Lost Cell Phone

Since I was pent up at my apartment recovering from having my wisdom teeth extracted (a ridiculously painful process), I spent a ton of time watching random crap on TV.  here's some of the crap that I watched:

- frazier reruns on lifetime - yes, lifetime....that station has some crazy commercials for ailments that most men don't know exist

- old school Michigan football on the Big Ten Network. I love the classics, but I seriously think the BTN is in trouble.  Their only commercials are the PSA ads from Big 10 schools!

so between Frazier and Michigan football, I finally ran out of soup, and was forced to venture from my house.  Of course, i somehow lost my cell phone in a cab...

Now I'm back in business with a new phone, but this ordeal got me thinking.  How do you maintain your contacts?  In the old days, people used to keep rolodexes on their desks.  What's the digital equivalent?  Is there an easy, free (or cheap), scalable solution that people use?

hit me back with your thoughts.....

Brickbreaker

I just passed 300,000 points on my blackberrys brickbreaker game!

I am a brickbreaker machine.

Photoshop Elements Review

I just came back from Costa Rica, and I have a ton of pictues. Since I've been relying on windows to keep me organized (bad move), I just realized that I have no idea what img788234.jpg means.

So, I decided to give Adobe Photoshop Elements a shot. I read that the software is a mishmash of regular Photoshop and a good photo Organizer.

After installing, I let the program sift through the "My Pictures" folder...and it pulled all the images in. From there, I can go through and tag my pictures with the people in it (ala facebook), places, events, etc. Bascially, any way that I want to organize my pictures, Photoshop Elements will do it for me. great feature.

So now that my pictures are tagged (some, not all), I decided to play with some of the photoshop-ish features. In Costa Rica, we went ziplining during a tropical storm. I brought along my little Canon Point-and-Shoot, and while getting some amazing shots, most of them had huge raindrops on the image sensor. With Photoshop Elements, no problem...the cloning tool took care of most o fthem.

I've only had this software for about 12 hours, and its already starting to replace Picasa.

I've heard that it integrates with flickr, which integrates with Blogger....which means that it might be a few days before pics are posted...but thye will be.

stay tuned for more...

The next two blackberries...

As I said earlier, one of my favorite gadgets is my Blackberry Curve. I admit that ever since I've become a technology consultant, I've been addicted to the blackberry devices. I have owned the the blackberry pearl, blackberry 7290, and now the blackberry curve is my mobile device of choice. Who would have thought that we'd be able to have emails, text, picture , and video messages to coming to our cell phones in the year 2008. Now cell phone carriers like Verizon and Sprint are even delivering tv to their subscribers' phones! I can honestly say that in 1993-95 when the internet and "digital revolution" were just beginning that I was just happy to have an email address and be able to browse the web. Now we're in the year 2008 where the expectation is that your mobile device should be able to do everything that your laptop does with some minor limitations due to screen size and software. For the most part my blackberry delivers on this promise on being able to do most of the things my laptop does for me keeping in mind the limitations of screen size and software. This gets me to the reason that I am really excited for the next two blackberries...(I am more excited for the Bold than the Kickstart...more on that in a minute)

Introducing the Blackberry Bold (top picture) and Blackberry Kickstart (bottom picture)...

Now for the specs...

Kickstart:

- flip phone design (first of its kind for Blackberries)

- Quad band GSM / EDGE data service (No 3G, boo!)

- WiFi (at least 802.11b, probably 802.11g)

- 2MP camera

- internal LCD is 320x240, external is 160x128

- OS is version 4.6 (woohoo heard a lot of good things about this version)

- suretype keyboard

- Tmobile is the launch customer (I'd rather tmobile be the launch customer for the Bold!)

Bold:

- Has 802.11a/b/g

- GPS which is enhanced and assisted, and the handset has better map rendering

- 480 x 320 resolution screen with 65,000 colors

- 624MHz Intel PXA270/Marvell Tavor PXA930 processor

- OS version 4.6

- weighs 4.7oz

- Side-loading MicroSD/SDHC slot for up to 16GB additional

- 2MP camera with flash

- Talk time of 5 hours, with standby of 13 days

- MP3, WMA, AAC, DivX4 and WMV3 codec support

- 3.5mm headphone jack

- 128MB of flash plus 1GB of onboard memory (with encryption)

- Rumors on Pricing: $300 to $500 ( most likely 300-400)

- 3G (highspeed data support for AT&T and Tmobile bands)

As you can see much more is known at this time about the Bold than the Kickstart...mainly because this information is publicly available on blackberry.com/blackberrybold. I am excited because this device is truly what I feel is a giant step forward for blackberry. Many people on the internet have called it the iPhone killer. Actually blackberry is working on another device that will feature only four buttons and be completely touch screen. That will be the "iPhone killer". I am not really a huge iPhone fan because of Apple's lock-in to their platform and their insistence on controlling what can run on the iPhone - Blackberry is a much more OPEN device platform and thus has many more applications.

Finally, both of these devices support OS 4.6 which brings about huge improvements in the speed of the blackberry browser and support for things like HTML email - (you'd be surprised how many emails these days have HTML code imbedded in them).

I will probably pickup the Bold if the price is right and Tmobile has 3G coverage rolled out in Minneapolis. Tmobile is the last major GSM carrier in the US to roll out 3G coverage, mainly because they just obtained licenses for the 1700Mhz frequency within the past 18 months. Unfortunately, this has meant that their customers have needed to be more patient than AT&T's consumers, however, I counter with the fact that Tmobile customer service still kicks the crap out of AT&T's. (I just hope I don't get desperate and find the "need" to switch to AT&T to try out the Bold.)

Expected release for the Bold - July 2008 (AT&T with 3 month exclusive)

Expected release for Kickstart - July/August 2008 (Tmobile with 3 month exclusive)

I certainly look forward to each of these device releases and will bide my time trying to figure out how to be more productive with my Curve.

While Sharad is on his vacation...

First, thanks to Sharad for the introduction. Since I know he is diligently packing right now, hopefully he has safe travels to Costa Rica and reports back some interesting stories from the trip. I am not as lucky to be spending my holiday somewhere other than where I live. So I've agreed to keep the blog going and hopefully the posts interesting.

I thought I'd give a preview of some topics that I will likely write about over the next 5-6 days and the websites that I frequently read. Sharad did a good job of guessing many of the topics I will be talking about - running, travel, and gadgets. This happens to be a pretty good breakdown of my personal hobbies and passions.

Travel:
Because I am such a travel junky and like my miles and points, I frequent popular travel forums. I like to find the best deals on flights and figure out how to earn the most miles and points. This addiction can get time consuming, but is very fun for me to do.

I currently visit the following travel related sites:

FlyerTalk


Airliners.net


If you ever wonder about how you can get extra miles or talk about airplanes, check out those sites. Some of the travel related ideas I want to talk about include fare and fee increases by airlines, the price of gas and oil, and airline mergers.

Running:

I am currently training for my first marathon which happens to be on June 1,2008. In the past three years, I have run 3 half marathons, a 15KM, and a 10KM. Some people would call me insane and I completely agree. There will probably be a post on the race I am preparing for - The San Diego Rock'n'Roll Marathon. More on this in a few days...in the mean time feel free to check out the race website.

Gadgets:

As Sharad said in the intro post, I am a technology consultant. Naturally, I have an obsession for gadgets. My favorite gadget right now is my Blackberry Curve. I am pretty excited for the upcoming blackberry releases as there are significant feature enhancements and hardware upgrades from current models.

Some of the sites I like to check out include:

Boy Genius Report

Engadget

Wired Magazine

I am also looking forward to discussing random interesting things that I see out on the internet and current topics in the news. Hopefully this post has not driven anyone away and will give you a good idea of what to expect over the next few days until Sharad returns. :-)