TechAddict

Of course, I will have to suck it up when it comes to the bane of a majority of American cell phone users, the money I will pay to escape the bonds of imprisonment with this last mobile provider’s contract.

But, sometimes to have a better quality of life, a little hurt in the wallet is worth it, especially if the long-term benefits truly enhance your quality of life, as I’m hoping my new service plan will.

As for finally having a clear signal and being able to actually hold a call where I live, for more than two minutes – I’m impressed. I talked for an hour to a friend last night, and not one dropped call in my tiny basement living space, where before, I could hardly hold a conversation over my Verizon mobile. And this has been my only phone since I moved here. I don’t have a landline to fall back on, which made it that much more disastrous when I couldn’t even get the basics I’d expect from a cellular provider.

I chose the Cingular 8525, the Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone -- I know I could have gone with a much cheaper model of phone, but that's just not me. I always want all of the bells and whistles, access to the Internet at all times, text messaging, email and multimedia capabilities. So, instead of another Treo (even though Cingular offers them in similar models, I felt too burned and hesitant to give these Palm models another try), I went for something different to the tune of about $450 before taxes and activation fee.

I don't like it that this one runs on Windows, since I have a Mac, but I was willing to make a concession since I do have Virtual PC, which allows my Mac to run Windows programs and because it’s almost impossible to find phones (except for the still elusive iPhone that Apple dangles above us like a carrot) that work well with Macs.

However, when I connected my phone to my Apple PowerBook with the USB cable, popped in and installed the ActiveSync software from the cd and then attempted to sync my laptop to this mobile machine last night, my computer said it could not locate the device - okay, this could be bad, but I was so damned happy to get a signal (and tired last night) that I did not focus too much on it; not going to jump the gun, because maybe there is an easy fix out there. (Et voila - sure enough, I did later find a potential fix via a Google search, which resulted in a website featuring third-party software built for the purpose of helping Macs and many types of PC mobile devices talk to one another: http://pocketmac.net)

I also tried a number of times to sign in to a few different email accounts with usernames and passwords I knew for a fact were correct, but, no matter how many times I tried, I was denied access. I’m thinking this could be because the customer service reps told me it takes 48-72 hours to get everything in place with the account. I guess time will tell.

Other than that, I LOVE that it combines the options of letting me access the Internet via broadband AND WiFi. My old Treo was only broadband-accessible. So that's a bonus to me.

When I showed the manager my military ID card, I also garnered a 19 percent monthly discount off my bill. Suh-WEET! Since my plan is around $120 per month, this is a significant enough savings, over time, for me.

Plus, Cingular has a store that is practically so close to me, I could walk there, and Verizon did not. I think there was an obvious difference in the level of customer service I experienced from the beginning.

When I asked if I still had to punch in a combination of keys each month to update the phone on the network, the guy just looked at me and laughed and said, "Nope, that's a Verizon thing." Apparently, my new device is smart enough to do all of that without my human intervention. Even cooler. I’m all for this non-preschool version of a Smartphone.

Having gotten used to the Treo, I figured I might have a slight learning curve with the Windows Mobile phone, but it’s pretty easy to navigate, perhaps even more so for devout Windows users.

So, Verizon, consider me a customer divorced from you, happy, and with good riddance.

P.S. Okay, maybe one other gripe I do have is that when I had my Treo, I could easily access radio stations, podcasts and other content from one basic screen, and, as far as I can tell, this is not available on the Cingular network?

I just discovered "blidgets" today. They rock!

Blidget is a buzzword coined from "blog" plus "widget."

I found out about this on Widgetbox and created a few using my own blogs on Vox, the new Blogger and this one on Tribe.

Try it. There is a fairly visible button right on Widgetbox's front page (left side) to lead you through the process of making your own. I'm unsure as of yet how useful this is to me, but it's cool and new, which usually are the two things that really get me pretty techxited! Believe me, I am a litterer. I suspect I've created more than my virtual environmental footprint should allow of "blog debris," setting up blogs just so I can test out cool new tools.

Which makes me wonder - could we one day in the future be cited or penalized for "blittering" (littering the blogosphere with useless, unused blogs)? Hmmm, interesting concept. Will these offending blogs need to be "o-blitter-ated" by their owners?

I guess we will see as we continue riding the cyber highway into this new and enchanted age.

Anyway, there are a few handy-dandy ways to create your designerific blidgets. You can choose for them to display horizontally or vertically with differently colored backgrounds, and add an image. There is even a last option that will let you add it to your MySpace page.

So have fun, and give me some feedback to let me know what you think on this, and I'll get off my word-coining soapbox... that is until the next new thing causes me to jump right back on it.

NOTE: (If you click on "techxited" above, you will see that I even "Googlemarked" it - this is not affiliated with the well-known enterprise, Google, BTW)

I am attending a Social Media Club event held by Ogilvy P.R. at one of their offices in Washington D.C. tonight - upcoming.org/event/137953/ I just happened across it today via my Upcoming.org account - handy site.

Best of all the event is free and open to anyone interested in the topic.

I hope to network, learn and add something to the conversation.

TreefromBeneathGreenbeltMDJan07

2 comments

Something has really changed from within in the past 2-3 weeks. I'm not sure why or how, and I'm almost afraid to acknowledge it too much and jinx the feeling, but I feel like I'm in the midst of this deeply creative flow lately, as if I've tapped into an open spigot on the stream of universal consciousness. I'm not sure what's going on. I didn't do anything specific to bring this about. I feel more confidence surging up from inside than ever before, and I seem to be having fortuitous meetings with people of like minds at every turn.

I am brimming with so many ideas that I keep a small notebook in my purse and at my bedside. I try to note everything that sparks some curiosity or gets my creative juices flowing -- URLs to check out and add to my Blinklist, things I overhear from strangers, words I pick up on and enjoy from books I'm reading, lists of recommendations for independent or foreign films from friends and colleagues, subjects I wish to blog about, descriptive phrases I think of as I'm traveling in new places, etc. If I didn't write these things down, I think I'd have too many ideas rattling around in my brain to ever wind down or go to sleep. And, as a writer, I can't just let go of ideas and lose them. I must capture my impressions as if preserving precious flames that may soon die out. This is something I've been passionate about for over half my life. It's the reason I've kept blogs since 1998 and the reason I became an Army journalist and went on deployments to cover stories about our military troops in different areas of the world.

When I'm feeling really enterprising, I use my Treo 700p to record tidbits of multimedia, such as random photos I find the opportunity to take, and experiences I wish to share with others later with both pictures and sounds in the form of short videos, such as the honking Canadian geese that surrounded me in Greenbelt, Maryland, yesterday when I had a nice run around the local lake near my home. (Funny, I think my coworker was shocked that I carry my Treo on runs with me - I guess that really tells you what a gadget freak, geek (pick your term), etc. I am; but I'm okay with that.)

It seems that having this technology all in one machine that I can hold in the palm of my hand energizes my creative faculties and frees me to do even more with my thoughts and ideas as they transpire. It even makes me more alert to looking for those random, serendipitous bits of data floating around in the world.  With my Treo at my side, I am never bogged down trying to find paper or pen when it's not available (although, with me, it usually is to be found nearby), and the Smartphone technology is intuitive enough for me that I can immediately make use of it, file away what I want to remember in either audio, text, graphic or video format and/or share that with someone else through the phone's communication options of text messaging, instant messaging or email; then I can get back to whatever I was doing either before or when the idea struck me.

At times I use the calendar to keep up on dates with friends and important deadlines that loom at work, as well as when there's an upcoming PBS, History or Discovery Channel special on television (which I rarely watch, so I have to remind myself that it's there as a medium for me). Lately, this seems to make a huge difference in the way I process and use information in my life, for the better.

The Treo's memo function is especially handy since I am an addicted bibliophile and cannot begin to be able to buy every book I want when I step into a bookstore, not all at once anyway. So after I've combed a bookstore and gathered an armload of the types of books I couldn't put down and escape buying in the past, I now just add their titles and authors to the ongoing, already lengthy list on my Treo. Then, I can quell my anxiety about having to buy them right then and there, and I can later look for these titles at a local library or for a cheaper price on say Abebooks when the book is out of print later down the road. Oh, so MANY books, so little time! I could never even scratch the surface of all of the books I want to read in my lifetime.

I say all of this without even going into detail on how wonderful it is to be be able to learn and be entertained while I'm mobile by way of podcasts, music, audiobooks, e-books and unlimited access to the Internet through broadband capabilities.  I can even better achieve my goals by reading them aloud and recording them with the voice memo function, so that I can later listen to them and really let them sink in by repetition. Can an electronic device help to transform our lives in positive ways? Maybe so. It depends on how you use it.

I should not even waste my breath on this topic, but... My first Treo had a glitch after I had gotten it all set up and personalized with my information, and once I got the replacement for that, I got home to find out the Verizon salesman didn't give me the stylus that came with it.  I went about for days away on vacation using the crude substitute of the retracted tip of a pen, and when I called about getting another, I received a long pause and then, "Well, we sell them." 

"Well, that's not my point," I countered, finally getting off the phone with him and saying, "Thanks...for nothing."

So, although I never got my one included stylus with the Treo in the first place, it was way too much trouble to get them to cough up one, and as a customer, it's embarrassing when you have to go to that much trouble to get something so trivial that should have been yours in the first place.  You're telling me this mondo company could not afford to just trust that I wasn't trying to get something for free and maybe make a good business-to-customer connection?  Geez.  I just went out and bought my own - case closed and more easily resolved.

Dianovo

I just started an account at Dianovo, a great web community to check out if you are environmentally conscious or just curious about how to be more so. We all should be these days, because it's becoming way too late for it to be just something we can choose to do as a personal fashion statement.

I love the bright pleasing design. I mean, an ecologically oriented website... so the designers could have stuck to the all too common hunter green used to color sites of this ilk, but thankfully they were more creative than that and gave the visuals a nice refreshing boost of energy.

It comes complete with your own blog, the ability to post photos and connect with other members, plus an ongoing surge of articles to keep you informed on the status of our (hint: the word "our" denotes that YOU, me, everyone individually and collectively are responsible for this world we live in and on) planet... which folks, if you read the news... prognosis is not the greatest if we keep up this mind-numbing, me-me-me, bigger-is-better, the-U.S.-is-the-only-world-inhabitant-so-it-can-do-what-it-wants type mentality.

I'm your average 30-something female consumer. I can't say I'm any better at being environmentally conscious than anyone else. In fact, I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do individually that could make an impact. But this site has my interest piqued as a way I can begin to learn more on this topic. Maybe, if more people band together in ways like this, our small efforts can one day pay off as big dividends, environmentally speaking anyway.

My profile is at: www.dianovo.com/Ecrivaine33

You would not believe how hard it is to find one standard Palm brand wireless keyboard for a Treo 700p, even in a suburb of the Washington D.C. area. I had personal experience with this last night.

After a light dinner at a local Thai restaurant in Greenbelt, Maryland, I stopped by a local Staples store in Greenbelt, to find that they were fresh out of them, although at least the service rep made a friendly effort to find it in the back storeroom, where he'd thought one more lingered. Radio Shack in Greenbelt, Md., (Beltway Plaza) told me they do not carry them, the two men there meeting me with an almost palpable wall of unhelpfulness, something I perceived as a dislike for me as a woman but of which I couldn't be sure. Still unperturbed, and sure that Circuit City would yield results, I got directions from the clerk to nearby Beltsville, a place that seemed pretty far out of my way since I'm still new to the area and need directions to go anywhere. So I did that. At first, I thought I was in luck. Seeing one, I happily snatched it up, only to find that the package defined it as compatible with the Treo 700w. I wasn't sure if it might possibly work with the Palm OS or not -- probably not, but I thought I'd check before I abandoned that plan. However, after 20 minutes of waiting and not being able to track down the unattentive store clerks, I frustratedly threw it back on the shelf and headed home. I hit up the Target in Greenbelt as a last ditch effort, because they usually seem to have more gadgets and gizmos than I would expect of a general retail store, but again, I came up short. Dejected after my fruitless search of over an hour, and growing even more ragged around the edges from that morning's scant three hours of sleep, I called it a night, bought one of the few leftover cartons of holiday eggnog I'd planned to pick up from the Giant supermarket and soon climbed into my P.J.'s at home (while many people are happiest out on the town, I prefer to be doing something techie-related in P.J.'s at home, preferably with an endless vat of coffee nearby); then, of course, as usual, I didn't really sleep but surfed the Internet and wrote emails to friends until sometime after midnight. I really must learn to curb my late-night technology tendencies if I ever plan to get a good night's sleep. It's just so hard to turn off my mind sometimes. Sometimes it seems like a wetware version of a feed reader, constantly filling up with new information, potentially interesting ideas that I sometimes scramble to capture as a voice or text memo on my Treo or Luddite-style -- if I'm awake enough.

It's funny how I got so worked up over trying to locate a $60-something item as if it were life or death. It's not THAT urgent, but it seems to be that one remaining piece of the puzzle that I need to complete my mobile communications dream inventory, especially when it comes to my newest pursuit, moblogging (mobile blogging). And once I get my mind made up on something I want, it bugs me that it should be so much trouble. I'm sure this lack of impatience I experience has much to do with being accustomed to being so plugged in to the world through the online medium. I sometimes operate outside of Cyberspace with the same mindset I employ within, and I have to catch myself at that. I mean, REALLY... a change is in order when "LOL" (a chat term for "Laughing Out Loud") slips into your actual daily conversations. Okay, hasn't happened yet, but there was an "almost" moment once...err...twice!?

I expect things to be faster sometimes than is often humanly possible. That's the keyword there, HUMAN. No matter how many eye-popping, mind-bending machines we invent, there will always be the human element needed to interact with them in some way, if even just to program a product with its automated capabilities (at least we can hope the visions in Terminator movies remain as theatrics and nothing more).

Therefore, machines can never, IMHO, be 100 percent perfect. What would be the fun of that? That almighty always future focal point of perfection generates the need for newer and better products, opening door after door for young new inventors to make their marks as they develop smaller and lighter marvels of technology that can host and perform a multitude of capabilities to the delight of feature-hungry consumers.

I am fascinated by the concept of being able to take my writing life just about anywhere I can get a signal with my Treo's tethered broadband. Woohoo! This is perfect, so that I don't have to lug my PowerBook around in my bag all day, when I want to hang out at a D.C. coffee shop after work before the hour-long commute home. My, how far we have come since the Industrial Revolution. Sure I could just take a pen and a notebook around with me, but I like to blog, so I don't relish the thought of writing it down only to put it all down again at a later time in type, so that I can post it online.

Besides... with my Treo 700p, I can:

Record vids for my YouTube profile.

Take photos and immediately post them to my Flickr account. 

Moblog to my heart's content on this blog - what else could I want?

Now that I also finally bought a new pack of styli and a new 1GB SD card for my new Treo, the keyboard has become the missing piece. I think I'll have to surrender my efforts to find it locally and just be happy ordering online and waiting a few days to have it affordably shipped to me.