Archive for November, 2009

Total Cost of a Droid vs. iPhone vs. Palm Pre vs. My Touch

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BillShrink.com has a good graphic they gave permission to repost on the cost and features of each “App Phone” as it seems that the new classes of phones are called. Personally I would get an iPhone or a Droid. I love my Droid except for the stupid back battery cover. The reason I have a Droid is that I’m stuck on Verizon because of the free mobile to mobile to family (switching them was out). Anyways, see below for the comparison.

Motorola Droid vs iPhone 3GS vs Palm Pre

Find the best cell phone plans and more graphics at BillShrink.com

–Ben

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2009 Xmas Price Index – Christmas is up a Small Amount

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PNC has just released their Christmas Price Index again. The cost of one full verse is up 1.8% to $21,465.56. While the True cost of Christmas is up to $87,402.81 with all verses, a gain of 0.9%.

You can get just the“Xmas Stats” if you want.

–Ben

Unemployment During this Recession – Animated Map

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I came across this animated map (The Decline: The Geography of a Recession) the other day and I thought it was interesting to see which states and counties went from low unemployment to high unemployment over time. It almost appears as a creep from the coasts to the middle of America.

That does not mean that the coasts are what caused it (although I have some beefs with “too big to fail” banks and wall street firms and their reckless attitude). However it might suggest that more people are employed in discretionary spending outlets in the coast versus middle America.

I’ve been having some discussions with friends and its been interesting to get views. Some of them made the assertion that the failure came from liberal states and cascading into more conservative states. I’m not sure I buy that.

What do you think?

–Ben

Time your Email Marketing Well

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One thing I’ve learned recently is that I become really annoyed with people who send their bulk email out at 4am. See I just a Motorola Droid and have been loving it. However, I also connected it to my work account. I like being able to respond to my clients quickly with an “I got it” or a “I’ll look it up” such that they know that I’m on their side.

But, if I forget to turn off my ringer – my phone would give a notification at 3am or 4am when some companies send out their bulk mail. I was not pleased

Guess what? I just opted out of emails that I had previously opted-in. All due to their poor timing. Merchantcircle – I’m looking at you.

There is another option for Droid users like me (or other android versions). I’m now using the app “locale” to shut my notifications off between 11:30pm and 6:30am. Its disappointing that I have to do that, but email marketers seem to be clueless. Seriously, consider whether anyone wants to receive email at 4am.

–Ben

Google Scholar now indexing and searching state and federal caselaw!

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Just found out that google took on the legal research industry. I’m interested to see how this pans out. Attorneys will still need to cite check to see if stuff is still good law. However many of the obnoxious $300 searches may be mostly a thing of the past.

Stay Tuned to Google Scholar

–Ben

Fix – Outlook 2007 won’t Search Tasks

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I don’t know what’s going on with Outlook’s Indexing, but it would miss tasks – even when I could see them by scrolling down by date. I had enough of it and disabled indexing. This forces Outlook to go back to the slow search method that actually works.

Here’s how you can do it

  1. Select Tools Menu item
  2. Select Instant Search submenu
  3. Select Search Options
  4. Uncheck the Data file that is missing stuff (or all of them, if you don’t know)

Hopefully MS will fix that painful issue. However, I don’t see a good fix in sight, even after a little digging.

–Ben

iPhone – check corporate voicemail problem fix

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One of the people in my office has an iPhone and was having problems in that the office voicemail system would only accept his password 25% of the time. It was getting really frustrating.

As it turns out, the iPhone mic may be interrupting your button presses being recognized, especially in a noisy environment. Here’s the fix

  1. Dial the office voicemail on the iPhone
  2. Mute the iPhone
  3. Dial your password
  4. Unmute the iPhone, if you want

Its a seriuosly simple fix, however, its not that obvious. We only got to the bottom of it because of inconsistencies between how often it would happen with and without a bluetooth earpiece.

–Ben

Droid – Unmerge a contact with a similar name

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So the facebook integration is nice, but I have a wife named Kat and a sister named Kate. Somehow, in Droid’s mind, they are the same person. Needless to say my sister got a strange response when she texted me and it came up as “Kat.”

After a mistake that left my sister howling, I researched the problem and the fix is easy. Just not well documented

  1. Go to contacts
  2. Select to the “merged contact” in the list (You should see all their contact information)
  3. Click the menu button (the one with all the lines)
  4. Click on the “edit contact” button
  5. Click on the menu button again
  6. Click on the separate button

There you go, the contacts are now separated. And my sister will not get any more messages intended for my wife.

On a side note: To join a contact, you follow the same instructions with one of the contacts to be joined. Instead of the last step of clicking on the separate button, you click on the join button. You then select the contact to be joined. However, I hear that you can’t join two contacts that were imported from the same source. So you can’t join two contacts that were imported from Gmail. However, you can merge a contact from Gmail and one from microsoft exchange. You can even merge the Gmail, exchange and facebook contact, if you wish. At least that is what I’ve interpreted.

Good Luck and Happy Veterans Day!

Program to Sync Droid to Your Music, Videos and Media – like iTunes for Droid

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The iPhone has iTunes, so what does Droid have?

If you dig deep enough, it looks like Droid has Motorola Media Link. I haven’t tried it, but I’m downloading it. However, since Motorola says it works with Droid, I’m apt to believe it. It even appears to transcode video to the right format! Woohoo!

Other people have suggested MediaMonkey. I may try that if I don’t like Motorola Media Link (Media Link also looks like a rebranded nero product).

I read that its like iTunes for Droid. We’ll see.

Look for an update and see if I have anything interesting to say after use.

On a side note. Droid rocks.

UPDATE: Emphasized that Media Link looks like the rebranded nero product not MediaMonkey.

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