August 2009 Archives

The recent ban of the Google Voice app by Apple / AT&T made we want to try it on my Blackberry Storm to see what the big deal is. My conclusion: It does indeed "replace the core functionality" of the phone's voice and SMS and with that comes a great value for the phone consumer.

You can download the Google Voice application on a BlackBerry by typing m.google.com/voice into the BlackBerry browser.

If you don't have an Android-powered device or a BlackBerry you can use Google Voice on your phone by visiting: www.google.com/voice/m However, the web application lacks integration with the phone.

On the Storm, the contact list gives you the option of calling and texting your contact via Google Voice right from the contact drop down menu. These links remain integrated after booting the phone so that there isn't an app to load every time you want to make a call.

And since the phone multi-tasks, the GV program is always running in the background ready to route your calls and SMS via your huge "unlimited" data plan and out of the realm of voice minutes and text message plans.

Incoming calls just ring into your phone like a traditional call when using your Google Voice phone number.

After originating a SMS text message in the GV app, the replies to that message and the thread move over into the the native Blackberry SMS stream. The GV app SMS runs in full keyboard, reduced keyboard and multi-tap, but only in portrait mode. The thread continues in portrait or landscape mode using the native Blackberry SMS.

Voice mail is translated into text and pushed into the native SMS stream.

This gives you integrated calling without using your precious phone minutes in the U.S and free to Canada. This could mean dropping down to a minimum plan. There are also some really cheap international rates. Try calling Spain on a traditional cell phone plan for $.02 a minute with using no minutes.

You would think every phone company would want to ban something that gives the consumer such value. The way I look at it, I am already paying a large sum for the data plan, Google has just helped me get more value out of my phone's ample data plan.

Other features of Google Voice

For vehicles that need to stay on the road and don't have time for a charge, a pilot progam in Tokyo for swapping batteries in taxis.

It's an important test for Japan, too. While Japan's 60,000 taxis represent only 2% of all passenger vehicles on the road in the country, they emit 20% of all carbon dioxide due to their extensive travel on any given day.

fastcompany.com

Update August 21, 2009: After an auction Thursday, the highest bidder -- Jim Rexroth, a representative of Rexroth Farms -- said the land will once again be farmed.

After the auction, Rexroth and Lefever both said Lefever will continue to live on the farm. "I'm gonna stay," Lefever said with a smile.

August 18, 2009 Ed Brothers Sr. was so tired of tenants who didn't pay rent and let the heating oil run dry at the rental house on his 435 acre farm near Manchester, Pa, that he was going to knock it down with his tractor.

When Sylvan Lefever was interested in renting the modest farmhouse 27 years ago, he approached land owner Ed Brothers Sr. and asked him how he felt about a tenant who would pay rent.

Brothers said that he would think about it and that Lefever should look at the house before he offered to pay rent for it.

Lefever looked over the house and knew it needed work. He rented it and proceeded to panel and paint the house turning it into a home.

Brothers saw what Lefever was doing with the house and asked for the bills. Lefever said he didn't want to be paid for the work he did to the rental house.

Brothers approached Lefever and asked him for his bills, looked them over and told him not to pay rent for a couple months.

Over the years, Lefever cleaned up a field and rent was suspended a few months. He brought in stone to repair an eroded driveway and rent again was suspended.

And 27 years passed.

Lefever survived Brothers and continued to rent the farm house from the family of Ed Brothers Sr.

The entire 435 acre property, now in foreclosure, will be auctioned off Thursday at 2 p.m.

Lefever hopes to stay on if the new owners will let him.

I watched a solar panel installation on a Springfield Township home by ASCOM Electric of Dover, Pa. today.

It's an interesting relationship between industry and home businesses.

To live off the grid using solar power is impractical in Pennsylvania. We don't get enough sun and battery storage is expensive and has a shelf life of about five years.

However, using the existing power grid as your "battery" is a very efficient way to buffer your personal power source and feed back into the grid during times of peak demand.

For the electrical utility, as well as other taxpayers who pay for tax credits, these solar home businesses help add watt by watt to the renewable content of the larger power grid.

After an eight year payoff for this system, the rest of the 25+ year lifespan of the system means a profit for the home solar business.

The system will produce 9.8 kilowatts during peak sunshine.

After Carl Williams and Peggy Gross get married Saturday, he'll go home, she'll go home, and together they'll live separately ever after.

Williams, 55, and Gross, 53, dated for several years before they each moved into opposite sides of a Warrington Township duplex -- him in his self-described man cave, and her in her more elegant, antique-filled home.

The couple cut a door between the two houses but maintain separate electric service.

He likes to air condition his home and she prefers to keep her doors and windows open.

In winter, they keep the door open to spread heat from a wood stove in his house using wood they both cut.

"It works very well for us," Williams said. "I think it will make our marriage stronger."

Tetherberry (tetherberry.com) is a software solution that utilizes the data plan you already pay for on your Blackberry phone. There is a free trial and then a $49 one time fee.

Free trial means testing.

I was up and running in a couple minutes with a Blackberry Storm and a Windows XP laptop. You don't even need to boot the phone.

Download the application to the phone (http://tetherberry.com/d/tetherberry.jad) using the Blackberry browser and run the app on the phone.

This is the beauty of not living at the mercy of app stores. I wonder if Verizon can block such a program because it competes with their own monthly tethering plan of $30.

Select your operating system (MAC or PC) and download the desktop application from the developer's website.

Connect the Blackberry to the computer via the USB cable. Run both programs and enjoy the data plan you already pay for.

The multitasking continues to function in the Blackberry allowing all push processes to run on the phone while it's connected.

If you receive a call, data transfer will cease. Data transfer continues when you hang up.

In the event you loose or destroy your phone, tetherberry says it's covered.

Beware that you have a 5 gig data cap on "unlimited" data plans with Verizon. It is the same data cap if you were to pay the monthly subscription for a USB wireless plan. You can monitor your data use via your online billing. It would be very hard to max out 5 gig on a smart phone, but using a phone to stream large amounts of data through a computer might be a different story.

It started with a man restoring an antique biplane.

With his young son, the man flew that plane across the United States and they shared our national treasures sleeping in fields beneath her wings.

The restoration turned into a niche business and a departure from corporate jobs for the father and son. The dream became sustenance.

The sustenance became a career.

Operating out of a nondescript building in Emigsville, Pa., the pair built perfection and preserved their moment in history for others.

Recently, the pair received a call from a customer that one of their restorations had won international recognition as a grand champion in the antique category at a prestigious show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

It's the ecology of souls - an American dream.

See full story in the York Daily Record "Flying High"

Walter Reed waits for a heart transplant, but he didn't wait any longer to marry his long-time girlfriend Candy Seitz at Sovereign Bank Stadium in York.

What was more useful to consumers, $700 billion bailout of banks, insurance companies and Wall Street, $180 billion to AIG ...or $1 billion that brought families scrambling for a $4,500 rebate on a new car that may save them $1K a year in gas, a 200 % rise in dealership traffic and a few car factories working overtime.

Clunker Class War - nyt.com/blog

Plug in "Cash for Clunkers" on YouTube and you get a stream of dramatic engine explosions with glove donned car technicians pouring in sodium silicate (liquid glass) and performing the not so painless death to vehicles.

They are often hooting and carrying on with the same glee that I might get from smashing a computer or a camera at the end of a long week.

Some of my friends in the used car business respond to these videos like an animal lover exposed to senseless pet murders.

Top Purchased
1. Ford Focus (built in Wayne, Mich.)
2. Toyota Corolla (assembled by Toyota in either California or Ontario)
3. Honda Civic (95% are built in Indiana or Ontario of U.S. made engines)
4. Toyota Prius (Japan)
5. Toyota Camry ("almost all" of the Camrys sold here are assembled at plants in Kentucky and Indiana)
6. Ford Escape FWD (Kansas City)
7. Hyundai Elantra (South Korea)
8. Dodge Caliber (Belvidere, Illinois)
9. Honda Fit (Japan)
10. Chevrolet Cobalt (Lordstown, OH)

Ford turned its first sales increase since November 2007, with the top seller from a sacrificed clunker. Ironically, Ford is the top clunker

Driven by Cash for Clunkers...

Ford says sales of its mid-size Fusion rose 66%, sister Mercury Milan sales were up 60%, Escape small SUV sales nearly doubled, the small Focus was up 44% and the small Ford Ranger pickup had a 65% increase. Overall, Ford's hybrid sales tripled during July. Ford saw its first sales increase since November, 2007.

General Motors says sales of its tiny Chevrolet Aveo more than doubled; Eqinox was up 164%; the HHR small SUV rose 36%; Cobalt small sedan and small Canyon/Colorado pickups climbed 38%. USAtoday