n()_cHIEFs Drivel

…I recently upgraded my Blackberry from the 8703e to the 8130 Pearl. I’ve been a huge fan of the Blackberry since I first received my 8703e a couple years ago, and I really liked the 8703e because of it’s large screen and full QWERTY keyboard, so when the opportunity to upgrade came about I wasn’t sure if I should go with the straight upgrade to my 8703e which is the 8830 or the smaller and more media oriented 8130. There were two downsides to the 8130 which I’ll address one at a time; first the smaller screen, and this issue was definitely a big one. I really liked the large screen that the 8703 sported but when I started checking into the specs for the Pearl I found that though the screen is smaller in size the resolution is still fairly high. Yes you’re still giving up some screen real estate but because of the high resolution the screen is extremely easy to read, and there’s still a lot of info there at one time.

The second issue is caused again by the Pearl’s small size, to save on space RIM went with a QWERTY layout but two letters per key. So you loose some of the ease in typing… or so you would think. To help out with the obvious problems presented by adding two letters to one key, RIM came up with a system called SureType to help out with figuring out what you’re intending to type. The system is remarkably intelligent, it comes with a dictionary that will work for most people out of the box, and for those in law or medicine there are addible dictionaries for specific terms to those areas (as well as many languages other than english). Not only does the system support this static dictionary but it also learns from words you type that it doesn’t know already, names in your address book, and text from all your messages (or messages from specific lists of senders if you get spam on your Blackberry). I was not at all looking forward to learning a new typing system, let alone working with the smaller keyboard. I was, to put it lightly, highly impressed with the keyboard and how quickly you could type. After about a day or two typing on the SureType I was able to enter text faster than on my full QWERTY 8703, yes I was actually able to type faster. It seems that the predictive text and my thumbs being much closer together actually makes it easier to type quickly than with the full QWERTY keyboard, go figure. Read more »

…sitting here enjoying CSI, glad to be home from work. What a day. Anyway, I did make a new discovery today with a little help from one of my brother’s-in-law. It’s a site called Pulse. It’s a really awesome site that aggregates all those various social networking sites (aka LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook) as well as personal blogs, Twitter, picture sites (flickr, picasa) all in one spot. You can keep in touch with your friends in any of those areas as well as Pulse connections from a single spot instead of having to use multiple sites.

I’ve heard tell that Yahoo! is going to have something similar coming out soon, the only difference is Yahoo! will be a software program, not a web page. The nice thing is Yahoo! is rumored to have a version that will run on my Blackberry. So I guess the day wasn’t a total loss

…and I’m done for the day. So you’re aware I’m working with the beta ecto and I have a complaint to voice. Guess what? It’s nothing to do with ecto (I think?) but Drupal. So here’s a blog flogging for Drupal’s Technorati module. Why when I post with ecto does some technorati tag called array always pop up? I haven’t figured it out yet. I have no freaking idea actually.

I never add tags aside from the categories that I choose so maybe I need to reconfigure. We’ll check.

More test posts to come.

So as you can see below it actually worked. You really have no idea how long I’ve wanted the functionality of adding images to my posts. It’s not really that hard either (I used to do it with my old geeklog powered blog, now we’re talking oldschool).

Anyway, enough of the really useless posting. Although I must say I’m pretty proud to have an ultrasound of my son flipping me off. How many of you out there can say that you have a picture of your child doing something like that in the womb? LOL!

Peace… …out!

…ok, so ecto 3 has integration with flikr.com. What does this mean? It means that I should be able to include photo’s in my posts like I’ve wanted to for sooooo long. So without adieu, here’s my son, giving us the bird in the womb (yes, we now know he’s a Chandler!).

That tiny little arm is indeed in a tiny fist with “The Finger” up. Now how’s that for learning quick how to let people know you’re not photo ready?