Jul

25

Nokia E61 review

July 25, 2006 | 15 Comments

My Nokia E61 arrived yesterday. Very impressed so far. The battery compartment door is metal! This device feels so sturdy. Kind of like the very first iPaqs when they came out.

The keyboard has a nice touch, but a little crisp. Maybe will get better the more I wear it in. I downloaded the Nova Media iSync plugin and was synced in minutes. That plugin is essential for OS X users. No client to install on the phone either. I need to look into it, but I think it might be using SyncML. Very cool.

The WiFi client seems a little wonky. I added my settings and it was unable to connect. Went back in, acted like I edited the name of my network and then it connected. Didn’t change anything, but OK. And it is unable to find other networks, when I know there is about 8 around my house. Might be a setting. I need to play with it more.

The browser is modern. It renders a lot. Including ECMA script and has support for popup windows.

Flash Lite came pre-installed on the device. Cool!

There are other goodies as well. I’ll post them later when I have more time.

Overall, I am really looking forward to carrying this device. Nokia E61 two thumbs up so far.

Jul

25

I played with Tracks some more last night, and discovered there are actually instructions included for using Rake to do the setup schema. I was unable to use the migrate command, however db_schema_import worked for me. Looks like my hacking of the SQL script to setup the db schema was 99% accurate. However, I would suggest everyone use the instructions included and try and use Rake.

I’ve found a couple of things, that maybe I’ll jump into the code and change, like the login controller should check to see if there are any existing users and if not, forward to the signup controller for first time set up. Also, when adding an action while on page ‘home’ should refresh the page (eventually use Ajax) to refresh the list of actions.

Also, my feed is invalid. I need to look into that. But overall I am going to stick with this solution for GTD. Looks promising, this is a great start.

Jul

24

Tracks is an open source Ruby on Rails app for implementing ‘Gettings Things Done‘, which I’m in the process of reading.

I decided to run this locally on my Powerbook, so I installed Locomotive first. Locomotive is awesome for running Rails apps on OS X. It does the setup, gives an easy way to start and stop WEBrick, etc…

Back to Tracks, I then followed the great instructions here: http://www.jackenhack.com/blog/archives/2006/05/25/gtd-ruby-on-rails-and-the-mac/. But rather than using sqllite, I wanted to use mySQL. Not too hard to do. I created a SQL script for setting it up initially. You can download it here.

So use the SQL script above to set up your db and tables, then follow ALL of the instructions at the jackenhack site above, except for replacing the text in the database.yml file. Use the template file that came with Tracks, duplicate it, rename it database.yml and fill in your mySQL connection info. That should be all that is needed.

The app needs a few additions like what happens when you first start the app, and creating users, etc… but overall this is a great start.

Jul

18

The recording for the Breeze seminar I did about two weeks ago regarding the MediaPlayback API for Flash Lite 2.0 has been posted. Check it out here if you weren’t able to attend: http://seminars.breezecentral.com/p61583106/

Jul

18

Congratulations to Smashing Ideas and BlueSkyNorth on their merger! I’m sure both teams are very excited about this combining of efforts. I expect we’ll see some great Flash Lite developments come out of this.

I look forward to seeing the work come out of this.

Jul

10

My full-time job has me working for a small agency called Barefoot Advertising. I work with some extremely talented people. Designers, Project Managers, and other Developers. We do Web based work for companies like Miller Brewing Company, Allianz Global Insurance, and Proctor & Gamble. We do some other non-profit work for fun as well. It’s a great place.

A couple of months ago, my boss/leader/overseer (the one whose son puked on the phone, see earlier post) encouraged the development team to start a blog. So one of the other developers set up a Blogger account and we’ve been posting on stand-out practices that we run across in our daily lives creating sites and applications for our clients. Even the boss chimed in with a major uber shell script that we use to setup virtual hosts, DNS entries, Subversion Repositories, etc… Check it out, we discuss lots of topics ranging from Flash to Search Engine Optimization.

I’ve been searching for other agency IT teams that want to talk about how they do certain things (Flash scripting, Server setup, Search Engine Optimization, etc…). So far I’ve only found a few. I think it’s an interesting conversation we can all learn from. If you work for a company that has an IT blog or a blog about behind the scenes development, leave a comment. If you’re interested in how we do things, check out our blog: http://barefootdevelopment.blogspot.com

Jul

9

In 1998 while living in San Francisco, a coworker/friend of my then-fiancee introduced the two of us to wine culture. When they started working together he was living in Marin, but as a child he grew up around the vineyards down in Monterey. Being from the midwest, we really didn’t know anything about wines or the fact that Napa had become a hotspot.

He began bringing us up to speed on wine and how the area was really impacted by the vineyards. We loved the area. We would travel out of the city and see the vineyards or go to Stinson beach on the weekends. So in addition to the great food of the area, we gained a fondness for wine as well. The food and wine are probably the top two things we miss about living out on the west coast.

Living in the midwest doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity to discover new wines. The local retailers have wine tastings on occasion, but that doesn’t quite compare to sitting down with friends and enjoying a bottle. So, the other day while reading the Rails community postings, I found a mention of Cork’d. It’s a new Rails app for wine lovers. It’s fun, not pretentious. You can create an account, view what others/friends are drinking, what people have in their cellars, etc… One of the greatest things for me is seeing the reviews of wine by the other members. Seeing what the community feels about a wine is much more valuable to me then reading the point score it may have received from Wine Spectator.

Very well done app. If you are into wine and would like to keep an online journal and join a community, try out Cork’d. I highly recommend. You can view my profile on Cork’d here.

Also, if anyone has any pointers on starting a local wine group, leave me a comment. I am thinking about getting some people together for one in the Fort Wayne area.

Jul

8

This is the best death to phone story I’ve heard, so I had to blog it. Too Funny.

My boss/overseer/leader at work, Barefoot Advertising, just sent me an IM asking if I had any extra phones that would work on the Cingular network. He needed to borrow one, actually his wife needed it. I asked why, of course, expecting to hear that hers had been dropped in a pool, or something like that. Nope! Instead, I heard, that they were driving back to their home after being out of town for the weekend with their boys, and one started feeling ill and eventually puked all over mom’s phone. Ewwww! Apparently the phone is out of order and smells like vomit regardless.

I laughed out loud. Phone destroyed by puke. Awesome.

So parents, lesson learned, keep all electronics including phones out of your kid’s projectile paths.

Jul

5

I’ve read a number of blog posts today about how mobile data and application adoption is occurring much slower than analysts expected. And I have a thought. Call me crazy, but AOL and later NetZero really brought a lot of people online in the US. Because it was free! Now the experience might have been terrible, and even walled off, but at least it got people online so they could see what this internet thing was.

We need the same thing for mobile data. What MVNO or carrier is going to be the first to offer a handset if you buy a voice plan, and throw the mobile data access in free. Specialize the browser, track user habits and serve ads, whatever. But it would be a step towards getting people “online” and consuming mobile data services. In the end, this would be beneficial to everyone. Maybe good ‘ol AOL could launch a MVNO with the same advertising scheme they did back in the late 90s, just change the wording from the internet, to mobile data.

Linkroll

Recent Projects