CorvettePower.COM
16Jul/07

Twitter

I've started to Twitter (http://twitter.com) IM or Email me to get my address.

16Jul/07

Notify

I've installed the Notify module to see if its a good module to allow users to be notified of new content. There doesn't seem to be a 'default' setting that will apply to new user accounts. ;(

http://drupal.org/project/notify

  1. Extract the notify module directory, including all its subdirectories, into your drupal/modules directory.
  2. Enable the notify module on the administer >> modules page. The database tables will be created automagically for you at this point.
  3. Modify permissions on the administer >> access control page.
  4. Go to administer >> settings >> notify and modify the settings to your liking.
    Note: e-mail updates can only happen as frequently as the crontab is setup to. Check your crontab settings.
  5. To enable your notification preferences, click on the "my notify settings" on the "my account page". Or, similarly go to another user's account page at user/<user_id_here> to modify his or her personal settings.
  6. Additional options can be set at administer >> users by clicking the "notify settings" tab.
16Jul/07

ComiCon 2007

Just a quick update, as I said before last week they have sold out of
all 4 day passes for the Comic-Con.  That means you will have to
stand in line every day that you want to go.

They are also now making noise that the Saturday only tickets are
probably going to sell out in advance, so if you want to attend the
Comic-Con on Saturday check out:

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_reg.shtml

You can pre-reg for the specific days.  I STRONGLY recommend you do
this right away if going to this event is important to you.  They are
limiting attendance and once those tickets are gone they are gone.

Since they sold out so far in advance I will be unable to get comp'd
passes for people this year unless you were on the setup crew for the
event.  So again, go pre-reg NOW if you want to attend a specific day!

2Jul/07

iPhone – the cheap review

OK I have to jump in and say that I got to spend 5 minutes with one over the weekend at a party.  I have to say I’m very impressed.  As with any ad you see, you know that the situation is very controlled, and things are loaded up to make the product work as they want it to appear.  So my friend hadn’t had much time to fill the device up before meeting up with us, but he had music, video, family photos, YouTube, contacts and the calendar all populated.  Here are my bullet points.

  1. The UI is as fast as the ad, except when rotating.  You rotate the phone a couple times and there is a delay… but it only seems like a delay because the rest of the phone UI is fast.  This delay is the NORMAL speed on my SmartPhone… its delays are measurable in 5-10+ second range.  iPhone was 3 seconds max.
  2. Navigating and zooming with finger gestures was fun, not sure how much I would like it over time.
  3. I spent some time watching the video on how the soft keyboard works, and feel frustrated it didn’t work as well as I hoped.  I wasn’t trying to type anything complicated and it still didn’t do a very good job predicting my key strokes.  But I only spent 5 minutes with it, I’m sure after a day, it would have trained me to type better.
  4. YouTube looks like … um.  YouTube was not very good on the iPhone, because of course of source material.  The display is beautiful, and when higher quality stuff is uploaded I’m sure it will look better.
  5. iTunes integration was apparently a breeze for my friend.  His purchased TV shows came over as well as music and album covers.  It all shows a well thought out strategy by Apple to prepare media for their devices.  The TV shows looked very good (in contrast to YouTube).
  6. There is a lack of applications, which is frustrating, but with 12k+ Apple employees with the phone, I am sure there will be web based applications a plenty soon enough.
  7. The phone is dense… compared with my MotoQ, it had a bigger screen, about the same size, but was a tad bit heavier.

That’s as far as I got before I started to drink and lost interest in the device.  My friend on the other hand was IM’ing people all night.  I couldn’t see what he was typing, just iChat like balloon windows on the screen.

Oh, one last thing…

Web browsing… “This isn’t a trimmed down version of the web… it’s the real web”… that really sucks to read on a small screen.

I’m getting old, and having to zoom to make the fonts bigger on web sites was difficult, and time consuming.  I have really enjoyed web apps that ‘know’ about mobile devices, and smartly render a more friendly experience.  If anyone hasn’t checked out Gmail from a smartphone (I use the MotoQ), it has a trimmed down UI, which focuses right on what you want to see, fits the screen, and support numberpad shortcuts (press 4 to archive this email, 0 to return to inbox at any point in the UI).

I know future apps will be written to take advantage of the iPhones display.  And being able to see the real web site when in a pinch is better than not being able to go to sites (which I can’t do at all on my MotoQ).