February 27, 2007
Export Mac OS X Address Book Entries to TomTom POI
After finding out that my TomTom didn’t know how to retrieve the telephone numbers from either my Treo 650 or my Nokia E61, I wrote an AppleScript that exported the Mac OS X Address Book’s telephone numbers directly to the file format used in the TomTom. You can read about that and grab the script here.
Unfortunately, the TomTom’s address book only stored two fields, Name and Number. I thought it an obvious omission that TomTom did not expand that to full street addresses so that TomTom users could navigate to their friends.
So again, I did some research…
Continue reading "Export Mac OS X Address Book Entries to TomTom POI"
Posted by Jay in technology at 5:20 PM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2006
Nokia E61 Review (from the perspective of a Treo 650 User)
I wrote this a while ago, and it could probably use a few more drafts and some more polishing, but I fear I'll never release it if I don't just do it now.... so here it is...
Like many others before and after me, I came to a Nokia E61 from a Treo 650. I had been a Palm OS user from 1999 and always carried two devices, typically the Palm and a Mac-and-Palm-friendly Ericsson/Sony Ericsson phone. The Treo 650 was my first proper converged device. I unsuccessfully hand a Handspring Prism with the VisorPhone add-on which was possibly the worst phone I'd ever used. The Treo 600 was very appealing, but I couldn't go back to a 160 x 160 display due to me religious use of SplashData's SplashMoney.
The 650 was without a doubt the most capable device I've owned. From being fully internet capable, being able to track ALL of my finances, have dictionaries, the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide, the Navman SmartST software and more. However, the devices memory and stability were shocking.
Continue reading "Nokia E61 Review (from the perspective of a Treo 650 User)"
Posted by Jay in technology at 4:22 PM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2006
Mac OS X Address Book to TomTom GO 500 (or 700)
A few months ago, I purchased a TomTomGO 500 from Harvey Norman under the agreement that since my Treo 650 was not listed as compatible, I could return it if I had any trouble. They agreed, it didn’t work, I returned it, but boy, did that result disappoint me! The TomTom was a FANTASTIC device in my opinion. It WAY outshined the buggy and slow Navman 4460 kit which I had been painfully using with my Treo (although it functioned well the Treo’s predecessor, a Tungsten T3). I even tried switching to a Nokia 6680 as to preserve the TomTom, but alas, I had become too dependent on the Palm OS and QWERTY keyboards, so the TomTom had to go, and the Treo prevailed.
Continue reading "Mac OS X Address Book to TomTom GO 500 (or 700)"
Posted by Jay in technology at 12:28 PM | Comments (4)
August 1, 2004
Movable Type: The First Week
Well, I’ve spent a solid week now submersing myself into MovableType. Overall, as I previously mentioned, I’m fairly impressed. I’ve made a few CMS’s in my day, but that was all pre-blog movement. I’m under the belief that a good web designer/developer, with an understanding of modularized structure, and possibly a plug-in or two, could adapt MovableType with all of its authoring benefits to be the CMS for nearly any site.
As much as I’ve been enjoying my week with MT, along with some great discoveries, I’ve come across a few issues…
Continue reading "Movable Type: The First Week"
Posted by Jay in technology at 12:23 AM | Comments (2)
July 25, 2004
Integration Complete!
After a solid day of being “at it”, I’ve successfully amalgamated MovableType with my photo database. The look and feel is now updated, consistent and the best one I’ve had yet I feel. Thanks to Oliver for his advice and assistance.
Coming up on the agenda is learning more about TypeKey, which is a common login across any MovableType blogs (would love to know some statistics!), and seeing what I can do to integrate my database of photo users with the comments system. I figure, worse case scenario, when users are logged into the photo site, I will auto-enter their name and email in the comments form.
I’m positive there are many more things on my agenda, but my brain’s calling it quits.
Posted by Jay in technology at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2004
Move to MovableType
OK. Firstly, please know up front, that this site is probably NOT going to act as expected for a few days, possibly a few weeks. I’ve decided to use the venerable MovableType as a front end to the site.
It all began with Eva’s upcoming trip to Europe and Andy’s desire to start posting his own photos to the web in an easy fashion. Unfortunately, my photo (media) engine is a bit specifically tailored to my needs, and I really don’t have the time to make it generic. So, I began to do some research to identify the simplest, most stylish way for Eva to easily update her friends in regards to her European travels. The search initially began for something PHP/MySQL based, my personal tools of choice. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything that was using that technology to be as slick, professional and impressive as MovableType. I’m quite intrigued by MovableType, their community and their pricing, and therefore will save further discussion regarding that for a later date.
SO…. in the meantime, I’m going to incorporate my photo/media engine with the MovableType engine and see what I can come up with, so patience is appreciated…. but let’s be realistic… it’s not like you’re all banging down my door…
Posted by Jay in technology at 5:43 PM | Comments (1)
March 8, 2004
Site Upgrade and Future Plans
OK, many things to report, as you'd expect since it has been over a year since the site has been updated.
1. I've completely modularized the site. I've done this with the intention of offering up this 'media' content system to everyone. All of my specific settings are now store in a configuration file, making it easy for others to adopt for themselves. Upcoming enhancements include an installer script to build the database.
2. Some minor database changes. The 'photo' table is no more. Long live the 'media' table! That means I'll be introducing other types of media in future updates, specifically movie files and text files. Also, an 'author' field has been added to give credit where credit is due and to eventually open up the site to others.
3. I'm running the site from my home again on Mac OS X Server!!! Let's see ya hack it ;-)
Posted by Jay in technology at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)