So I guess I've been busy

What have I been doing, that would keep me from my most favoritest of blogs?  A few things.

Allison and I started dieting the South Beach way, and have each been losing weight in a steady fashion.  Along those lines, I've been using my new phone to keep track of the miles I have been walking or riding on my bike.  Nokia Sports Tracker is my weapon of choice.  I can use downloaded maps from Ovi Maps, or grab them from an active internet connection and see where I've been.  After the workout, I can check my stats and compare them to other workouts on the phone, or upload them to the website and do the same thing.  You have a number of privacy options for the workouts you upload, so you can share with your friends, or everybody, or nobody.  The other nice thing it does after uploading your trip is it offers to scan your phone for any pictures or video you may have taken during that time.  It then places those pictures on the map of your route, similar to geo-tagging.  I love this phone.

We sold my car, Ellie, which had served us for many years.  While it made me sad to see her go, the money we are saving on insurance has gone to adding Internet service to our phones, which is kinda nice.  Since we already have unlimited family messaging, and neither one of us has a "smart phone" it only costs us an extra $10 per phone, per month.  I've been taking advantage of the weather and biking to and from the vanpool most days.  Good times!

We took a trip to Ohio to see Allison's friends and family for the part of July.  We had LOTS of fun, and of course it was with faces full of tears that we left to come back home.  We flew out of Portland, so we spent a little bit of time with my family before and after the trip.  We did lots of hiking and exploring and generally had a great time.

I have graduated to keeping the books for the Vanpool.  I actually have a legitimate use for Remember The Milk besides just for my own personal purposes.  I set up monthly reminders for processing the vanpool log, collecting fees from the riders, and sending the reports to Intercity Transit.  I can access the reminders and check them off from anywhere.

I think you are up to date for now.  I'll be writing more about my experience with my phone later.

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A new toy in my pocket

I got a new phone. Not one of the ones I've been aspiring to reacquire from Sony Ericsson, but an upgrade nonetheless. I was going to hold out and just purchase an SE model this summer, but was tired of being frustrated by the Samsung Blackjack I had been using. The Blackjack has lots of features, but is overall very unsatisfying.

My new phone is a Nokia 6650 Fold (not anywhere close to the original 6650), from AT&T Wireless, which is different yet than the regular 6650 Fold you might find from other networks or independent dealers. AT&T wanted to make it a little different, to show off their navigation software and PTT features on this phone, so it has a few more buttons to mess with.

Part of my agenda with this phone is to undo some of the crap AT&T has done to make it "theirs," and make it a little more my own. Symbian is a new beast to me, so I'll be learning for a long time to come, but I am already enjoying some of the benefits of this phone.

Bluetooth: I can conclusively say that bluetooth reception and transmission on the Blackjack sucks. I went back to trying out my Sony Ericsson over-the-ear headset for this phone, because it is the best sounding, least intrusive, and most comfortable headset I have. This headset had a problem with the microphone not always working with the Blackjack, and I still need to test this out. The other problem I saw with this headset was in being able to keep it connected to the phone. This is no longer a problem with the 6650 (hooray!!). The NEW feature with the Nokia is that it pings the headset when a message is received, so I can set the phone to complete silence and tell from the headset when something has happened.

Flexibility: The phone's menu system can be presented in a number of ways, and I still haven't decided what I like more. The addition of touch sensitive buttons for the external display allows for some nice features. I can scan text messages without opening it up, and have access to the calendar, stopwatch, timer, camera, and music player!

The funny thing I see with this phone is that it is running what is normally recognized as a smart phone operating system, but because it isn't from Microsoft or Apple, and only has a numeric keypad, it has been given access to the cheaper data plan from AT&T. I love that.

What I'll be doing next is adding some applications to use the GPS built into it. The phone comes with the AT&T Navigator software built in, but that costs money for the service and data (separately). There is navigation software available that can be used with map data stored on the memory card, which is preferable right now, as I only want to be able to see how far I'm walking at lunch, or whenever else. I would also like to see if it has any geotagging options.

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This is a test of the emergency FlockCast system

If this were a real emergency, you would not have had a chance to read this bulletin, because at least one of us would have been busy running for our lives.

In case you were wondering was FlockCast does, it allows you to send a link to Facebook for just about anything you are posting somewhere else with Flock.

Sometimes this is extremely handy, but might have a tendency to get very annoying as time goes on.  Please use at your own discretion. 

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A Blatant and Probably Useless Plug

My topic for the day is a subject that may sound a little sticky.  It is called Glue, and it has a plugin for Firefox based browsers (my favorite is Flock) that can connect you to other web surfers in new ways.

At its core, Glue invades your privacy by monitoring your activity on certain websites and allowing you to show your enthusiasm for different noun-based objects (people, places, or things).  That alone is not all that great, and has been most of my experience so far.

What makes it better is the networking capability it has.  You can instantly add other glue users to follow from your Facebook friends and those you follow on Twitter, in addition to following other Glue users that show up in the Glue Bar when you visit a site monitored by Glue.  Once you happen across more people, you can comment on the comments they have left, see what they like or where they have been.

I consider myself lucky to know a few BIG movie buffs, and would love for them to start using Glue to show me which ones they like or dislike by slapping a link to their review of said movie into the "2 cents" Glue comment section.  That might also promote more reading of their reviews. Ha!

I have only done a little bit of this so far, and most of it has been on Yelp, recommending local restaurants.  I look forward to doing more, and seeing what my friends can do to tell me about what they like, whether it is books, movies, movie stars, music, recording artists, gadgets, restaurants, stocks, TV shows, or wine.

Now if only I could motivate them a bit more...

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New Blog Features for kEnny!

Part of what keeps me active on this blog, is a desire to understand how to appply new and nifty applications and gadgets.  Whenever I hear of new features or hacks being made available for my favorite sites and tools, I'm all over it.  Almost every gadget in this blog's sidebar is a result of that pursuit.  To that end, I'm officially introducing two new features to my blog today.

The first can be seen at the top of the main column, where you should see "Click here to leave your answers!"  This is a Wall gadget from Google Friend Connect.  This is not my first time using gadgets from Friend Connect, but it is the first time I have put something interactive like this on my own blog.  It is there for whatever you would like to use it for.  If you would like to tell me how super green my blog is, or how i could do something to make it easier to read, or if you want to ask a question for me to answer in a new blog post, go right ahead!

The other new gadget is my label cloud in the sidebar.  I've been looking for something that makes better use of the humongous amount of space taken up by Blogger's default label list.  You can find tag clouds all over the web, but it is near to impossible to find one that works with Blogger's Labels.  I found one, and it is fairly easy to implement.  Let me know if you want the details.

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