Kindle At Last

Good news: Kindle reader is now available for Android phones.

I had a couple of free but boring Kindle books already downloaded, so I splurged at bought a $0.99 book by Don Brown (NOT Dan Brown) called Treason.

My friend Peter, who reads lots of books on his iPod, has been educating me about Don's books and similar other thillers which are put out by Christian publishing companies.

They are actually usually light on the Christianity parts, embedded here and there, and have a LOT of violence. But no sex.

And they are often very inexpensive and sometimes even free.

According to Peter (I haven't checked myself :-)), some of these same authors also have books from other publishers and in those, sex is definitely allowed.

Bodice rippers are also common free items on Kindle and now iBooks. I downloaded one and am amazed that I really did read these things as a teenager. I also used to love s'mores.

Photo Geotagging

I haven't been taking as many pictures the last few years and so I had taken my eye off one of the nicest developing features: Geotagging.

Very simply, this is a way to use GPS information to identify where a picture was taken. It can be done manually, using applications like Picasa to add the information, or - hurray - it can be added automatically.

The Android platform cameras add the geotag if you set that to be your preference (it is the default, I believe). iPhone will also do this.

There does seem to be a hitch in that you need to make sure your device can be located first. I notice that about 2/3 of my pictures aren't tagged.

There are also SD card that have both wifi and geotagging built right onto the card. I have ordered one from Eye-Fi to use in my Canon camera.

I'll report on that later!

Meanwhile, using Picasa to group pictures and use the map panel to locate a spot works fairly well for manual adding. Then when you share the album or pictures, the geotag panel shows up when you click on that photograph. Not bad.

Have PMS Will Travel

Ah - time to plan a summer trip to Vermont.

I'm just itching to dig into the TV and internet issues, but first I have to get there.

Getting there means usually flying to Boston and then renting a car. I hope no one is surprised that renting a car for 2.5 weeks in the summer out of Boston costs about twice as much as the plane ticket.

First: plane

At the end of April I flew to Boston from SFO on JetBlue.

I actually prefer to fly red eyes because I cannot stand to lose a day sitting in the air, even though I love looking out the windows. When you fly the red eye, everyone settles in and sleeps. Bathroom trips are minimal for one and all. Even the children chill out for a few hours.

The best deal for that trip required flying first to Long Beach, CA from SFO, and from there to Boston.

The flight from SFO was packed, of course, and the entire crew seemed to be suffering from a sort of PMS I really hadn't quite experienced even in these days of enhanced security and tension.

We were told multiple times during the boarding process that our bags MUST fit under the seat in front of us. AND if our bags didn't fit, we would be TOLD to make them fit - or else. This was repeated multiple times.

The rest of the blessedly short flight went along these lines. We were reminded NOT to get up and go to the bathrooms no matter how badly we needed to if the seat belt light was on. Then when I had the nerve to ask for orange juice during drink service, I was informed that we had all been told - multiple times! - that the options were: Pepsi, Diet-Pepsi, Sprite, and Water. Period! After waving my hands a bit, a small water was tossed into my lap.

Long Beach turns out to be a tiny airport and the boarding area was tiny with about 8 flights waiting for boarding in a space about 1,500 square feet.

However, the trip to Boston from there and back to SFO was flawless. We were not harangued beyond the normal admonitions and the passengers - except for a few elicit bathroom trips - seemed to be resigned to compliance without additional reminers.

And now I am once again booking with JetBlue. Happily they have renewed non-stops to Boston from San Jose so we can give Long Beach a miss this time around.

As a clarification: why to Boston if I'm going to Vermont?

1. Lots of family in Boston, where I was born.
2. Only 3.5 hours drive to our place
3. Longer and more expensive to fly into Manchester, NH or Burlington (probably cheaper cars) which are still at least 90 minutes from Greensboro.

I used to prefer to fly into Montreal until I almost got left behind due to overbooking on the way back to California. Realizing that there were no more CA flights until the next day and tired of explaining why - as a US citizen - I was headed the wrong way over the border with a Canadian rental car, I re-opted for Boston.

And cars. Cars usually cost 2x the price of the air ticket.

Last summer, I chose the cheapest possible option: Dollar.

Taking the Dollar van from the terminal, we rolled by all the other rental cars lots and then turned down an alley way, crowded with weeds and an abandoned car leaning on the left side.

The rental counter was staffed by young people in flip flops, shorts and a variety of Dollar t-shirts. The carpet was stained and an aroma filled the air.

Right across the street, I could see Hertz. I felt like an illegal immigrant on the Mexican boarder, looking at paradise a few feet away.

My designated car had so many dents and dings that we gave up on noting them all. Half way to New Hampshire, I realized that the cover for the fuses next to my left knee was missing.

To be fair, the car gave me no trouble although the tobacco smell drove me a bit nuts.

This year, I'm renting from Hertz.

NYC vs Vermont: Which Is More Primitive?

Just back from a half work / half vacation trip to the East Coast - a couple of days in the Boston area, then 5 days in Vermont, followed by about 2.5 days in NYC.

Boston traffic drives me nuts. I'm appalled that I might have to live there some day in the future but given that this is where most of my living relatives reside, it might happen.

And when I say traffic, I don't mean the drivers, which is the usual complaint. It actually seems that lately Boston drivers are not quite as crazy. Fortunately, I learned my city driving in NYC where I spent most of my adult life. New York City driving is aggressive and assertive but generally not nutty. This made dealing with Boston driving a little less horrific.

But these days, it's all about delays and traffic and weird routing. I turned on MyTracks as we left my sister's house in Marblehead. From there we drove 30 miles total, first to pick up my Dad and his girlfriend in Cambridge and then to my cousin's house in Jamaica Plain.

That trip took 90 minutes. 30 miles, 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon. MyTracks confirmed that we spent 30 of those minutes "stopped".

That's Boston.

In Vermont, there is still no cell phone coverage because no one wants ugly towers on the beautiful hills. However, I did notice a very visible wind power unit.

Then New York. Very sophisticated. Very primitive. Back when I moved to California, I couldn't get cable in my Brooklyn neighborhood because we had "bluestone" sidewalks and the neighbors didn't want their sidewalks ripped up. During the first Gulf War, I really couldn't quite get what the "Mother of all..." referred to because I only got basic VHS and VHF cannels. TV life was pretty much like Vermont in that regard.

On the other hand, I did get to stand about 6 feet away from George HW Bush and General Schwarzkopf as they rode down Broadway for the victory ticker tape parade.

Sun's offices were on Broadway at that time. A couple of years later the offices moved to the World Trade Center. Everyone made it out of those offices on 9/11 thanks in large part to a conscientious Xerox contractor.

When I go to New York, I usually stay with my friend, Pauline, and her family in their loft on Murray Street, in the what used to be covered by the shadow of the WTC, a block away. I really can't do their 9/11 stories justice so I'll leave it at that. There are many more tourists in that part of town now.

Getting around NYC is significantly better than Boston. Pauline and I made it from the Lexington Avenue stop closest to the Metropolitan Museum to the Brooklyn Bridge stop closest to her house in about 15 minutes.

But for those who have never lived in NY or spent a long time there, it is hard to describe just how constrained and primitive life can be there. Basically, to live with the equivalent suburban conveniences requires unimaginable wealth.

- Storage: most places have tiny closets or none. I really felt I'd arrived when my last place in Brooklyn allotted me a 5x10 space in the basement for extra storage.
- Parking: assuming you have a car, you will almost never be able to park it outside your residence.
- If you are lucky, you will have an elevator.
- Doorman? Please!

This is how I would get ready for a car trip:
1. Go find car, usually 2-10 blocks away.
2. Drive back. Double park in front of building.
3. Lock car. Climb stairs. Unlock front door. Lock front door.
4. Climb to 4th floor. Bring down all items (2-5 trips).
5. Lock apartment with each load (this might not be necessary if you have good neighbors).
6. Unlock front door. Put first load on stoop.
7. Lock front door.
8. Take load to car. Unlock car. Put stuff in car.
9. Lock car.
10. Unlock front door. Go in.
11. Lock front door? Is someone climbing the stairs behind you?
12. Unlock front door, but next load on stoop.
13. Repeat until done.
14. Repeat in reverse when you come home.

Michael and Pauline would like to get rid some some stuff they have accumulated in their loft.

Naively, I suggested freecycle. Michael laughed when I described leaving stuff tucked behind my chimney for people to pick up. The whole issue is getting things to the street. Once there, it will take care of itself.

Ah, I am now so spoiled. I can even drive to the supermarket, park, and roll a shopping cart out to my car.

All that being said, I do miss New York.

Now back to technology!

Thank you Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton for Geocaching

Whatever you might think of Ronald Reagan fan, we owe him a big thank you for making GPS available for civilian use and thereby enabling Geocaching, one of my favorite GPS activities.

In 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 (sad coincidence) was shot down by the Soviets when it inadvertently flew over Sakhalin Island airspace. As a result of that incident, President Reagan mandated that GPS be liberated from restrictions limiting it to military use and be made available for civilians. By 1994, this process was complete, although the accuracy for civilian use was limited to about 1000 feet. Bill Clinton fixed this during his last year in office and accuracy was improved to about 65 feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Precise_monitoring

Within a few days, the geocache had been set up and found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching

So thank you Ron and Bill!

Geocaching is a contemporary, GPS-based remake of traditions like Letterboxing, which have a long history of adult hide and seek.

Very simply, the idea is to place an object someplace hidden and then post the GPS coordinates to a site such as geocaching.com. There are a variety of different types of caches as well as difficulty ratings.

The most simple caches will leave a small log and pen or pencil for visitors to note their visit. Sometimes, the idea is to take something from the cache and leave something in return. There are other variations such as finding one clue that leads to another location and so forth. Difficulty of finding the cache and difficulty terrain are also rated and there is usually some sort of encrypted clue.

For example, several years ago a couple here in Mountain View placed geocaches at each stop on the Light Rail line terminating in Mountain View. Each cache provided a certain clue and for the person who assembled all the clues, this would tell them where to find the last cache which held a free Light Rail ticket.

I have done geocaching here, England, and Paris and about 6 or 7 years ago bought a handheld Megellan GPS. No longer needed!

Strictly speaking, you don't really need a GPS. Since there is always a question of inaccuracy in either determining the coordinates to begin with or finding them later, often you can do just as well by getting close and then using your best observational skills (or the clue) to do the rest.

It can be very frustrating to have the GPS say you should be standing right on top of the cache and then moments later have it tell you that you are 20 feet away. And then sometimes caches get "muggled" - discovered by people who stumble on them completely by accident.

In addition to the GPS for navigation, there are a number of other GPS apps as well as some made specifically for geocaching and other letterboxing-type activities. The one I know the best is GeoBeagle.

And if you don't have a GPS, you can still look up the coordinates on basic mapping like Google Maps.

I have to admit that I have yet to put out a geocache of my own. I have an idea to create a sort of non-linear story, linking a collection of caches together but so far I am strictly a consumer.

Leaving Tracks

There are so many map and GPS-based apps that it would be impractical to catalog them all or even rank them, particularly with the list growing every day.

Following are some discussions of few that I like or appreciate. I find I particularly like the ones that are meant to be used on a device like the iPhone (not the iPod) or the DROID. Fortunately, many of these apps are available on both devices.

My Tracks has to be very high on my list. After determining your position, you can click to turn on position recording as you drive, walk, bike, or otherwise move around. I use it out both curiousity and practicality to figure out how far my morning walk truly is, or a round trip biking to the farmers' market. I then save the ones I like the best and upload them to my personal Google map.

I find that Google Earth isn't quite as compelling on the small form factor of the DROID but the Sky Map, broken out separately is fascinating and beautiful although I find it a bit disorienting to use, as I only recognize a few commonly known features learned way back in Girl Scouts.

There are many apps that are great in combining maps and positioning with finding out what services or restaurants are in the vicinity (I like Urbanspoon and Yelp but there are others). I'm also rather fond of Glympse (recommended by my friend Janis, who works with the developers), which has the ability to send your current position to another user. Very handy for letting people where my office is or meeting up.

Next Up: Geocaching

So: What is "GPS"?

My friend Peter reminds me that I haven't posted this week.

It was busy! Two big dances for the annual Playford English Country Dance Ball which included house guests, a seder, another normal English dance, a trip to SF to see the terrific art work of a fellow alum from Kirkland College, and Easter looming as well.

But part of the problem was: how to talk about this rather complicated and overloaded term "GPS".

Coincidentally, as I was riding in the elevator back to our car in the SF garage, I overheard a conversation that captures what I mean.

"So we're going to go to Helen's now, right? What is Helen's address? Do you have it?"

"Yes, I'll give it to you. Oh, but do you have GPS?"

"Yeah."

"OK, I'll put it into your GPS."

They meant a navigation system that uses GPS, of course, but it's worth spending a little time to tease apart some of the underpinnings.

GPS means Global Position System, which is a space-based navigation system offered by the US government. Using a set of satellites in space, control and monitoring sites on Earth, a GPS receiver is capable of determining your position on the planet, including elevation.

This information can then be used in a wide variety of ways, some of the most useful include combining data with maps for applications such as driving navigation, tracking, letter boxing, and more, more, more.

The iPhone and the DROID both have genuine GPS chips in them, similar to what are found in GPS navigation systems for cars. Different chips sets have varying quality and reliability characteristics.

The iPod Touch does not have true GPS. It is possible to perform a quick and less accurate substitute GPS using the wireless network address. This is sufficient to enable a number of interesting and useful apps, but you will find that there are a number that iTunes will not let you install.

Probably the most common GPS app for most people is car / travel navigation. This combines the now-familiar ability to calculate a travel route from point to point (e.g. using Google Maps on your computer) with turn-by-turn directions with voice prompting, tracking your progress along the route. These are now common integrated add-ons in car purchases and they can be also bought separately and perched on dashboards, powered by the standard old "cigarette lighter" port on the dash.

Both the iPhone and the Droid have the advantage of portability. Navigation no longer has to be restricted to the car.

A huge benefit for the Droid (and general Android platform, I believe), is that a full-featured GPS navigation system, complete with voice prompting, is included for free. I am told that on the day that the Droid was announced, the stock price of GPS navigators such as Tom Tom dropped by a significant percent.

GPS naviation apps for the iPhone are not free (as of this moment) and accessing the system and specific features (such as voice prompting) also require additional yearly fees.

For me this makes the Droid quite compelling, but from a feature comparison perspective, the two are very comparable.

Next Up: Other fun and useful location based services

Maps and GPS: Prologue

My mother, an artist, papered one wall of our cottage in Vermont with contiguous US geodetic topological survey maps from the early 20th century. The entire NorthEast Kingdom is captured in a panel of 6 x 6 maps. I believe that they are or were done every 50 years.

That set was done in brown and sepia tones and are still the most beautiful maps we own. Later ones are green and brown. Functional and pleasant but not compelling.

In addition to beauty, those maps capture a certain snapshot in time as they also show roads, railroads, and buildings.

At that time, my father's family was heavily involved in the granite business and were the founders and principal owners of the Woodbury Granite Company, the largest provider of structural (building) granite in the world (Pennsylvania State Capitol Building, Union Station in DC, and many more).

Using the Woodbury section of that wall map, I can - to this day - find hidden roads, old cellar holes of office and dormitory buildings, the railroad lines, and more. The quarries and the surrounding infrastructure melted away once re-enforced steel muscled granite of the building business and this area was largely abandoned. Consequently, those details have disappeared or become muted more recent maps.

Why my mother - whose family is also from the same area - took on all this as a project based on her in-laws is hard to reconstruct, but it triggered a life-long fascination and with maps and the thrill of hidden discovery. I'm never happier than sitting in the navigator's seat, driving with a detailed area map in my lap.

The arrival of basic street maps on the internet in the early 90's was a revelation. Since then the advances have been dramatic, although still don't allow me the history function that I treasure from those maps on the wall.

Happily most smart phones provide some type of mapping and GPS navigation capabilities, and on platform such as the iPhone / iPod and the Android there are an abundance of apps that leverage these technologies and services to make this general area one of the most compelling and delightful reasons to own one of these devices.

Next: Details

Eyes-Free Integration

Before going into GPS, I wanted to remember to call out some terrific work being done at Google called eyes-free. Some of this technology has made its way onto the Android platform. My friend, Loretta, who works at Google pointed out this work to me.

These are not just features for the sight impaired and are broader than just things like voice recognition and search. They also allow easier navigation and access touch as "touch" dialing.

Follow links after searching for eyes-free. There are some great videos on UTube. You can also download the eyes-free shell.

Missing in Action: Kindle & WebEx

As a reward for finishing my taxes (and as a consolation for having a cold), I finally paid for something. Namely a Kindle book: The Girl Who Started A Fire, by Stieg Larssen.

I was very apprehensive that the small screen would be satisfying as a reading experience and I did try some free content first. But my friend, Peter does a lot of reading using Kindle on his iPod and convinced me to really dive in.

I have to say that I am really, really enjoying this on my iPod. To be fair, it helps to be reading something that I really enjoy. In addition, there is an Kindle application for my Mac and Whispersync allows me to "bookmark" where I am reading at the moment and then pick up there the next time, including on the other device.

There is no Kindle reader for my DROID. There are various ebook apps but it appears that Kindle books are significantly less expensive to purchase and download, at least for the titles I was looking for.

There are a few things about the Kindle experience that are not optimal, particularly on the small screen. For example, in this book Larssen introduces a number of characters and tends refer to them by their last names. I need to scroll back - sometimes quite a distance - to recall whom he is referring to. This is a total pain on the iPod, rather easier on the Mac, and much easier using a real book.

And I think I'd miss the ability to share books with my friends. Amazon allows you to have multiple kindles for your account (up to 7 or so) but you can only share with those. There are ways to finesse this. You can deregister your Kindle or Kindle app, then register it in a friend's Kindle / Amazon account (or have them do it for you), download the content, then de-register from there and re-register again. I'm not entirely sure that this is legal, btw.

The next time I fly across the country, I will definitely plan to load up a couple of books, free or otherwise.

WebEx is a bit more practical. I work for Cisco as a consultant. Cisco now owns WebEx and we use WebEx extensively. There is a WebEx app for the iPhone and I have downloaded it to the iPod, but haven't tried it yet because I haven't wrapped my mind around the phone aspect yet.

I could have WebEx call a number and that number could be another phone (but that would be besides the point) or perhaps I could have it call my Skype Out Pro number or maybe a Google Voice number if I ever get around to setting that up properly.

But I would prefer to just have it on the DROID.

Upcoming: Finally some of the things I really love: all things maps and GPS-related, Eyes Free (Voice Integration)

Bumping

My friend and wonderful massage therapist, Karen, invited me to celebrate her SO Franklin's birthday.

Franklin is an MD specializing in pain management so there were a bunch of MD types and other health related people with iPhones there.

I introduced them to Bump, which is also on the DROID.

Bump takes advantage of the accelerometers in each to detect when phones have been tapped together and then exchanges contact information.

Worth checking out and it turns out to be a great party ice breaker!

Second Hand

Like many people, I am the proud owner of a very bad back. I stretch every single %()@ day for a minimum of 30 minutes.

As anyone who knows about stretching will tell you, it is important to hold each stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds. It's interesting that after at least 10 years of stretching, I still almost always want to stop at 20 seconds unless I have a clock to keep me honest.

But the problem is: I don't have any clocks with second hands. I do have a couple of small watches, but they are not large enough when I am stretched out on the floor.

Then I had the bright idea of finding a clock or timer for either my iPod or the DROID.

Once I started looking into this, I realized I really wanted an "analog" clock with a round dial and a sweeping second hand. This was a reminder of how differently our brain processes information.

Looking at a digital clock with a timer or a seconds counter, I realized that those required too much interaction or at the very least a basic "thinking" function for math. Not that it is hard - you either add or subtract 30. But looking at a second hand requires no real computation and yet is understood very passively.

(Years ago when I was managing an imaging group in SunSoft, one of the engineers explained to me that the finest instrument for detecting changes from one image to another was the human eye and that imaging science aspired to that standard.)

I have yet to find a FREE (critical) clock for the DROID that provides a second hand. Very disappointing. On the other hand, I have found a very, very simple clock for the iPod /iPhone which also - btw - came with a nice little clear plastic propping unit along with the Red (my favorite color) protective shell.

This is called RYClock. Very nice.

Next: More applications I miss on both platforms.

SunSoft: The B Team

Right about the time I joined Windows Engineering at Sun, the SDF was introduced.

Sun had recently released it's first version of Solaris (as opposed to SunOS) and things hadn't gone particularly well. It was big, buggy, and slow. Rob Gingell explained this (paraphrasing), "We hired a couple of thousand engineers and guess what? They all wrote code!"

So Rob had taken a detour from being a God in engineering to lead a team to set up some way of herding the cats to deliver a Product Life Cycle type of process, and that ended up being the Software Development Framework. This probably cost Rob a couple of points on the deity scale with the engineers, but he could afford to drop a few for the benefit of figuring out how to deliver Solaris.

This was not fun for organizations that had been used to calling their own shots and the initial steps were daunting and frustrating. Actually, that never stopped but we got used to it and the processes continued to evolve.

One of the characteristics of the SDF was that everything was organized by Teams. W Team, C Team, E Team. Actually I can't even remember what all the teams were at this point, but it did seem that every letter of the alphabet had been co-opted into service of the SDF.

But one letter did remain.

Milind Pansare stuck his head into my office one day, probably in the fall of 1992 or spring of 1993. He announced that I should come to a B Team meeting right away in the break room.

I happily trotted along and found that a handful of the engineers had gone out and bought 2 or 3 six packs. B stood for Beer and that promptly became the code word for our own mini beer bust (the big official ones having been recently banned).

Before long, more people joined in and B conveniently became Beverage as not everyone drank alcohol.

Sooner or later, this reached the ears of Real Management (not just the likes of me). Our Senior Director and then VP, Paula Sager was a good sport. B Team became a monthly event for the entire group. We all had to contribute a penny for the beer to prove that we weren't coerced into drinking. It lost a bit of the spontaneity and evil thrill but Paula did pick up the tab and provided alternative options like ice cream sundaes. This continued for a long time, even after I left for IT almost 6 years later and Milind and so many others had pushed on as well.

Once in those early days of grappling with the SDF and getting used to the group, I attended a team meeting led by Steve MacCay, our VP at the time.

Steve had the unenviable task of addressing the growing (or contraction) pains of SDF and making us enthusiastic about it.

Steve was a typical introverted nerd. I think he had gotten a Ph.D in something like studying the asexual reproduction of bacteria.

Nevertheless, Steve did have some oil in the crank case and he did deliver a couple of very pithy observations from time to time, many of which I remember. In this case, he said that when he was asked why he was working on this Solaris stuff and his answer was, "Because it's hard."

He then went on to explain that some things simply do not scale as they grow. Software engineering is one of those. What works when you're a small, nimble startup just doesn't hang together with thousands of engineers delivering code. There were no easy answers and that was one of the intriguing things.

Steven didn't make this concept up, of course, and I have no idea how enthusiastically he believed this, but this lecture made a big impression on me and helped guide my thinking about a long list of projects and environments I've had to deal with over the years.

When to iPad

Apple has sent out emails to pre-order the iPad.

Despite the terrible name, I do want an iPad. Which one? With or without 3G? How much storage?

I may hold off just a bit.

Form Follows Function

Ignoring specific apps for a moment, here are a few highlights of similarities and differences between my DROID and my iPod Touch.

1. Bluetooth
I might as well start with a pet peeve. Bluetooth is frustrating enough to being with. On the DROID I find I'm connecting promiscuously to every device in range EXCEPT for my headset(s). The iPod Touch doesn't want to connect to anything at all.

Part of this is a beef with Bluetooth on other devices. For example, my old Plantronic headset connects instantly and easily to the DROID for the most part. The newer Jawbone needs to be put into pairing mode by manually putting it into pairing mode (despite what the documentation says).

The problem with the iPod Touch is that it will only connect to advanced Bluetooth audio devices without microphones and will not connect to ones using the Hands Free protocol. This means that to use it with Skype I have to use a plug in headset and mic. I wish Apple wouldn't make so many decisions for me.

BTW, iPhone can use regular hands free headsets.

2. Supplemental Gadgets
I suppose it's not fair to put this second in line, but there is no doubt that the iPod / iPhone wins hands down on this one. Some of this is just time. Still, I go to Frys and find a whole aisle of iPod / iPhone related speakers and protectors and cases and anything you could think of.

The DROID has a little section over by the telephones. I found two accessories: a GPS / Voice Navigation mount for the car and a sort of charger that turn the DROID into a large clock with weather, music, pictures, and alarms.

The car mount is a great success. The clock thingy is incredibly limited. Even the alarm times are pre-set to fixed hours to go off. Useless. I took it to my office so that I can monitor weather, listen to music and see a big clock.

The snap on covers / protectors for the DROID come in 3 colors: pink, blue, and clear. My favorite color is red. I ordered clear.

The iPod and iPhone have colors and patterns galore. For Christmas, my niece gave me a red cover for the iPod Touch that also comes with a little stand that is surprisingly useful. Every time I start having critical thoughts about the iPod, I look over and smile.

2. Screen size
The DROID has a higher resolution but the iPod Touch is a bit larger and also does have better overall design and look to apps and icons.

3. Keyboard
The iPod Touch (and the iPhone) only have an on-screen pop-up keyboard. Versions of Android differ. For the Motorola DROID, there is also on on-screen keyboard and also a slide-out keyboard. Initially I thought this would be a big plus factor and it is in some cases, but not as much as I had thought, mostly because I don't send much in the way of email from these devices, so most text requirements are light.

4. Touch pad
Equivalent. There are even some applications like Google maps that now recognize the Apple "pinch" for zoom functions. Some applications on the iPod will also provide a magnification "bubble" if you press and hold your finger over an area of text. Not usually critical but a very nice feature.

5. Accelerometers, etc.
Included on both, this is a feature that I adore. Accelerometers allow the device to know whether you are tilting, rotating, waving, or otherwise moving it around. This provides some very basic features like switching from portrait to landscape viewing (often inadvertently) for applications. But it also provides the basis for a number of the coolest applications, many of which are available for both. More on this type later, but a few quick examples are Bump (bump to exchange contacts), Labyrinth, and more.

In general, aside from the basics (phone, email, calendar, contacts....) the applications I enjoy the most are ones that are truly made for this device. Form follows function. Games and whatnot that I am willing to play on my laptop are generally strict translations and not very compelling. But the ones that are platform specific are often great.

6. Connectors
OK, so why is it that everyone thinks they need their own special, unique plug? Don't answer. I think I know why for Apple. They are all about locking in and control. For the DROID, I need to use a micro USB connector. This is a standard-ish connector for USB, but not as common as the mini. I'm sure Motorola had their reasons but it does look gratuitous.

7. Camera
The DROID has a 5 MP camera and it does do a great job. The iPod Touch doesn't have a camera but the latest version of the iPhone is somewhat lower at 3 MP. I haven't had a chance to check quality aside from that.

8. Sound and Voice
The quality of my Motorola DROID is significantly better than my Motorola Q, both on Verizon, when it comes to calls. I also get good coverage and have never dropped a call. Everyone complains about the iPhone. That being said, I don't see how people can live without a landline or high quality VoIP for doing real business. The quality of cell calls is still atrocious under the best of circumstances.

On the other hand, it is telling that listening to music and other sound features on both units is really delightful. I am not a sound weeny, so I am less qualified to judge, but both are really terrific to my ears. And - getting ahead of myself - Pandora is a wonderful, wonderful app (available on both).

9. Controls
The iPod (and iPhone) have only one button which is for on/off and getting back to the main screen. Along the bottom of the screen there are a set of permanent app icons.

The DROID has a row of soft keys across the base of the phone for Last, Settings, Home, and Search. I like these but my fingers are always drifting over one of those when I don't want to. This can be very disruptive. Unlike the ones on the iPod, the ones on the DROID are very close to the edge so that it is easy to hit by mistake, plus the ones on the iPod are not as disruptive.

10. GPS
This is the last for the moment but another one that is dear to my heart and I'll dedicate a whole posting (or more) to GPS with both fun and practical things to do with it soon.

I'm sure I've overlooked more features but those will out eventually.

Can You Remove the Battery?

The most common questions I get asked about the DROID are:
- What is a DROID?
- Do you like it?
- Can you remove the battery?

The last comes primarily from iPhone users and people who are considering acquiring one. This is one of the most unnerving aspects of the iPhone as every cell phone I've ever used eventually (and even regularly) got into a state where the only recourse was to take out the battery.

Much as we respect Apple engineering, we all seem to share a basic belief that the physics of current cell phone technology is such that it is simply not possible to design a device that won't require removing the battery from time to time.

The answer for the DROID is yes, you can remove the battery. In fact, I had to do just that today for the very first time. I had checked various things on the phone first thing and checked it about an hour later and it was dead. I assumed that the battery had unexpectedly lost charge. I had noticed on a couple of occasions that the battery had started to drop quickly, so I plugged it in again. Nothing. Moved the charger to another outlet. Nothing. Finally I removed the battery and put it back in and then all was well. The battery was even fully charged.

Although this was a bit disconcerting, this exhibition of fallibility was also strangely reassuring. The DROID is a real cell phone, not some mysterious alchemy.

I have found that the DROID does tend to get confused when moving between wireless networks. I leave my home office and go to my consulting office or the reverse and somehow it just won't connect to one of the new set of wireless networks.

Usually turning the wireless on and off does the trick, but from time to time I need to turn the phone off completely.

The iPod Touch hasn't needed as many re-boots. On the other hand, I don't drag it around with me as much as I drag my DROID.

Coming up: a few apps I like on each, GPS, geocaching

At Last: iPod Touch / iPhone

My reasoning for choosing the iPod Touch over the iPhone is that I am assuming that for all intents and purposes, the iPod Touch and the iPhone are identical.

The iPhone has the cell phone and 3G thing added on. It has a camera. To me, these were things I didn't need to check.

But that isn't entirely true. For example, iPhone friends definitely do complain about dropped calls, as do those who call them. But let's put that on AT&T and not the iPhone.

In addition, I don't drag the iPod Touch everywhere like I do the DROID. So certain aspects of 3G connectivity and jumping quickly to and from various wifi networks don't get as stressed on the iPod.

But basically, we are talking about roughly equivalent experiences for all the non-voice aspects.

First of all, packaging for the iPod Touch lives up to the Apple standard. Fabulous, right down to the small details. For example, the headset (with mic) for the 32 GB iPod Touch is both white (more expensive due to volume) and has a sweet little flexible clip that holds the two ear phones wires together. These are small things but just so nice.

The instructions inside - like all instructions these days - are very minimalistic. They do a good job of explaining that you need to install iTunes on your computer.

What they don't explain is that you have to enable / authorize that computer to be the one that is allowed to update / save all those apps.

That led to some seriously unhappy moments.

Because I was convinced that Apple had thunk this thru, I persisted in diving into a number of Google searches and figured this out (once again: remember where that application bar is!).

And later I was reminded that you can only assign one of 5 devices at a time to do this. Which is to say that you can download iTunes and charge your iPod / iPhone using a USB with that device / laptop but only one (out of 5 for your account) is allowed to manage / backup / update your iPod.

This is a busines model that is very interesting and we'll come back to this.

Do I like the iPod Touch / iPhone?

In case it's not clear: I do very much. I think of it as a micro laptop / computing device and it more than meets my expectations. I can definitely see why combining that with mobility (cell phone calling and G3) would be incredibly compelling.

In general, I have not found any apps that I personally would like on the DROID that I don't have on the iPhone aside from Kindle, but that's probably a reflection of my demographic to some extent.

There is no doubt that Apple has control of the overall experience that is impressive but subtle at this point. In the future, this model presents very interesting alternatives.

My Mac: Step 1

I'm on a "diet". I must refrain from posting as much as I'd like until I have finished my taxes.

This seems like a nice opportunity to procrastinate a bit and put off working on assembling data for my taxes.

As I mentioned earlier, I acquired my DROID, my Macbook Pro laptop, and my iPod Touch all within a few weeks of each other.

For years I would sit down at other people's Macs to solve specific problems and often struggled to figure out how to find applications or settings. And yet at the same time, my family and friends just raved about how great and easy to use. Not being technically unsavvy, I figured I just wasn't familiar enough.

After a couple of weeks, I decided that Apple does do an amazing number of things right. So many, in fact, that it is rather astounding to me when I come across things where they definitely don't.

No new news: It does start with the packaging. For the first time that I could recall, I really wanted to hold onto the boxes and wraps for my Macbook and the iPod Touch.

Then there are lots of little touches that really grab me. For me, having magnetic connectors for things like power are really brilliant. Spending a lot more for equivalent hardware begins to feel less painful.

Gradually, I'm overcoming most of my issues with familiarity but:
- File systems. Yikes. I have a hard time finding documents and then saving in the right places. It often makes little sense to me. Under places, for example, I have my "home directory" and then I have a Desktop, and then I have Documents.
- That application bar across the top. Even now, I have to remind myself to look up there. It seems to be an antiquated mechanism to me. Also, you can click various places and not actually see the application on the bar. For example, click on the background and you'll get Finder but Finder doesn't open.
- Why do somethings get installed and you see them in the Applications folder but then others hover around as "disks" on my screen?
- Some plug-ins like Shockwave just don't work right. I have to disable Shockwave for Director for a number of sites, even in Firefox. There are other sites where I just cannot figure out what the problem is and so I go find my Windows device. I'm going to load VMware soon and solve that. I've resisted running Windows applications to date, but I can see that is going to change.
- Knowing that there really is UNIX and X11 under there is both amazing and frustrating. I'm gradually figuring out how to get to those, but it increases the feeling that Apple is thwarting aspects.
- "Ejecting" devices. Windows figured this out 10 years ago. Why should I have to eject a device? OK, I know why on some level, but it's time for Apple to figure this out. Also, I have some devices that just reconnect. For example, I like listening to NPR while I work out in the early morning or at the end of the day. The best, cheapest, and most compact way to do this is with a basic MP3 player for $25-$50. I can charge this with the USB connection but when I "eject" this on the MacBook, the MacBook just reconnects to it. Stupid. No big deal to ignore it, but...

Next: the Touch

A Further Clarification on extending Google Wifi

This is a further clarification on extending Google wifi that I composed but did not send to the Old Mountain View Yahoo Group.

++++++

Since I have received a number of direct emails asking questions about the security issues with extending Google Wifi using the Buffalo Converter, I thought I would explain a little further.

First it helps to understand how the BC is normally used / marketed.

Let's say that you have internet service already and have a wireless network in your house.

Now you find you have several devices in a corner of the house that do support a wired (LAN) connection, but not wireless, e.g. a Blueray DVD player, an Xbox...

You have a number of options, but they may be expensive or limited: you can extend your LAN wiring to that corner of the house back to the main router, you can look to powerline ethernet (I have used this very nicely), and so forth.

Or you can buy one of these "converters". The converter connects to your existing wireless router and brings the wireless signal to this box and then you can plug your devices (up to 4) into this box. For $60-$90, that's not a bad tradeoff, particularly since the BC has a number of features particularly targeted for this scenario.

The security risks in this case are minimal assuming that the central wireless router / SSID that you are connecting to has been properly secured to begin with. In fact, the BC has an automated utility that might work with your existing wireless signal.

In this case with the Google WiFi, we use the BC a little differently in that the converter is connecting to a wireless source that is not secure (Google does have a secure version). Therefore you are only as safe connecting to this unit as you are to connecting to DSL or Comcast without a router (and maybe less) or using Google WiFi out on the street: make sure your computing device is properly protected.

Therefore, if you are using the BC to connect to the normal Google WiFi and bring it into your house, I would strongly recommend plugging in separate router (wireless or not) into one of the ports on the BC and only using those LAN ports or the wireless network that you set up on that router. Even the "wired" / LAN ports on that router will typically have good, basic security enabled. And of course if it has its own wireless capabilities, you can set up that properly as well.

Extending Google Wifi

This is another aside, but entirely unrelated.

I live in Mountain View, CA, home to Google. Google provides free wifi internet access and coverage is generally good outside but not reliable inside for most. In my case, I have good connectivity on one side of my house and decided to try an experiment to bring it inside.

This is a posting I sent to the Old Mountain View Yahoo Group about that.

++++++

Several weeks ago, we had a discussion thread that started out about alternatives to DSL or cable. I suggested using Google WiFi with one of the devices out there that bring the signal inside. And here is the update.

I have a somewhat similar problem at our family vacation location, so I decided I wouldn't mind spending a some money to see if I could make things work here and then ship the equipment and reconfigure there.

Several people had sent me email directly saying that they had picked up a Pepwave or Ruckus wifi modem. You cannot buy these directly. When I went in search of places selling them locally, I couldn't find them. Or in the case of Expressnets, no one was in the office, no one answered the phone, no one returned calls and on their website all the wifi modems were listed as Out Of Stock. Plus the prices seemed higher than what I wanted ($150 and up).

Digging around a bit more, I found that Buffalo makes a Converter that is recommended. I picked one up at Frys for about $90 (seen from other sources starting at ~$60). Note that it has to be the Buffalo wifi converter, not a router.

As an aside, I noticed while I was there that there was a Frys.com G router for less than $20. Interesting.

Setting up the converter took about 30 minutes - a little longer than I had hoped. Once I'd figured out the IP address of the converter, I logged into the web interface and it went faster. Connecting through to the internet, Google WiFi does require a login and once I had done that - click the Keep Me Logged In box - through the converter I was pretty much set.

However, this is a wired connection from the computer to the converter (4 ports) and Google WiFi is open (never had any luck with the Secure version).

So I plugged in a small wireless G travel router that I rarely use. Once I'd figured out that it needed to be in router mode, not Access Point mode, all was well and I set security on that.

Connecting directly to the converter, I got 3.4Mb down. In the current position and with the wireless router, it seems to be about 1Mb (the converter says that I get about 40-60% strength to Google wifi directly on that side of the house). And of course the whole house sees the wire router ssid as 100%.

Pros: If you have a reliable, modest strength connection to Google Wifi, a one time investment of ~$150 for the converter and a wireless router, you can have free wireless throughout your house. Not hard to set up if you have similar experience with routers, etc. Connection strength is fine for the basics.

Cons: Not hard technically but perhaps more fiddling than many people would care for. Then you need to find the best position for the converter to maximize the signal from the nearest pole. And of course, a number of people don't seem to get a good signal to begin with. If you want wireless and / or a secure connection, you'll need a router - a bit more fiddling. Connection strength (based on distance from Google WiFi pole) may be too slow for high performance usage.

You Want Me to Do WHAT to My SD Card???

As you might be able to tell from Episode 1 with the calendar, dealing with the DROID can be a bit geeky.

This was confirmed the first time I saw that to access my SD card that I had to "mount" it. Looking over various DROID / Android forums, questions as to what this means are quite common.

As a long-time UNIX / Linux person, I knew exactly what it meant but it clearly confused numerous others and brought to mind little jokes that Spanish-speaking people from different countries use to tease each other. For example, a verb that means "to take / catch" when used in Argentina means a very explicit sexual act. So if an outsider asks where to "catch" a taxi, this leads to some giggles or raised eyebrows. And there are more cases like that.

Even though I was now firmly in like-very-much with my DROID, I was more motivated than ever to experience Apple's vaunted reputation for ease of use and whatnot.

I was finally committed to have a separate cell phone when an old issue came bubbling back: Skype.

As I mentioned previously, Skype had been a bit of a lifesaver while working and tele-living from Vermont. Unfortunately, my Skype experience on the DROID was very disappointing.

The disappointing part was that the Skype app for the Android platform makes a cell phone call on my behalf when I place a call, even when I have a wireless connection and not at all with only a wireless connection. The problem with this is that I already have paid for SkypeOut minutes! This would mean paying more than double.

What's with that? Not good.

Two points:

1. I solved this in the short term by using Fring (and I believe there are other solutions). Fring will use a wireless connection and can transparently frontend a number of services like Skype. Very impressive, IMHO.

2. Just last week, Verizon and Skype announced a new alliance where Verizon will allow Skype calls to be placed over it's 3G network at Skype rates. This definitely applies for Skype-to-Skype calls and in some way will apply to SkypeOut calls. I'm waiting for the details and not deleting Fring yet but I believe that Verizon has shown some standout foresight with this agreement. Bravo Verizon!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/verizon-to-allow-unlimited-skype-calling-over-3g-starting-next-m/

However, several months ago all this was still under wraps and it definitely made me rethink what I really needed from a device. Did I need another cell phone? No, not really in the traditional sense. Did I need another camera / video recorder? No. I barely use the one I had.

And then there was the aha moment when I remembered the iPod Touch. The Skype app worked on the iPod Touch so it certainly worked on wireless only.

I did a little bit of research. Not being in the - ahem - typical iPod demographic, I wasn't sure that I would be downloading a lot of video (although I'm now rethinking this signficantly). But it did appear that there were good reasons to go for the 32 GB iPod Touch rather than the 8 GB.

For approximately $100 more the 32 GB provided the current generation internals that were significantly better than the 8 GB particularly for voice. The 32GB also ships with a headset that includes a mic while the 8 GB does not. Having to buy an additional headset with mic cut the price difference still more. On the other hand, for me the 64 GB hit the diminishing returns curve.

I picked up the iPod Touch 32GB at CostCo (my second favorite place to express the shopping gene) and moved into Apple world.

Next up: Surprise! Apple doesn't do everything perfectly.

Calendar trials and the DROID

I do know that there are other types of phones besides the iPhone and the Android.

Blackberry comes to mind.

But as my friend Richard says, "I hear lots of people saying they like the Blackberry and couldn't live without it, but I LOVE my iPhone. I can't imagine living without it."

Having heard that over and over again, I was finally ready to make the leap but then at the last second chose the DROID.

I set my expectations low. I figured that if I could just get to "really like" with the DROID, that would be fine and then I'd go get an iPhone as well. That was an extravagant plan but I figured that I would view this as a professional investment.

First things first meant figuring out how to manage the DROID.

Even before I made the choice of the reasons I was attracted to the Android model was that the entire platform is truly internet based. Despite what platform(s) win in the short term, I am convinced that the "cloud" approach for data, synchronization, and more will all be "out there" and not constrained by passing information back and forth on cables to other devices.

I'm using the term "cloud" very loosely here as I don't want to digress into specific implementations and visions of how that would work.

In the case of the Android (the Verizon DROID for me), you can plug into your computer / laptop with a USB cable to charge and even to exchange data if you want to, but all the real work takes place over internet connections.

Initial startup of the phone requires having a Google gmail account. This also automatically provides a Google calendar, contacts, and so forth.

When you start the phone for the first time, it asks for your gmail account and password. After that, you're off and toddling along.

I've had a gmail account for over 4 years and had played around with a few other services like calendar but working full time as a consultant at Cisco meant that I had become quite anchored to Exchange. I rarely used my gmail account to send email. Instead, I used it as my backup system for personal email and my own consulting company email by bcc'ing my gmail account. That has proved to be a life saver several times.

Once the first baby steps of connecting and making the first call had passed came the significant challenge of synchronizing calendars and - to a lesser extent - contacts.

For me the calendar was the biggest thing that separated me from being OK to like to love with the DROID.

Everything went quite well with getting to the market, downloading some apps (all Free), trying out the camera, making calls... But calendar syncing remained a problem for about a week and reading the various postings on this were not providing insights.

Specifically, I was trying to sync my Outlook calendar at Cisco to the Google calendar. There is a built-in app for both direct Exchange email and calendar sync-ing, but as a consultant at Cisco I am not allowed an externally-facing Exchange account to do this. That's OK, it should have been possible to do this to the Android / Google calendar.

The Google calendar web site provides a sync client that can be downloaded to your Microsoft unit to handle synchronization with Outlook. It's very simplistic, rudimentary, and limited. It only wants to synchronize one Google calendar even though you might have several sub-calendars set up. It tends to die / hang every week or so, requiring a de-install and re-install on a regular basis. I'm told that Google has a professional version for corporate accounts. All I can say is: I should hope so.

That said, once I finally worked out the kinks - aside from the hanging and re-installations - it works rather well.

But those kinks!!

Part of the initial problem was that my Google calendar already had a few things in it. As it turns out the first sync is critical. After a few tries, I had quadruple and more duplicates in my calendar for every entry and the Google calendar had choked (no response from tech support on that either). I had so many entries in the Google calendar that I could even delete them.

1. Make sure that either your Google calendar or your Outlook calendar is empty. I finally got the nerve to go into "Settings" for the Google calendar and "Delete" it. I had worried that this would completely remove the calendar (another complaint: the term Delete isn't clear), but it only removed all the entries.
2. Next I had to manually clean out billions (so it seemed) duplicated and re-duplicated entries in my Outlook calendar. Hopefully you won't have to do this, but if you do, there are a number of little tricks with Outlook that can help.
3. Be sure to save your Outlook calendar locally in your My Documents. Just in case :-)
4. Now download the Google calendar sync client.
5. Set your first sync to be 1-way, Outlook to the Google calendar. Provide your gmail login information. DO NOT SET THE SYNC TO BE BOTH DIRECTIONS FIRST TIME.
6. Sync. That's to the Google servers. You should see the information appear on your "normal" browser view of your Google calendar right away. An additional sync will happen automatically from there to the phone.
7. In general, be very careful of messages that say things like "You have just removed [added / changed] 2,000 calendar entries. Do you want to proceed?" Unfortunately the answer might be either yes or no.

After a few minutes, check your Android / DROID. It might take 30 minutes or so the first time as there is probably a lot of data for the first sync.

Now you can set the sync to be both directions. And be sure to make sure the sync client hasn't gone belly up every couple of days.

You might think that after all of that that I hate my DROID. I don't. It came very, very close when I saw 10 duplicates of all my appointments appear. But after I had crossed this Rubicon, I felt it was functional and I could deal with it.

And then I remembered: Plaxo!!!!

Plaxo is another networking site but as far as I am concerned, it's biggest plus is excellent multi-calendar and contacts synchronization. It wasn't particularly great when I started using it. I wanted a network-based calendar and was sort of torn between Google and Plaxo. Over time, Plaxo has developed into a really solid tool for synchronizing. It isn't perfect, but it is head and shoulders over the Google calendar sync tool.

I now have a Plaxo client on my Mac which then syncs to my iPod touch. Meanwhile, the Mac updates with Plaxo, which in turn will sync with multiple Google calendars and my Outlook calendar and put that all into separate personal calendars in Outlook. Every so once in a while, I have to remove a device / calendar endpoint and then set it up again, but lately that has been rare.

And Plaxo has a little utility to remove duplicates. Great feature. And of course this all includes contacts as well.

My only complaint about Plaxo is that it tends to put the birthdays of people in my contacts into my calendar. Sorry. I am not a birthday type of person. Unless you are a blood relative, I don't care.

I even got good technical support from Plaxo when they had a screen painting glitch.

After a struggle for a week or so, I finally settled in and started to really enjoy my DROID. I'm not sure I could LOVE any of these devices, but this definitely works for me.

Next up: iPhone / Touch and next steps on the DROID

Me and MYLO

Now back to gadgets and phones.

I do have the shopping gene, it just doesn't express itself very often for clothes, more often for shoes, and never for jewelry. Gadgets on, the other hand, are a very different story. That's where the gene kicks in.

When I tell my (male) friends that I have picked up this or that at Fry's or similar spots, they frequently pooh pooh this. I could get the same thing on line, through EBay or other places and this is true.

But they miss the point! Trying to browse for interesting discoveries on the internet is very unsatisfying for the most part. If I know what I want or need to do comparisons or other research, or watch for various announcements - that's another issue.

But for the thrill of discovery, there's nothing more satisfying than wandering the aisles of a big, chaotic store like Fry's.

What I love about Fry's is its disorganize nature. You can often find the same type of item in multiple areas of the store, at very different prices.

For example, a number of years ago I was looking into bluetooth USB fobs. In the section of the Palo Alto store closest to the computers, I found several and then found another cluster over by the wireless routers and memory cards for $20-30 less. Headsets in the Apple / iPhone section are quite pricy but the equivalent selections can be found in the audio aisle for less. And so on.

That was how I found the MYLO.

Connectivity in the Northeast Kingdom

I had a problem to solve at our place in Vermont. My family (both sides) come from there and both sides set up summer "camps" in Greensboro, in the Northeast Kingdom. I only spent summers there, but then my father moved back to live there permanently in the mid-90's and in 2000, my sister and her husband and I bought a "village house" suitable for living in during the non-summer months (September-May). The combination of wanting to spend more time with my father and being able to avoid freezing to death doing so, made the option of working from there very appealing.

But there was a problem. Actually, there were two problems: no high speed internet and no cell phone coverage.

As late as 1990, we still had a party line at the cottage. AT&T was the only long distance carrier and there was no direct long distance dial for us until the 1990s. This originally meant dialing 0 to place a call and then upleveled to allow us to dial the remote number but then required operator manual intervention to place the final connection. That has been remedied, but given that history, it should be no surprise that that there is still no cell phone coverage in this part of Vermont due to enormous local resistance to placing unsightly towers on the lovely hills.

This was a very understandable reaction, particularly when cell phones were viewed as the extravagant toys for part-time "Summer People" like me. But as time has gone on, cell phones have been come a critical part of business, safety, and communication for most people.

Someday this will be solved in our wonderful corner of the NE Kingdom. I can appreciate the issues and I'm still only a part-time resident. Meanwhile, I needed to figure out something else.

Unfortunately, we had no broadband either. No surprises there if you know the area. TV and radio reception are generally terrible with most channels coming from Quebec (keeps the French in shape). Satellite TV is more or less available but due to the rural environment, hills and trees sometimes make that unfeasible as well. DSL was only enabled very recently.

But finally, in 2005, a broadband carrier set up line-of-sight systems and we had broadband.

Some of the time.

A strong storm or wind would knock out service for days and even weeks at a time. The notion of technical service hadn't quite penetrated the mentality of this small, altruistic company. Calls went to voice mail and were rarely returned. Same for email, usually from home after you could send it.

Finally, Verizon provided DSL in 2008! Hurray!!! Even so, Verizon wasn't entire sure if we were covered or not. The previous system was faster but only when it was up. DSL has been as solid as a rock, if a good bit slower.

Meanwhile, I had been trying to solve the phone problem ever since we had first gotten our sporadic, unreliable broadband.

My sister works for IBM and I had started consulting for Cisco. We both needed telephone connections regularly and if my brother showed up or anyone wanted to call - like our father from his separate cottage - this became untenable.

Both Cisco and IBM provided VoIP options, but the connections were not (and still aren't) great running over DSL with VPN on top.

And remember - no cell phone coverage. Still no cell phone coverage.

I had already started using Skype, including Skype Out, in 2004 or so. And in Vermont, I found this worked better than Cisco's VoIP for clarity.

That was when I found the MYLO at Fry's where a returned package was on sale for under $200.

MY Life Online is another fascinating almost-ran technology from Sony. Think of it as an iPod Touch without many apps. It has a nice screen, a slideout keyboard, and a built in 802.11b capability along with web browsing, video, and music built in. And it has "communications" apps, including Skype.

Finally I had the equivalent of a cell phone in our cottage and our village house.

Subsequently, I bought several Skype phones (discovered at Fry's). One from Linksys connects via a bluetooth device to my computer and works great on my home computers where I have a faster network, but not as well in Vermont on DSL with VPN. The Belkin connects directly to the router and when I talk on this device I've been told I sound like I'm on a landline phone. But the volume is so low on my end that I can barely hear it even with amplification and it will not accept additional keypad entries after the initial call is connected, making it useless for work-related calls requiring navigation.

The MYLO remained my traveling friend right up to November, 2009. As far as I'm concerned, it's still a great little device that saved my working life for at least 4 years.

But all along, I wanted to just glue that thing to the back of my cell phone.

I also knew that the iPhone had a Skype app. The problem was that with Verizon, I could at least have cell coverage in Vermont right through Danville (historic home of my line of Bickfords, btw. There are a lot of my ancestors who ventured "west" from New Hampshire at the end of the Revolution buried in North Danville) only about 20-30 minutes away. AT&T dropped off somewhere in the White Mountains.

But my will power was waning. I soooo tired of hearing my friends say they LOVED their iPhones and I was tired of carrying at least two devices when I traveled to Vermont.

The crowning blow came with my trip to the UK. I couldn't use my Motorola Q there, even at $2 / minute or whatever outrageous fee Verizon would have charged. I looked into all sorts of unlocked and ToGo phones. Jonathan's lecture aside, I was so impressed by the voice quality of the simple phone I had with the ability to reload the ToGo SIM with minutes, that I knew the time had come.

Next Up: Susan gets a DROID AND an iPhone (OK, an iPod Touch).

Phases of the Moon: Time at Sun

Over 16+ years at Sun, 1988-2005, I spent roughly equivalent amounts of time in Sales & Marketing, Product Engineering, and IT.

In sales, I learned to see through the customers' eyes and I developed the ability to simultaneously see from Sun's perspective. From this came the capacity to uplevel, focus and frame issues differently and find answers. I learned to tap dance and not be afraid when I didn't understand things completely (this is a skill that cuts both ways, however). I learned to swear and I learned a lot of jokes.

Working as an SE, I had a ringside seat to observe how the 99% male "sales pukes" (a Peter Young term) could deliver amazing results. As SEs, we were serfs in Puke hierarchy, but it did have its moments.

The Sun sales guys, at least in NYC, were extroverted, highly intuitive, extremely profane, ruthless, and wildly entertaining. They also knew great jokes.

Moving to California for a short stint in SoftSoft Corporate Marketing was rather similar, albeit a little less profane. I did learn by observation that once you become a VP, you are allowed to forget all the behaviors you were forced to adopt in kindergarten. Fortunately, not everyone took advantage of that.

In Product Engineering, I learned (over time) to stop swearing so much, how to become a manager of people and teams, the design center for building products (not just point solutions), and how to turn the crank (PLC). All these are asymptotic goals. You never quite get there.

In IT, I learned the great satisfaction in being able to solve a genuine business problem with technology. It was actually possible to transform how the company did some critical aspect of the business within a relatively short period of time.

I also learned about ubiquitous computing and security and those became my passions.

Managing through adversity was the bigger lesson. I learned that being in a part of the business that is a cost center and does not bring in revenue is a very precarious place, even in the best of times. And in the worst of times, it can be heart-breaking. Figuring out to transform, keep moving, deliver anyway, and try to keep up team cohesion was invaluable, if not always perfectly executed.

SunIT had an interesting relationship with various product groups, particularly enterprise software.

First of all, there was a general attitude that all the really good technical minds did not work in IT. Of course this is overly simplistic, but that was still the general attitude on the product side (and I knew because I'd been there).

Secondly, I saw the seeds of what I perceived as a problem for Sun that might prove fatal.

Sun's products had traditionally been successful because engineers (including former engineers now VPs) ran the show and they were designing workstations and operating systems and capabilities for people like themselves.

That success factor began to change with enterprise software. Suddenly we had extremely smart people who had never worked in an enterprise IT organization, but were now designing and developing enterprise IT applications. They also had a attitude problem when it came to valuing the issues raised by Sun's captive IT experts and for the most part they weren't used to looking to (or valuing) marketing or product management to help solve that problem.

The upper management chain did seem to understand this and there were even some notable successes, but the culture was deeply ingrained and overall the ship was too big to turn quickly.

I am not claiming that this was why Sun ultimately failed. That list could go on and on and I don't have enough insight into all of them. But for me this was significant because it was the first time I saw a situation where Sun couldn't seem to nimbly adapt to critical changes and that did not bode well.

I voluntarily left Sun in May of 2005. The final straw was that IT was going to outsource most of IT which they did a number of months later to CDC. I had no way of knowing whether I would be part of the group staying or going, but pragmatically I knew that I risked being sent to a company I'd never emotionally signed up for and then left with a 2-week notification period if I were laid off vs what I would get from having been a director with 16 years at Sun.

More importantly, it was time for me to go. I had learned what I needed to know and it was time to go re-invent another phase in my career plus it was very clear to me that Sun was not going in a healthy direction. It still felt like divorce because I had been so invested emotionally with Sun.

I don't think of myself as an emotional risk-taking type of person. I think things through.

But when I look at the amazing leaps of faith I have taken over the course of my career I realize that there might be a side to me that I don't fully appreciate.

I'm sorry Sun had to end and I greatly miss the place that it used to be, but that company was gone a long time ago. I hope the remnants find a good spot at Oracle.