June 2009 Archives

scanR is an App for the Blackberry Storm that harnesses the phone's sharp auto-focus, flash and excellent exposure control and turns it into a copier and character recognition tool.

The App is available via App World and via the scanR website, but via App World appears to be the better deal.

The image is captured via the camera and transferred to scanR where it is transposed into either a JPG, PDF or a text file.

Business cards can be automatically downloaded into your address book.

Long pages of text can be copied and processed into text.

It makes a great portable copy machine that can be interfaced with any printer via the web interface.

Documents can also be sent to a fax number from the handset.

scanR "turns the stuff we have to deal with in our daily lives--receipts, business cards, faxes, jottings on the back of napkins--into something digital. ... It's practical. And it's simple. wsj.com

scanR is one of those applications I keep using over and over. If you go to the effort to shoot a straight image the copies look pretty close to a dedicated copy machine.

Midge Morse, age 85, has competed in basketball, softball, tennis, golf and bowling. Today she takes home the silver for shuffleboard during the 8th Annual York County Senior Games.

Morse said that she started exercising regularly in 1970.

Midge, your my inspiration to get to the gym. Good health will get you further than any investment and will get you by when every financial investment fails.

Ubertwitter is a beta program that you won't find in Blackberry's App World, but it's my favorite Twitter app for the Blackberry Storm.

You can download it directly from their site by pointing your Blackberry web browser to their download link.

The program pushes an alert to the handset, while running in the background, and allows you to link a still picture or video from the camera or archive.

The coolest option is tagging the tweet and Facebook link with a general GPS location.

If you link Facebook to Twitter, the picture/video/GPS links mated to your pictures also appear in Facebook.

Some care in sizing photos will speed transfer times as Ubertwitter will transfer the full file size. I either set the Storm's camera down from 2048x1536 down to 640x480 or push the photo into a MMS text message and copy paste the photo back into the archive. The MMS message system will automatically downsize a photo suitable for texting.

Same with video: I usually shoot a MMS video at 176x144 rather than the 480x352. Huge files aren't any fun with twitter.

Ubertwitter reprocesses the video in Quicktime and embeds it off the status link looking like this http://mypict.me/50DS in a standard web page.

Ubertwitter has undergone two upgrades in the past week that work well with the most recent Blackberry Storm operating system upgrade.

The picture at left is a picture Tweet in Ubertwitter.

A software upgrade last month on the Storm made the global copy and paste more functional. A dot to define the beginning of the selection has been replaced with a floating window that increases the contact patch and smooths navigation. The method of copy and paste remains the same allowing the user to transfer between any field in the phone.

1. Select window appears in any field that you can copy by depressing the screen. Place the window where you want to select the text.
2. Blackberry key/ SELECT
3. Drag the select window to the the end of your selection
4. Blackberry key/ COPY
5. Swap application or open a new applications and place cursor in field to paste
6. Blackberry key/ PASTE

3,827: Number of property maintenance complaints received by the city in 2008
2,717: Number of complaints that were resolved

Broken community: A York yard in shambles. Owner occupied transitioning to rentals, destructive renters, abandoning owners, foreclosure and people gaming the system.

Self-interest, corporate and banking systems gone amok sucking the life out of the people who gave them their power.

Survival

People who loose the vision to love their community.

RIM's podcasting platform on the Blackberry Storm starts with a blank slate. Pick your software, find your streaming sites and download via the wireless network.

In 1968, you did this with an AM transistor radio powered by a 9 volt. People would sift the airwaves, make choices and listen for free.

There are several pieces of software that can stream podacsts to your Blackberry available from the wild and though Blackberry App World. I use PodTrapper downloaded via App World simple because it had a free trial and I didn't go further with software research. It works well, has a directory of hundreds of podcasts or you can copy and past the URL of your choice after searching the internet.

You aren't limited in file size for downloading over the wireless connection. Once your podcasts are chosen or URL's are loaded into your player software, the program can run in the background updating ready for you when you want to listen.

About this series

The recent OS upgrade appears to have added a pause feature when pushed content (email, facebook, IM, txt) is sending an alert. The podcast pauses, the alert sounds and the program leaves off where it stopped without missing anything. You can continue to listen and multitask by replying to pushed content.

I find myself never using the headphones as the external speaker on the Storm is petty good and i can just set the unit down in a room, or while working in the garage and not get tangled in headphones.

I almost never stream video, but I also never watch television. It's information while you are working in the garage, or hanging laundry or your eyes are ready to explode because you have been on a computer for 10 hours, but you still want more information.

Podcasting on the Blackberry Storm is a self contained information streaming device harnessed by your imagination.

Around 1920, there were hundreds of car companies in the United States. Industry revolved around local communities and the cars from those companies transported their local economies.

Wood craftsmen skilled in building wagons jumped into the car business. There were many chassis designs, but often the tiny car makers outsourced engines from a reputable engine supplier because they didn't have the resources to design their own cars.

Many local companies provided jobs and products in the communities they served using larger national suppliers for a complex standardized part. Hercules engines were used by some of these companies for their cars.

Most of these car companies were killed off by the depression and consolidation.

Fiat SpA Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne says building 6 million cars is the minimum he that is required to be profitable through the economic contraction. bloomberg.com

Roger Penske, who grew his roots selling cars, is taking an entirely different turn after buying Saturn. The tossed off General Motors step-child will manufacture no cars and will source all of it's cars from yet undetermined manufactures. Time will tell if a trade-off between less risk and less total control will work as a car company. usatoday.com

In any case, it's a smaller, dealer run company and dealers as a force have a greater motivation to sustain their local economies.

It isn't reality to think that a group of woodworkers today could build and sell a horseless carriage with an outsourced engine and compete in a global market, however smaller, less corporate self-serving companies that can innovate in a global market might motivate people to invest money and soul in the products they consume.

A U.S. symbol ties a family and school together across 6000 miles.

The American flag raised at Orendorf Elementary School in Manchester was sent home by Dominick Versace as a thank you for support he has received over the past year.

Sometimes the path of commerce getting smaller is a good way to evolve.

East Market Street in York started out as a path for early inhabitants to pass though the woods, evolved into a congested main artery for local, rail and cross-country traffic and now serves as a route from a historical urban core.

Bill Schintz, a property owner and resident of East Market Street for the past 35 years would like to see the three lane, one-way street revert back to a two-way to cut down speed and racing by weekend loop traffic.

Volvo Car Corporation is sending a demonstration fleet of the new plug-in hybrid cars this summer, which feature two charging ports. newsoxy.com

On Monday , the utility put into effect a 8.3 percent increase that tacks on an additional $6.97 per month for the average residential customer who uses 750 kilowatt hours of power, said Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for FirstEnergy.

The increased rate will cover the transmission charges paid by Met-Ed directly to PJM Interconnection, an organization that coordinates the movement of power from a plant to utility substations. The increase in population across the area contributed to the hike in transmission charges, Surgeoner said. inyork.com/ydr (6/06)

Now if the population is increasing, you would think that the number of connections would result in higher overall transmission fees collected by a greater number of connections. Statistics from the U.S. government seem to indicate that over all electrical use is down as is generation to supply that electricity.

Along with a recession is a reduced demand for power.

US Sales: For February 2009, sales in the residential and commercial sectors decreased by 2.7 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, while sales in the industrial sector decreased by 13.8 percent, as compared to February 2008. For the month, total retail sales were 285.0 billion kWh, a decrease of 34.5 billion kWh from January 2009, and a decrease of 6.3 percent or 19.2 billion kWh from February 2008. Year-to-date 2009, sales were 604.5 billion kWh, a 4.0 percent decrease over the same period for 2008. eia.gov

Generation: Net generation in the United States dropped by 7.3 percent from February 2008 to February 2009. This was the seventh consecutive month that net generation was down compared to the same calendar month in the prior year and it was the second-largest percentage drop this decade. eia.org

Something doesn't add up here. Is PJM/FirstEnergy is scrambling to meet a "increased population" or is less revenue generating a need for profit from a monopoly in the face of conservation and recession?

General Motors Corp. has struck a deal to sell its Hummer truck unit to a Chinese industrial business, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd. cnn.com/money

Trading a bicycle for a Hummer.

U.S. taxpayers, owning a major share of Government Motors, have given the Chinese people a new tool to consume themselves into the same standard of unsustainable living that has brought the U.S. population to it's current state .

More is always better.

The current success of the global free market has depended on massive consumption. What better tool to speed up this process for China than a vehicle, that when properly equipped, can consume gallons per mile!

Depleting China's resources, and increasing their standard of living and thus leveling wages with us will surely keep the quality of life in the U.S. from eroding further from outsourcing.

A free freezer filled with grain feed beef as an incentive with each Chinese Hummer sold in China would help complicate their diet further, burn up resources faster and make Chinese people less healthy.

As an added bonus, U.S. consumers will be able to continue to enjoy their ride in a new outsourced, Chinese made Hummer in the near future.

Human energy seeing basic nutrients from the clay that gives and takes life.

Sixty years ago Americans banded together to raise Victory Gardens for the war effort.

With more people losing jobs, produce from Grace United Methodist Church's garden will help demand at food pantries and other ministries in southern York County.