October 2009 Archives

Sifting through today's BlackBerry OS upgrade, I keep finding improvements and tweaks.

With 5.0, the upgrade via the handset is no longer an option attaching us to the tether and Desktop Manager. A new option appears during the upgrade for an email alert which replaces the handset push.

The entire operation of backing up and restoring data, preferences and apps is accomplished by the desktop manager. Always do a backup first.

Blackberry OS 5.0 finds.

• A new startup screen with a status bar that measures the entire boot-up process


• Menus feather in and out with bouncy scrolls that are more responsive


• Horizontal word correction replaces the vertical making it easier to see all entries


• Larger icons in the media folder for photos


• A touch icon to send email


• Auto-focus now has a maco mode letting you focus almost down to an inch


• The camera responds quicker and the option to customize a physical trigger key is in the camera interface


• You can scale photos sent out via email. The scaled down .png files are as crisp at the full rez. Great for blogging! and direct posting


• Permission approval for apps appears before the download


• MMS/SMS is identified by a bubble instead of the email icon


• SMS has gone fancy with smiles and bubble threading - grouping a thread in the directory. MMS remains utilitarian. I'm not too thrilled with the tiny scrolling windows in the SMS. Pretty takes up too much space. (I have always wondered why if MMS costs the same as SMS and has a longer word limit, why not use MMS all the time?)


• The BlackBerry web browser has been updated


• Steaming radio volume adjusts with the physical buttons while running as a background program.


• The Alert icons have been updated so you no longer confuse medium sound with calls only

Best of all, the upgrade was flawless, free and the phone hasn't crashed or bogged down since I upgraded. So maybe the memory management has improved.

It's great to get a major upgrade just BEFORE RIM releases the Storm 2 giving Storm 1 users a taste of something new before the dulling the sting of hardware envy.

Now on to see how many programs I can run at the same time before it crashes....

While some people retire into a motor home built on a bus chassis pulling a Chevy Suburban, George Bombardier has spent the past 11 years touring the country in a golf cart.

The 68-year-old retired roofer even sleeps in the Club Car golf cart powered by a used 300 cc Kawasaki generator engine.

Taking my vacations on a motorcycle over the past nine years, I understand Bombardier's storytelling zest.

"You really get to see the country," he said, "including things you don't want to see, like tornadoes and things like that. You don't want to see one of those, I'll tell you. Not up close."

He has also been through the the Holland Tunnel into New York City, because they wouldn't let him take the cart on the Staten Island Ferry, and to Washington D.C. because he wanted to see where the president lives.

It takes him about 10-20 days to cross the United States mostly on small roads, but that seems to be the point of traveling for Bombardier.

He's had open heart surgery, and he died three times on the table, or at the hospital. And now he has a machine in his chest that powers his heart.

Bombardier will delight in his stories about facing death with the same sense of adventure that he brings to his life.

So if you see a golf cart buzzing around York that looks like a tiny red 57' Chevy that's been through a few too many adventures, its just on the way to the next adventure.

Mark Bluett got really frustrated making his first stringed instrument when he was 12.

"The instrument ended up in the fireplace," he said. "Actually, I got so mad, I ended up burning it."

In a blind test at Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University many years later, one of Bluett's handmade violins competed against instruments that were 200 years old and worth $150,000.

"They all picked mine as the best instrument, and it was a week old," Bluett said.

His humble beginning came 25 years ago this month in his brother's dining room. In that time, Bluett has crafted 220 handmade violins, and a total of about 1,400 stringed instruments.

He's the artist behind Bluett Brothers Violins in Spring Garden Township, where custom violins sell for about $6,000.

His creations sing their songs in symphonies, teach students at the Peabody Institute, play country music in Nashville, and fiddle for the Irish.

For this luthier, as he refers to himself, it all boils down to one thing.

"When you string it up, and the joy of hearing it . . . that's what I live for."

Our plan is to retrace the route of the automotive CEOs who went to Washington DC asking for government loans. But instead of looking for aid, we'd like to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis. And instead of flying in a corporate jet, we're riding Brammo Enertia powercycles. We're just a couple of guys who work for Brammo, but we want to show that there's a better way to get from Point A to Point B. And we want to have a little fun while we're doing it. So join us as we surf from plug to plug in a quest to meet Obama, fueled by nothing more than electricity and the kindness of everyday Americans.

The pair are near Pittsburgh right now. You can follow them at shockingbarack.com or on twitter 'ShockingBarack'

I received an HCH Class Action Settlement for my 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid (True vs. American Honda Motor Co., Inc. ) last night.

Fortunately for Honda, the settlement includes rebates for new vehicles. I get $100 cash back and a video to train me how to best use my gas and brake pedal.

The lawsuit revolves around EPA mileage estimates for Honda's hybrids and the lower than expected mileage figures some people got from their Honda hybrids.

I suggest Honda use a disclaimer sticker.

Failure to use common sense may result in lower than expected mileage figures.

Smashing the gas pedal (combining the use of electric and electric motors without the use of cylinder deactivation) and smashing the brake (not using regenerative braking) will result in lower than expected economy.

Accessories, like air-conditioning, use energy. When you shut them off you use less energy.

Very cold days and very warm days take more energy to keep you comfortable and move your vehicle.

Some days I can get over 50 mpg and some days it may be as low as 40 mpg.

All vehicle manufactures use EPA standards for fuel economy. It is the competitive benchmark for selling a car in the United States. It makes no more sense for Honda to post figures lower than the EPA testing procedure than it would be for Toyota.

Honda can keep my $100 and put it towards research and development. I am happy that there was a car on the market in 2005 (or 1999 with the Insight) with the potential of 50 mpg.

Perhaps it would be more beneficial to force the mindless, lawsuit money train toward adopting a universal standard that more accurately reflects the cost of driving. This would actually help all consumers.

It will be interesting to watch what happens when vehicles with an even greater variability of mileage like the Chevy Volt (230 mpg) or a totally electric car like the Nissan LEAF come on the scene with the same aging EPA standard.

...but don't look for this Ford Fiesta ECOnetic model in the US as clean diesel doesn't seem to fly here.

The Australian press is buzzing with talk about the little car from a U.S. based company that beats the Prius in price and fuel economy.

How refreshing.

BMW, Mini, Audi and Volvo have special frugal models that use similar fuel-saving technology, but Ford hits the low price point.

According to the story, the car has been immensely popular in Europe, where fuel taxes promote small car use.

The U.S. Fiesta is expected to arrive in her late this year

Gov. Ed Rendell visited Voith Hydro today to say that hydropower has the potential for generating clean energy and creating jobs for Pennsylvania and the nation.

According to the study released today by the National Hydropower Association, the U.S. hydropower industry could install between 23,000 megawatts and 60,000 megawatts of additional capacity by 2025, or enough to generate electricity for 31 million additional homes. The study also estimates that the installation of this amount of capacity could create between 230,000 and 700,000 new jobs.

There are 80,000 dams in the United States and only 3% are used to produce hydropower.

Canada is one of the top producers of hydro power in world with some provinces extracting over 90% of their electrical needs from falling water. A market perfect for electric cars!

Not all these dams are suited to produce power, but if the dam is already built the environmental impact is already in existence. York companies like Voith and American Hydro use technology to produce highly efficient runners that can extract efficiencies into the high 90% and are more fish friendly than equipment made in the past.

You have to wonder, if there were an increase in the mandate for renewable energy or if new technologies were invented to harness even 25% of the of the 97% of the non- generating dams, how much renewable energy we could produce from falling water.

Slacker streaming radio has improved, skipping past Pandora as my favorite free streaming radio for the BlackBerry.

The ability to create your own channels and saving music station content to the phone's memory add extra features to Pandora's core idea of grouping music types into channels.

Multitasking pushed content, email, SMS/MMS, browsers, and other programs remains in tact on the BlackBerry as with Pandora during the music stream maximizing the use of your 3G data stream and time.

A paid version offers unlimited skips, no ads, unlimited song requests and complete lyrics for songs. However, the commercials on the free version are few and short as compared to traditional radio.

Add a set of stereo blue tooth headphones and you have a mobile concert hall, multitasking office all for the price of your data plan.

Download the free version of Slacker from BlackBerry App World via your handset.

Using the 3G network to download podcasts/stream, a flash/video light, a great external speaker you want to use instead of headphones are energy hogs. Add to that pushed email and multi-tasking several applications plus using GPS with apps all suck power out of your BlackBerry Storm.

I looked at a number of ways to conserve power with the standard battery, but all of them detract from the reasons I wanted to use this phone in the first place. If I am at a news event wildly picture and video tweeting, the last thing I need is a dead battery.

My random internet choice for an extended life battery was the Seidio 2600mAh battery. It's available from many suppliers.

The company says that the battery provides 90% more battery life than the standard BlackBerry cell. The catch is that it comes with a replacement phone back to accommodate the larger size.

The battery replacement is as easy as performing a warm boot to the phone.

I found Seidio's new plastic cover a bit more finicky to latch than the OEM BlackBerry metal cover, but oddly enough it seems to go easier after it's been on and off a few times. I found that just closing the cover and slipping it into the BlackBerry leather holster seems to be the best method for latching it.

The cover only adds about 3-4mm to the thickness of the phone and doesn't impede the magnetic auto-lock/sleep feature with the leather holster. It's a tight fit, but it fits into the OEM case.

I actually like what the extended case does for the handling and desktop use of the phone. The plastic has a rubbery feel that makes the phone easier to handle and it sits more firmly on a flat surface as compared to the OEM case's touch points. As an added benefit, the case brings the external speaker away from a flat surface and maybe adds a little bass to the normally crisp sounding speaker.

I still tether up the phone for a charge while driving, but the added buffer gives me a piece of mind that I can tweet away into the wilderness at any time.