Posted by Doug
Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:52:20 GMT
My hot company, Rosetta Stone, has bought me a gorgeous Samsung t809. The display on this phone is stunning. I like the size and weight. I like the auto-lock keypad. What I don’t like is that it doesn’t support the syncML Bluetooth profile. This means it’s incapable of working with Mac OS X’s iSync.
I was just about to throw in the towel and swap the phone out for an uglier Motorola V360 when David Nanian (of Super Duper! fame) gave me an idea. I had just gotten off the phone with Samsung’s tech support. The end of that conversation was, “We have no phones for T-Mobile that work with a Mac.” When I told that to David he reminded me that any GSM phone will work with T-mobile if you just plug in your SIM card.
That got me thinking. I still have my Sony Ericsson T637 that has always worked marvelously with iSync. Why not simply use my SE T637 as a very clumsy conduit between my Mac and my t809? It works pretty well. Here’s my steps:
- Power down t809, remove T-Mobile SIM card.
- Power down SE T637, insert T-Mobile SIM card, power back up.
- Use iSync to load phone numbers onto SE T637.
- Use the T637 to copy phonebook out to the SIM card.
- Power down SE T637, remove T-Mobile SIM card
- Replace SIM card back into t809
- Power up t809 and feel the love!
There are two things that make this work fairly nicely. The first is props to Sony Ericsson for first-off working with iSync; second for nicely allowing me to copy all my phone numbers out to the SIM card. Second, while I can copy the numbers from my SIM card into the t809’s memory it easily allows me to use the numbers directly off the card.
Besides the umpteen steps needed to complete this process, all is not a bed of roses. The biggest limitation of this process is the extremely simplified phonebook on the SIM card. It’s basically one name, one number. So instead of getting one contact with both a cell phone and a home phone, I get “Joe Somebody/Home” and “Joe Somebody/Cell” and “Joe Somebody/Work”.... I may grow tired of that, we’ll see. For the time being, I’m happy enough with this hackery.
Posted in Mac OS X, Hardware | Tags Ericsson, iSync, phone, Samsung, Sony, T637, t809 | no comments
Posted by Doug
Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:02:38 GMT
My son Joshua is eight. He loves video games, loves robots, and loves video games about robots. As a full-fledged computer geek, I really want him to enjoy computers as much as I do. I want him to be able to work creatively on a computer and enjoy it. In this quest I bought him a new game this weekend.
We were at Micro Center this weekend returning my bum mouse. As usual, we spent the requisite 15 minutes in the “Mac Games” section. He really wants RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, but it’s $50. I stumbled across MindRover that had been marked down to $9. I figured this was perfect.
The setting for this game is that you’re a researcher doing work in Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Since you can’t go there yourself, you design robots with AI to go complete missions. It’s a thinking game. Josh is totally excited about this game. You select missions, select a robotic vehicle chassis, put various components on the chassis, and then wire them up. I’ve done my best to set his expectations for this game. It really is a lot like programming. You have to program sensors to the thrusters so that the robot will either move towards or away from other objects. There are lots of other events that can be wired to various components to control behavior. It looks extremely well done. As such, it’s quite complicated.
I just spent my lunch hour with Josh just going through the “basics” tutorial. I had to explain things like “sensor”, “radar”, “angles”, “thrust”, “friction”, “resistance”, and even right-clicking the mouse! It’s not that Josh can’t understand these things. I have full confidence he can. It’s just that he’s never been exposed to this level of detail in mechanical and electrical design. The reading level for the user’s guide is probably 6th grade; maybe higher.
So, I’ve set myself up. This really is a great game for Josh. He’s all the time thinking about robots and how to build them. This gives him an idea of the complexity for robots and the types of things you have to do without letting him get bogged down in actually working with how a sonar actually works. On the other hand, the game really is too advanced for him at his current level. I’ve been putting off the Lego MindStorms because I’m not sure he’s quite ready for those either. The good news is that with this game I’m only out $9 for him to learn. With the Legos it’d be a lot more.
The moral of the story is that I really want Josh to be able to play this game successfully. He really wants to play this game successfully. Odds are though I’ll have to play the game with him each time he play for the first while. If I don’t I’m sure he’s going to get frustrated and not play. There’s really no way for him to learn this game on his own.
So it’s all up to me. His success with this game is 100% related to how much time I spend teaching it to him. That’s a lot of pressure on me. It’s certainly good for me to have some pre-structured one on one time with Josh. The bad news is that if I don’t do it for whatever reason he’s going to be pretty disappointed with me. Here’s praying I don’t drop the ball.
Posted in Family, Josh, Software | Tags Lego, MindStorm, parenting, puppy, Quicksilver | 1 comment
Posted by Doug
Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:04:54 GMT
So I returned my Logitec V270 Bluetooth Mouse (you can read about my less than ideal mouse experiences). I replaced it with the Kensington Pilotmouse Mini Bluetooth. Unfortunately, I’ve found it to be less than ideal as well.
I love the size and feel of the Kensington Pilotmouse Mini. It’s not really a “mini”. It’s only slightly smaller than my standard sized Kensington Iridio. I like the way the Pilotmouse Mini looks. The silver and blue is sleek. The rubberized feel is nice too. I have pretty much zero pairing problems with my 12” Aluminum Apple Powerbook (1.33GHz G4).
My main problem is that tracking is unpredictable. I got the Kensington Mouseworks driver (which, btw, bonus points for the cute icon) version 2.5 which didn’t recognize my bluetooth mouse even thought the release notes said it should. I waited on hold for however long to talk to some guy in India who finally told me version 2.5 of Mouseworks wasn’t compatible with Mac OS 10.4.4 and that a new version would be coming out shortly. In the meantime I kept wavering between the Pilotmouse and my Iridio depending on how much I hated wires at the moment. The Kensington software update didn’t notice when the new driver was released. I had to go find it myself. The good news is that it recognized my Pilotmouse Mini Bluetooth. The bad news is that I still have tracking problems.
So, I’m returning the Pilotmouse and I’ve just ordered the RadTech BT510. It’s not especially attractive, but it’s gotten some excellent reviews. I’m a little worried about this comment
Update: From John Grzeskowiak at RadTech; ”...we’re working to find out why some are having cursor instabilities with the 510 – we plan to release a button-mapping driver soon which will be able to slow the acceleration curve and prevent this condition which seems to affect about 20% of the folks using this mouse with a Mac.”
I’m assuming that the “button mapping driver” is the RadMouse Bluetooth HID Driver. Also, the above lined article doesn’t have a date. So I can’t really tell if RadTech has had time to release any updates to the driver or mouse to compensate for the problem.
What I’m really worried about is that my Powerbook somehow falls into that “20% of the folks using this mouse with a Mac” and will affect all my Bluetooth endeavors. For the record though, I do have the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and am quite happy with it.
Posted in Hardware | Tags Apple, Bluetooth, Kensington, Logitech, Mice, RadTech | 4 comments
