Dana’s Mixed Bag

Today Ed Bott wrote an article reminiscing about his computer hardware collection ten years ago. IN the article he describes an inventory of what he had, which reminded me of a spreadsheet I made in 1997. I was trying to convince my boss to implement computers into our dental office. Just 12 years later computers, digital x-rays, intraoral cameras, video education systems, and more are the standard. Back then, though, it was a steep hill to climb.

After doing some comparison shopping, I recommended that we get a system from Intrex. It featured a 200MMX Pentium processor, 4.0 GB HD, 32MB of RAM, a 24X CD-ROM drive, 33.6Kbps Fax modem, and 1MB of video memory. Total cost: $1,330. This was a system that was fairly middle-of-the-road in performance and price.

Price was a huge factor, because that $1,330 only included the CPU. Also recommended: 15” monitor ($230), Iomega Ditto Tape Backup Drive ($170), 6 Ditto Tapes ($120), Windows 95 ($100), HP 6Pse Laser Printer ($800), HP ScanJet 5pse ($300), Microsoft Office ‘97 ($480), and a $30 surge protector.

The total cost of this workstation was $3,560. After adding in the dental software which cost somewhere in the $10,000 range, my boss balked and the practice remained computer-free long after I left.

That was a different era. I was busy trying to score on NHL ‘97 with my 40MHz desktop machine. Email was becoming popular, and Juno was the first to offer it for free. The internet was text-only, and download speeds of 56K were expensive. Removable media meant 3.5” “floppies”, and digital cameras where thousands of dollars. Portable music players were CD players that skipped with much motion, and to record TV, it meant finding a blank space on a tape, and going through your VCR’s cryptic on-screen programming sequence. Music subscription meant the $6 Music Choice service that Time Warner had available only through the services of a separate tuning box.

That was just 12 years ago, a blink of an eye compared to the 44-year drudgery of dental school. Where will we be in 12 more years? Progress will continue, and we’ll one day laugh at today’s isolated DVRs, movie rentals, cell phones, reliance on powerful PCs, “slow” internet speeds, and possibly streaming network TV.

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Just ran across a fun site for IKEA fans. IKEAhacker.blogspot.com

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If you are looking for an internal computer modem that will handle Caller ID, do not bother with the US Robotics 5670. They have very misleading info on their datasheet, and virtually no help to speak of on this issue in their support pages. However I found on a message board a person with my similar problem.

He was able to get an “OK” response to the AT+VCID=1 string in Hyperterminal, but still got no data when an incoming call occurred. Turns out, USR only implemented Caller ID on this modem when the user is connected to the internet through the modem. It doesn’t do Caller ID when the modem is idle. What a crock! Back to the drawing board.

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Recently a few blogs have referred to a piece describing the evolution of Windows Media Center. After Microsoft bought WebTV, the product evolved into a very mature, robust, and downright delicious application known as Windows Media Center (The Vista version is commonly termed “VMC”).

Meanwhile it seems two other Microsoft teams were busy developing two other Windows media applications. The Windows Media Player (which first appeared in, what, Windows 3.0?) has evolved into a very nice mp3 library and video file player. Meanwhile Microsoft developed another team meant to tackle the music market’s biggest entity, iPod/iTunes. This team introduced the Zune line of players two years ago. The robust players are nice and boast something Apple doesn’t, a full-service subscription service (like Rhapsody’s fantastic service). However, they require their own desktop media software.

So, for a person using a Zune and VMC in their lives, they have to use three separate pieces of software that contain many redundant features. I would like to see Microsoft roll up all of their media players into one umbrella: Media Center. Get rid of stand-alone Windows Media Player and Zune software and make them subsets of VMC. Put the Zune store (containing music subscription and purchase outlets as well as TV and Movie Rentals) inside of VMC. The Zune subscription service could be a no-brainer if it could be accessed by all extenders on the VMC’s network + up to 3 Zune Portables. Finally, have two VMC viewing modes: 2ft (”Desktop”) and 10ft (”Theater”). The Desktop mode would essentially be the quick-loading Windows Media Player branded under VMC, but would contain the current Zune store. The Theater mode could offer media browsing and purchasing, but would be more specialized for playing already-obtained music, like VMC currently does.

By wrapping up all of these services into one umbrella that appears on everyone’s copy of Windows, users could have a completely vertically integrated, logically arranged solution that the average person could easily understand.

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I have an Epson 1680 scanner at my office and it is an impressive piece of equipment. It’s ability to scan a legal-size transparency, as well as a sheet of photo slides have allowed us to digitize many objects and clear up some space.

The Epson Scan software works great with Vista Ultimate, however it suffers mightily in XP. After a few days of being installed, it disappears upon launching and is unusable. After several attempts to update the software, drivers, and other hacks, I found the problem. Some problem with the software is causing two variables in the Windows XP Registry to change. This change forces the application to load way off of the screen, in an unrecoverable state.

Should you launch Epson Scan, see the splash screen, and then have no function once the splash disappears, try this:

• Open the Windows Registry (Start | Run | Regedit)
• Open this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EPSON\EPSON scan\ES001B\Environment

Look at the values for these entries: “Main Window Position X” and “Main Window Position Y”. Both should contain the value “0000000a” (that’s seven zeros and the letter “a”). If they do not, change the value, close the Registry, and relaunch EpsonScan. Hopefully this fix will help you, too!

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I subscribe to a few good magazines for my dental office’s reception area. Some offices like to place People, US, and some other horrendous sleaze in their reception area. To satisfy that content area, I’ve gone with Entertainment Weekly. For the most part they deal with the movies, shows, music, etc themselves, and avoid the gossip and celeb-of-the-month worshipping that inexplicably goes on out there.

On Monday our mail came and we got the new EW as well as the new, typically-slutty Victoria’s Secret catalogue. How bad is it when your magazine cover is more inappropriate for a dental office than Victoria’s? Yep…looks like EW is officially in trouble.

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Here are five key economic indicators as of election night (11/4/08):

• Consumer Price Index: 218.783
• S&P500: 1001.84
• Unemployment Rate: 6.1%
• Gross Domestic Product: 11,720.00B
• Prime Lending Rate: 4.0%

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Apple unveiled its iPhone last year among an incredible swell of hype. While the phone was ground-breaking in some areas, it was extremely expensive and woefully short of basic features seen in PDAs for well over a decade. A year later, Apple released its second version of the phone and made huge strides in some areas, yet still leaves a tire stuck in the mud.

The Good

The new iPhone is the best mobile web browsing experience to date, and it’s not even close. The full rendering of non-flash containing websites is fabulous, and has made my life on the go much more seamless. I’m able to save time by checking restaurant hours, check my gmail email, view maps, view traffic conditions, etc. The phone is slick as all get-out. By that I mean that the multi touch interface is incredibly intuitive and fun to use. I love scrolling a long screen by dragging. The flick action, which makes pages spin by like the Price Is Right Bonus Wheel, is outstanding.

The phone’s ability to know when it’s being turned sideways comes in handy when viewing wide websites, video, and photos on its large screen. Also, the fonts used and the layout of operating system pages is beautiful. It is a gorgeous device that I enjoy powering on.

The biggest impact of the new iPhone is not its speedier 3G connection, but rather the Apple App Store. Tons of free and cheap applications allow users to add applications for their favorite social sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), play games, listen to music on the internet, etc. The most useful for me have been the Facebook app, Twitter, and Pandora apps. With Pandora I’m able to ride around town listening to free music on Pandora instead of the radio or CDs I’m sick of. (I would love a Rhapsody app, but that’ll be the day)

There are some fabulous apps, and there’s no reason to believe the selection and functionality won’t improve. One of the best apps is the Evernote app. If you have a free Evernote account, the iPhone app allows one to access their online notes with an  interface that is much more appropriate to mobile units than Evernote’s web page. Evernote is by far the best system by which to jot notes that you want to always access.

Remember The Milk is my new ToDo list manager. Based on a web interface, RTM allows one to assign multiple tags to tasks. This is perfect for a Getting Things Done system of lists. Therefore items like “Buy balloons for reunion” could show up in a project-based list (like “.reunion”) AND a context-based list (like “@errands”). This feature was one of the key factors leading me toward the iPhone. Palm’s todo list app does not allow multiple tagging.

The phone aspects of the device are excellent as well. When I actually get an AT&T signal (most places not called “my house”), the sound quality is fantastic. I adore the Visual Voicemail portion of the phone, and the Contact Manager is well done. (this allows me to a see a list of my voicemails and play them as local files)

I really enjoy the iPhone’s 3.5mm headphone connector. The first generation’s socket was recessed, and only cheap headphone plugs would fit. This socket is flush with the convex exterior, and is a joy compared to my Treo’s 2.5mm socket (which required an adapter). Now I’m able to plug in nice headphones and feel like I’m in the room where the music was originally compressed!

Finally, I am enjoying the iPhone for playing podcasts. I listen to about 8 different podcasts weekly, and the iPhone’s syncing to iTunes and its system of marking which episodes have been heard is great. It automatically bookmarks so when you listen to music and return to the podcast it picks up where you left it. I avoided iTunes for a long time due to its slugging performance and walled garden feel. However I have to say that the newest version, running on Vista, works very well. It launches in 4 seconds and manages podcast catching and dumping very well.

The Meh

There are some ballyhooed features that just don’t impact my life at all.

• Movie/TV Show watching - I simply refuse to give in to iTunes’ price-gouging, and have absolutely no desire to keep some DRM-laden copy of an episode of “The Office” in my collection for all time. (I never actually got around to buying the plug-in that converts Windows Media Center files into a format for PDAs, but this subject has become muddy. I plan on buying a dedicated Windows Media Center computer with the Fiji upgrade. That means it will record shows in the new format, not dvr-ms format, so that plug in will be broken anyway)
• Coverflow - What a joke this feature is. It’s pretty, but given that album art isn’t automatically discovered and tagged in iTunes, it’s just a big hassle. I can read, and I like alphabetical order, so give me a list.
• 3G - I guess I can’t appreciate it because I didn’t have Edge, but I find myself pulling on the internet more from places that already have wifi, I suppose.
• Camera - It’s better than the Treo camera, but it’s not that great. It’s….a camera.
• Google Maps and GPS - The phone knows where it is and the Google maps look pretty, but for most of us who spend 99% of our time in the same domain, we really don’t use this feature. My Prius has an excellent nav system, so I will hardly ever use the iPhone’s clunkier GPS system.

The Bad

When things get bad for the iPhone, they aren’t kidding around.

I’ll start with the biggest problem: the battery. I cannot attend a football game and make it through one charge of the battery. It is so bad, that I cannot make it through a day without charging at least twice. While the phone recharges within an hour, it’s no laughing matter. I got the phone for its abilities to surf the net and listen to music. If I have to turn off 3G and wifi sniffing to get decent battery life, then why even have an iPhone? The Treo would make it for three days between charges. I’m getting about six hours with this thing. To make matters worse, there isn’t a replaceable battery. If there were, I could carry around a spare for days that I foresee being hard on the device. So, if this battery is so bad at keeping a charge now, what isn’t going to be like at the end of my 2-year contract period? This is the overriding feature that keeps me from loving the device. Of course, I can compromise by buying a battery sleeve thing for it and a car kit, but then I’ve spent another $100 to make a $200 device operable.

Costs: While the iPhone is only $200, the new plans at AT&T are so much more expensive, that over a two year period the phone actually costs a little more than it did before. AT&T does what they can to take the fun out of things.

Thin and slick - The device looks sexy,  but in real use, it’s too thin and slick to handle. I’ve spent $20 on a Speck rubberized cover for it, which sticks to my pocket liner and accumulates lint. Very sexy.

Notes backup - The iPhone has a nice little Notes application. Too bad it doesn’t sync with Outlook. This makes the application useless.

Cable - I like the idea of the sync/power cable. It has one end that is a USB male, and another with an elongated, proprietary iPhone connector (around which an ecosystem has evolved). The phone pulls power over USB when connected to a computer, however the best charging situation occurs when the USB end of the wire is plugged into a supplied power cube. The 1″ cube has two prongs for an AC outlet, and a USB female, into which the cable is plugged. Neat! No cradles. No separate power and sync cables! The problem lies in how cheap this cable feels. It’s thin, limp, and has cheap collars at the connector. Will it make it longer the battery? Who knows. A mini-USB interface would have been far better for this device. Consumers would be able to obtain quality cables from an array of sources.

Lack of Local Productive Apps - While I enjoy Remember The Milk, it is a web-app. They have an upgraded interface for $25 per year that makes the service far easier to use, but at the end of the day, the data and all interaction rely on a decent internet connection. I use mobile todo lists because I think of things to add when I’m shopping, driving, in the yard, etc. It is incredibly frustrating to think of a todo while in a store and spend 2 minutes finding a connection and entering the item. I would far prefer a local todo app that syncs with Outlook and keeps all of the data on the phone.

Wish List

How can Apple make V3 The Ultimate Phone? Simple

• Sync todos and notes with Outlook
• Create a thicker phone with an excellent battery

Really? That’s it? Yep! No device out there is going to be perfect for everyone. However the release of an SDK by Apple has allowed some great developers to create applications that make the iPhone extremely useable. It has the best interface and the best web browsing experience. If someone can just fix this productivity application synching issue, then the woeful batter would remain as the only inexcusable defect.

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It looks like this is the best overview for what is on now.

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Here is a great idea for a new online social networking app: StomachBook. People can link through their stomachs, not by their faces. It’s time we get down to meeting people who eat like we do, not think. There could be a whole linky thing with recipes and restaurants. Friends would be called TummyChummies. Just a thought.

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I’ve always been intrigued with tablet PCs, but could never really see how the tool could move me past paper and pens. The other day a patient told me about how he uses Microsoft’s OneNote on a tablet PC. He records the lecture through OneNote and an external USB microphone. Then he takes handwritten notes in OneNote. Throughout the lecture, OneNote matches his notes to audio points in the recorded lecture. Not sure what the teacher said when you were scribbling the diagram? Just have OneNote playback the lecture at the point when the drawing began! Here’s a video of the process.

Imagine the possibilities if a decent recording could be coupled with decent-quality snapshots of the teacher’s PowerPoint slides! Not only would your notes be searchable when it’s time to sit down and review them, but the lecturer’s comments can quickly be replayed.

Backing up your notes just got easier as Microsoft’s Live Mesh offers 5GB of backup storage space for free. Time that puppy to synch with Windows Live Foldershare, and the thought of tablet/notes theft is far less daunting.

Wanna be totally paperless? If any teachers are still giving out handouts, the ScanSnap510 sheet-feed scanner by Fujitsu is the answer. Go back to the dorm room and throw those handouts in the hopper. This scanner does both sides of the page at 3 seconds per page. The price is a little steep (~$400), but it may be worth it to some students who either want to be totally paperless or have all of their notes in one place. (For light loads, maybe something slower and cheaper will do the trick?)

Tablet PCs cost too much, right? Well, every student going to college has to get a laptop these days, so most people are spending $500-$800 (maybe more - a LOT more if they bought a Mac) or so for their darling’s laptop. This blog entry claims that the student will spend at least $100 each year in office supplies, expenses that could be nullified by tablet PC use. After a couple of years, that puts the total cost in the tablet range, so it may not be that much more to have a searchable, archivable, and sharable notetaking system after all.

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From the days of MealMaster and Prodigy, my family and I have been big fans of computer cookbooks. The ability to store an infinite number of recipes in an easily searchable, confined spot has been a joy in the kitchen. Several years ago Sierra bought MasterCook and looked like they were going to make great strides with their excellent program. It was far ahead of its time, being a database where items (in this case, recipes) could be tagged with multiple categories. I longed for a flexible database that would allow me to tag entries that had nothing to do with food and it’s here: Evernote.

With Evernote one can place little written notes, copied web material, scanned notes, or photos into a database, and tag them for easy retrieval. The search is fantastic, and the database is backed up online so it can be accessed from any place with web access. There is an overview video that demonstrates the concept, though the narrator is barely intelligible at certain moments.

I decided to move a cookbook of about 500 family recipes over to Evernote, and it went fairly smoothly. Using the instructions below, one should be able to smoothly transport a MasterCook recipe database over to Evernote.

Evernote offers a few advantages over MasterCook. The ability to access recipes from anywhere on the web is very enticing, especially if one has mobile web access with a device like an iPhone, Blackberry, Treo, or other large format phone. The second huge advantage is retrieval. Evernote’s search finds matches as you type, so inputting a word like “chocolate” will show every recipe containing chocolate. Keep typing “chip” and the search results narrow to something fairly browsable. Compared to MasterCook’s convoluted search page, Evernote is as easier to use than Google!.

Evernote also allows tagging, so all of the recipes can have category tags. Tag certain recipes as “Favorite”, “ToTry”, and “Standby” and you have a very powerful database (MasterCook also could handle this, but Evernote is easier to work with). The final, major feature that I haven’t taken advantage of is the easy capture of recipes online. I foresee finding this month’s Bon Appetit recipes, selecting them and placing them into Evernote where I’ll tag them as ToTry, all in about 5 minutes. No clunky folders or mistorn magazine pages! Another huge advantage to Evernote is that it is free.

Mastercook has features that Evernote cannot handle. The two I will miss are recipe scaling and the pretty format printer output. To make those cookies for the entire church will require a little bit of calculating for ingredients. There are plenty of features I won’t miss, though, such as nutritional information, awkward entry of ingredients (like “Watermelon, cubed in 3/4″ by 1″ chunks), and instructional videos. I just didn’t use these features.

To get a MasterCook cookbook into Evernote, we’ll basically export the recipes from MasterCook into one big document. We’ll open that big document in Microsoft Word, manipulate it to strip unnecessary formatting, then save the recipes as individual .txt files. Once the recipes are in their own .txt files, we’ll drag them into Evernote and be done!

Here are the detailed instructions:

• Create a temporary folder to place outputted recipes. I prefer to place a folder called “Import” on my Windows Desktop.
• Open MasterCook and select all files to be exported from the recipe browser
• Export as a “text file”. Deselect “Break Up Lines When Exporting Text”, and be sure to click “Export As A Single File” (when MC exports to multiple files, it puts wasteful text at the beginning which will cause the recipes to not have titles in the Evernote Table of Contents).
• Open the output file in Word.
• Open Find/Replace (Ctrl-h) and Find this exact phrase (copy and paste it):   ^w^p* Exported from MasterCook *^p^p^w
  Replace with: ^m
  (This step will put the recipe titles on line 1 of each page by removing unnecessary spaces, line breaks, the MasterCook’s “Exported…” message)
• Make sure each recipe fits on a single page. Change your page size, margins, and text size to keep recipes from automatically spilling to subsequent pages (I like to set the page length at 22″ and the font size at 5, just to be sure. Ignore the fix margins message that may pop up)
• Create a new macro that will save each page as a separate document:
  • Tools, Macro, Macros…
  • In the top white box of the pop-up window, type “BreakOnPage”.
  • Hit “Create”
  • Replace the text in the window with:

Sub BreakOnPage()
   ' Used to set criteria for moving through the document by page.
   Application.Browser.Target = wdBrowsePage

   For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties("Number of Pages")

      'Select and copy the text to the clipboard.
      ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("\page").Range.Copy

      ' Open new document to paste the content of the clipboard into.
      Documents.Add
      Selection.Paste
' Removes the break that is copied at the end of the page, if any.
      Selection.TypeBackspace
      ChangeFileOpenDirectory "C:\"
      DocNum = DocNum + 1
      ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="test_" & DocNum & ".txt", FileFormat:=wdFormatText
      ActiveDocument.Close

      ' Move the selection to the next page in the document.
      Application.Browser.Next
   Next i
   ActiveDocument.Close savechanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges
End Sub

• In the copied text from above, replace the c:\ portion of the ChangeFileOpenDirectory line with the exact location of the folder created in Step 1. (If this is confusing, open the import folder created in step 1 of this exercise in Windows Explorer. Click on the Address Bar to reveal the actual long name for the folder. Copy and paste this name between the parentheses in the ChangeFileOpenDirectory line above. This line will tell the macro where to save all of these recipes, so we want to to show the location created in step one)
• Save the Macro, and close the Visual Basic window

• Hit Ctrl-Home to put the active, blinking cursor at the beginning of the document.
• Select Tools, Macros…
• Select BreakOnPage in the list and select “Run”. This will save each page to its own file in the Import folder created in step one.
• Open Evernote and the Import folder side-by-side
• Drag outputted txt files into Evernote.

Once the recipes are in Evernote, you’ll want to take some time tagging them. Evernote will not read MasterCook’s tags, but thankfully one can search for the tag names, then tag all of the recipes in the search result quickly. This will greatly speed things up versus tagging each recipe in Evernotes tape stream.

Evernote can handle a tag hierarchy, too! Instead of having names of ethnicities, food categories, and source names scattered throughout your tag list, simply create a few tags called: Ethnicity, Meats, Desserts, Source, etc,. Then, create new tags for each ethnicity (Mexican, Chinese, Indian, etc), meat type (chicken, lamb, beef, etc), dessert category (pies, cakes, ice cream, etc), source (Bon Appetit, Emeril, etc). All of these tags will appear initially as main-level tags in Evernote’s left margin. Now drag tags like “Chicken”, “Lamb”, and “Beef” to the “Meats” tag, and they will become sub-tags of Meats. This is an excellent way to organize your tags so you can browse them later!

Good luck and happy cooking!

Tags: Food, Software // 1 Comment »

Now that the MLB All-Star Break is over, let’s talk college football! I’ve uploaded the 2008 football schedule for all ACC teams in .CSV format.

Outlook/Palm Users:

• Create a new folder in your in Outlook calendar (Fball08, for example). Use the File | Import and Export… to import from “another program or file”, then “Comma Separated File (Windows)”. This will set up the ACC schedule in your new sub-calendar where you can make whatever changes you want.
• When you are happy with the way the subcalendar looks, change the calendar view to “Events” (instead of 7-day or 31-Day or whatever view you’re using). “Select All” from the list, and drag them over to your main “Calendar” (The Treo and other Palm Handhelds only sync to the main calendar - time for Palm to get with the program on that one!). If you want to keep your sub calendar intact, use Ctrl-drag instead of plain drag. That will create a copy of each event to the main Calendar and keep the Fball08 calendar in place. Sync your handheld to copy the events to the handheld.

iCal Users:

• Use iCalTextImport to import the .CSV version of the schedule.

Google Calendar:

• Google Calendar users can easily add this to their collection of calendars. Click here to view the calendar, then click on the “+ Add to Google Calendar” button on the lower left.

Download acc_fb_08.csv

(right click on the link above and “Save As…”)

Note: Use at your own risk. I do not accept responsibility for any consequences resulting from errors in the schedule.

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You may recall my series on souping up Firefox 2. Lifehacker now has some tips on modding the new Firefox 3.

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Engadget recently posted a story about the BuzzBall from Evento. They describe the toy as a personal rollercoaster, enabling riders to have fun on flat surfaces or even hills. This looks like fun and the seed to a new field sport.

via Bornrich

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I’ve certainly loved having my Treo650 for the past 3 years. It’s allowed me to carry all of my contacts, do-lists, calendar, and phone wherever I go. Frustrating, though, is that it seems like a piece of technology that hasn’t evolved in over 10 years. Vista users, imagine still using Windows 95 for everything!

The Palm was a big step up in convenience from my 5.5 x 8.5 Covey-based planner that I constantly forgot to bring with me. After reading and appreciating David Allen’s Getting Things Done book, I’ve come to realize just how outdated Palm’s organizational tools really are. (If you haven’t read that book, BTW, it’s great. Amazon has it for $9!)

Here are two minor changes that would revolutionize the Palm platform:

1. The ability to tag ToDo list items and Calendar items with more than one category. This would allow sublist items in a project tag to show up in a context list where the task needs to be done. For instance, “buy streamers” is a “+Reunion” project item, but needs to be completed in the “@Errands” context. When I’m getting things done, I refer mainly to my context lists. When I check the item off, I want it gone from both the context list and the project list.
2. The ability to have multiple calendars, each acting as an overlay. If arranged like Google Calendar, the Palm Calendar would allow me to walk around with my local minor league baseball and soccer schedules without them cluttering up events on the calendar such as important meetings and appointments. Of course, each of these sub-calendars should be synced with Outlook’s subcalendars, and Google Calendar should also sync with Outlook’s subcalendars. This way, we Palm users could find a publicly shared calendar at Google Calendar (such as the complete ACC football schedule or complete CBS TV listings), add it to their Google Calendars, sync it to Outlook, then have it appear on the Palm. A simple check-box of viewed layers would allow people to easily temporarily view the non-important subcalendar.

The chances of Palm waking up and realizing their software shortcomings are slim-to-none. Microsoft released information to developers about programming for Vista in the Summer of 2005. Palm didn’t release a Vista version of their desktop software until January of 2008!!!

The iPhone’s quickly developing ecosystem and semi-open SDK make it a promising device. To date, though, the $500 phone doesn’t even have a ToDo list, much less a crappy one! The iPhone would be a $500 downgrade for GTDers who want to run local organization applications. Chances are, though, that an excellent set of organizational applications will accompany the new G3 phone this summer, and blow away Palm’s family of devices. As annoying as Apple is, I won’t shed any tears.

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Last week I upgraded Vista to SP1, but found a new problem after the upgrade: no sound. My speaker in the tray had a red “X” through it, but the drivers didn’t seem to have any problems. When I tried to automatically upgrade the sound driver, it told me that I had the most up-to-date driver available. When I went to the Control Panel’s “Sound” applet I was able to select sounds, and had the option of clicking the green play button, something that isn’t available when the driver is wrong.

I’m just using the on-board sound that came with my motherboard. I have an Intel DG33BU, and the Intel site offers no help on the situation. Hopefully the Googlebot will pick this up and help others with Intel SP1 Realtek sound problems.

I was able to get the sound working by disabling the front panel jack detection. The way you do it isn’t intuitive:

• Open Vista’s Control Panel (Window | Control Panel)
• Open the Realtek Audio Manager (not “Sound”)
• In the navigation bar in the far right, there is a little yellow folder icon. It is just below “Device advanced settings” and above “ANALOG”. Click the folder icon.
• Click “Disable front panel jack detection” so that a yellow check mark shows up. Hit “OK”, and close the Realtek HD Audio Manager. That should re-enable the sound.

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It’s a shame that global warming has made it quit snowing these days. Here are some pictures from Watertown, NY which only got 146" in 2 weeks this year.

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We laughed at loud at this Will Ferrell commercial as Jackie Moon, for Bud Light. I didn’t see this version until the next day:

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