Over the last couple months I came to the realization that I couldn’t continue intermittently sharing my son’s cell phone. He is going into the Army next month and will need his own phone and with our increased community volunteer work I need a phone of my own. After realizing I could no longer be cell phone free, the next logical decision was: what phone to buy?

I did what most techies do these days and twittered the question: what cell phone would you buy?

The most common response, of course, was the one phone I least wanted to buy: the iPhone. It wasn’t that I disliked Apple or the iPhone – I’ve owned a Mac for several years now and consider myself platform agnostic – plus the iPhone has looked like a sweet gadget from the get go. I also haven’t been swayed by the ditch the iPhone crowd although will admit these are some compelling reasons to stay away. Then again, when others zig, I tend to zag. Just my style. And I like most of Wayne Sutton’s reasons for sticking with the iPhone (question: what are you using for iPhone screenshots?).

My biggest hurdle has been getting over the company Apple partnered with to deliver the service: AT&T. I really, really, really dislike AT&T but realized that was based on too many things to get into that matter any more. Sometimes it’s best to leave the past in, well, the past.

Real world iPhone usefulness

So I kept coming back to the iPhone in my search for a phone which did everything I wanted to do and more:

• be an easy to use phone
• allow me store ample number of contacts
• decent digital camera so that I could stop carrying around two devices
• would store and play a reasonable amount of music in MP3 format (didn’t have to be our entire music libary, but needed to have at least 10GB of our favorite MP3)
• could take place of my aging Pocket PC and store all my online passwords
• GPS that might replace Garmin which needs map updates
• could be that magical *one* gadget to carry (almost) everywhere

It began with us heading off to the Apple store at the Southcenter Mall just south of Seattle. I didn’t even make it into the the Apple store as there was an AT&T kiosk out front that had the white 32GB iPhone 3GS. I bought that and two more touch phones (non iPhones) for our kids. After tax the three phones came to around $525 which doesn’t take into account the two year (gasp) contract we’re now locked into.

Despite salesman pressure to do so, we didn’t cancel our Sprint EVDO card and go with AT&T’s version of that, but canceled all other Sprint business. Interesting sidenote: Sprint wasn’t throwing any significant deals at us to stay. We told them one of our only problems with them was that they refused to replace a broken phone ($150 phone) for us when we had paid for the warranty for two years because they said it wasn’t “accidental damage.” Another reason we don’t have love for any of these cell phone carriers.

So we gave into the AT&T demons and bought an iPhone 3GS. I must say after using the iPhone 3GS the last week or so it’s the most useful phone I’ve ever used. I didn’t buy it to be cool or be the first one on the block with one or anything silly like that.

With that said, there are things about the iPhone 3GS I don’t yet understand how to do or like. The app screen organization is clumsy, for example. I’ll skip making a list as I haven’t owned it long enough to learn if the things I don’t like are my newbieness or actual design flaws.

Oh that glorious app store

Speaking of the app store. Wow, that thing is jammed. There are a bunch of free apps and paid apps. Here are the first two apps I paid for:

• eWallet ($9.99) – this allows me to sync via WiFi with my Windows desktop version of eWallet to manage all the logins and user accounts I keep online. Since I don’t duplicate passwords and use strong passwords where allowed, this application is indispensible
• Trek Keno ($0.99) – hey, Star Trek + Keno, gotta have it

Here’s a few free apps I’ve tried so far:

• Pandora (music) – wow, talk about getting a free radio station of music you like streamed. Just plug in an artist you enjoy like say, Ozzy Osbourne, and Pandora will create a station around that artist.
• Tap Tap Revenge (game) – think Rock Band drums and Guitar Hero and you’ll get the idea of what this is about. A bunch of free songs you can download and play.
• Waterslide (game) – tilt the iPhone to move you down a 3D waterslide. A quick distraction type game.
• SportsTap (sports / news) – keep track of sport scores. Also has a neat prediction section which will guess as to who is going to win based on a bunch of different stats. Might be of use to sports bettors.
• AroundMe (location based) – a portable version of our Garmin GPS that tells you what banks/ATMs, bars, coffee, gas stations, hospitals, hotels and more are nearby. Then you can get directions. Handy.
• Nike+iPod (fitness) – along with a pair of Nike+ shoes you can track how many calories you are burning walking around or running. Optionally you can have iTunes transfer the stats to nikeplus.com and do even more.

Being there are tons of apps, other iPhone users are welcome to suggest other apps I should check out in the comments below. Also, if you think I made a mistake or the right decision in this phone person, you’re welcome to weigh in.

The Amazon Kindle (affiliate) e-book reader has been on my gadget radar for a little while. I thought the price was too much when it came out and didn’t pull the trigger when I was in heavy gadget buying mode, but they’ve since upgraded and made a bigger screen and added a few more goodies. The new Kindle DX is still black and white and still a bit too pricey I think at $489 but being I love to read and am on the move, this device remains on the radar as a possibility.

One of the neat things about the Kindle is it has forever free wireless access to the Kindle store so anywhere you went that there was coverage, you could buy and read a book. Or even a blog. I submitted this blog eons ago but it never got added. You can probably guess the blogs you would find on the Kindle when Amazon chose them.

Well this changed this week when Amazon shared their new Kindle Publishing for Blogs area – open to all bloggers - which means the blog population in the Kindle Store could increase dramatically in the coming days, weeks and months.

Or maybe not, as it’s not like there are a zillion blog hungry Kindle store shoppers.

And unfortunately there is no option to choose what price to charge for the blog as Amazon sets that which is kind of a bummer because I would have chosen the absolute least price (likely free if it was available – which it isn’t - in fact). I marked down the Hmm updates to ‘1-2 updates a week’ for now since that’s pretty accurate as of late, but I suspect this frequency will be increased in the coming months as my stored up writing energy is starting to overflow.

Most blogs cost $1.99/month to subscribe to and the blog owner only gets 30%, so I won’t be retiring off Kindle blog subscription income any time soon.

If only blog publishers could add bonus content

Really wish there was a way I could push additional bonus content a la DVD extras out to these Kindle subscribers as I still have a significant backlog of unpublished posts. It would provide something extra to these paid subscribers to make it more worth paying for.

But so as not to punish loyal readers who didn’t own the Kindle and couldn’t subscribe, there could be a time decay on these posts that eventually kicks them out to everybody. Put that on my Kindle feature wish list for blog publishers. Actually, this might be possible by offering a separate feed for Kindle readers … only since you can’t password protect it or anything, once that feed address was released in the wild, anybody could simply subscribe to it instead of the main feed.

If anybody is reading any blogs through the Kindle, please let me know what you think of the experience. I’m curious.

Update 5/15/2009 6:05am PST: The Make You Go Hmm Kindle edition is live!

It can be found at the following location: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029U2NUE

Last night there was the annual Best Buy customer private party and I saw voodoo for the first time. Er, VUDU [vudu.com] rather which is pronounced like voodoo. Here’s what this VUDU $299 DVD/HD/1080p on demand in a box badboy looks like:

Little bigger than the now defunct Xbox HD-DVD drive and a little smaller than the Xbox 360. What does it do? Delivers movies up to 1080p/24 to your TV over broadband internet.

VUDU comes neatly packed with everything you need to hook up to a 1080p TV and broadband network:

- network cable
- HDMI cable (also includes standard AV cables for those without HDMI)
- VUDU box (pictured above) which has 250GB storage
- AC power supply
- radio frequency antenna for remote (shown in the right rear of the picture)
- remote + required 2 AA batteries
- $200 in free movie credits (cannot be used on adult movies), more on this later

Don’t be dumb like us and forget to screw in the radio antenna first before trying to use the remote. The "Start Here" manual tells you to do this, BTW. Good idea to thumb through before digging in.

With RF frequency you don’t need to point at the box in order for the signal to make it to the box. You can put the box behind the TV if you want and it will work just fine. Downside to this is getting it to work with Slingbox, but in the VUDU forums I found some people who were successfully using VUDO with a Slingbox and IR dongle.

The VUDU has a USB 2.0 port which is planned to be used for external storage since it only has 250GB of storage. In the meantime you can use the VUDU servers for archival storage if you decide to build a library of movies in addition to renting movies. Not sure it’s wise spending too much money on buying movies from a service you probably haven’t ever heard of before. I hadn’t heard of VUDU until last night and I’m looking for new gadgets like this to try out.

Gotta dig the VUDU remote which looks like an alien’s head and has a simple, but effective design:

Pressing and holding the VUDU button for five seconds starts the step by step process. Vudu will test your broadband network and decide how long it takes for Standard Definition (SD) and HD movies to play. If you have 2.0 Mbps - 4.0 Mbps you can watch SD movies instantly without any waiting but you’ll need to wait for the HD movies.

You need to activate the VUDU at vudu.com/activation which involves entering in a VUDU activation code provided in the setup, putting your information in on the website along with credit card and agreeing to fund your vudubucks account with at least $20. The website is also where you turn on the adult movie feature if you want to be able to watch any adult movies. By default, VUDU is set not to show any movies in the After Dark category.

There are a handy set of parental controls to restrict what movies can be rented and watched without a pincode. By default everything is wide open (except adult as mentioned above) without any code required.

Once you provide your details and give VUDU at least $20 via credit card, the VUDU box will go through the final update stage and then you can start browsing, renting and/or buying movies to watch.

$200 in free movies — the catch

If you buy the VUDU during the promotional period you are also given the $200 in movie credits. Reading the fine print I learned that:

- the $200 in movie credits must be used within 4 months of activation or you lose the credits
- the $200 credits do not apply to any adult movies through the AVN after dark area
- if you return the VUDU they will bang your credit card for whatever movies you’ve rented, the credits only apply if you don’t return VUDU

Tall tales by VUDU sales rep

The VUDU rep wasn’t completely straightforward with us on the whole "having to wait" thing. I asked him point blank if there would be any waiting time of HD and he said there wasn’t. Wrong. There can be a wait, and can be a substantial one if you get the HDX (1080p) movies which are around 10GB in size. If you have 4.0 Mbps or greater connection you can get the HD movies instantly according to the documentation.

On every page of the VUDU website you can test your connection. When VUDU tested my speed through the box it put it at 2.0 Mbps speed, but from browser I’m seeing this:

From the Info & Settings menu you can force VUDU to use the higher setting.

The VUDU rep also told me the average price for movie rentals was $2.99. I found from browsing most of the newer movies seem to be $3.99 for HD and more for HDX. I didn’t see any HD movies for under $3.99. The movie rentals work similarly to renting movies through Xbox Live. You pay for a 24 hour window of time.

Watch movies the day they are released on DVD

The big selling point for VUDU is the ability to rent movies in HD quality the day they are released. Netflix which is going to be available through Xbox Live later this month streams movies as part of their monthly subscription.

The VUDU rep told me that they get movies the day they are released on DVD which is different from the other similar movie on demand services I’ve seen but unfortunately not every studio in Hollywood let’s their movies be immediately available for rental. He said the window was two weeks before the new DVDs become available to rent through VUDU which isn’t bad if you can wait. I don’t recall which studios he said made their movies available for rental on the day they were for sale, but it’s stupid that any studio does that. Hollywood being dumb again.

Iron Man, for example is available to buy ($19.99) but will not be available for rent until November 12.  It’s cool that VUDU shows you exactly when you will be able to rent movies, as well as provides coming soon dates of upcoming DVD releases.

Vudu menu is slick and simplistic

The VUDU UI is easy enough for a child to pick up and begin searching through movies. I was impressed with the design which consists of five top level options: Most Watched movies, New on VUDU, Explore Catalog, My VUDU and Info & Settings.

As the screenshot above shows, as you move to the right with the VUDU remote scrollwheel, the movie box art grows bigger and shows at the bottom the rating as well as range of prices for rental and to buy. If you don’t see any $5.99 or less price it means there is no rental available, it’s purchase only. Simple, but effective.

Most Watched - shows the top 100 movies other VUDU users have rented or purchased from the previous week
New on VUDU - here you can see what’s recently been added as well as when the movies will be available for rent
Explore Catalog - sort from thousands of titles (our list of ‘all’ showed over 7,000 titles) by genre and subgenre (like comedy-romance). You can also search by keyword on title and even actors in movies. VUDU also has TV shows available to buy at $1.99 per episode (upscaled in HD) which might give you the best picture over SD DVD set available to buy in stores
My VUDU - shows active rentals, movies you own, TV shows purchased as well as a wish list for titles you’d like to rent or buy someday and an archive/delete menu for moving content onto the VUDU servers
Info & Settings - adjust parental and other VUDU settings

There is an in-depth VUDU user guide (PDF) online detailing each feature available.

Is VUDU worth $299?

If you love to watch movies like we do and in the highest quality you can see them, we own over 600 DVDS (including some HD-DVD and Blu-ray) and we regularly rent movies through Xbox Live (paying $3+ for the privilege), the VUDU is worth checking out.  With the Best Buy $200 in free movie credits promotion, that brings the price of the VUDU + some movies/TV to watch down to a more reasonable $99. Something tells me they aren’t moving huge numbers of these because:

1. they are bit too pricey for something that requires spending more to watch movies and
2. they aren’t very well known and thus could be a here today gone tomorrow gadget. I remember Slingbox being something nobody had heard about once upon a time, but don’t think VUDU is as widely useful as the Slingbox.

Another downside is VUDU is yet another box around your TV and will fight for an HDMI slot among your gaming systems, cable/dish box, etc. If we keep the VUDU then we need an HDMI selector. I’m having to plug and unplug into the back of the TV too much already. Two HDMI slots and 4 HDMI devices doesn’t work.

I’m not sure we’re going to keep VUDU yet (30 day money back guarantee), but like the idea of being able to rent newer DVD movies without (hopefully) too much hassle. It takes way too long for new DVDs to reach the movie channels like Cinemax, HBO and Showtime. Xbox Live has them sooner, but there is still a noticeable delay. If Hollywood wasn’t lame, they’d make the movies available in VUDU on the day they are for sale for rent, just like they are in movie rental stores.

If the window of time that VUDU gets the newer movies is shorter than it takes to get to Xbox Live, it fills a niche for us versus getting the all you can watch subscription at say Hollywood Video. I also like not having to pay for a monthly subscription fee, but will probably be getting Netflix with Xbox later this month and comparing vs. VUDU. The quality of movies through Netflix vs. VUDU could be what separates the two.

If you watch a lot of new DVDs and don’t care as much about the picture quality then VUDU will be more expensive than one of those all you can watch plans from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video even when factoring in gas if you need to drive to/from to get the movies. Gas prices aren’t almost $5/gallon any more so this makes sense.

VUDU would be more attractive with an internet browser

Why can’t I check my email on this thing or watch vid clips from sites like YouTube? Or (gasp, competitor alert!) visit Hulu.com and watch TV shows for free. I think they didn’t put this option in for fear (?) that it would cut into people paying for the content versus going to legal, legitimate channels to get it and works against the overall value of VUDU.

Watching a movie or TV show in a pixelated browser window is not worth as much as seeing it in 1080p. Until the web offers that kind of deal for free (legally), VUDU shouldn’t be afraid of making a browser available. The Xbox 360 doesn’t have a browser either. So, it’s off to the PS3 or Wii if you want a browser.

The other possible issue here is bandwidth cap from your internet service provider. If you watch a lot of HDX movies at 10GB a piece and have a 250GB per month cap, you could run into additional charges from your ISP. Add all this up and VUDU could be ideal for heavy duty moviephiles who like the best quality they can get without having to leave their house to get it.

Grade: B-

Yesterday I spent too much time getting my music organized in iTunes on the Mac so that the new iTunes ‘Genius’ would not suggest to me music I already own. Probably won’t bother trying iTunes for Windows, “bloated” or with unintentional or intentional problems as some folks are suggesting , as I’ve been happily using Zune on Windows for almost 2 years now, but what other compelling choice for music management is there on the Mac (suggestions, please)? It’s sort of a shotgun gadget wedding on the Mac.

Genius creates playlists based on a song you listen to from what you already own and I’ll get to that fun in a minute, but finding/exploring music I don’t own is something I enjoy. A true musical genius would be able to mine the world’s database of music and return me exactly the type of music I enjoy but don’t already own. AmazonMP3 does a decent job recommending me DRM-free MP3 albums I might want to buy based on what I’ve already purchased from them, can the iTunes Genius do better?

First, you have to activate Genius, which burped for me the first time:

But worked fine the second try:

This process took several minutes mining our family’s ever growing music collection of 272 artists and 50.35 GB of music. After running, I noticed iTunes 8 changed my default view to Cover Flow.

Cover Flow looks pretty when you have album art for every artist and ugly when you don’t.

A couple years back I hunted missing album art for every album but through time and circumstance I’m missing a lot these days, since iTunes on the Mac isn’t my regular music player any more. Good thing you are just a view click away from going back to the boring text view and can have iTunes automatically fetch missing album art.

Recommending to buy songs you already own = not Genius 

Even after a couple hours making sure the music library was updated — and Genius was updated too — the Genius was still recommending songs I already owned on best of albums instead of the studio albums. Bummer. I would think a song with the same name by the same band that’s not marked ‘live, unplugged, acoustic, demo’ etc., would not be returned as a result.

Not all the results were bad, I noticed a couple songs of possible future interest. This part of Genius shows promise, but sorry, it’s a long way from being genius.

Play a song and press the Genius button to generate a similar playlist of songs you already own = almost Genius

My first Genius playlist test started with the song "Born Again" by Black Sabbath, here’s the playlist Genius generated:

Cool results! I like many of these songs. They aren’t just popular tracks I’ve listened to with songs like "I’m Insane" by Ratt live and "The Eyes" from Dio’s Master of the Moon. And I totally dig "Keep It Warm" off the same Born Again album, "Heaven and Hell" Live by the renamed Sabbath. This Genius generated list of 25 similar songs is excellent.

I tried playing other less popular songs that I five star rated in iTunes to see what Genius returned. Next: "All Mixed Up" by The Cars:

Doh! Even after an update, no luck with this song. Next song: "Time and Time Again" by Counting Crows:

Another good list with some songs I recognize and like along with some lesser known titles. Thumbs up. Next song: "Comin’ Under Fire" by Def Leppard:

Another solid playlist, saved. I found while testing more songs with Genius, I wished there was some sort of way to quickly output the results of these Genius playlists as text files to share with others online. Wait, this could be where a service like Nutsie comes in. Remember me writing about Nutsie a year ago? Bet the Nutsie folks are ecstatic over Genius. I see where you can make an iMix out of these playlists but Nutsie seems like a better idea if it works with Genius playlists.

Overall, I like what Genius does. I don’t think the name quite fits because as you can see from a small sampling above that there are some holes. I suppose even Einstein wasn’t perfect, so maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Genius algorithm appears very, very good. This feature will encourage me to start using iTunes again. Mission accomplished, Apple.

New iPod announcements

Before exiting this post, I see Matt is curious what I think about the new iPod announcements. From an Apple shareholder standpoint (I’ve owned AAPL stock for a couple years now), I love these Apple events. Steve Jobs out on stage evangelizing like only he can. And what’s not to like about taking $100 off the iPod Touch?

Being excited about touch screen enabled devices like tablet PC, I really like the idea behind the iPhone and  iPod Touch but here’s my problem: not enough practical storage space for the price.

Realistically I’m only going to carry one music device. I’ve already got my Pocket PC which the iPod Touch could someday replace, but I don’t see it having enough space for me at the right price now. We have over 50GB worth of music and my current 30GB Zune isn’t enough. Why would I spend $299 for the iPod Touch 16GB and have 14GB less for music not counting cool iPod Touch applications? Even though the Nano’s price is right the storage is the issue there too. Always have liked the Nike+ tie-in.

Right now the 32GB iPod Touch is selling for $399. The money conscious side of me says: wait it out until the price comes down and storage amount increases. Inevitably it will. The cool gadget side of me is saying to stop thinking about it and drop down the bones now.

The iPhone remains out for me as long as it has anything to do with AT&T. If Sprint had the iPhone, the current cell phone carrier my wife and sons are using (I haven’t had a cell phone of my own for awhile), I might pull the trigger. Been checking out that Samsung Instinct and thought maybe, just maybe that would look good in my hands but then I think about having a phone contract for two more years and that keeps me at bay.

So it looks like I’ll be getting either a Zune 120GB or iPod 120GB classic. In the iPod corner is knowledge that my wife’s 80GB iPod has worked very well and I like the interaction with iTunes on the Mac. Also, I’m hoping this holiday season to upgrade my Mac. Last and my first ever Mac purchase was in October 2004. It’s time for me to get one of those shiny Intel-based iMacs. Santa, are you listening? Having the 120GB iPod would fit this scenario well.

In the Zune corner, bonus points for how the Zune has treated me as a customer by continuing to give me firmware updates on my Zune 30GB with features that are in their next generation devices. I’m intrigued by comparing the channels function to the ‘Genius’ and must admit not being one of the 50% using the FM tuner to date, so that FM to tune capability won’t play much of a factor. I spend 75% of my time in the Windows world and prefer Zune software to iTunes on Windows. Seems like jumping into the 120GB is going to fit my growing music needs well whether it be Zune or iPod.

If I let desire rule my wallet, I’d buy a new iMac, the Zune 120GB and the iPod Touch 32GB tomorrow. Oh temptation, you cruel beast!

The world needs more thinkers and tinkerers like Hiroyuki Manabe, who wants to find the next great phone interface, via Wired:

Manabe wired a pair of headphones to a system that detects the electrical currents produced by the rapid movement of his eyeballs. The invention is so precise that he can actually turn up the volume on a music player by rolling his eyes up or down, and he can fast forward tracks with a couple of quick eye jerks to his right.

This type of eye-powered interface could also be helpful to the disabled. Although the prototype looks ridiculous and needs serious fashion tweaking, I’d like to see more eye-powered devices.

Could be a few problems though if it tied too much activity to blinking as we tend to blink our eyes a lot of times every day. If it’s 16 times a minute, or 15,360 times over the course of 16 hours (hey, we have to sleep the other 8, right?), that’s a whole lot of unintentional activity. I’m lucky if I consciously think about blinking once a day, never mind over 15,000 times.

But you could do some sort of switch for closing your eyes and keeping them closed for a period of time. Close eyes and hold for five seconds to play Metallica "Enter Sandman" for example.

Here I have these glasses on every day, why can’t I get an eye-powered or eye-enhanced set of glasses that help me multi-task easier? Such a contraption might border on looking like some Borg apparatus and make even Manabe’s headphones look cool.

How about using our eyes to control a 3D viewer like PicLens (left) someday? Is Piclens neat browser eye candy or a glimpse at the future?

It looks like Chrysler is going after techies — in a good way.

I’m going to contact the sales department at our local Chrysler dealer and ask them about UConnect Web and when the 2009 model cars are coming in.

The system is not rigged to keep the driver from doing such things while the car is moving, though Chrysler will discourage it. UConnect Web will be offered in most 2009 Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles starting in August. The in-vehicle router will cost $449, plus installation of up to $50. Mobile Web access for it will require a $29-a-month subscription, after $35 for activation, through provider Autonet Mobile.

As some readers might recall, our last new vehicle purchase was a 2007 PT Cruiser. Subpar gas mileage aside — I mean you’d think a little car like this would get great gas mileage, but it doesn’t — we’ve been happy with the purchase otherwise. There have been a few other minor dealer-related annoyances, but nothing worth writing about. We really like the fact that all our preventive maintenance was paid for in advance. I’d buy that plan again and would recommend to friends.

I’m mildly interested in the Sebring, but like the look of the Chrysler 300. The next business vehicle we buy will be automatic and likely not an SUV. We’re interested in something small that does at least 30 MPG on highway (the Sebring does) and needs to have something like UConnect. Like the idea of a built-in GPS as well and it wouldn’t break our hearts to see built-in Sirius satellite radio either. This will be my wife’s car and she wants to get her driver’s license for the first time (hence the reason it needs to be smaller).

If someone reading knows of smaller cars that fit the above specs, please let me know in the comments or trackback in.

Been a little while since I’ve mentioned Chumby.

It still sits to the left of my computer monitor, nestled atop the printer, updating me through a dozen different widgets throughout the day on things like stock prices, my horoscope, what happened on this day in history and so on. To date it’s been used like a $179 billboard, rather than anything that useful or revolutionary.

This morning the New York Times has a piece which discusses the monetization scheme for Chumby (emphasis mine):

Businesses are free to distribute widgets that use information from their own sites, except if they want those widgets to display advertising or sell something. In that case, the only thing that is open is Chumby’s phone line. It expects to be paid a cut of all the money made over its system.

At first I didn’t see as many Public Service Announcements on Chumby, but I’ve noticed an increase. I realize the Chumby can be modified to function as a lighthttpd server which better suits my needs and would use 100% of my bandwidth. I’m thinking about doing that because I don’t really want or need to see commercials in between widgets. That’s too similar to the TV model of content, commercials, content. Anybody else reading using their Chumby this way and want to share your experiences in the comments below?

My original plans were to do some amount of Chumby widget development but since I don’t have and have little desire to pay $679 to buy the Flash IDE, I’ve kept on the fence. There are some open source alternatives to doing Flash development, but they looked a little time intensive. Is there an open source Chumby Flash lite IDE that somebody reading knows about and is using? I’d still like to get into developing some Chumby widgets, but if this calls for me buying the Flash IDE, it will probably be back-burnered.

Also, anybody running Silverlight applications on Chumby yet? I see some PHP 5.25 binaries were cooked up already.

If you’re traveling to Montana with shiny new Kindle in hand, might want to buy those books beforehand. Sprint EVDO coverage in Montana is limited, very limited if you look at the EVDO dead zone in the nationwide Kindle coverage map below.

When no Sprint EVDO network is present, the Kindle will attempt to downgrade to the dramatically slower Sprint data network. Unfortunately, coverage in Montana and other white areas on the map is still limited.

Relating to this coverage issue bookofJoe has a post asking: Amazon Kindle a Fraud?:

You and I know now — and Jeff Bezos knew, or certainly should have known — that the device doesn’t work in certain places yet Amazon happily banked the money from the dupes who didn’t, as well as crowing about how demand was so great it was sold out the day it appeared. Not the way a good company does business.

Hey bookofjoe, you’re reaching, mon. Anybody in this day and age who paid $400 for a device that relies on internet connectivity for full functionality and didn’t first check the service coverage area should have their license to geek taken away. Don’t any of these people have cell phones? Who doesn’t know internet coverage isn’t omnipresent? Really?

Apparently, bookofjoe and the commenter he was excited about, Steve Saroff who lives in Missoula don’t believe checking coverage maps before purchase is important? Mr. Saroff goes even further to suggest that this might be some kind of “bait and switch” advertising by Amazon.

Please.

While I would submit that the customer is almost always right, this particular Kindle customer is wrong. Missoula and Helena are beautiful cities with wonderful and friendly people, but they just don’t get much respect when it comes to Sprint coverage. Blame this on Sprint, not Amazon. Lobby them for more towers.

Forget 4GB or 8GB flash drives, forget polyethylenedioxythiophene, forget 30GB, 80GB or 160GB hard drive based players, in a few years it will be possible to put a terabyte (TB) in a very small package. Goodbye to messages like this:

Although no 1TB iPods, Zunes or other portable music/video devices exist yet, you can safely wager they are coming. Even if PMC turns out to be a bust.

I was somewhat surprised our CD collection wouldn’t fit on the Zune 30GB. It took nearly a month of time here and there ripping the CDs to MP3 at 320kbps/44 for a total of 4,927 songs, 42.3 GB. The collection does fit easily on our 80GB iPod, so maybe it’s time for me to update to the Zune 80 (if I can find one somewhere, I hear they are hot sellers at the moment).

PMC plans to put an end to these kind of concerns in a few years. PMC might even allow me to re-rip our collection in FLAC or some other lossless format. PMC will slow aging.

Ok, joking on the last one.

PMC stands for programmable metallization cell and was created by scientists at Arizona State University. In April 2009 the first PMC memory chip is going into production via tech.co.uk:

The new memory uses nano tech to charge copper particles on the molecular scale, making it 1,000 times more energy efficient as current flash memory.

Managing a music collection larger than fits on a Zune
Running out of space did yield one side benefit, to look at the situation positively: I was able to pick and choose exactly what music would be synced. It’s been awhile since I’ve run into space issues with a portable music player.

Choosing what music to sync on the Zune is a matter of dragging individual songs, albums or artists down to the icon in the lower left corner. The Zune will update while you work. It didn’t lag far behind how fast I chose the music from the total collection. I’m not sure about you, friendly reader, but I found a significant amount of music in our family’s collection that I didn’t care to have on the Zune.

I asked our youngest teenager to help me pick a few of his favorite artists. Syncing playlists works similarly. Just click and drag the created playlist to the icon to the Zune device graphic.

It’s too bad these small TB devices aren’t here already, but since I’ve been getting more into HD quality video, I can see the out of space messages appearing for video content. Word to the scientists, hurry up and get us a petabyte storage in small packages for video. I’m positively that, health willing, I’ll be around to see the day that we can comfortably pack around our entire entertainment collection: music, videos, books, magazine.

Looking forward to it. You?

We just got back from a mini road trip to demo our newest car gadget: the Garmin Street Pilot c330. I’ve been checking out these GPS navigation systems for awhile and waiting for the right moment to jump in. One of the Wal-mart Black Friday deals was the Garmin c330 which Consumer Reports rated highly. $128? Are you kidding? I’m there.

Official website product page for Garmin Street Pilot c330
Buy Garmin StreetPilot c330 at Amazon (affiliate)

The c330 comes in one of those knuckle bleeding clam shell cases. Take your favorite pocket knife or razor blade to the case and unveil the contents: c330 which fits in the palm of your hand, suction cup mount and circular dash sticky mount, CD and USB cord.

Attaching the Garmin c330 to the suction cup windshield mount is as easy as pressing it into the grooves and snapping it gently into place. You don’t even need to even plug it into the USB to charge the three hour internal battery.

I wet the back of the suction cup, unhinged the clasp and then stuck it on the front windshield beneath the rearview mirror of our 2007 PT Cruiser. The winshield mount swivels so when you aren’t using the device you can push it up near the mirror and give yourself more line of sight. There is a small plugin on the device for the cigarette adapter which powers the c330.

Note: the states of California and Minnesota prohibit the use of anything that attaches to your windshield. You’ll need to use the enclosed circular dash mount for those cases. Pity really, as the c330 isn’t intrusive (see picture above of limited line of sight interference).

During our trip, we decided to move the unit down further so it had a better view of the skies. We had some issues with locating satellites with it closer to the rear-view mirror.

On first power-up the c330 will communicate with the satellite and triangulate your position. Now big brother knows where you are at (just kidding). This process takes a couple minutes. Meanwhile you can thumb through one of the smallest instruction manuals I’ve received with any gadget. It’s like a half dozen pages with color pictures. The Garmin Street Pilot c330 ranks among one of the easiest to setup gadgets I’ve ever used.

After the initial setup the User Interface gives you two choice: Where to? and View Map.

This simplistic UI is surprisingly effective. Both my wife and I found it very easy to tell the Garmin c330 where we wanted to go.

In the above picture four key items are marked in red:

1. The arrival time to your destination. This will be explained in more detail shortly.
2. Menu button will return you to the “Where now?” screen. You can also access the settings (marked with a wrench). These items are disabled in safe mode while driving. You can disable safe mode if a passenger is going to program new or modify existing destinations. If you choose a new destination along the route to another one, the c330 will ask you if you want to travel to the secondary location along the way to your existing destination. This is useful if you are hungry and need to veer a bit off track in order to get to a nearby restaurant.
3. This is your vehicle. Note that your destination is shown in red. As long as you keep the car in the red, you’re traveling the right direction. Funny that they didn’t use green. Your destination is marked with a checkered flag.
4. On the right bottom corner is how many miles or feet until your next turn or action point. We learned that sometimes the c330 would tell us to “stay right” or “stay left” when the text actually says to turn. A little confusing when you look at the screen but if you follow the road, you’re good to go.

One of the neat functions is being able to choose the “near” option which will tell you where points of interest are like shopping malls, gas stations, restaurants and more. When you find a spot you want to go to, like we did with a nearby Godfather’s Pizza you just touch with your finger and choose “Go.”

Perhaps the biggest issue with these devices is the accuracy of the maps and satellite connection. If the maps are too outdated then it will show you places nearby that don’t exist at all. Godfather’s Pizza in Lacey is now a Round Table, for example. We also found a couple other places on our brief beach trip that didn’t exist.

As for the satellite connection, we experienced a total meltdown with the Garmin c330 while driving through Portland, Oregon. It kept losing the signal and when it found a signal it would be off on streets nearby that we weren’t on. I decided to call Garmin support today to see what they recommended about dealing with outdated maps and inferior satellite connectivity through a major city in the United States. If we lived in and/or regularly navigated through Portland there’s no way I’d want to use this device. I learned that there is a free firmware upgrade on the website which specifically deals with this issue.

Another useful feature is bright, very readable text that shows detailed data about your trip such as (pictured above):

- how long it will take to get there. The estimated arrival time is shown in the lower left corner. This gives you the ability to estimate how many miles away you are. The arrival time and miles will adjust as you move closer to your destination.
- miles per hour traveled both current and overall average. There is also a rather useles max speed counter. We found this number getting out of sync frequently showing numbers like 286mph. In a PT Cruiser? Yeah, right. Even got a number 986mph once, I’d like to see the speeding ticket for that one!
- trip counter (”Total time”). Contains stats for how far traveled, how much time. Some vehicles have these features as part of the cruise control package and this would be a duplicate feature but for those vehicles without, it’s handy.
- stop time (”Stopped”). How much time are you spending stopped at traffic lights?

Both the trip settings (”Reset Trip”) and max settings (”Reset Max”) can be reset with a touch to the buttons along the bottom.

Somewhat quirky search
You can also enter in street addresses and search by names, but the search is greatly dependent on the map database. Again, everything goes back to the map database. We tried finding the Fry’s in our area. We tried misspelling (below) and spelling it correctly but the c330 could not locate the Fry’s in Renton.

Fortunately, we could enter in the exact address and have the c330 help us navigate there that way.

The importance of current maps
Business open and close, it’s very difficult for the maps to stay completely current, but after further more extensive testing I was disappointed that the c330 comes with crippled maps. The reason the c330 is being sold so cheaply is because the maps are outdated and there isn’t enough space internally on the units to hold the entire US and Canada. Since we travel to Canada a few times a year, this isn’t a good unit for us.

Surprisingly, the customer support rep at Garmin was very helpful in recommending the following other Garmin units which would fit our needs better:

Street Pilot c340 - this is the newer model in the 300 series and if it doesn’t come with the current 2008 maps, Garmin will automatically send you the new maps for free ($70 USD for c330 owners). This also adds the feature of voice prompts for the street name: e.g “turn right on main street in 0.2 miles” versus the c330 version of: “turn right in 0.2 miles.” Also the c340 comes with a feature that allows viewing the maps on your computer. This way you can map out destinations from your computer.
nuVee 250 (no voice streets) - comes with enough space to hold full US and Canada maps but doesn’t have the voice prompts
nuVee 260 (voice street prompts = yes) - a little more expensive than the 250.

And finally a more fancy and expensive version was offered: the nuvee 350 (voice street yes, MP3 and picture storage). Not sure we need to go this far as we already have an iPod and Zune with plenty of storage for music and pictures, but it’s nice to know what versions come with the 2008 maps. It’s too bad Wal-mart didn’t do anything to educate people on Black Friday that the c330 deal came with a big *asterisk:

*1. maps are outdated and it cost $70 to update them
*2. unit doesn’t have the capacity to hold full maps for US and Canada. Something important that people who live near the border like we do will probably want to know.

Bad Wal-mart, bad. I suppose we should have expected it was too good a deal to be true.

Points of Interest
One last thing to mention that makes these devices cool are programmable points of interest (POI). You can download POI from various sites on the web to an SD card up to 2GB in size and then be able to access them from all the Garmin GPS devices. I didn’t check into how easy this is to do, formats and the like, but it sounds like a great way to make your GPS even more useful.

After using the c330 the last few days, and especially because I love playing around with new gadgets, I’m not sure how or why I haven’t bought and used one of these devices sooner.

Summary and Grade
If you live in the midwest or don’t travel to Canada, the c330 could be an OK first GPS device at the price. I was really stoked about the device until realizing the number of limitations. Now I have buyer’s remorse. I was on hold calling Garmin support for almost 20 minutes before the rep came to the line (bad), but found the friendly service representative helpful and knowledgeable.

I love how easy it is to read the c330 screen. It will automatically switch into night mode display which is also easy to read in the evening. The touch screen sensitivity was just right although my fingers did press the wrong keys a few times. Overall, not something that would turn me off to the interface which I think is one of the strengths of the device.

It’s rare when a customer support person encourages you to take something back to the store because the device isn’t a good fit for your individual situation. Additionally she knew the answers to my other questions and helped me understand what other units they sold would be a better fit. I’ll end up spending more, but then if we bought the $70 maps that we couldn’t even load fully anyway, we’d be at $200 anyway. I’m thinking for $200 we should be able to find the c340. Amazon shows the c340 for almost $100 more than we paid for the c330.

At the price and if you don’t mind the limitations the c330 could provide a whole new travel dimension. I’m going to take it back to Wal-mart and see if I can get the c340 instead. Grade: C+