I’ve heard of this before and I’m shocked that its still just this easy to create a bump key and pick a lock.  This guy makes it look really easy.

This is why I have a monitored alarm system. 

Labels: Miscellaneous

Randy Pausch gained world fame with a lecture he gave, called The Last Lecture, in September of 2007 after finding out that he had a terminal case of pancreatic cancer the summer before. 

This lecture is very motivational and a good lecture and if you have not seen it before you will enjoy it.

He recently died from the cancer on July 25th, 2008 and his memory will live on through this lecture.

Please take the hour to watch it and enjoy.

Labels: life, Miscellaneous

I constantly hear people complaining about how fast their battery dies.  As the phones and their batteries get more and more expensive we need to take more care of them. 

I have gotten into the habit of plugging in m y phone whenever I go to bed.  I usually only have to do this every two days but I always like waking up with a full battery.

I was recently going to buy a car charger for my phone just in case and saw this article.  Very interesting reading.

To sum it up it basically says:

• Car chargers are the worst thing to use for your mobile battery.  It should only be the last resort.
• Get in the habit of charging the phone at home every night.
• The cheap $10 home chargers are even worse for the battery than the car charger.

Read the full article here to get more information.

[ Full Story ]

Labels: mobile

So the iPhone 3G is now out.  The Bold is on its way.  The guys over at BGR decided to put them head to head.

I really enjoyed the review.  They broke down the comparisons into parts and analyzed them in details. 

I was a little disappointed by the conclusion but understand why it ended up that way.

I won’t ruin it for you but go ahead and enjoy.

[ BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone 3G: yeah, we definitely went there : Boy Genius Report ]

Labels: blackberry, iphone, mobile

I consider myself a heavy RSS user.  Whenever I come across a site with useful content I instantly look for an RSS feed and add it to my list.  If it does not have one chances are I may not visit it it in the future.

This also includes forums.  More and more forums these days have RSS feeds that report the new or updated posts.  Some forums work better than others but I’m just happy if a forum has one.

In the past I used a plug-in for Outlook (pre 2007) called NewsGator.  I loved it so much that after purchasing my copy it probably became the most used application on my computer.  Then along came Outlook 2007 with built in RSS feeds so I really saw no need for NewsGator and unfortunately the program I used so much was put aside.

Recently I got a BlackBerry and was looking for a RSS reader that I could load on it.  The only catch I had is that I wanted something that would sync with my desktop so I didn’t have to do the same work twice.  After a few Google searches along came NewsGator again.  I quickly surfed over the site and was excited at what I saw.

They have an online RSS management system where you can centralize all your RSS needs and all of your clients will sync to it so you don’t have to read the same feeds over and over again.  You can download clients for your PC/Mac or for your mobile devices to read news on the go.  I use this heavily and the clipping feature allows me to mark articles to read in more detail when I get to my PC.  The articles are added to a special folder that I can access later.  I LOVE THIS.

I have listed some of the pro’s and con’s I have noticed so far. 

Pros

• FREE
• Centralized management of feeds online.
• Sync all changes including read/unread, deleted, folder changes (rename/move) done on any of the clients.
• Online feed reader.
• NewsGator Inbox for Outlook.
• NetNewsWire for Mac.
• FeedDemon for PC.
• IE/Firefox plug-in.
• NewsGator Go for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Java Mobile
• Clipping feature to mark items to be read later.
• Much more …

Cons

• Require a data plan for NewsGator Go.
• The NewsGator Inbox for Outlook seems to cause my outlook to take longer to startup.  I remember this way back when I used it in the past but its a small price I pay for such a good program.
• Can’t think of much more as I am still getting use to this.

The best way to learn more about this program is to just give it a try.  Let me know what you think.  Did I say I LOVE IT already?

Labels: mobile, software, Technology, web sites

Apparently Blackberry will be.  Yet more rumors are coming out about how they are improving on the touchscreen keyboard with their Blackberry Thunder device.

The touch keyboard was one of the main reasons I did not like the iPhone in the first place but if this is as good as they are claiming this will be a HUGE selling feature.

[ Full Story ]

Labels: blackberry, iphone, mobile

SMS is currently heavily used by almost everybody that owns a cell phone these days.  Its a quick easy and somewhat cheap method to communicate with others.  However Bell and Telus are going to start charging for incoming SMS’s at a rate of 15 cents per message. 

I honestly can’t believe they will do this.  It is a dirty little trick to get a quick cash grab.  If they allow you to include those in your monthly SMS limits then your limits are basically cut in half.

The one thing I hate about this is that you never know who is sending you or where it is coming from.  I can start sending random messages to people I don’t like and run up their bills quickly.

On my Windows Mobile phone I was able to download a program that would block SMS messages from people I didn’t know.  However the problem with this is that it is handled at the phone level so the message still would go through.  I hope the service providers allow you to set something up on their servers to block them.

I really really hope Rogers doesn’t follow them as well. 

I will start utilizing my data plan more and using things like MSN mobile and blackberry messenger since I am already paying for my data.

[ More Info ]

Labels: mobile, rambling