Category: Uncategorized

The cost of making a trip differently in the US, in terms of time, effort, and driving habits, is small. For any individual trip, I’m not sure how many people will change their habits. My wife doesn’t, and the Prius is great because she just drives and gets 40+mpg. I pay more attention and can usually get over 50MPG.

So will people use the new technology from Ford that shows a more economical route? I don’t know. I think if there’s very little personal cost in terms of time or hassle, they will. If it’s annoying, has more traffic, takes more time, etc., they won’t.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

I liked Android, I really did, and I thought my G1 was the best phone I’d had to date when I got it. I’ve had Motorolas, Nokias, Sidekicks, a Dash and another Windows Mobile, but out of the gate, the  G1 and Android was better. But there were 2 things that weren’t polished on it and didn’t work well for me.

• Reading
• Music

Those might not be important for most people, and certainly aren’t for this ZDNet writer. But they are for me. I used my phone to do these things, primarily in this order:

• Read
• Music
• Social Network
• Text/email
• Games
• Phone

Kind of funny, huh? It’s a PDA for the most part that makes phone calls. It converges, and it allows me to do a lot when I’m in motion, which seems to be constantly. Despite the fact that I work at home, I’m not always at a PC, and a cell phone needs to do these things for me.

The iPhone does this, and that’s why I switched. It just works better overall. Not at multi-tasking (it doesn’t) and not necessarily with some things I would use more, like calendaring, but it does things well enough for me.

That might be changing with Amazon finally moving the Kindle app to Android. If that had been done last year, I might have stuck with my G1, or upgraded to a MyTouch, but it didn’t, and I didn’t.

Now if there were a good music sync app, I’d be interested. As much as I’d like to say that I’ll keep the music on my phone, I have a lot ripped to my PC, and I often manage my playlists and get organized on my PC. Same for apps. Some things work in a pinch, but they aren’t what I want to do on a regular basis. Sometimes I just want a larger screen to work with, and for organizing music and photos, I want a PC to help.

Tomorrow kicks off the second 24 hours of PASS event. 24 consecutive 1 hour sessions presented around the globe by SQL Server professionals from all around the globe. These are video/audio webcasts that will start on 12GMT on May 19 and continue through 12GMT on May 20.

There’s a great lineup of speakers this year. You can check out the entire lineup here, and I’d encourage you to attend a session or two if you can. There’s a lot of information on SQL Server 2008 R2, so you can get up to speed on some new features if you want.

I’m not a part of it due to a holiday being scheduled, but I enjoyed it last year, and I had a good time watching a few of the sessions.

From Barnes and Noble. You can get them on a Nook, Blackberry, iPhone/Ipad, or PC. They are offering a few free titles to you with a coupon. You need to go to a B&N store to get the code, but you can get these titles:

1. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (first week’s free title)
2. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
3. Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg
4. Storm Front by Jim Butcher
5. One Shot by Lee Childs

I’ve read The Long Tail and One Shot, both of which I’d recommend, but I don’t have One Shot as an ebook. I might go in to check this out if I’m near a store sometime soon.