Category: Opinions

What I think about things

“Must Have” apps for BlackBerry Torch

I’m about to trade in my BlackBerry Torch 9800 for a couple of HTC EVO devices from Sprint. The job I’m moving to, while still a BlackBerry shop, does not provide them for my position (yet…).

But I’ve been refining my collection of BlackBerry apps for a while now. Mostly with my Bold 9000 but these apps have served me well on the Torch for the brief time that I’ve enjoyed using it.

As you check out the list below, remember that my BlackBerry device is primarily a business tool needed for communicating day-to-day support issues plus nightly oncall support notifications. So it needs to be available for all this – sometimes 24 x 7 – and it needs to do all this and be a reliable telephone to boot.

In order of usefulness and not including standard apps that come with the phone :

Pocket Informant: (in app store) Without hesitation the most useful application I have. It replaces the default calendar, tasks and contacts applications and expresses daily commitments in a clear and useful manner. I can quickly see what scheduled calendar entries I have for any day along with relevant tasks so I can work through them as the day progresses. I favor the agenda view as being most suitable for my needs.

BerryWeather: (in app store) A great weather app that I have set to show the current conditions on the home screen as well as a tiny little icon showing temperature in the icon strip. I have mine configured so that my current GPS location (updated every hour) is considered my “home” location and is what displays on the home screen. Then I keep track of my actual house location and Toronto (so I know how lucky I am to be living here). It also shows weather advisories as they are made available.

BatteryBooster: Actually, I only got BatterBooster because I wanted to get SmartWiFi but BatteryBooster was being offered for 1/2 of SmartWiFi’s price and had SmartWiFi bundled in as a package deal. BatteryBooster looks like it would probably help somewhat but many of the options did things like turn off the phone radio if the signal strength dropped too low or (with another bundled piece called PowerControl) it can turn off the whole unit at various times during the day. Since I often have a 24×7 requirement for my BlackBerry, this doesn’t benefit me at all. But the SmartWiFi app is great. Basically it figures out what cell towers are near WiFi spots you use. If you move away from those cell towers it turns off the WiFi radio. Likewise when you return to those cell towers it reenables the WiFi and reestablishes contact – completely transparently to me. I just happen to notice that my device is browsing the web MUCH faster when I get within range of those hotspots and I can see that I’m not wasting my WiFi power otherwise.

MailMinder: I make copious use of Profiles and filters on my blackberry. But the simple distinction between “normal” messages and “Level 1” was not quite what I needed. I have things set so most messages just appear on my device and I’ll get to them when I get to them. But I wanted to be able to distinguish between different kinds of high priority messages since, depending on the situation, I may or may not need to address them right away. So I use MailMinder to draw distinctions between messages from certain friends, warnings from the servers that I monitor, critical issues from the servers that I monitor, messages from my wife and notifications from my personal calendar on Google Calendar. MailMinder allows me to have distinct tones and LED colors for all of the above. Especially handy when I’m on call and the only thing I want to wake me up are critical server issues (and maybe messages from my wife…). If I’m in a meeting, the device can silently let me know just by its LED that a message has arrived from a friend and I can ignore it without even touching the BlackBerry. However a server failure worthy of interrupting the meeting will give me a blip and a red LED and I must be on my way.

RingScheduler: Another great app for someone with differing notification needs throughout the day. I have mine set so that it uses the “Normal” profile as its default. Every evening at 10 pm it switches to the “Phone only” profile until 8 am. On nights when I am oncall, I have oncall scheduled in my calendar as a 10 pm – 8 am meeting. RingScheduler sees the keyword “oncall” in the meeting and automatically switches me over to a custom “oncall” profile that I created. If I have an ad-hoc meeting or simply want to ensure that the BlackBerry will not disturb folks around me for a period of time, I can select the “Schedule Ringer Now” menu option that is available nearly everywhere in the device and set it to hold any of my profiles for a selectable period of time (a few minutes, a few hours), then the BlackBerry will switch back to whatever profile makes sense (default, timed, meeting based) when the ad hoc period ends. Very good if you have ever silenced your device while in a movie or a meeting and then forgotten to reset it and missed those phone calls or emails afterwards.

Ascendo DataVault: A worthy replacement for MiniSafe. It follows the same paradigms. My passwords, logon information, bank account information, etc. are stored in an encrypted file on my BlackBerry – available to me at any time. I bought the bundle that syncs the data with a desktop companion so I can more easily update and reference the same information when I’m working on my PC. It also boasts the ability to fill forms for you on your PC but I use a different app for that so I haven’t tried that functionality.

Twitter (from RIM): I’m not a power Twitter user by any stretch of the imagination so my needs are simple. I tried other offerings such as “Uber Twitter” and a couple of others whose names escape me now and they were not as good as this simple app made by RIM. It actually works in the background to refresh tweets – something the others seemed to have problems with – and it integrates very nicely with my messaging app so I can see that I have new tweets just by inspecting my inbox. And the notification is removed from my inbox when I return from Twitter. Simple and functional.

Bloomberg Mobile: Pretty clean, easy to set up and accurate. It’s amazing how hard it is to get a decent stock price app. I have concerns about battery drain with this app so I always exit out of it so it is not constantly running. But I like how it presents my data.

Facebook (by RIM): While I am sure there are probably better Facebook apps out there, this one from RIM is pretty straightforward, allowing me to post simple updates and pictures without any fuss at all as well as read items from my friends. It lacks the ability to honor the  filters I have set up on the web version to ignore crap such as game updates from bored folks but fortunately not too many of my friends are that desperate for stuff to do…

Google Sync: I only use this to sync calendar entries (not contacts) so I can speak solely to that half of its functionality. If you sync with another calendar system, Google Sync will recognize that fact and will not sync those entries with your Google Calendar. Have a LOT of experience working with corporate calendaring systems I can appreciate that there are probably huge complications that this avoids. But I put it to you that Google should develop read-only calendar entries so that so that your *complete* calendar can be reflected in Google Calendar and be available to aid in planning. As it is, I must choose what calendar to update for what events so that my wife or coworkers can see my busy times. Fortunately the BlackBerry *does* show all entries from all platforms, so I work mostly out of pocket informant.

Vlingo (Professional): I went crazy and sprang for the full version of Vlingo. Seduced as I was by the prospect of being able to largely dictate my emails. Two things: First – If you are in a modestly technical environment and you use a fair amount of jargon in your messages, especially names (people or computer names) then you’ll spend plenty of time manually correcting these. Vlingo’s “learning” ability seems to be more about grammar and sentence structure than individual words. No matter how often I corrected it, it never managed to spell my name correctly.  Second – I really don’t think that voice recognition is quite there yet. This app is amazingly good compared to other versions I’ve experimented with even in the past few years, but it either gets my words almost exactly right or laughably wrong. There does not seem to be a middle ground here yet. My favorite use for this app is to read incoming SMS text messages to me while I drive. The free version will accomplish this for you.

Gmail app: As I have my BlackBerry configured I really can’t work properly with Gmail using the native BlackBerry messaging application. In searching for the link for Gmail Mobile I see that there may be remedies out there for this but it’s a bit too late for me now. I review new messages on my handheld and then delete them permanently (handheld & mailbox) or just off the device (handheld only) if I want to add a label in Gmail later and then archive it. I use the Gmail app because there really isn’t a practical way to keep Gmail messages on the device in the default app and the Gmail app allows me access to search my entire Gmail mail database.

Evernote: I use Evernote on my PC a fair amount. I thought I’d use it more on my BlackBerry than I do, but even with the Torch device – which sports a respectable enough camera – Evernote takes such poor pictures that it is really only useful for non-text grossly obvious subjects. But the ability to search Evernote is handy.

Pandora: I’m of mixed opinions about using my SmartPhone as a music player. The idea of my phone being dead because I was listening to the latest “Katie Melua” song seems distasteful to me. Especially when I actually *do* have an iPod available to me. But the iPod’s weakness is that it cannot introduce me to new music and Pandora does a great job of that. This app doesn’t seem to have buffering issues (that I’ve noticed) and the commercials are not a nuisance. I may even upgrade my Pandora subscription to a paid membership if the Android version of this app is as good as this one.

BeamExplorer: If I really want to manipulate files on my handheld I plug it into my computer and use “mass storage mode”. But this little app is useful when you’re on the road and you want to find or move something other than a straight media file around.

Remember all of these are apps that I use pretty regularly and they are all worthwhile. My needs are more oriented towards business and communication and I think the apps that I favor reflect that. YMMV but I would not hesitate to recommend these apps for the right needs. Most of them I feel are best of breed except where I’ve indicated otherwise.

Battle of the Chocolate Milks – Mayfield Lowfat Chocolate Milk

Since there is a dearth of whole chocolate milk options to choose from, and I’ve already opened up this challenge to low fat contenders, I couldn’t resist picking up a “Mayfield Lowfat Chocolate Milk” while at the store last weekend.

Interestingly, the half gallon size (at $3.00) as pretty reasonable compared with the whole milk options which were selling for $2.50 for a quart (1/2 of a half gallon if you are used to metric).

Unexpectedly the lowfat option was significantly darker in color than its whole milk alternative. The taste was commensurately more bittersweet as well.

Not unexpected was the viscosity of the lowfat being much lower than that of the whole. This leads to my perceiving it as being somewhat more watery than I would prefer.

Surprisingly, on its own, it would could well have been passable. But contrasted with the current front runner (Mayfield Whole Chocolate Milk) the lowfat version stands tied for second place with Whole Food’s Whole Chocolate Milk offering.

Socialized Medicine – Looking Better and Better – I’m about to do the MRI Thing

For those that don’t know, I hail originally from Canada. There is a lot about America that attracts me and “Government staying out of my affairs” is a biggie. It is with no surprise then that I was very much in favor of shucking off a socialized medical system and its shortcomings for a more pay as you go system.

When I arrived here I was healthy and did not have kids so my contact with the medical system was minimal. Pretty much limited to a general physical now and then.

As I live here longer, I’m starting to grow more and more fearful of the financial repercussions of even a modest illness and find myself hesitant to take advantage of what is arguably one of the best medical systems in the world.

I’ve had a couple of procedures done over the past half decade or so and found myself annoyed that it is very difficult to get a cost for a procedure. They seem easily able to give you a bill before you go into the operating theater but try to get that bill amount when you are setting the appointment and people seem confused. On top of the, rather substantial, bill that you pay up front. The little bills that keep floating in weeks or months later are unexpected and annoying. When you call about them you will find that they are “usual and customary” but that is only for folks in the billing departments of hospitals or in insurance departments.

If I went to a mechanic and had my transmission replaced you can be sure that I am going to get an estimate from him. That estimate better be what I’m charged at the end unless something unusual comes up and, if it’s substantial, I expect a further call to ensure that I want the extra work done (maybe they notice a broken support for the engine while they’ve got the car up on the lift). You can be damn sure I’m not going to be receiving a bill from the “Oil Support Technician” or “Hydraulic Lift Specialist” two months after the fact because they consider it “Usual and Customary”.

In medicine it seems perfectly OK to have essential folks’ services completely omitted from any estimates. I had a hernia operation about 6 years ago and the anesthetist’s (or anesthesiologist’s – can never keep those two straight)  services, something that I consider quite essential when I’m to be rendered unconscious for surgery, were charged for separately at least a month after the fact. I had to call to see if this was legit or some kind of scam because I was so amazed at this boldness.

I need to have an MRI to sort out some issues left over from my bicycle accident a few months back. On Friday my doctor tells me he’ll begin a precertification for this. Today I receive a call from the MRI place to schedule an appointment. I went ahead and set up a date and decided to persue this to see if it’s possible to determine one’s liability and maybe plan for this kind of thing.

The girl on the phone for scheduling, of course, can do nothing for me to help nail down the cost of this thing. So I contact my insurance company. After 15 minutes waiting on the phone I find out that my insurance company contracts out radiology type stuff to a 3rd party precertification company. I’m told I need to call back if I want to find out more about costs because their department also doesn’t handle that.

So I call the insurance company back. We’ll leave the sorry-ass IVR system out of this conversation suffice it to say that it aided me not at all in getting to a customer service rep. All the rep is able to tell me is that I’ll have a $500 deductible and then I’m responsible for 20% of the cost beyond that. OK, that’s in my benefits plan. How much does this kind of procedure cost?  All he is able to tell me is that it will be a negotiated amount and that my liability will be as he’s already said.

So I contact the third party pre-cert group and find that my doctor’s office hasn’t yet initiated the precertification process with them and that my plan is the kind where only a doctor or the MRI folks can initiate the process. But that this process typically takes one business day, so my appointment (scheduled for next week) is not yet in jeopardy.

So I contact my doctors office to see what needs to be done, they acknowledge that they need to initiate this and that they’ll call me back.They call back within the hour and it turns out that this is the normal way that things are done since the pre-cert company likes to know where and when the procedure will occur. So I’ve jumped the gun on this part but they tell me that everything is now in place.

Finally I call the billing department of the MRI folks. It took them 10 minutes to figure out how much this was going to cost me. When I asked if this was an all inclusive price, explicitly mentioning that there’ll be someone administering an IV they did agree that I can expect another, separate bill from them that should only be in the range of “a hundred or so dollars”.

So, an MRI of my head, both with contrast and without will cost me no less than $868. With a little math that puts the “negotiated cost” at $2,340. Then I can expect at least another $100 bill to come floating in sometime after that for the IV person and I have no idea how many other folks it is “usual and customary” to have wander into the room while the procedure is under way and then send me a bill.

The care we have available might be some of the best in the world, but the cost for that care is terrifying – for its magnitude certainly but more so for its quixotic cost. For all its pitfalls, under a socialized medical scheme for all but the most catastrophic of issues my liability is capped so I do not have to put my self or my family at financial risk – heck it’s not even a risk because you cannot even begin to forecast the costs before you begin it’s really more of a game of chance than anything that can be calculated.

So color me leaning back in favor of the socialized medicine side of the debate.  If we can get to a system where I can get off the phone with an appointment and a guaranteed estimate (representing the cost both with and without insurance) and none of those “gotchas” that make this such a risk I will rethink this. Hell I can do it for my car, my cat and my washing machine. Surely we’ve got enough knowledge and experience to estimate simple procedures accurately by now.

Beware Amazon Price Watch

I love Amazon.com. I do a LOT of my shopping there. Anything from my TV to my rowing machine to filters for my furnace I purchase through Amazon.

Anybody who has dealt with Amazon knows that prices tend to fluctuate rather a lot.

Recently I was opining that Amazon’s kindle book prices should not be greater than those for new hardcopy books. So I set about looking for some kind of price watch tool that could alert me when ANY Amazon price changes, I was specifically interested in finding a tool that could track Kindle book prices as well.

This turns out to be pretty hard to find.

In my travels I elected to install a piece of [expletive deleted] software from nukeprice.com called “Amazon Price Watcher”. I found the software on CNet which is usually a pretty reliable source of safe software.

Right away, after installing it, I wasn’t impressed with the interface. It really wasn’t clear how it did what it was supposed to do and there was no useful help at all.

The clincher is that the uninstall – when you find it in the program files folder – doesn’t really uninstall everything. I ended up manually going through the registry to get this hunk of junk off my system.

I had already pointed it to my wish list (public wishlist) so it had already absorbed some of my current items of interest.  So for the past week I’ve been receiving daily emails from nukeprice.com telling me about one item that seems to drop by about 2 cents a day.

The *only* way, according to the email, to stop the emails is to reinstall the software and then change my watches. There is an intimation that the watch my expire on July 21 so that may ultimately stop the messages.

Of course I don’t feel comfortable with that software so it’s not going back on my machine so I’ll be spamming the incoming emails in the interim.

I just wanted to post this in case anybody is smarter than I am and searches teh intertubes for some opinions on Amazon Price Watch before installing.

I’ll say it again to be clear. I do not like “Amazon Price Watch” by nukeprice.com, the interface is confusing, the help is terrible and it doesn’t uninstall right.

Yech.

Battle of the Chocolate Milks – Nesquik Reduced Fat Chocolate Milk

I have already expressed my disapproval of Nestle’s “Quik” chocolate powder. It is just sloppy with big sugar granules and relatively little chocolate. I suppose cocoa is the more expensive ingredient and so they use sugar to fill up as much space as possible.

Their “Nesquik Reduced Fat Chocolate Milk” offering is of a similar bent.

The one positive thing I can say for it is that it was not at all watery which seems to be an issue with low fat anything. So it does have that going for it.

But the color is an unappealing grey/beige and the taste is remarkably devoid of any flavor at all. If you favor subtle then this may be your chocolate milk drink.

Verdict: unappealing

Mayfield is still the drink of choice.

Battle of the Chocolate Milks – Kroger Chocolate Lowfat Milk

Originally I had intended to only use whole milk offerings of the chocolate kind. But Michelle very kindly decided to pick up some samples for me recently while she was in Kroger and they simply didn’t have any. So I’ve expanded my evaluation to include low fat offerings as well.

The first one I tried was “Kroger Chocolate Lowfat Milk”.

The color was OK, but rather predictably it was somewhat watery. The taste also tended toward the bittersweet end of the spectrum.

Do you remember those wonderful, creamy fudgesicles you used to get when you were younger? Well this is instead more like those crappy, watery knock-offs that your parents used to be able to buy by the dozen at the supermarket.

Verdict: Unsatisfying.

Mayfield is still the drink of choice.

Alienware and good customer service experience.

Several years ago I had a terrible experience with Dell’s customer service and a video card on my still-under-warranty system. The experience involved me being hung up on and eventually sourcing my own parts from my local Microcenter.

After ignoring them for my subsequent computer purchase I’ve since ordered other Dell products, mostly because they offer IMHO the best combination of customizability and pricing that I’ve been able to find. My Inspiron 530 worked pretty well except for the “missing RAM” problem that a lot of people both with and without Dell products got stung by. It was that missing RAM experience combined with my earlier customer service issue that had driven me to try a boutique online computer shop instead of Dell originally.

Once that was all sorted out I decided to go with an Alienware machine in spite of my concerns. The costs and ability to get pretty much exactly what I wanted won out in the end.

About 3 weeks after I received the new system, the fan on the Video card (ATI Radeon HD 5870) started making noises that told me that it was giving up the ghost. It was especially disappointing given that all the other fans on that computer stay very quiet depending on the load. This one fan was louder than my nearby fridge when it’s in full swing.

So I called Alienware support (still separate from Dell’s support ultimately even though the front end is the same) and all the horror stories I had heard about Dell ruining the Alienware branding proved… unfounded.

The tech was knowledgeable, we quickly came to an agreement as to the issue. They shipped out a new card which arrived a few days later and whose box I used to return the failing card with no hassle or cost.

The new card is working great and I’ve had no other issues. The Alienware machine is pricier than piecing together a machine for yourself, but that also depends on how much you value your time. I much prefer *using* my computer to tweaking it, generally speaking.

I wanted to put this kudo out there for Alienware’s support and say that my experience, at least, was just fine.

Kudos to Flushmate

About 3 years ago I had all 3 toilets in my house replaced by with new ones powered by Flushmate’s pressure assist systems (the actual toilets are made by Gerber).

A few days ago one of them stopped working so I started pulling it apart to figure out what the problem was. I ended up on Flushmate’s website and found a wealth of information, most useful were a series of videos showing how to test and replace various components of their system. I was originally a little hesitant to go for the new technology since I *knew* that I could always get parts for conventional toilets at my local hardware store but was not sure what would happen should I have issues with these new units.

After watching the videos I could tell right away what was not obvious from reading the install manual, the actuator shaft of the flush cartridge was sheared through, but the break was smooth enough I did not initially recognize that it was not *supposed* to be in two pieces. I called their 1-800 number and, as it was a Saturday, I ended up leaving them a voicemail with the particulars of my situation.

Come Monday morning, Dawn from flushmate called me back and we determined that the flush cartridge was indeed broken and covered under their 10 year warranty. Even though the toilet had not originally be registered with them they honored the warranty and immediately shipped out a replacement cartridge.

Thursday the part arrived by regular mail and half an hour later the toilet was right as rain.

So I wanted to toss up my story of an easy to work with company that honors its stated commitment to its product without a lot of fuss and bother.

And these are still the best toilets we have ever owned. Three years and I’m sure they can flush anything Consumer Reports can throw at them. Exactly what our sewage system needs!

Battle of the Chocolate Milks – The Fresh Market

This battle pits The Fresh Market’s “Grade A Chocolate Milk from Jersey Cows” against my last post’s winner, “Mayfield Whole Chocolate Milk”.

The Fresh Market’s foods are very often my favorites. They make some great cakes and brownies  and I expected their chocolate milk to be a strong contender.

They did not disappoint, their chocolate milk offering has a great color and is smooth and flavorful but… misses for me on one crucial element. The taste tends more toward the bittersweet end of the spectrum than does the Mayfield offering.

If you know me, you know I’m not a fan of bittersweet chocolate. I’d say that, if you prefer your chocolate a little less sweet than I do, then I think I’d give The Fresh Market’s chocolate milk the edge. But, for me, I have to say that Mayfield Chocolate milk is still the one to beat.

Battle of the Chocolate Milks

As you know, I like my chocolate milk. And with the end of my supply of Hershey’s Chocolate Milk Powder I’ve begun searching for the pre-made chocolate milk brand that is best of breed and is easily available to me.

My other criteria are that it should have a smooth texture (not granular or “sugary”) and it should be something that I would look forward to drinking rather than merely be a utilitarian aspect of my meal.

I was in a Publix store yesterday and all that they had available were “Publix Chocolate Grade A Milk”  and “Mayfield Whole Chocolate Milk“. I’ve elected to skip the skim or fat-reduced versions of these because, really, what would be the point? If I were concerned about calories I really shouldn’t be drinking chocolate milk at all.

The Publix offering was, to put it kindly, subtle. Even looking at the drink you could tell it was not going the be the richest chocolate milk out there. It was certainly not objectionable, it was simply not outstanding.

The Mayfield offering, on the other hand, was a dark brown in color and was much richer and flavorful. Until I have the chance to try some others, this one will be my “favorite”.