e-Tools Quick Take...

Just a quick update, here:

I found a work-around for Blogger's inability to keep completed tasks from showing up in my "Blogs to Be" sidebar gadget. This was coming from a Remember The Milk task list, and has probably only been read three or four times in the correct manner. I found out how to change the feed from Atom (default) to RSS, and now it works! At least there is a workaround for Blogger's ineptitude.

Since my favorite browser, Flock, has now integrated the photo sharing services of Tinypic into its Media Bar, I have signed up as well. Another member of my household has been a longtime user of this service, for stuffing her blogs full of pictures, so I have some catching up to do.

I've added a Digg feed to the sidebar, but unlike the gadgets referencing the most popular articles on Digg, these are just my own most recent diggs. You're here (all 2.5 of you) to read my spewage, so you deserve to see the "garbage-in" side of me as well. Look for "What the heck is kEnny reading?" on the right.

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On a somewhat unrelated note, something funny happened between last night and this morning. On a whim I decided to look up the ShamWOW guy, Vince Clortho Offer. I found his Wikipedia page and used twitter to make note of it. This morning I got an email from twitter announcing that _VINCEOFFER_ was following me on twitter! How very interesting!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

E-Tools that have me hexed, and some that don't.

This is more of a feedback entry than introducing anything new, and for that I apologize. There are a number of my regular tools whose usage has changed and their operation (or lack of) should be noted.

Where to begin... Twitter has been all over the place, functionally speaking. I've recommended it's use to a number of people, both as an organizational aide and for fun, and for about half of those instances there has been something bad going on over at Twitter. I'm happy to say that overall, they seem to have gotten it together, but it hasn't been without some loss of functionality elsewhere. One of those losses has been my twitter sidebar gadget (formerly on the right). Since the gadget doesn't work at the moment, and I don't seem to be able to capture the RSS feed, I decided to remove it for now. I'm keeping it on my mobile blog, if only for the link it still provides.

I have been a little "mixed bag" about Flock's most recent beta (you know, probably because it is a beta!). One of it's downfalls for me has been the (hopefully temporary) loss of keystroke access to the blog editor. The new security features inherited from Firefox have been a pain to deal with, but I can see their necessity.

One good note is that where I had previously been unable to use Flock's blog editor without trouble from the Flock Blog Plus add-on, I'm not having that problem any more.

Google's Send to Phone add-on for Firefox has been retired. I've come up with a substitute of sorts, by borrowing from the clues left by Flock when sharing a link via webmail. I now have a bookmark to open Gmail's Compose Message page, with the To: address filled in with my phone's SMS address. This works almost as good, as Send to Phone did.

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In my last big post, discussing event organizing, somebody left a comment saying how great their product was. I thought I'd try it out. After reading up on it a little, I made an account for myself and attempted to login, but it didn't work. To make matters worse, there was no password recovery/reset tool either. So much for being able to recommend it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

An Update in General

I've been busy lately, but not here exactly. I started two new blogs that more adequately address some of my desires for outlet of late.

The first was Pushing Wool, a place where I do my part to hinder or help the larger coordinated efforts to pull the wool over our collective eyes. Having been trained throughout my life to be suspicious and look for ulterior motives, I feel well equipped to address these issues. I know there are many other worthy places to look for such illumination, but I think most of them have either jumped the shark and/or been swallowed by the gigantic loom of lies and misinformation.

The second blog, which I just kicked off a few days ago, was something I had been considering for a long time. It wasn't until somebody came out and said I should write for one of the beloved car magazines, that I really considered giving my own thoughts on the topic more than just lip service (because I really can talk about cars all day long). Once given the nudge, I was determined to give it a name both clever and self-centered enough to meet or exceed the standards set by my other blogs. I finally came up with Autogotistical Carpinions.

In the process of becoming inspired on the spot for topics about which to blather on about (see?), I've been trying to utilize any possible tools at hand to make it easier to keep track of my thoughts for expounding upon later. I'm now using Remember The Milk for that purpose, via Jott or by SMS via Twitter when I'm on the go. When I organize my task inbox later, the blog ideas get filtered into their own list, which you can see the contents of in the sidebar of this blog and both of the new blogs. This was my first attempt at using the news feed from a list of reminders. I like the fact that you can make some of the static blog content a little more dynamic without too much babysitting.

So that's what I've been up to. Keep an eye out for more from each blog. I'll probably be adding a news feed for each blog on the other, for a little cross-promotional action.

Blogged with Flock

kEnny's E-Tool Fourvarites!!

These are my mobile phone essentials, compiled over the last year and some, since outgrowing my Motorola RAZR V3. They are somewhat tailored for use on my Sony Ericsson K790a Cybershot Cameraphone. Yes, I called it a Cameraphone with a capital C. My rule is that if it has more than 2 mega pixels and a REAL flash, it gets a capital C. Get one for yourself and you'll see why. There are a few available now with 5MP sensors as well.

Daily Use Tools: These are the programs and websites I use every day, to keep in touch and up to date.

• 4INFO: While it is a very capable source of information for mobile browsers and SMS related queries, I primarily use 4INFO to give me my morning weather forecast on the weekdays. The infospace supplied services for AT&T Wireless still suck for regularly scheduled alerts.
• Twitter/Remember The Milk: I don't use Twitter other than to connect to Remember the Milk, for which I am contually finding more uses. I just recently added lists for Movies and TV shows to see, gifts to get for people, and music to take another listen to. When I happen to catch a movie, I can type in the names of the previews to add to the list. When I'm listening to the radio in the car, I use Jott to tell RTM who I need to listen to again (because I try to make a concious effort not to take my eyes off the road). When my kids start asking about all the neato cool stuff they have got to get, as told to them by various children's television networks, I can keep track of those as well. RTM has a very easy to navigate mobile site, which really shows off how flexible their service is. As a side note, Remember The Milk just got whole lot better by using a Firefox add-in to integrate closely with your Gmail Inbox. Very sharp!!!
• Jott: I have to check in at Jott's website every week or so for new Jott Links. My favorite new one is called Trapster. Sure, Trapster has their own software that runs on your GPS enabled mobile device (mine is not yet), but if you just want to do your part and look out for your fellow drivers, you can use Jott to send the exact location and type of service spotted to Trapster's database, in a safe manner!
• GrandCentral: Since starting my E-Tool monologue, GrandCentral has graduated to the only voicemail service used for my cell phone. After re-enabling the internet access for the phone, and realizing that calling AT&T's voicemail counts against your anytime minutes (during the daytime of weekdays), I realized that I could keep a few more rollover minutes by using my unlimited Media Net access to check my voice mail visual-style from GrandCentral's mobile site. It took a little digging, but I found the generic GSM commands to send from my phone to change from ATTWS voicemail to GrandCentral. *** Know what makes this cool now? I can give my GrandCentral number to anyone, and it will either screen the call or forward it to my cell phone (or any number of other phones I specify), based on my preference. When I can't answer my cell phone, same thing! The links to the voicemail messages are sent to my Gmail inbox, just like my Vonage voicemails, and both services send SMS alerts to my phone.
• Weather Underground: This is the sexiest website for weather, hands down! Not only does it give you an amazing amount of information (lots of great Google Maps mashups), but it has advertising for meeting single people in your local weather area too!! I use their RSS feed to get detailed weather predictions each day.
• Google's mobile services: Where do I start? Headlines via RSS, Gmail and Google Maps from Java applications, and browser bookmarks for local movies. Of special note is Google Maps. They added the ability to triangulate your location based on cell tower data, allowing remarkable fun watching the map move when you aren't driving. It is also handy for looking up directions. The directions can start out from your approximate location. You can also get loads of information via SMS queries.
• Blogger gets special mention apart from the rest of Google, as my phone has software made specially for it. Blogger can be configured to send SMS, MMS, and other picture messages from my phone (directly after taking the picture, even) directly to the Blogger blog of your choice. Since I only use Blogger, there's no problem.
• Fandango: While I have been hesitant to use Fandango previously, due to Regal Cinemas as Comcast relations, I have to admint that they have a pretty good mobile portal. They have the only movie listings I have found where you can view show times for future dates. You can even purchase tickets from your mobile.
• Yahoo! Go: This is one I've been following for some time, but still isn't available for the firmware version on my phone. I had a chance to try it out on a Samsung Blackjack, where it worked really well. Yahoo! Go packs in all kinds of Yahoo! content in an easy to navigate package. If you are a Yahoo! user, this should be at the top of your list.
  

That does it for now. You can expect part five when I come up with a clever way to phrase the title. :^)

Blogged with Flock

Shifting the Scope, assuming I had one to begin with...

My wife, being the only person I know who reads this, suggested that I add a little more to my blog so that I can keep a more continuous stream of (BS) information pouring forth. Sounds good enough. Maybe I can use it to help her and other "resistant to change" types step into the ever-widening world of Gadgets & Technology Entertainment. I think I'll coin my own acronym here and call that GATE for short. Yeah! That's the ticket.


The first thing today will be RSS feeds. Many folks know all about them and can tell you their favorite feed-reader and why. RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication, and is a method of making information available to internet users who would like to read just the articles or headlines they want from a given website supporting RSS. You can get more information here.

I try not to use much more than a core of programs for most tasks on my computers, so I'm not very interested in feed-readers (or news aggregators as some call them) unless they plug into another program I already use. Being a heavy Firefox user, I tried a few readers that were set up as Firefox extensions a while back, then Firefox started supporting RSS somewhat natively. At that point, I quit using add-ins and only used Firefox. They way I do it is to make a folder in the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder called (pretend I'm being imaginitive here, okay?) "News Feeds". When you come across a website where Firefox is showing this symbol:

you can click on the symbol and Firefox will ask you whate folder you want to save you Live Bookmark in. I always select my (imaginitively named) "News Feeds" folder. Right now, I've got Live Bookmarks for my GMail account, Techbargains, Local TV headlines, The Inquirer, and my Lovely Wife's Blog.

In 1080p RPTV research news, I have found some good threads pertaining to the televisions in question at AVS Forum . I'm starting to get a better handle on some of the Audio pass-through capabilities of some of these sets. I'm still trying to gleen some of the useful information, but it is taking a long time because of the sheer number of posts involved. The good ones have over 600 posts! I still have a long way to go before there are more than a handful of people reporting their own experiences with the TVs. The big question is: Does any TV pass along anything more than stereo audio from an HDMI connected source? The HDMI spec says that it can carry as much as 7.1 channels, but I keep reading that the TVs only output 5.1 channel audio sourced from their own tuners, and not from HDMI. This is not what I wanted to hear. I guess I shouldn't be getting my hopes too high for this generation of sets, but I feel like I've waited long enough.