Well after spending countless hours the last couple days on iTunes being slow after backing up my iPhone.  Apple released an update to the iPhone 2.0.1.  Things were responding nicely..sync was on par, so why not check out some more free applications.  I mean … worst I can do is slow things back down again, right?

CrazyLighter - this is by far one of the most useless apps, but one I will never attend another music venue in the evening without.  And the great news? I won’t be nursing my burnt fingers the day after as the iPhone hasn’t yet burnt me or anyone else I know of!

PegJump - Cracker Barrel peg toy on table.  I will say no more…even kept the kids entertained.  For some reason they keep beating me…I don’t know why.  Maybe because my parents taught me collecting more pieces in the end shows the winner.  My kids just rolled their eyes at that one…

Compass - I can’t really test this one out, as its pitch black out at night.  Tomorrow I’ll check it out.  Maybe the developer will think of moon light on the next version.

Hangman - Good, fun game.  I’d like the keyboard to be bigger.  Drop the space between the letters and/or reuse the iPhone keyboard, no? The graphics are not bad, but upon loading the program, I thought of a stickman with attitude (Animator vs Animated).  No attitude on this one, he was already dead before I hung him.

iPhunny - catchy app name.  Very simple….amusing jokes.  Hint….to change to the next joke…swipe your finger sideways like scrolling through your pictures.  It only took a few seconds of shaking and finger swiping to move it along.

Magic8Ball - This one rocks.  Shake your iPhone (holding it firmly in your hand) and it vibrates and makes sounds…stop the shaking to get your fate…

Earth 3D - I like it…awesome looking, but was bored quickly.  It would be good for a lesson on….oh the earth is round…and we do revolve around the sun, etc.  Honestly, I’m not sure how to really use this…or come up with a reason to keep it around.

Whip - Nice!! Just like iSaber, but with the sound of a whip coming from your iPhone.  I have some useful ways to use this tomorrow…Get your room clean….hang on…oh damn dead battery…ok…just pick up your socks…please!?!

Stress Toy - uhh…not what I had in mind.  It made me more stressed out…honest!  I deleted this one immediately.

Carrie’s Dots - a connect the dots, make a box, color it in game.  I’m going to try this out with the kids tomorrow.  I remember playing this in school as a young boy….when we didn’t have computers to make games for us…. :-p  I did change the names from Carrie/Dad to You/Me.

SpeedTest - Check the download/upload speed of your connection.  Nice utility to keep around.

Save Benjis - Look up the price of just about anything to compare while standing in your favorite store.  What’s even cooler is you’ll look like you know what your doing in a place like Fry’s! Those in Walmart will probably not even have a clue.  The search gets pretty involved, letting you specify the barcode, mfg., etc.

Nearby - Show’s POI or points of interest near your position, without having to register or log into anything.  There are other application similar to this, but I like the fact I don’t have to register for yet another social site! The downside is it uses Microsoft Virtual Earth, which I find to be more clunky to use than Google Maps.  May just be this application, but zooming in/out is not as simple and downloading the new maps to redraw the screen take longer than Google’s over same connection.

TapTap - I haven’t owned any of the Guitar Hero or Band type games as of yet.  After playing this for a few minutes, I may consider it.  I mean everyone has a little bit of Rockstar in them, don’t they?

Labyrinth Lite Edition - Not bad…get the ball traveling past the holes to its goal.  Yah right…this is a fun game, but not easy…well I did better just sitting it on the flat table and watching the ball barely move around.  Some of the maps did seem glitchy…the ball would bounce off a wall hard while slowly moving along.

And….I almost forgot…

1Password - I like its concept.  I don’t know how much I trust it at the moment.  I’m not putting anything super secret in here…that goes in my safe.  But its good at keeping things semi-private, well…private!  Saves logins for you on common websites…like Taco Mac…so you can log into their WIFI.  Don and I (at work) were looking for similar app to log into our WIFI at work.  I may just have to test this out and see how it does.  I hate having to log in each time, but it would be slightly better if I didn’t have to type anything in.

So since I’ve had the iPhone for a couple of days.  I had a few tasks to take care of:

Music
I restored my music making iTunes the default music browser now.  Went through a large subset of my music collection and made playlists by themes that I enjoy.  I played around with how best to import my mp3 music collection, and after experimenting, I found going to File -> Add Folder to Library… would be the best option.  Keeping all my mp3 music on my RAID 5 file server.

Contacts
Every time I change phones, moving contacts is never automatic.  It does not matter if the store copies your contacts.  Typically, contact information stored in different fields gets dropped.  Well I decided for the time being not to join Apple’s MobileMe just yet.  I may enroll and check it out for the free 60 days. So I set up my Gmail account to syncronize with my iPhone.  I really like having all my contacts in Gmail and keeping them backed up there.  I was using Mail2Web.com to sync my contacts with my old phone (Blackjack).  Mail2Web provided a free account that provided Enterprise level services (calendar, email push, contacts sync, etc).

Mail2Web lacks a very important feature; exporting your contacts! So I went through all the contacts in Mail2Web copying/updating the ones I had in Gmail.  This enabled me to clean them up.  Only after going through this exercise, I realized that I could have just connected my iPhone 3G to the Mail2Web exchange services.  I may go back and do this, but my Mail2Web account is not my primary account.  I like keeping my contacts in Gmail.  I wouldn’t mind however for Gmail to enhance the contacts interface via the web client.

Applications
I’ve downloaded over 25 free applications by now.  Games, gadgets (light saber, Pint of beer), social applications letting me take pictures with geo-tagging.  I must admit this is all beginning to be quite fun! Two areas that interest me greatly are the where am I with a note or picture and what is around me (including friends).  I had began to use BrightKite suggested by a friend (Ken), but have also discovered two others since having purchased the iPhone: Whrrl and Loopt.  I’m going to test each one out and decide what I like best.

midomi - is one application I am impressed with.  Sing, Say or grab a song you hear on the radio, and this application will search attempting to match it so you can identify the song’s name and artist.

Twitterrific - probably the best (or one of them) to post updates on Twitter.

Google Mobile App - this application is handy to search everything at once.  Search your contacts, google search engine, coffee shops near your position.  I can see myself using this regularly.

Weatherbug - I was skydiving yesterday, and used this application so I could look at the radar and guess how long it would be before the storm passed over head.

BoxOffice - look up movies playing in the local theaters.  I wish it had movie previews/trailers.  It was however able to locate my local movie theater and easily show the movies that were playing, including times, etc.  Also includes movie ratings from RottenTomatoes.com

iPint - this is more of a novelty, but is was put together quite well.  At least when I can’t take it any longer at work in a meeting, I can pour myself a virtual beer and drink it.

People - find people using white pages look up.  I had no problem finding people with first/last name  and city/state.

Dial Zero - calling customer service for some company? Hate all the buttons you have to press to get a real operator? This program will dial the company and get you pass all the prompts to a live operator.  Classic!

Pocket Express - contains weather, movies, entertainment all in one package.  First noted, the weather radar is not as good as Weatherbug.  You can’t move the map around like you can on Weatherbug.  The travel section has not yet been implemented (you get directed to the web version).  The movies section has not been implemented yet.

PhoneSaber - Another novelty, but do you honestly think I would dare take on another iPhone geek without my PhoneSaber? :-p

Cloudy Photo Blogger - Take photos, and check out nearby photos that have been taken.

Fox News UReport - see something happen that is news worthy? Take a picture and send it to Fox news.  It may actually get used! I doubt I will stumble across anything news worthy…but just incase.

I’m can’t wait any longer…I can’t stop thinking about owning the new iPhone 3G that is suppose to be available this Friday.  Seeing applications like 3D Earth makes me drool even more…

I’m imagining 3D earth as shown in the video to let you pan around by simply tilting the iPhone, but also with the built in GPS, I should be able to return to “where I am located” with the click of a button or two.  This is not a confirmed feature of 3D Earth yet!

I always said my next phone would be one that included GPS.  I said that about my next digital camera too so my photos are automatically geotagged. :-)  (still holding out on the camera)

Yeah, plan to set a filter now to ignore any posts on my blog with “iphone” if you don’t want to hear me rant and rave over the new phone starting this Friday! :-p

After trying out the Passport 9500i.  I had to give the Valentine 1 I ordered a try.  I’m not a professional tester like you see on these other sites.  I’m more of a consumer who loves electronics, gadgets and well…a new gadget is hard to not scrutinize even if I now only 10% about radar detectors.

In short I decided to keep the Valentine 1 over the Passport 9500i.  I’ll explain my reasons below and point out the ones I had read/researched about below.

What I like about the Passport 9500i (in order of importance):

• Voice that announces what threat you’ve encountered keeping your eyes on the road
• I could customize the operation and what was displayed on the detector using the configuration menu
• auto adjusting volume (it worked OK, wish it would auto-volume a little better; but I did have a convertible mini cooper — adjusting the sensitivity would have been nice?)
• GPS capability for blocking out known non-threatening signal
• Mute button on the power plug was easier to reach
• Speed display upon detection
• updated sleek design
• Hard case everything came in that can be used to carry the detector when you leave your car

What I like about the Valentine 1 (order of importance):

• Arrows to indicate direction of radar
• Blinking arrow to indicate location of most severe threat
• Excellent reputation, reliability and has proven it just works over and over again
• Changing between three modes calmed my concern of the claims I read with the unit being annoying in city driving
• Coiled and straight cable were both included

Dislikes with Passport 9500i (biggest complaints first):

• I would like arrows or the voice alert including a direction!!! When testing the 9500i, the voice alert could be improved by telling me where the threat was coming from:  “K-band Front/Rear/Side”
• Correct the GPS locking feature that blocks signals you chose to block; but may inadvertently also block radar guns in the same frequency.  I’m not sure from a technical view point if this is really possible; perhaps blocking out a smaller subset range of the frequency? But then how small of a window should the engineers choose?
• The USB port on the side is not currently usable.  It makes the geek in me curious as to what the intent behind this will be for and also cautions me as this may still be a beta product released early…ouch!

Dislikes with Valentine 1 (biggest complaints first):

• Before learning the different beeps; at night it is hard to tell what band the detector is informing you about.  Little LED’s illuminate, but telling if the LED is next to the L, Ka, K or X is not easy to read at night!
• Would like voice alerts so eyes can stay on road
• Prefer mute on the power plug for easier access and also to prevent changing the volume when pushing the knob to mute the detector
• a nice carrying case would be nice; I know its extra — I should have ordered it with the detector

So the 9500i is nice if you want the frills, which I really, really liked.  I wasn’t so concerned with how they both looked.  I didn’t initially think the arrows would matter much to me, but once you begin using the Valentine 1 with the arrows, you just cannot go back to another radar detector.

Mini Cooper S convertable with Valentine 1 mounted high, behind and just to the left of the rear view mirror.

That’s right…for today only…download Firefox 3.0 and help set a record — or — just download the latest version of Firefox and try it out.

After spending two hours on Friday to get my front tire replaced (due to a screw). I returned on Saturday to get the left front tire replaced (due to a nail), I also discovered (the dealership didn’t discover this); that my back two tires were badly worn. I paid ($500) to have the two rear tires also replaced and balanced on Saturday. I spent another 2 1/2 hours at Global Imports BMW Mini.

Now…I have four good tires, but have to take the car back in and spend another $150 to get the front alignment redone. Its not something they suggested to me or that I even considered they wouldn’t have done on Saturday considering there were now four new tires on the vehicle.

I don’t get it, maybe its me. But when I take my car for service at NAPA around the corner I receive excellent customer service. They check and recommend things to the car owner if they see it out of whack. Why do I keep going back to Global Imports BMW Mini? Well first off, the service (not tires or brakes) is free for the first three years. But at the rate I’m going, its costing me almost a full days work the amount of time I’ve sat at the dealership. I will have accumulated eight hours by the time I finally get my car back to normal working order.

Why the alignment? I took the car on Fathers day to Helen, Georgia with the kids and the car is majorly pulling to the right. A recently purchased car with new tires should not pull so badly to the side of the road.

Very unhappy with the attention to detail Global Imports BMW/MINI has given my Mini Cooper S. At the moment, I doubt I would ever buy another one since this is the only service center in town and I’m stuck with them! How do they continue to operate like this????

Update:

Before taking my car in, I decided to check the tire pressure on all four new tires.  The pressure was off on all four tires.  Funny how a dealership puts on four new tires, and doesn’t even follow their own guidelines on tire pressure.  With the newly recommended 35 psi on all four tires, I took the car for a short drive and it tracks straight! (30 psi was the old rated pressure, but MINI sent out notices to all owners including a new sticker that should be placed in the door over the old sticker; it appears that I am not the only one that had tires improperly inflated following the old sticker on my car).  I wonder how much money all the dealerships made off of tires that wore improperly?

The notice said that you had to make your claim within 10 days of receiving the notice.  I did not.  But even half way through the life of your tires, how do you know what is proper or improper tire wear? Will the dealership really be honest and tell you? I shouldn’t be shocked by all this, but I am!

I was leaving work a bit early yesterday, when the tire warning light came on.  Rather than just reset it as I had done this morning when driving in, I decided to call the dealership and stop by on my way home.

Upon inspection we discovered that the right front tire had a screw in it.  The head was missing, but you could still make out the threads.

The Global Imports BMW MINI dealership estimated one hour, it took two hours to replace the tire.  In talking with Brandon the service rep, he was very nice and helpful.  He told me to watch my tire pressure, as we talked about my tires having uneven wear.

On the way home, I stopped and picked up a digital tire gauge and checked the air pressure in my tires.  That is when I noticed a nail in the left front tire.  Frustrated I called the dealership and now today, I am back at Global Imports BMW to have them replace the front left tire.

I asked Tara, the service rep. I am working with now if they could inspect the back tires for foreign objects while they had the car up in the air.  Just as I was saying it, I walked behind the car to look at the rear tires and noticed the steel belt barely visible in the center of the tires only.  Crap!

Well Tara has been very helpful.  She apologized that they let me even leave yesterday with tires looking like that and offered me a discount.  Since I have the wheel and tire warranty, the front two tires are free.  But the back two tires I have to replace, they are worn out and even if they had a foreign object in them, they are below the minimum tire tread wear for a free replacement.

Things I’ve taken away from this experience:

• I need to monitor my tires much more closely.  They are high performance tires and if not watched closely, even a small amount of air pressure will cause uneven tire wear more dramatic than any other vehicle I have ever owned.
• Tara and Brandon are excellent service reps at Global Imports BMW.  They are professional, provided me with free food and drinks.  This isn’t something that even my wife’s Saturn dealership provides as adequately.
• I have strong concerns with the maintenance technicians who are working on my car downstairs.  Why didn’t they take a quick spin of the other tires and check them yesterday? This isn’t the first time they have made me unhappy.  The first time I brought my Mini to them, they left the drain plug too loose and I was leaking oil!

I decided to grab lunch and read more of what I could find on Google App Engine (GAE).  Found a few interesting sites.

Steve talks about how GAE fills a much different need in the cloud computing arena than Amazon has done with its own S3 and EC2.  Google doesn’t charge you for the server you rent (i.e. like EC2), but rather they charge you with how much you actually use.

Next up is Shannon, who explains how .NET can leverage GAE through abstraction via a webservice call.

Last up, is a solution I found very interesting.  Andreas explains how GAE can be used as a Content Delivery Network (CDN).  I won’t bother going into details of what a CDN is, it is explained well on his website.  What I found interesting is how this would compare to Amazon’s S3; where I’ve seen several people adopt a similar strategy using Amazon’s S3.

Over the last couple nights, I also watched the GAE video on YouTube introduced in Google Campfire One.  Parts One, Two and Three.

You can download the GAE SDK here.  Pricing is discussed (not confirmed) here.

Two weeks ago I picked up the Escort 9500i from Best Buy to try out. I’m not a radar expert and I wouldn’t classify myself as a radar consumer enthusiast. I have never had a radar detector before either. I was going into this self-evaluation completely blind. First to determine if I wanted to buy and keep a radar detector and second which one did I like best? (I like != best radar detector)

I researched several detectors online. This site, oh this one too, and this.

Now my buddy, J Helms…likes cars and so I asked him one evening after I had the 9500i for a week. Which one did he feel is better? He gave me several opinions and suggestions on why they work, why they suck and why the V1 or Valentine 1 is rated as one of the best. As fate would have it, just before asking his opinion I ordered a Valentine 1 on their website to compare against the Escort 9500i I have been using lately.

I have 30 days to evaluate each radar detector!

Originally, it all started when I drove my son to Huntsville, AL. I was on the dual highways with a speed limit of 65. I kept my speed around a comfortable 70 on cruise. The problem I began noticing was if I missed one speed limit sign, I could be in big trouble, because speed on these signs dropped down to 45! And there may have been one or two houses, maybe a gas station around with no intersection!

I began thinking of my latest speeding ticket. Its fair to get a speeding ticket if you are speeding, which I was. I’m not trying to claim ignorance. Or am I? I was passing another vehicle that was 10-15 under the speed limit in a dual lane road. I got zapped for 15 over! Its amazing how quickly your car will pick up speed when you punch the gas to get around someone! :-/

After I purchased the 9500i, I drove it on a trip to Huntsville, AL in the evening. Just before it became dark out, I passed through Rome, Georgia and the 9500i went off on Ka band. I looked around and then noticed a pimped out Police Cruiser turned out behind me and proceeded to tail gate me. The 9500i doesn’t block all Radar Detector Detector’s (RDD), and I am guessing he had a RDD that could identify me as having a radar detector. That was fine, I was doing the speed limit there was a lot of traffic anyway. I kept driving through town and he eventually gave up and turned off.

The next alert, I was five miles over the speed limit (70 in a 65mph), and it was pitch black out. This police car was pointing away from me, in the median (grass) between me and oncoming traffic. I was coming up a hill and the 9500i picked him up before I could see him. I was pretty sure he was in front of me, as I was coming over the crest of a hill. I slowed down slightly and passed him while the 9500i kept alerting me of his presence. This was the first time I felt the radar detector was useful. I would never have seen him in time otherwise.

The rest of the trips with the 9500i have resulted in mostly city driving with 15 miles on the highway for work.  I drive about 25 miles one way to work in Atlanta, which has one of the worst driving records.  One morning, traffic was actually moving on 75 South! (Hey school was out!)  I was cruising with the rest of the vehicles at 70.  The speed limit is 55mph on the highway near the city.  Coming around a bend, the 9500i went off alerting me to radar (which I presumed was ahead of me).  It was, a Police Cruiser in a median between an on ramp and near where the HOV lane starts.  Its a perfect spot, slight bend in the road, people accelerate when getting in the HOV lane, etc.

I slowed down while cars flew past me, then slammed their brakes on! One of my theories is do radar detectors increase dangerous driving or cause us to be more cautious and aware?

The Valentine 1 arrived.  I picked it up at the FedEx facility as it needed a signature and mounted it on my windshield and drove home in my Mini Cooper.  Not enough to consider much yet.  I did make a few similar passes among a road where there are several stores.  The 9500i warned me as my speed increased.  I switched it to Highway mode to disable its self adjusting sensitivity while I am driving slow.  It picked up one strong signal in front of me.

I took the Valentine 1 through the same route.  Wow…this thing was picking 2, 3 then 4 different signatures.  I’m not impressed as they seemed to be all stores.  I didn’t see any police cars around, which doesn’t mean a whole lot.  I’ll have to drive to work for the next two weeks using the Valentine 1 before I make my decision.

Oh and this weekend? I’m taking both detectors as I travel up into the mountains for fathers day.  I hope I get to see a speed trap through one of the smaller towns.  I would like to evaluate both detectors at the same speed.  I hope the family is patient with me turning back around, etc.  They will be rolling their eyes with this geek and his new toys! :-p

After my recent new desktop purchase.  I had always intended to run multiple machines on it using VMware Workstation.  I started with the 30-day trial.  Just as I went to sit down and knock out some work, I was hit with the your trial has expired.

So, I head over to the website to purchase the software; $189.  No problem.  Oh, wait, there is an update.  Fine download that too.  Might as well get it all done at once right?

WRONG!

I purchased the software, downloaded, installed the new version (which automatically removed the older 6.0.x version) and rebooted.  Next I started VMware.  But instead of getting the program I expected, I received a dialog with an error:

Application failure. hr = 0×80004003: (null)

WHAT???? I can’t believe I just purchased software from a reputable company (is it?), upgraded to the latest version and I get this.  I did my research and found a solution on the VMware forums here.

I can’t believe the only solution offered is by the community.  Why hasn’t VMware/EMC addressed this by now? What is even more confusing is I didn’t originally receive the error when I first installed the software!

After wasting 1.5 hours, I am finally going to get to work.