I recently replaced my Palm Pre with a HTC EVO. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had the entire weekend of non stop playing and have come up with a few things that bug me, and could be improved.

I’m a huge tech guy, and switching from WebOS to Android was a bit of a challenge. I kept wanting to swipe, and view the launcher and switch between applications.

It wasn’t until I really started downloading apps, and playing with all the cool features, that I realized while this Platform is still young it has a ton of potential. I thought that about WebOS and Palm, and I thought Palm was going to come though.

I think things are very different with Google, they want to go to war with Apple, but most of all they want to produce something that the world can change, and be part of it. To me thats a company for people, not to people.

Anyway onto a few of my little issues.

Swiping:

If you have ever used a WebOS device closing applications and switching between them is pretty cool. I can get over not having that feature on a phone, and while holding the Home button on the evo shows applications, I’d much rather see it in a Expose sort of view like the Sense view, but with all my applications. However I would kill for a notification view that shows the current/last 5 applications so I can switch between them that way too.

But the “Card” view isn’t the issue. Its the deleting emails. In WebOS you swipe to the left or the right and it deletes the email. With Android you have to either click menu, or long tap on the item and delete from there.

Contacts:

The Android Contact screen is pretty awesome, but it needs to be changed a little bit. It just seems like there is way to much information to display on a screen. I’d rather have it be dual tabbed. top tabs for a contact show different contact methods. Like Phone, Email, Web, Social Networks.

Service Details:

I’d love to be able to click on the battery or the signal stuff and get better details, I mean really no percent option for battery? Ok I know that the Pre doesn’t have it either but it just seems like a simple option.

Launcher:

I’d love to be able to pin a program to the notification Menu. See the issue I have is, I haven’t figured out how to get to the the launcher without going back to the home. If I’m in the middle of doing something I want to just open the application rather than going home first and then bringing up that panel.

So why Android?

Well Palm is taking a stupid long time to do things. First and foremost why hasn’t Palm made their OS use the GPU yet? I mean seriously, it would give the phone such a huge speed up, and remove a lot of the lag. Maybe they are afraid it will eat the battery to no end. Don’t get me wrong Palm created a pretty cool OS, but their development is horrible. They take way to long to do anything. There should be tons of updates coming in and fixing little bugs, and tweaking the OS to have much better performance than what is currently given with it.

So far I love the Android OS. There are some things that bug me. I love Google though, they have done some amazing stuff and Foyo will not disappoint. At this point they need to look at user experience and give users what they don’t know they need, but will want like no other.

I’ve always been somewhat of a nerd, I know I know hard to believe right? I usually have the latest gadgets, toys, and the occasional useless purchase. I started this cell phone epidemic before it was even one. I had a T68i as my first phone. I once watched that phone slide across a dance floor during a break dance move. Luckly I found it from the blinking bluetooth light. The the geek overdrive took over and a phone that didn’t have a touch screen was a thing of the past. I moved up to an Sony P800. Aww technology.

I’m that sort of guy who pushes things to the edge because well I need speed. I need things to be fast. If its too slow I’ve already moved on. I switched to Sprint about a year and a half ago. I eventually ended up with the phone I have now. The Palm Pre. Don’t get me wrong I love WebOS, but the phone is a piece of crap. I’ve had 4 now, its slow, its painful, and it randomly reboots. But it does a lot of things. One thing it does not do however is 4g.

I work near LAX airport. We’ve got a few cell towers on our roof here and one of them is Verizon, and the other is Sprint. I was on the verge of paying my early term fee, and switching to Verizon because I want android, and there was no end in sight for 4g coming to LA. That was until Some guys in a truck showed up to run fiber. You see I’m the guy who knows where all the fiber comes and goes in this building. First it was Verizon working with Timewarner to get a bunch of fiber. Then Sprint showed up. I had a chance to talk to them, see the inside of their sprint setup, and finally was told… “This is WiMax going in”.

So I hopped on a roof and snapped some photos which you can see here.

My heart jumped, I was so excited that we were getting WiMax here in LA, but when? There are no WiMax devices, I don’t really want an overdrive because well I have a cell phone and Wifi, and well fast internet everywhere except my pocket. Where are the WiMax phones?

Thats when Sprint, and HTC announced at CTIA that they had a new phone.

Meet the HTC Evo. This phone does it all. It runs Android, 4g, HDMI, mobile hotspot. Feature packed, amazing phone that I want now. This is the kind of the device I’ve been waiting for. Full 1ghz processor, plenty of storage, sd card, dual cameras. This phone takes it to the next level… my level.

I’ve been waiting for this kind of device. Something that can keep up with me.

You see as I said previously, I’m a geek. I rely on technology as its my day job, but also my hobby. I sync with multiple exchange accounts, google, yahoo, aim, and a bunch of other personal sites. I’m the Ninja of the internet, I deal with backbone, routers, and switches all day long. Not to mention coding, and forcing things to work the way I want them to work.

Thats how it has been with every phone I’ve ever had. I’ve had to push it to the edge to keep up with me. Hacking kernels, rooting, writing my own plugins. Just to get it to do what I need it to do. I don’t think I’m going to have that problem with the EVO.

I’m ready to switch from Palm to Android. I’ve almost always had an HTC phone, but Winmo sucks, and I’m never going back there.

So heres to you Evo, I hope that your cost is worth it, your OS works, the hardware is solid, and you can run voice and data at the same time. I don’t know when its going to be released, some say june 13th, other say end of May. Either way its not quick enough. If the nexus one was available on Sprint I’d probably have that by now, and then switch again when the Evo came out.

Palm, thank you for the good times. Hate you for the bad times, you’ve been fun to root, hack, and make my phone slave. I’ll miss you, but only in that foster care kind of way.

I thought it would be a good idea to post a review of the first few days of using the Nook, that way I not only have a history of what bugs me and got fixed, but also things that I got used to.

I’m a new e-reader. I’ve never owned one, I used to read on a cell phone 4 or 5 years ago, and then just went to plain books.

I’m reading,  Makers by Cory Doctorow.

I describe as, “An industrial view of the broken culture that hackers and geeks alike rebuild from the ashes of a collapsed technology paradise.”.

I’m sure there are plenty of summaries out there, but to put it simply its about the new age dotcom bust, and the culture of hackers and gadget geeks making it on their own, taking old technology and reinventing it.

So far I’m about halfway through it. The book is seperated into parts. I’m in the middle of Part 2. Its a little weird starting part two as it has some of the same characters, and the its continuing on, but it leaves you with this sense of waiting for some characters to return.

So far though I’ve had trouble putting it down, and find it interesting to say the least. I downloaded it off his site as its free, If he had only charged for it, the book would have been sort of ironic with the content and then the commercialization. Either way I think more and more authors should do this. Not that I wouldn’t buy a book, but if he charged a few bucks for it. I’d have no problem buying it in a heart beat.

Onto the Nook, since this is the only book I’ve read so far, I’ve broken down a few issues I have with it.

Annoyances:

1. Jump to page

There is currently no way to jump to a page number, only chapters, some books do not have the chapters broken out, but there are page numbers (nook page numbers) that you can see, yet there is no way to jump to a specific page number.

2. Page turning buttons.

This whole bottom set to go right, and top set to go left is kind of stupid if you ask me. When I first held the device I thought to go back I’d just hit the other side on the bottom. Apparently I was wrong since it takes you forward a page, Its going to be the first hack I write for this thing. Just doesn’t seem very logical.

3. Cover Flow

Books you buy show up on the tiny display  when you hit Show Covers, but not books you loaded yourself, even if they have thumbnails and covers and all that.

4. Page Refresh

This one is not that bad, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten used to it, or its speading up as I get more and more in the book. But I think it could still use a little faster page refresh.

Likes:

1. Battery life

The battery life seems great, Although I’ve only had it a few days, I charged it over night. I’ve been reading a book pretty much 2-3 hours on the weekends, and during the week about 1 hour in the mornings, and an hour at night before going to bed. Its still at 86%. It hasn’t had a full charge since Saturday. Pretty good.

2. Readability

I was amazed at how easy the screen is to read. The pages are formatted correctly, the text is easy to see. Although I think I’ll need to invest in a reading light. I wish it was backlit.

3. Subscriptions

I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, I can read the paper whenever I want. Go 3g!

4. Customization

Customizing this thing was a little fun. First I named by Nook “Breakfast”. Then I created a background for my favorite book, you can download it below. I’m still working on screensavers and I’ll get to it eventually.

Thats all for now, I’ll be sure to post another as time goes on.

I’ve been on the dev version of google chrome since 2.x. I don’t mind a few bugs here and there, and for the most part I get to contribute. Since Chrome has finally released extension support there have been a few great ones that I need, and some that just don’t exist yet. I’m gonna go over a few of them here.

1)  
LastPass; Multi browser, multi platform, and the last pass you’ll ever need. This simple to use extension works on nearly every browser, syncs between them all, cloud based so it works on multiple computers, and best of all is free. There is a subscription model for $1 a day. It includes extra features like, iPhone and Android applications, Ad free, and Yubikey support. I hear a Palm WebOS version is in the making. FYI, you should always build secure passwords.

2)
Xmarks; Now that you’re passwords are sync’d you you probably want your bookmarks sync’d across browsers too. Xmarks is your program. Also based on a cloud platform, it allows you to keep your bookmarks sync’d across computers and browsers. As with Lastpass it has a web interface and sharing with friends.

3)

Web of Trust or WOT; is a great extension for finding those shady sites. Now Chrome is great at detecting phishing sites, but WOT extension adds little colored icons next to each link on your search page and gmail. It gives you a better view of sites to just outright avoid. You can also read what others had to say about it.

4)

Adblock; If you’re a Firefox user then you probably know what Adblock is. If not, then it does exactly what its named. Blocks Ads. I however do not use it. I”m sure its a great extension but I like a more system wide approach. I use Privoxy. Its a small application that is basically a pass through proxy, it listens on local host, and you just point your browsers to it. It then filters out anything that passes through it.

5)

Google Quick Scroll; Have you ever been searching for something and you get to a page, but you can’t seem to find it on the page? Here comes Google Quick Scroll to save the day. Basically the way it works is when you click on a link from a Google search page, if relevant enough it dumps to you the right place on the page and shows you a box. Its a great simple little addon, that in my opinion should just be built into the browser. However since there people who use chrome, but don’t use Google search, I could see how this might be a conflict. Anyway back to this plugin, it uses Google’s Magic to decide when the quick box should be shown.  Somehow it does seem to be there when I’m looking for it, and not when I don’t need it.

Misc Extensions:
There are tons of plugins out there, and more every day, The few others I use are;

• Quick Calendar
• Stumble Upon
• Cooliris
• KeyboardNavigation

Call for Development:

So I’ve been thinking about how I’d use the web more and more, I know Chrome is a baby in the Browser war, but its already its approaching its terrible twos and going to wreak havoc all over your virtual house.  I’m sure there is already a plugin for Firefox, but what I’m looking for is an extension that can be a notepad per sites. I already use Chromepad, but its one pad for everything. I would love to be able to put notes per site I’ve visted.

In a previous post I discussed my Media Center setup. After some time with my Logitech Harmony 880 Remote Control, I’ve been frustrated, annoyed, and ultimately happy with my remote. I’ve had this remote for about 2 months now. I picked it up at Costco for about $119.00, and was very excited to rip it open and play. Since I got it mid day, and I’m an instant gratification kind of person I ripped the box open and wanted to play with it. I held back, especially since I was at work, Its not like I was going to control anything in my office. So I put it on the charger. Great choice so I could play with it at home without having that hidden concern of breaking the manuals rules of a full charge before using.

When I first set it up, I thought I’d have it configured, and done. Never having to touch it again. I spent some time thinking I knew exactly how I wanted the remote and what activities I want where. Boy was I wrong. Here is my advice to using this remote.

Think about all the devices you have, TV, Stereo, Game Consoles, Computers, DVD players, whatever you have that you may want to do with a touch of a button. for me, I have TV, TV w/ Stereo for surround sound, Media Center, DVDs, and XBox. I setup all my devices to turn on each component that was dependent on the other.

For Media Center I had to turn on the TV, and the Stereo. After about 2 months of this setup I started to realize the fustrations I had with this remote. First I enjoy switching between tv and the media center all the time, mainly because sometimes I like to check on a download, or search a webpage. Using an activity for this was not really acceptable. My media PC Is always on, and having the activity turn everything off to turn other things on was just kind of time consuming. So on every single activity I modified the display screens left side buttons. They were the devices attached to the TV. HDMI1 HDMI2 and so on, but labeled a little smarter like TV, XBOX, PC, and well thats it. This way no matter which activity I was in, I could switch between inputs. I also didn’t like the fact that the remote turned off my PC. So I modified the Media center activity and Device options and set it never turn off this device. That has made things much much better.

The software is great. Its a mesh of an application and web based. You can tell it uses a lot of syncing with the web, which is good so you never loose your settings, however if the site fails or goes away I’m not sure how this will affect the remote in the long run. Being such a technology whore however, I’ll probably have replaced it by then.

Pros: Great battery life, syncs with PC, has a help button for GF’s who offer to make you some water for breakfast. Rechargeable, and is backlit based on movement.

Cons: I wish the Display was an OLED, and it had RF. Audio feedback would be nice. I would love to have a row of hardware device buttons, like TV, PC, and Stereo that change the soft buttons at the top, instead of having to hit devices.

Bottom line? I love the device, its a perfect fit for my technology driven home. I recommend it.