Safe at Home

So far, I’m thankful I can say the same for friends and family (thanks to Twitter, IM, and mobile phones). I’m also thankful for telecommuting.


– thanks to smithers for the photo

The stretch of Highway 35W bridge I – and many other of my Twin Citizens – take to get around Minneapolis collapsed earlier this evening.

Gone.

Into the river taking 50+ cars, trucks, and a school bus with it.

If you need an idea of where:
Imagine this picture without the big bridge.

I’m pretty torqed @ the mobile phone networks right now. This is when they’re needed the most. And they’re failing.

UPDATE 3 AUG 2007:
With the 35W South onramp @ Stinson/New Brighton Blvd closed and now 280 closed @ Broadway, I went from living in a place with easy access to all major Twin Cities freeways, to being completely isolated. It’ll probably be like this for a couple years. Farg.

I’m anxious to see how NE Mpls culture will change between now and when 35W re-opens. Will the disconnect with downtown make it more NE-y, more suburban, or more North-y?

What If…

  • ….email apps didn’t consider reading and writing separate modes?
  • …you could post to your blog, from mine?
  • …your online profile was filled out by your friends?
  • …Popularity was measured by the size of the group of people that are everywhere you are.
  • …only robots exchanged messages on Twitter.
  • …I stopped getting distracted by hypotheticals?

UPDATE 19 May 2011

“How can you tell if the person at the other end is real or a kid in Guatemala or Malaysia being paid by the message to engage with people to help build cred for some spam-issuing Twitter account?” – Dave Winer

Hello Nokia 6806 and TMobile HotSpot @Home

After watching my Treo 650 looping restart all morning, I’ve decided to leave it 1 and move to a very utilitarian Nokia 6086.

Things I dislike about the Nokia:

  • Flip phone. I’m just not a big fan.
  • Display is much less attractive than the Treo’s.
  • Only 500 slots in the Contacts list (I had to clean out my Address Book).
  • Clumbsy and ill-organized menu system, pointless ‘my shortcuts’ menu.
  • Mute isn’t a button on the keypad.
  • Need to clear messages (‘Battery Full’, etc) before it recognizes keypad entry

Things I like quite a bit about the Nokia

  • Uses Apple’s iSync thanks to a small hack from shadowmoon 2. Even with Missing Sync, the Treo’s syncing was unreliable.
  • BluePhoneElite2 support. Neither Treo or iPhone have this to any useful manner.
  • Calls over WiFi.
  • It’s a disposable phone that I can’t wait to dispose of.

Dave Winer’s review-at-one-month confirms I made the right decision not picking up an iPhone.

“Because the iPhone doesn’t have a search command, and apparently doesn’t store messages locally, it makes a poor choice for a mobile email client. “

LATER:
I just added a synchronization command to my regular backup script. Feels like tech working for me, not me playing with tech. A good feeling.

UPDATE 31 July 2007:
My number has been ported to the new Nokia. Yea! So far, with my little playing around, it works as expected. I’m actually finding I can dial much faster and more reliably from the Nokia keypad than I ever could from the Treo. I’ll miss Chatter – but I think I’ll get over it. 🙂

1. And unless something very interesting happens, Palm for good.
2. As simple as it looks, I hosed my system the first time I did it. Had to restart in Safe Mode and wait through an fsck to get back to normal. No fun. Second time, no problems.

UPDATE 21 August 2007:
I’m happy for 2 things:

  1. The Nokia moves so seamlessly and actively between the wifi and TMobile networks. Even sitting right next to my router, the phone is constantly bouncing back and forth.
  2. Call initiated on the wifi network that move to the TMobile network don’t go against my minutes.

UPDATE 26 November 2007
This Nokia is turning out to be a pretty horrible phone. Mute & loudspeaker, my two most used functions during conference calls, are a pain to access – even when the screen doesn’t fall asleep and go black during a call. While dialing is faster than the Treo, it’s still cumbersome – using this keypad for text messages makes me cringe. And needing to clear every message the phone wants to tell me before I can tell it to do something isn’t right. Plus, I’ve gotten lost enough to justify hiring a full-time guide, let alone a magical device w/ Google Maps on it.

As I suspected, T-Mobile has added more phones to the WiFi lineup – namely a. Blackberry Curve. Attractive, but I’m not sure if I want to go back to Missing Sync.

Kris Takes the Un out of Unconference

As much as I like Kris, I disagree with his How to save your unconference post.

It’s #2 that gives it away:

“Awesome hallway conversations”

If you’re having awesome hallway conversations, it’s not an unconference. It’s a regular conference. Sorry.

A good unconference has the awesome conversations within the sessions. Otherwise – why bother with the sessions? Maybe you enjoy sitting quietly while being pitched to?

If the goal of the event is to be a conference – then absolutely take Kris’ advice. Be a conference; plan the hell out of it, have tracks, boring lecture/presentations, and tasteless box lunches. Sounds like a waste of time for everyone.