|
Written by Russell Johnson
|
|
Although I am a bit of a nerd, that is only on the surface. I am not one in practice. I love flashing lights and gauges (especially round retro ones) and use all sorts of gizmos from an HDTV camera to a Roomba. My relationships with their intricacies, however, are about as deep as Thomas Kincade's relationship with art.
I have had an uneven courtship with mobile phones.
|
|
|
Written by Pat Meier-Johnson
|
|
Telenav Phone GPS Sniffs Out The Neighborhood
I often don' t know where I am going, but most of the time I know where I have been. Most of the time.
Telenav GPS Navigator, a service and Bluetooth device that let you get voice and graphical GPS directions on your mobile phone has become my driving pal over the past few weeks. I installed it on my Treo 650 and my husband and I left our home in the woods, winding our way down the mountain as we have several days a week for the past nine years. The Telenav voice spoke the turns and the display showed the names of streets. "Hey, did you know there's a Cape Court here," Russ said. I had never paid attention to it. Nor had I noticed Seymour Lane after passing by well more than 4,000 times. Was I so intent on peering down other sidestreets for lurking police waiting for hapless drivers to race up and down our mountain or commit the infamous California rolling stop that I couldn't tell you what was less than a half mile from our house? Seems so. Cape Ct. looks like a nice place. Maybe we should walk by there sometime.
|
|
Written by Pat Meier-Johnson
|
|
Playing "Where's Waldo" with TalkPlus
I've always had delusions of grandeur, of having offices all over the country. Well, I do now. I hung out my shingle in New York and Los Angeles in just a few minutes without leaving my desk in Northern California, or so it appears to anyone with caller ID. TalkPlus is a service that lets you add a multiple lines to your mobile phone to make and receive calls. You can mirror your existing office or home number on your mobile phone plus select and add secondary numbers from pretty much anywhere in the US and make calls on your mobile through a TalkPlus web page, making it appear as though you're calling from those other locations.
It's almost too easy.
|
|
Written by Pat Meier-Johnson
|
It’s a close call every time I try to get work done on a plane on my laptop. The guy in front of me gets a sudden urge to snooze. Back goes his seat, threatening to catch the top my laptop in the tray well and snap it off into oblivion. So when I saw two slim, small devices that run Windows XP, one from TabletKiosk and the other from Samsung, I thought, now well there’s a nice size…5.5” high as opposed to my 10.5” laptop height, and 9” wide, but can I get any work done on it?
Meet the Ultra Mobile PC, a size and format alternative to the PC that looks like a small tablet (imagine a mini Etch a Sketch) that Microsoft has been trying to get off the ground for some years.
Still fraught with a slow start in the market, as it has no keyboard, no mouse (though you can add these) the UMPC is part business, part entertainment in a size that fits into a handbag.
I recently took a look at two UMPC devices:
|
|
|
|
|
|
