tech ronin

I Want those Gmail advances now. Any takers?

Forget the privacy issues for a minute. I spend a lot of time in and on email. Email is an essential app. Today I would prefer my own paid for email sans ads if for no other reason than I'm not sure my correspondents will all appreciate the potential privacy compromises of having the emails they send to me used for commercial ends.

But I really want Gmail's key advances:

1. Powerful search engine
2. Keeping everything together without sorting into folders - I can never remember where I put things
3. Multiple labels instead of folders - much more powerful.

I'm hoping that Apple Mail (my current email app) will take a couple cues from Gmail. I'll bet Steve Jobs like Gmail's simplicity.

The one thing I like about the whole Gmail AdSense experiment is that it brings email out of isolation (hence a certain potential loss of privacy). This is a stretch, but in a way it's similar to what happens in social networking services where you lose some privacy but gain other network benefits. In the best possible scenarios, good things could emerge.

The interplay between the advocates and the nay-sayers may actually be a healthy thing that will elicit great creativity from Google's developers. Or, it could kill the experiment prematurely. I hope not just cuz it's more interesting this way.

While I'm wishing for better email, I must also mention that I would very much like to be able to convert emails into to do items and manage them powerfully. That might mean being able to move the messages to a to do list or outliner app.

Finally, I wonder about competition with Outlook. It seems to have such a big user base. Will Outlook users give up the integration, add-ins, calendaring etc. to get what Gmail has going once it gains further sophistication? I doubt it. But there will undoubtedly eventually be Gmail add-ins and the like. And perhaps there could be a conduit or something to Outlook and other apps. Hmm...

Excellent Gmail Tour & Evaluation:
Gmail Beta: First Impressions, 5/13/04

Manifesto for the Individual

According to Robin Good, The Individual Is The Epicenter Of The New Media Revolution. I love this manifesto of the individual cultural creative - tech ronin - newsmaster. I've had Robin bookmarked for eons and read his blog regularly but this focus will have me champing at the bit to read more.

The individual is going to be the center of these new universes. More and more, the skilled and capable individual will play an important role in the way that news will be created, customized and consumed by others.

News reporters, highly specialized journalists, researchers and investigators will be reporting 24/7/365 on the most disparate topics, and with a much higher degree of precision and depth than any other commercial publishing venture has been able to offer so far.

This weblog is called tech ronin for a reason. It has its focus on things from the individual point of view - unlike so much good information that is subtly *tainted* by the *what will sell to corporate?* point of view.

My guess is that it goes that way because so many of us bloggers are selling our services/products to corporations. Nothing wrong with that, I just think there's a big need in the middle between strictly personal needs and corporate needs. It is that growing segment of free agents and avid *hobbiests* and passionate *amateurs*.

I've been on my own - outside the corporate walls - for 18 years now. I love it. I direct my work and products towards individuals and small groups (maybe 10% of them are in corporate workgroups).

I need to hear about tools, environments, experiences and trends from the personal point of view. Directed to the current and future free agents amongst us who need to discover and invent how to negotiate this changing and unpredictable world without a *good job*. For people who will no longer put up with being labeled, treated and manipulated as consumers by corporations or big government.

What's great about Robin's piece is that he's saying - we are the ones. This is where it's at. Self-published citizen journalists of all sorts: bloggers, wikizens, forum participants and *commenters* take their place on a scale never imagined beside traditional writers, journalists, artists, pamphleteers and writers of letters to the editor.

We're the future. I'm already signed up but I sure like having company. There's lots more in the post than excerpted here. Check it out!

Powerbook 15 1.5 ghz arrives

Lucky me. I'm using a brand new Powerbook. It's running OS X 10.3.4 after I was prompted to update during the welcome sequence. So now I can't tell how much of the speed increase I'm experiencing is from the .4 upgrade and how much is from the book. Either way, this is really nice.

I was surprised this morning to see the Powerbook on my porch when I glanced outside. I had been tracking with FedEx and the book was in Indiana last night and due to arrive Friday morning at 10:30 am. I guess both Apple and FedEx are conservative. Whoopee!

I've got my Titanium hooked up as a Firewire drive and have transferred most of my Home folder over. I've installed FileMaker Pro 6, NetNewsWire and Ecto so far - from scratch. Email is working including all my mail from the Tibook. My addresses are in the Addressbook. My bookmarks are in Safari. I'm connected to the Net, my local printer and network - no problem.

One thing. I called my old Titanium Powerbook, Titanium for short. Aluminum doesn't have the same ring to it. Albook doesn't work like Tibook worked for me. So, until I think of something better, I'm just calling this new machine, Powerbook15. I hope to find a better name soon. If this is my hardest problem, I'm doing good.

One other little nitpick thing. The keyboard feels different. I'm afraid I'm going to scratch it with my fingernails. I didn't get that feel with the Ti keyboard. Not sure I like it, but guess I'll get used to it. It will help when I find out that these keys don't scratch easily - which is my hope.

Some things I like besides the obvious speed and brand new qualities: the aluminum case texture and look, the better bigger hinge for the screen - the feel is really smooth and solid.

I'll do some tests and comparisons soon between my two powerbooks to see what kind of speed differences I see with my real world apps. I'll also do a comparison or two to my PowerMac 867 dual with 7200 rpm drive. Meanwhile, this new Powerbook stays with me 24/7. It's my new baby, after all.

John Siracusa seems to have the ultimate Powerbook 15 AL review (for a 1 ghz model) on Arstechnica. It's long and leisurely and personal.

Zire 72 hard case rocks

Oh boy, my new Zire 72 case, styluses and Now You Know Zire booklet came today. This will console me for a minute while I wait for PB15. Apple could learn some from whoever designed this case (of course Palm started out as a heavily ex-Apple employee shop and probably still is).

You have full use of your Zire while in the case - once you flip it open. And it has a neat sliding cover for the camera lens on the back and outlets at top and bottom for all ports, connections and controls. And not quite so easy to get to - if you slide the Zire 72 out, there are two little slots to store a couple SD cards. The case might seem ho hum in the photo but much better in the flesh.

Then there're the replacement styluses or is it styli? As usual, I lost the original stylus within the first couple of weeks. It's probably somewhere around the house but I don't know where. The replacements are metal stock - probably tin - with a black plastic tip. I've seen better but not bad. I had one once that was springy - the tip had some give to it - which was really nice. But then, it probably cost $15 or more for one stylus. These are 3 for $10.

Then, last but not least, the booklet! In the old days these booklets came with your purchase. Oh well. I wanted a little book I could carry around with me in a cargo pocket while I learned the Zire 72's secrets. This is it. 176 pages with an index. Nevermind that it has lots of marketing fluff. That's OK - the tone is high energy and upbeat which makes it easier to learn and get through the whole book. It has fundamentals, tips and warnings.

Before I go, I should update you on how I'm liking the Zire 72. I love it still. I've downloaded an RSS reader: Hand/RSS and I'm bookmarking PDA-friendly sites like crazy. Now, when I'm sitting at Peet's or Starbucks without my Powerbook (that may change soon), I can still read my favorite bloggers and websites. I think the speed is something like 27 kbps but since I turned the graphics off and only double-click them when I REALLY want to see something, it goes pretty fast.

The other day, I had forgotten my Minolta Dimage X camera and wanted to take some quick pix. So I used the Zire 72. Pretty low quality with fixed focus and no zoom, but it sure was better than nothing! The best part is you get to see your photos immediately with a 320x320 TFT screen rather than the tiny screens on most cameras. Instant gratification and showing the photos to the friends you are with is high.

As I surf around and check out Palm applications now, I'm noticing that most of the popular ones are capable of displaying 320x320. That wasn't true until just recently.

I would like to have GPS with maps eventually and was glad to see that PalmOne has announced GPS Navigator according to PalmInfoCenter. The $299 kit is scheduled to be available on June 11th. It comes with a bluetooth-capable GPS receiver and full US and Canada street maps plus roadside services info and Palm software for the T3 and Zire 72.

Also, Brighthand has a tip that Palm is going to release an SD-sized Wi-fi card that will run only on the Tungsten T3 and the Zire 72 [via Engadget]. I know, I know. Sandisk was going to release a Palm-compatible wi-fi SD card and it hasn't happened.

Powerbook 15" 1.5 ghz on order

I've been neglecting my blog a bit lately due to a lengthy FileMaker project. I'm creating a custom version of Studio Manager for an Ad agency with special needs. It's been time consuming. All that time led to exhaustion and more money than usual flowing in which then allowed for the perfect remedy for exhaustion - a new Powerbook!

I considered going BIG with a 17" whose 1400x900 screen I would love but the weight and size were too much for someone like me who also has a major PowerMac 2-screen desktop set-up for office work.

I also considered going small with a 12" to save myself a pound and some size. But I am fond of the extra wide screen on my current Titanium 15. 1024x768 seems cramped and I plan to use this notebook for near full-on work on my couch or watching TV or when traveling for FileMaker projects (and vacation - don't leave home without it). Not just web surfing and email. I expect to be more productive with a TiBook on work projects which will easily pay for the extra price of the 15 over the 12.

Build to order is the way to go. This way I can create a cross between the econo 15 and the premium 15, like so: 1.5 ghz, combo drive (saving $200 - I already have 2 superdrives elsewhere in my house and must admit that I've never burned a DVD yet), 80 gb hard drive with the +$50 option to get a 5400 rpm instead of 4200 rpm, 512 mb RAM and the included built-in bluetooth, airport extreme and keyboard backlight, 2 USB 2 ports, 800 and 400 firewire ports. Total damages - a reasonable $2350.

Except, I chose to cough up another $350 for 3 years of Applecare. Applecare covers not only the hardware but all the Apple applications like isynch, addressbook, mail, ical, iphoto, imovie, itunes, quicktime, sherlock, appleworks plus OS X. When I get a spare $250 or so, I'll up the RAM to 1 gig which is what I have now.

I'm tracking the shipment several times a day. I even looked out on the porch this morning to see if it had arrived. Hope springs eternal. I ordered Saturday. So far, it just says expected ship date is Thursday. I'm hoping to have it Friday but Monday or Tuesday is probably more realistic as I'm using FedEx ground. I'll probably be making an ecstatic post the day of arrival. I always love the out-of-box experience when buying a new Mac!

UPDATE 11:34 pm Tues May 25
It shipped! Just got the shipping notice from Apple. They're very conservative (I hope) and are saying it should be here within 10 days. I'm hoping by Thursday or Friday... this week.

UPDATE 3:51 pm Wed May 26
Uh, maybe it will be a while. The Powerbook is shipping from Shanghai of all places. Ground shipping might be a long swim to the US. This global economy stuff sometimes sucks.

Zire 72 is awesome!

I'm on day 3 with my new 1.2 megapixel cam, bluetooth, 312 mhz Palm Zire 72. I wasn't planning on buying this device. I wasn't really using my Treo 90. Just carrying my Sony-Ericsson P800 cell phone/pda which after 11 months I still have mixed feelings about. It's too big, heavy and slow to boot for a cell phone and has a too-narrow 208 pixel screen for websurfing and no Palm OS.

My gadget-buddy, Bob Britton, bought a Zire 72 with my blessings last weekend, so before we started our every other week Alexander bodywork session at 5 pm on Wednesday, he demonstrated it to me by doing a little websurfing using his bluetooth connection to his Sony-Ericsson T610 phone. Very crisp. Really appealing but I thought I could resist.

The last week or so I've been flirting with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) personal organizing approach. Reading Marc's Outlook on Productivity blog got me interested. Bought and read about 1/2 the book. Needed a good capture device and wanted one that was wireless - also I couldn't find the cable for my Treo 90 ;-).

After I stopped at my local stationery store Friday night around 6:30 looking for the ideal 4-color pen I walked across the way to Starbucks and did a little surfing. Somewhere along the way I started browsing GTD forum topics on GTD for Mac users and found a good Palm-based solution - Shadow Plan.

I emailed support @ shadowplan about the Zire 72 saying it was an emergency and that I wanted to make sure Shadow Plan ran well on the new Zire 72. It worked. I got a reply within 10 minutes and Jeff said the Zire 72 was "one hell of a unit".

That was all I needed. Went over to the Apple store in Corte Madera. Even though they charge full price, $299, I figured I wasn't going to get a much better price anywhere else while the Zire 72 was so *hot*. Apple had one Zire 72 on display. Being careful, I did a little more surfing on a G5 with a 23" display and found Zire 72 reviews at InfoSync World, Brighthand, Palm InfoCenter and CNET.

I'm now the proud owner of a Zire 72. I absolutely love the user interface of this palm device. All the applications seem optimized for the 320x320 screen and look like eye candy. The type looks like laser print, practically. I'm crazy about the calendar with its combo view showing all my appointments this week plus tasks due.

The Bluetooth app is fantastic and I easily paired with my Titanium and P800 and then synched to my Addressbook. I'm sure I'll have more to say about Bluetooth. This is the first time I've really gotten things working well.

I'm surfin' the web with the built-in, very good WebPro app via my P800. Works like a charm! Besides the included Versamail 2.7 which I copied from the included CD, I downloaded and tried out a trial version of Stand Alone's Hand/RSS. It's working wirelessly. It comes with a fairly short list of RSS feeds but enough for a taste. I'll need to put in some of my favorites shortly.

All I can say is that the look and feel of this thing is awesome. The eye-grabbing *zapphire* blue soft plastic casing is great to hold - a vast improvement over most cold and slippery metal cases. It's so good to have a mature pda. No doubt cell phone competition has inspired the folks over at Palm to get on the stick.