Apple Store Experience Enhanced with iPhone App
by Jeff on November 20, 2010
I had to visit the Genius Bar at my local Apple store the other day. My MacBook Pro, which I use for work, wouldn’t boot all the way into the main user profile. So while I was on a conference call, I opened up the Apple Store app on my iPhone, found my local store and made a Genius Bar appointment. No need to juggle two calls, no need to risk miscommunicating information to the Apple employee working in a noisy store. I was able to quietly schedule my appointment and leave a detailed note describing my situation.
Twikini: THE Twitter Client for Windows Mobile
by Jeff on June 18, 2009
For the past six months or so I had been using PockeTwit as my main Twitter client on my Windows Mobile Professional (touch screen) phone. The graphics looked really good, the functionality was robust…but the app was just so temperamental! It lagged when scrolling through tweets, it gave me random “Communications Error” messages even while on a clean wi-fi or Edge connection and the app completely froze my phone on more than one occasion.
Poached Egg Rant
by Jeff on April 4, 2009
I’ve worked on and off at a kitchen supply retailer since 2000, and one thing continues to surprise and frustrate me: people thinking they need a special $70 pan made specifically for poaching eggs. You don’t need a special egg poaching pan to successfully poach eggs. Honestly, you don’t. I promise. Here’s what you do need:
Google Contacts in Outlook
by Jeff on February 10, 2009
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Google has licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync, allowing us to sync Google Calendar and Contacts directly with an iPhone or a Windows Mobile device. HOORAY! If you’re an Outlook user for whatever reason (mine is because I have years of archived Outlook emails that I need to keep searchable), and you use Google Calendar and Contacts, you’re also most likely aware that there are few if any good, free utilities for bi-directional syncing of contacts between Google and Outlook. Why Google doesn’t include contact sync in their otherwise-useful Google Calendar Sync I have no idea.
RSS Feed Management
by Jeff on January 30, 2009
I’m an RSS junkie. Ever since I learned about them on an episode of NPR’s Future Tense back in 2004, RSS feeds have been my primary method for consuming news and blog content. Over time, I built up a substantial list of feeds across a variety of topics that I wanted to access no matter what device I was using, be it my home PC, my work laptop, my smartphone, etc. Of course the frustration came when I had no way to easily synchronize my feeds across the devices.
Keeping My Devices in Sync
by Jeff on January 22, 2009
REVISED: I am now using Google Sync for Windows Mobile in place of Nueva Sync to synchronize my Google Calendar and Google Contacts with my Windows Mobile phone. I’ve edited this post to show those changes.
I recently picked up a netbook – the Samsung NC10. As much as I love it, it threw a giant wrench in how I keep my calendars and contacts synchronized (the nerve!). In the pre-netbook days, I had my PC and my Windows Mobile device. Since I don’t use an Exchange server, I just tethered my phone to my PC and had cabled syncing. Easy. But now I have three devices to synchronize, and on top of that, I decided I don’t like cables. What’s a geek to do?
Back to Twitter Basics
by Jeff on January 21, 2009
I was inspired to write this post after reading a recent entry on Fanboy.com titled, “Social Media ‘Experts’ are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped).”
I started using Twitter in October 2008. I’m a geek who follows the tech scene pretty closely, so I’ve been aware of Twitter for a long time; however, since none of my friends were using it, I saw no reason to participate (I didn’t think “taking a crap,” or “watching a hockey game” would be remotely interesting tweets for anyone, even my closest friends). But now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I love it! I’ve had a lot of fun following tech bloggers and podcasters whom I’ve been reading and listen to for the past few years. Even though I’ve never met them, I feel like we could grab a beer and have a lot to talk about.
This is the personal blog of Jeff Sandstrom, a thirtysomething geek in the Raleigh, NC area.