then finally up to upper-east Manhattan. 

At the end of our day we were hoping to meet up with my cousin for dinner, but she got held up at work and wasn’t able to join us.  We didn’t have any idea what we should do for dinner, so I turned to Yelp to provide us with some suggestions.  I loaded up the mobile version of the web site on my Treo, keyed in our intersection and searched on restaurants nearby. I started reading some reviews on Italian restaurants when I found many great reviews for Nick’s Pizza on 2nd Ave & 94th St.  We definitely weren’t disappointed!  This was some of the greatest pizza that I’ve had!  I’ve spent some time making reviews on Yelp for Fort Collins as something to pass the time, but I never really appreciated what a great resource this is for those in new places.

If you’re in a new place and happen to have Internet on your cell phone, give Yelp a try!

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front this week due to playing “catch-up” with the NCSC web site.   I’ve been volunteering with the design and maintenance of this site for the last 3 years, and now the web site is in need of a face-lift: both on the front end and the back end.  Frankly, as I’ve gotten busier I’ve become quite the bottleneck in keeping the NCSC web content fresh, and I’d like to eliminate that by using a CMS system.  I played with Drupal for a bit, but ended up going Joomla, the sexiest free solution out there.

I’ve done a little bit of work with Joomla in the past, using it primarily for the NCSC Resource Bank, however it’s been quite a learning curve trying to get this to work.  Over the past week I’ve had a really hard time wrapping my head around the Joomla content management methodology.  I’ve spent hours reading and playing with the damn thing, and scratch my head so much that it’s become sore. 

Then right as I’m about to give up, the light bulb goes off above my head and it’s become clear to me. The trouble is that this has happened a half-dozen times as I’ve been implementing the site, and I’ve lost a lot of time (it doesn’t help that I procrastinated on this as well).  This isn’t the first time I’ve said “If I don’t get this in the next hour I’m going back to a static site.”  Then it becomes clear and I move on.

Joomla is a really slick tool, and you can’t beat the price and community support. However, as technical as I am – if I’m having trouble figuring this out, how can I expect someone who’s not technical to wrap their brains around this.  I’ll cross that bridge as I come to it. 

I was hoping to expand on my Joomla experience, but it’s late in the evening.  I’ll follow up more tomorrow and hopefully offer a sneak peak of the web site soon.

In April of 2006 I joined the smart phone craze, and got a Palm Treo 650 (along with making the switch from Cingular to Verizon).  I had owned a PocketPC since 2000 and had a cell phone since 2001, and was looking at this as an opportunity to consolidate devices.  I loved having a smart phone, especially the ability to go on the Internet (I actually have a bad habit of playing with my phone too much, but that’s another story).

However, one of the reasons my 650 was affordable was because newer models took over the top tier of Treos.  The more I used my phone, the more I realized how outdated it was becoming.  It was on the slower data network, there seemed to be an unavailability of software choices for the Palm, and the OS was really frustrating me.  It was really pretty, but was prone to rebooting at random times for no reason at all.  From some of the news I was hearing, it sounded like Palm was slowing development and updates on their OS.  From the way I felt the wind blowing, it seemed like time to jump ship.  Unfortunately Verizon wouldn’t offer any kind of device discounts (since it hasn’t been 2 years), so I went looking on eBay and picked up a refurbished 700w.

I’m about a month in from using the device and making the switch wanted to share my experience on a few things.

• The Hardware: It’s funny just how similar the Treo 650 and 700 are.  Aside from subtle cosmetic differences (the 700’s buttons are a little more square), they’re essentially identical.  This is helpful because I now have a spare Treo battery, as well as 2 sync cables.  I’d also imagine I could raid the other phone for parts if need be as well (although I haven’t cracked the case on the old one)
• Data Transfer: The 700w (and 700p for that matter) are now EV-DO capable, and compared to the data speeds on my 650 – it’s night and day, definitely worth the price of the upgrade alone.  Now I don’t feel ripped off when I’m paying my data plan bill each month.  As someone who uses the Treo as a PDA more than a phone, I appreciate this feature the most.
• The Software: This is probably where I set my expectations too high.  I used Windows PocketPC from 2000-2006, and during that time there was a plethora software available.  While that still seems to be the case, there are slim offerings when it comes to software needed to accomplish my tasks:
  • MS Money: Microsoft has all but abandoned their integration from Windows Mobile 5 into MS Money.  The fact that they’re the same company and can’t support their software across all of their devices is appalling.  This was the biggest shock in this migration.  When I was on Palm I moved over to Quicken and was using a utility called Pocket Quicken.  I had to do a “slide-grade” from the Palm OS over to the Windows Mobile, and they did charge me upgrade pricing – a bummer, but understandable. The Windows Mobile version actually works better than the Palm version.
  • There doesn’t seem to be a good CBR (comics reader) application, bummer
  • IMPlus is a pretty decent IM utility, although I still miss Verichat.
  • NewsBreak is a fantastic RSS reader application
  • I had to reconfigure my home machine for Remote Desktop so I could use the Terminal Server utility built into Windows Mobile.  I still use VNC for remote administration from my laptop & browser, so both are running side-by-side.  I previously used Palm VNC on my 650.
• The Phone Experience: This has been a step back.  I’m not sure if it’s because I’m using a refurb unit, but when I make/answer calls, sometimes the phone just randomly mutes the mic.  I’ve done some reading and found out this is a common issue (with no fix of course), so that is annoying to say the least.  The Bluetooth works craptacular, and I went through 2 headsets to try to clear up the static – it turns out that’s a known issue as well.  Lastly, the phone doesn’t manage it’s memory very well. I don’t even know if the Palm device has a memory manager, but I never needed it.  On the 700w I’ve found myself completing each task with a trip to the memory manager to purge all running programs.  Palm/MS seemed to realize this and have the 700wx with a ton of RAM, but that was out of my price range for a short-term replacement.

Overall, I’m willing to put up with the minor annoyances to enjoy the EV-DO experience. The phone is far from perfect, but it does what I need it to do, and for $200 it’s a good geek replacement.  I’ll be counting down the days until my “new device discount” date, and will be looking forward to seeing what’s available in 2008.