Blog

  • Alton Towers Theme Park: PDA’s Banished To Oblivion This Half Term


    Just read about this on Slashdot and went to see the site myself…

    PDA’s Banished To Oblivion This Half Term

    While I can appreciate the reason for the apparently opt-in ban, it doesn’t make sense to me. I think it is a good idea for kids and parents to all carry phones to keep in contact when separated (either by design or accident). I also use my phone’s camera a lot. We’ve always had fun at theme parks with phone, digital camera, GPS, and all kinds of other e-gear that have actually enhanced the experience IMHO.

  • So, How is Craigslist Mobile Mobile-Friendly?


    I just read somewhere (sorry, I can’t recall the reference) that Craigslist is the most viewed site on mobile devices. From what I can figure, this is the address for their mobile site…

    mobile.craigslist.org

    The image at the top of this blog is pretty much what this site looked like on my iPod touch. Clicking on any link results in a reasonably mobile friendly page. But, I had a hard time reading the main cluttered page on my mobile device. Is there some other mobile friendly page on Craigslist that I missed?

  • TwitPic: Send a Photo to Twitter From Your Phone


    TwitPic is a free web service that lets you attach a photo web link to a Twitter tweet. Here’s how you do it, head over to TwitPic and sign-in with your normal Twitter account name and password. Then, click on Settings and add the special email address it shows you to your cameraphone’s email contacts list. The address is in the form of: twitterusername.secretstuff@twitpic.com. If you send a photo to this email address, the email subject line will become your tweet text and a weblink to your photo will appear beside this text. Anyone who clicks on your TwitPic photo link will be able to see your photo.

  • Windows Mobile Voice Command, Alarms, and Bluetooth

    The T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6 has one really annoying bug: Once you set the phone to vibrate profile, event notifications always vibrate even if the profile is set back to normal. However, there is a workaround if you use a Bluetooth speaker or headset. The Dash comes with Voice Command in firmware. If you set it to send voice notifications to the Bluetooth device, the darn Dash will still vibrate for event notifications, but it will provide a text-to-speech notification via the Bluetooth device.

  • Fedora 9 Linux Live USB Portable Desktop

    Just read this article over on Information Week about Fedora 9‘s (Linux) USB Live feature that lets you store your preferred desktop on a 2GB USB flash drive. This desktop is not from your own Fedora desktop. Instead it is a prepackaged image that Red Hat calls CustomSpins.

    Red Hat’s Fedora 9 Loads Portable Desktop On USBs

    These desktops can be booted and run directly from the USB flash drive. I haven’t tried it yet. But, it is on my list of things to do 🙂

    You can find more information about this on Fedora’s web site at…

    Fedora Live Images

    Addendum: Just found an additional Linux on USB flash drive article on Information Week: How To Run Linux From A USB Flash Drive

  • kwiry: Text or Email a Topic to it and Retrieve Search Results on the Desktop

    I usually don’t mention a service I haven’t tried yet. But, I’m almost ready to hit the sack and don’t want to start playing with anything just now. And, yet, this service seemed interesting enough to blog it as a kind of reminder to myself to try it out tomorrow.

    kwiry (which I suppose is pronounced “query”)

    …is a free service that helps you jot something down from a phone and lets you retrieve the results from a desktop web browser. They push the idea of text messaging queries to the service. This caused me to lose interest at first. However, reading on I noticed it also lets you send the query via email too. My phone plan only includes a handful of free text messages. But, my email is free (unlimited data). So, that is a much better fit for me.

    It apparently somehow ties in to Twitter (another favorite of mine) and other social network services. So, I’m definitely going sign up and take a closer look at it tomorrow.

    Good night, all!