Search results

How long is a day Östersund this time of year? I was really excited last week when I noticed that it was after 5PM and still light out.

We had a week where it snowed, warmed up to 45, snowed warmed up to 45 and then snowed and warmed up to 45. Where are you in PA, Will?

I'm about to make a proposal for changing the way my company works from having a large suite of offices and classrooms to a single storefront containing one large classroom and one much smaller one. I figure we can maintain a space for printers, perhaps a corporate fax line and as a mail drop...

Last night, one mile from the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan, it was 59F at 11:00PM. It's suppose to get to the upper 50s today. Man our weather is screwed up this winter.

Using Thunderbird and various mobile clients and interfacing with Gmail or other IMAP server, here's what happens: Items sent are delivered to the "Sent" folder for the relevant account on each IMAP server (i.e. Inbox > Sent). If the message was sent via Gmail SMTP, the message also goes in the...

The standard Android client can look at Sent Items and other folder on IMAP servers just fine. The Gmail-specific client has a nicer presentation, but that's to be expected. I do get frustrated with mobile Gmail, but my issue is that I have damned many different identities that it's easier for...

I'm actually a huge fan of Google Reader, though I'll admit one of the main uses I have for it is keeping up with the various webcomics I read. I also use it in combination with the Android-only Google Listen to make sure that I'm up to date on the podcast versions of various NPR programs I...

Congratulations Paugie!

I just ran across an interesting application for somebody who lives and dies for "push to talk." It's called Heytell and it's an Android/iPhone thing. It's not quite the same thing as Nextel's deal, more like voice text messages, but it's free and looks really easy to use.

Wikipedia actually has a nice if not fully updated table of Android devices. It seems to include screen technology when known, weight and distinguishing characteristics. You'll have to scroll a while to get to the tablet portion, but it's still a handy reference.

Something I've found that I like about the 10" tablet over and above the smaller ones: It's a good adjutant to the screens on the computers I'm using. With some experimentation, I've found a collection of widgets and tools to keep on my Xoom so that it's displaying useful information every time...

Nah. He has a special pillow for that now. ;)

The tree is a might impractical for most people. I can't say I'm terribly worried about someone stealing my spare phone, if only because it doesn't have an Apple logo on it.

The Asus Transformer would also be worthy of consideration, though it has kind of an odd form factor. As far as the port situation on Samsung tablets, I've never even had my 8.9" one plugged in to anything but AC power. It's less hassle to just run file copies over SMB.

CDs go into computers and get turned into FLACs. Thereafter the CD is irrelevant.

Things that don't play FLAC are not worthy of consideration as useful audio devices.

That 30-pin connector is on both my Galaxy tablets. But I'd be pissed if I had to stick that on my tablet in order to make it useful for my intended purpose.

VNC is a dog regardless. It was made for high bandwidth, low-latency networks. There's just no getting around that. It actually uses UltraVNC for its foundation, but that's because many VNC variants don't work properly with UAC prompts on Vista and Windows 7. Hamachi + RDP is my preferred means...

That's a really nice PSU for anything under $40 in any case. Thanks Bozo.

The displays on the Galaxy tablets are wonderful and in fact the 8.9" is my favorite of the tablets I have access to, but the larger ones do not include expandable storage. A few Android tablets (e.g. the Thinkpad tablet made by Lenovo) do have USB root hosts, but the bundled drivers generally...

Most 10" Android tablets meet most of those qualifications. You might have to use a tool with a small fee attached to keep your bookmarks synchronized, and the ability to do anything useful with Office file formats depends on having an app like Quickoffice or Polaris Office installed. I suspect...

802.11 can be frustrating. I swapped an Airport Extreme in to replace an Encore cheapie at a client's office couple weeks ago. The feedback I've gotten is that it's nice and fast for most people but ironically the two Apple computers in the office seem to disconnect more often.

It's bound to happen sooner or later.

woot.com has a 32GB HP Touchpad for $220 today and a 16GB one for $170 (on deals.woot.com). Honestly, that's a pretty tempting deal. The Touchpads have nice screens. From the little bit that I've gotten to mess with one, WebOS is slick and different from Android, and HP is actually still...

Thanks man

That thing is probably interesting, but I already have extra Android phones with 32GB microSD cards. You're right that I don't want to plug my phone in when I get in my car. The idea is to just leave on in there all the time.

The files I have tend to exceed the attachment limits of most mail servers, so it didn't occur to me to check.

The ipad I was messing with wouldn't let me do a single damned thing with it until I plugged it in to a computer with itunes on it. It just came up with a graphic showing a picture of the data cable and an arrow pointing to the word "itunes." If that's changed recently, it's for the best, but I...

For the last couple weeks, some of the most active threads on SF have been about phones and tablets. Those threads are currently in the Pub. We know where they are, but for purposes of organization I was thinking it might make a little more sense to either move that stuff to something under the...

The biggest problem I have with istuff is the reliance on itunes to do everything. I can grudgingly accept locking data to an application and Apple's sealed-box approach to its OS, but itunes itself royally sucks. At least the iphone isn't locked into crummy phone networks any more.

I think the issue might be that our stuff is spread across a bunch of different sites and media, and that google can't index some of it.

As far as I can tell, that hasn't had an impact on retail pricing for brand name systems. I guess the big guys are eating the costs or getting vastly better pricing since their contracts to get more drives are probably a lot better than anybody else's.

Well, yeah. There wasn't any new Windows or Office and no real change in form factor, performance or pricing in the last couple years. Netbooks were a big thing a couple years ago, but I'm sure the margins on those amounted to squat anyway. There might still be some businesses migrating to new...

It SHOULD since it's just a standard USB connection, but as far as I can tell, Saab is the only company that supports Android in its stereos. For head units that have USB support, the current capabilities are to treat the phone as if it were just a flash drive. No control capabilities.

Likewise Google and Amazon have their own storage services that can be integrated into Android. It's not like "cloud" is something unique to Apple, though AFAIK Apple is the only game in town for comprehensive service on iOS.

And we're back to comparing a built-to-be-low-cost, first generation device to expensive and presumably refined over time hardware, too. The Fire has a slow-ish CPU by current standards (It's "only" a dual core 1GHz system) and probably the most customized, eye candy intensive front end of...

I'm thinking that it shouldn't much matter. DLNA magically supports control protocols across devices, brands and capabilities. How hard is it to implement a device interface that understands "pause" and "next track?" Apparently I can get something better than what I have via Bluetooth, but IIRC...

They're both acceptable. Swiftkey probably is too. I'm used to Swype on my phone and that's what I prefer work with. The biggest annoyance I have between on screen keyboards is the mild lack of standardization about which non-QWERTY keys go on the primary screen. The default keyboard the Xoom...

Is it really so hard to type out the name of a company rather than its ticker symbol?

There's obviously enough divergence of opinion in what makes a good on screen keyboard that ithing people could probably stand to see some choice in the matter as well.

Even being able to control music playback on the head unit instead of the screen would be nice. I mounted an Evo in my car on a little arm to basically be a full-time music player but the only control I have without endangering everyone else on the road once I start it playing is volume.

Why can't we get car stereo integration with Android devices? I've looked. It doesn't seem to exist. Boo.

Mildly amusing tidbit relating the Megaupload saga: The morbidly obese multimillionaire who owned the site had a bunch of hip hop stars record a song in support of his service. Apparently those people are actually celebrities for some value of that term. Also, he was apparently ranked as the #1...

I'd have to see one since I'm not terribly confident about the quality of the panel. They do claim it's IPS at least.

The nice thing is, at least Android people get a choice.

Actually, yeah. There are several different virtual keyboards to choose from. I prefer Swype. One of my frustrations with the Fire is the fact that Amazon doesn't have any other keyboards for it in its app store.

You're talking about a $600 phone from a tier 1 OEM vs. a deliberately inexpensive lowest common denominator 1st generation device.

What about adding a repeater or just locating another AP broadcasting the same SSID?

I can't say I've ever had good luck with desktop internal WLAN hardware. Your best bet probably is to upgrade antennas, but everything 802.11 has an element of crapshoot to it, just because of all the environmental issues. Can you replace the antennas on the AP side as well?

Good idea, but what would most likely happen is that if any of the all-powerful meta-editors noticed, we'd wind up fighting over wikipedia's notability requirement.