iPhone vs Droid

I now have both phones. This isn't a totally fair comparison, as I have a NEW Moto Droid, and a 1st Generation iPhone.

The iPhone is definitely a great phone, that redefined what should be expected from a smartphone over the last couple of years. The apps that are available are excellent. The usability of the device is incredible. The interface is Apple shiny smooth. The call quality is decent, and the media capabilities of the device are unmatched. The exchange integration is mediocre at best, and the first generation's lack of hardware encryption makes it almost useless to any corporate user due to prevalent mobile device security policies of the day. Where this phone fails, is the network. Yes, my phone isn't 3G. It doesn't matter. AT&T 3G coverage in my area is spotty at best. Why would I upgrade to pay $10 more a month, lose my text messages, and get the same data speeds?

The Motorola Droid on the other hand is almost the opposite of the iPhone. The Droid runs Android 2.0. I am very impressed with the Android OS. It does a lot of things extremely well. It also fully supports Google Voice, which I use almost all the time for inbound call screening. The best part of the Droid is it's network. The Verizon 3G network has yet to let me down in the many, many places that I have taken it. The corporate email is still lacking, as it doesn't have a full implementation of ActiveSync. No remote wipe, etc.

To get around the corporate issues, both of these phones are supported by Good Technology.

So, the deciding factor for me on this, is the network. AT&T is totally spotty when it comes to 3G. You can't dual task on the phone in Edge mode. My suggestion, get a droid and an iPod touch.

Erik Buell moving on To EBR

Erik Buell's last day with Buell Motorcycle company will be November 30th. From then on, he will be founding Erik Buell Racing. This new venture will manufacture, support, and develop race parts for the 1125R based race only bikes under license from Harley Davidson.

What does this mean? Well, hopefully we will still have an American made bike that is a real contender in the AMA DSB and Superbike classes. I know that many of us are happy for Danny Eslick, and Team RMR. However, there decision to move to Suzuki's is troubling. Yes, Danny earned the #1 plate last year, but the Suziki he will be riding this year, sure didn't.

Who is going to be riding a Buell next year? Not too sure at this moment in the previously mentioned classes, however we know that the James Gang, and several other privateer Buell teams will more than likely compete again next year.

Go Buell Racing!

Eslick and RMR receive the #1 Plate for Daytona Sportbike

Snow Leopard - 30 day Review

Well, it's been a few weeks since Snow Leopard was released publicly. I purchased my copy in advance, and had it ready to install on the 28th. There is only one problem. Not many vendors were ready to support their software on it. Normally, i would just take the plunge, and give it a try, but not this time. I utilize PGP's WDE product. It isn't supported under Snow Leopard. Sure, I could just decrypt, and run without it, but in my mind the risks are too great. Without a bootup password on Apple products, WDE is my only defense when it comes to protecting my data in the event it is stolen.

I can't wait much longer :) I am an Entourage user, and totally hate it. It's the worst app by far. I am really looking forward to Apple Mail / Calendar integration with Exchange!

Never Forget

I hear quite a few folks saying, "It's been 8 years, move on."

I don't get it. How do you just move on? Would you say the same thing to those folks who lost loved ones on December 7th, 1941? Sure, not everyone is still feeling the lasting long term effects, but some are, and will forever. I don't see a problem with paying respect for those innocent folks whose lives were taken 8 years ago today.

God Bless America.

Marine Corps Bans Twitter, Facebook

RIP - Farrah

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30072275/?GT1=43001

Very Cool Expense Tracking Tool

For the past few months, I have tried to get a handle on my daily expenses from a tracking standpoint. I have tried excel spreadsheets, big stacks of receipts, and several different iPhone apps. However, I think that I may have found the ultimate tool to tackle this problem. I am talking about the web app xpenser. (http://www.xpenser.com)

Xpenser tackles the problem at the root. It makes it super simple to record the expense WHEN IT HAPPENS. How does it do this? The incredible number of methods it supports for entering data. Today it supports the following:

1.) Web Interface - You can enter your expenses directly into the web interface.
2.) SMS - You can SMS your expenses to a bot,
3.) IM - You can IM your expenses to a bot.
4.) EMAIL - You can Email your expenses to a bot email address.
5.) VOICE - You can actually call a number, leave a one sentence entry, and it converts it to an entry.
6.) TWITTER - You can have it follow your twitter account, and it can transfer entries.

All of it is pretty cool. You can also track your time along with your expenses. What a great tool for the consultants out there, and those of us trying to track our expenses a bit better.

iPhone 3G S

Yes!

Its about time! The iPhone 3G S has all of the features that many of us had hoped would be in the original iPhone, and the 3G model that came out last year. I am totally excited, and can't wait to pick one up.

Powerful

I didn't WEEP. Well, definitely not tears of joy.

It's Time for a Tea Party

Did you know?

March Madness - How to counter the bandwidth suck

Every year us folks responsible for corporate networks have to be the bad cops. This is one of those times, March Madness. Now, thanks to the NCAA, all of the games can be watched online for free. Luckily these folks have also made all of the video play via the same Fully Qualified Domain Name (http://mmod.ncaa.com).

So all you have to do is block that particular host. This can be done several ways.

1.) add mmod.ncaa.com to your block list on OpenDNS
2.) Create a firewall rule at all of your sites to block to mmod.ncaa.com, and its IP addresses.
3.) Create a false DNS record on your internal dns servers to point to nowhere
4.) Create a hosts file and distribute it via GPO or other means to block the lookup.

Option number 1 is much easier, and OpenDNS provides quite a bit of value for being a free service. I would suggest taking a look at it. http://www.opendns.com/

iPhone OS 3.0 - My take

Ok. First off, I am a proud owner of a G1 iPhone. I love it. When I heard about iPhone 3.0, I figured that besides the GPS in iPhone 2.0, that they would continue to add some features that would try to push me to a new 3G version of the phone. So far, they haven't, but the feature I was really wanting to see, is a 3G only option. Bluetooth stereo. It must be some type of hardware shortfall between the iPhone 1.0 and 3G. I had thought that other than the GPS and 3G, that both phones were pretty much hardware identical. Perhaps not. I would love to get bluetooth stereo, but is it worth purchasing a new iPhone, and having to pay premium 3G rates in an area where 3G is barely available? Nope. Not yet.

Other cool stuff in the new version.

1.) Purchases inside of Apps
2.) Maps inside Apps from the Map Kit API (New)
3.) Like 1000 new API's in the SDK.
4.) Picture MMS - 3G only
5.) Push Notification for 3rd Party Apps

And a few others. What are your takes?

St. Patrick's Day Music

A couple of years ago, I happened across the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast by SongHenge, and Marc Gunn. Its a great cast, full of awesome traditional and contemporary Irish tunes.

http://celticmusicpodcast.com

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes!

New IPod Shuffle

So a new shuffle was announce by Apple today.

Check out http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/features.html for the full info on the new shuffle.

Its super tiny. It does have some new features besides its improved diminuitiveness. It now allows you to put multiple playlists on the device, along with the new Voiceover feature. At $79 for the 4GB model, it seams that the pricing model isn't changing. I am a big fan of the previous shuffle, but I think that this one is bordering on a bit too small, and very easily lost :)

Great IMS Videos

Removing Quota from VPOPMAIL with Qmail

./home/vpopmail/bin/vmoduser -q NOQUOTA user@domain.org

Getting Rid of an old Computer - Tips

So, you just got this spankin fast computer for Christmas, and you are wondering what to do with that old machine. There are tons of options from donation to recycling, but lets take a moment to go through some personal security issues that arise from discarding old machines.

Unless you never used your machine to check your bank account, do a family budget, or put any other kind of any personal information, you can just donate away. But most of us, actually used the machines to assist with the daily tasks of managing personal information, including accessing our banks websites, doing our taxes, etc. These tasks, even when we "delete" files, still leaves quite a bit of obtainable information behind.

For this reason, before you get rid of any computers I always suggest that you run a DBAN on it. DBAN is short for Darren's Boot and Nuke. It basically writes over the drive several times to prevent any data that was previously on the machine from being recoverable. The DBAN utility is available freely for download from the internet.

RIM issues security patch for BES 4.1

For all of you iPhone haters out there, RIM has security issues too.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10141507-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

10 Year Old Peter Lenz

Absolutely incredible.