I’ve had the Froyo update for my Motorola Droid for a few days now, and overall I’m impressed. There have been some minor UI tweaks, and the speed seems slightly improved, though I think some of this might be in my head. Still, I think it brings the Android experience up to a slightly more refined level, and that’s definitely a good thing. However, there are a few bugs and…
Last week Microsoft made a huge deal about the voice control that will be part of WindowsPhone 7. I watched the demo video and wasn’t impressed at all. As I posted last weekend, I am still perplexed as to why Microsoft wouldn’t just turn to Nuance and license their time-proven and excellent technology in order to ensure a level of voice control, and voice-to-text transcription that will work perfectly from…
I am a huge fan of Ilium software’s eWallet for the iPhone and iPad. It is a great way to keep information on my handheld devices in a manner that is safe and secure but also quickly accessible. The only problem I have had with it is that the desktop version of eWallet was only in Beta and the sync functionality was highly limited. Since I use multiple devices that…
I sang the praises of Graffiti for Android when it first came out. It was solid and easy for quick text entry. Now Access has released an updated with the following improvements: Autocorrect Auto-capitalization Word prediction Input word learning Japanese input Effectively it goes from being a simple text entry system to a very full-featured one. It works great…except for one bug. Most text entry programs recognize if your device…
I have had the original Motorola Droid since last November just after it launched, and I have been extremely happy with the device and the Android operating system. Aside from the mediocre keyboard (which I’ve gotten used to over time) I have had an absolutely fantastic experience with the Droid – it is my constant companion, and I greatly appreciate how it has improved in many ways during the time…
If you’ve got a Sprint HTC EVO 4G, then today you have yet another reason to feel vastly superior to all other Android Device users … Today HTC marked yet another “first” in its long history of bringing innovation to the mobile arena. Ahead of the pack, Sprint has started to make available the latest version of the Android platform, version 2.2, otherwise known as Froyo, for HTC EVO 4G….
Amazon, Kobo, and Borders have all weighed in with their ebook apps for Android, and now it’s B&N’s turn. They’ve rebranded all their reader apps to “nook”, and finally they’ve released the nook app for Android. Right from the start, the nook app and I didn’t get off on the right foot. It almost froze the marketplace trying to download! As it turns out, it’s because the file is a…
There’s been a bunch of stuff going around the web about the Droid X and the fact that it likely will not be able to run custom ROMS and may even be hard to root. I’ll try to describe, in layman’s terms, what this may mean to a prospective Droid X buyer. What is this root and custom rom thing? First, having root is like having the Administrator user password…
If you were a Palm OS fan, you were probably a whiz with Graffiti, the shorthand text input system. In college, I took all my notes on my Palm M100, and I used Graffiti so much my pen and paper notes were in an unholy mix of print scrawl and Graffiti. So when I saw this morning that Access had released Graffiti (the famous, original, pre-lawsuit with Xerox version) for…
As I have noted time and again here on Gear Diary, I am a huge fan of Evernote and rely on it for everything from clipping web pages, to saving important emails to putting some of my rabbinic resource material where I know I can quickly access them no matter where I am, no matter what I am doing. Well I haven’t been all that happy with Evernote lately. No,…
I love Evernote. I live in Evernote. Evernote is killing me… Evernote has been teasing about something new coming for some time. They have blog posts up about it, are running a contest about it, and have reached out directly about it. But try as I might (and I HAVE TRIED) I can’t get a clue about what they are about to unveil. The only thing I do know is…
The other day we were watching the news and there were three product recalls in a row and my wife mentioned hearing on the radio a report about ‘recall overload’, how so much stuff is being recalled so frequently that we become numb to it all. In fact, this week there are reports on various news sources about the issue. Well, apparently the government agencies issuing these recalls are aware…
I love the Skyfire browser. If you aren’t fortunate enough to be running Android 2.2 (aka Froyo), Skyfire is your best bet for web video on the go and your only option for flash video. It’s also a very handy browser to have around in general, with the ability to swap between mobile, desktop and iPhone browsing. Best of all, it’s remarkably flexible and runs equally well on my Droid…
News has been leaking out over the last few days about the new Motorola Droid phones. They sound amazing, with high-end specs like a 4.3-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera, even HDMI out. Unfortunately, it looks like Moto is also going to be slapping MotoBlur on these phones, and that’s a huge disappointment for me. It’s not that I think stock Android is the greatest thing since sliced bread. To be honest,…
Know how you can tell smartphones and app stores are truly mainstream? No, it’s not because my mother just bought a Blackberry! It’s because the Wall Street Journal is writing articles on apps, and that <gasp> malicious apps have been creeping into the smartphone space. I am being a bit tongue in cheek; the Wall Street Journal is, as always, fairly even and conservative in their tone: As smartphones and…
I’ve never had much luck as a matchmaker. In fact I am perfectly horrible at it. Still, this is one time when I am pretty sure that a marriage ought to take place. That’s right, I think it is time for Apple and Nuance to start getting serious about one another. Sure, Nuance now owns MacSpeech Dictate and Scribe which run on OS X. And yes, Nuance’s Dragon Dictation and…
I carry my Droid on every run so I have a phone with me. Since it’s already with me, I use it to track my pace and distance on my longer runs. There are a number of sports tracker apps in the Android marketplace but I keep going back to using one in particular, Buddy Runner. Buddy Runner is super simple. When you first start the app you are greeted…
Looks like this might be the summer of ebook readers! Rumors are flying about new Kindles and nooks, the Kobo reader is hitting Borders Stores, and that’s without considering the impact all the potential Android tablets will have on the reader market. While there’s been some ebook rivalry so far, I think this next wave of readers is where the B&N-Amazon-Borders-Tablet rivalry is really going to get heated. Engadget caught…
I’m in the process of deciding how to rework my home tv setup. At this point it’s a matter of when, not if, my TiVo will die…and as I’ve said before, I don’t really see the value of upgrading to another TiVo. Since I’ll be reworking my whole setup anyway, the thought crossed my mind that a Slingbox might be fun to have. Now that I’ve seen Engadget’s preview of…
Rejoice, satellite radio fans! Sirius XM is now available for Android. It comes with a 7-day trial if you are not already a satellite radio subscriber, and from my brief experience today I don’t plan on becoming a subscriber in the future. First of all, you need a great deal of patience to parse out the subscription options. Sirius doesn’t share what the options are for subscribers unless you log…
Smartphones have become nearly indispensable productivity tools. Businesses issue them to employees, and people use them constantly to keep up with their personal lives. But what do you if you are blind or visually impaired? Tiny keyboards and 3-4 inch screens aren’t always great if your eyesight is wonderful, let alone if you have vision issues. Luckily, the American Foundation for the Blind puts out an online magazine called AccessWorld,…
