gadgetboy.org

People constantly ask me what gadgets I have my eye on, so I thought I'd share what's currently on my wish list:

• Netbook (Acer Aspire One with Linux Linpus Lite, 512 MB RAM, 10" Display)
• 6-cell extended battery for the Acer Aspire One Bought from a shop in the UK - the only place I could find it!
• Widescreen Display (Samsung 2233BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 20,000:1, 5ms, 1680 x 1050, DVI)
• Chumby I may ask for this as a Christmas present. I'd probably never buy it for myself. My wife has vetoed this one as a gift. Heh.
• boxee (Free!) I just need a Mac to install it on...
• BrightKite for the iPhone (Free!) Just waiting for it to come out of beta...
• Google Chrome for the Mac (Free!) Just waiting for it to be released. Seriously - what's taking so long!?
• PPS130 - 130Wh Portable Power Station. For those times when you just gotta have juice.
• Neoprene or Leather Case for my Acer Aspire One. I need to make sure that it will fit with the 6-cell battery first.

I'll update the list as I a) buy them or b) change my mind. ;)

Cloud from the Inkscape Tutorials blogToday is the day I moved completely into the Cloud.

After having my netbook (an Acer Aspire One) for a few weeks, I've been trying to determine my optimal workflow. Today, I realized I had a couple of holes that needed to be filled.

Here was my original setup, BN (Before Netbook):

• Productivity: Office 2008; iWork (Keynote, Pages, Numbers)
• Corporate Email: Microsoft Exchange (Entourage on the Mac with occasional use of Outlook Web Access)
• Calendar: Microsoft Exchange (Entourage on the Mac with occasional use of Outlook Web Access)
• Contact Database: OS X Address Book
• GTD: Remember the Milk Pro Account
• Personal email: Google Apps (as spam filter and mail archive) forwarded to Mobile Me, then using this effective workaround to send email from my domain.

I used over-the-air (OTA) sync for everything (calendar, contacts) and had push email for both my personal and corporate email. I like the OS X Address Book for contacts instead of Entourage/Exchange because I enjoy having people's photos appear in their contact entry and when they call on my iPhone. ;)

Over the past few weeks, I've begun using ThinkFree Office for reasons you can learn about here. It's been a pretty seamless transition and has really helped me use the netbook effectively.

Today however, while in a meeting, I realized that I needed to send personal email from my netbook. That's when the fun began.

The first problem with Mobile Me is that you can't set the "FROM" address to use your own domain. (Hence the above workaround.)

The second problem is that the Mobile Me online Address Book just plain sucks. I needed to get an email address from my contact database and it was such a painfully slow experience. Even on a fast Mac using Safari, it takes an inordinate amount of time to load.

That's when I realized that I needed to go into the Cloud a bit more deeply in order to get my workflow right. So, here's my setup as of this evening:

• Productivity: ThinkFree Office Netbook Edition + ThinkFree Office for Mac
• Corporate Email: Exchange (Outlook Web Access for the netbook + Entourage on the Mac)
• Calendar: Exchange (Outlook Web Access for the netbook + Entourage on the Mac)
• Personal Email: Google Apps
• Contact Database: OS X Address Book syncing with Google Contacts
• GTD: Remember the Milk Pro Account syncing with Todo from Appigo on my iPhone (thanks to Brad Feld for the tip)

What I lost:

• OTA syncing of my contacts. I now have to sync my contacts with a cable between my iPhone and my Mac. Any additions to my contact database while on-the-go with the netbook will have to be done on my iPhone (if I want to use them while away from my Mac) then sync'd up when I get back to my desk.
• Push email for my personal mail account. 

What I gained:

• The ability to send and receive email from my own domain from any modern browser.
• Access to my contacts in from any modern browser and natively on my Mac.

Those simple changes should allow me to get the most out of this little experiment. I'm sure more of my computing will move into the cloud, at some point.