Then I started seeing some buzz about a new kid on the Twitter app block: Trinket Software’s Twikini. Being a good Windows Mobile geek, I had to try it. The verdict? Two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Screen shot of Twikini on a Windows Mobile Standard device. DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT FROM MY PHONE! I am not following Britney, Ryan and Kim.

The main reasons I’m switching to Twikini are:

• Speed: Twikini loads fast and the tweets scroll very smoothly up and down the screen
• Stability: Twikini has never frozen my phone (always a good selling point)
• Clean UI: No bulky graphics weighing it down, but it still manages to look very good
• TwitPic Embedded in the Tweet: This is probably my single favorite feature - instead of having to launch the phone’s browser to view a picture uploaded to TwitPic, the image is embedded in the tweet - so I can stay within Twikini to view the image.

As of the writing of this post, the only hiccup I found was with password management. My Twitter account password contains some numbers, and for some reason Twikini forgot the numbers each time I tried launching the app. Instead of going right into my feed, it made me re-enter the numerical portion of my password. Strange bug, hopefully one that is fixed soon.

So if you’re searching for a fast, clean, fully-functioning Twitter client for your Windows Mobile device (Standard or Professional), give Twikini a try.

• A shallow pan that can hold 1-2 inches of water (a saute pan works well)
• Cold water
• 1-2 tablespoons white vinegar (quantity depending on the size of your pan)
• Fresh eggs
• A slotted spoon
• A paper towel

 
Mmmm…breakfast

Instructions

1. Fill the pan with 1-2 inches of cold water
2. Bring the water to a boil and pour the vinegar into the water (the vinegar helps prevent the egg white from spreading out too far)
3. Turn the burner down to low/medium-low to bring the water to a slow simmer
4. Crack an egg into a small prep bowl (I do this so I don’t accidentally break the yoke into the simmering water and to double-check the quality of the egg) and gently pour the egg into the simmering water
5. Let the egg cook for approximately four minutes. The egg is poached when the egg white is cooked through and the base of the yolk just starts to solidify.
6. Once the egg is cooked, gently lift the egg from the water with a slotted spoon and pat with a paper towel to remove excess moisture.

That’s it!

So if you feel the need to spend $70 on poached eggs, consider putting the money toward fresh, organic eggs - not a special egg poaching pan.

So instead of trying to sync Outlook contacts with Google, I decided to abandon using Outlook for contact management and instead switch to Google Contacts so I can take advantage of the new ActiveSync option. But now I have to open up and log into Gmail to find contacts while everything else is in Outlook! That’s not going to work. Instead, I’m going to view my Google Contacts directly from Outlook.

How to View Google Contacts Directly from Outlook

There are two hacks at work here. The first one is viewing Google Contacts as a standalone site instead of through Gmail. That one comes from the good folks at Lifehacker.com. The second is configuring the Outlook Contacts drawer in the main navigation pane to point to a URL instead of the standard contacts view.

All of the steps take place in Outlook, and this should work in 2003 and 2007 (I’m using 2007).

1. Click on the Contacts drawer
   
2. Go to File > Folder > Properties for “Contacts”…
3. Click the “Home Page” tab in the new dialog box
4. In the “Address” field, type http://www.google.com and check the “Show home page by default for this folder” box. Click OK. The main Google web page should appear within Outlook.
   
5. Log into Google. Be sure to check “Stay signed in.”
   
6. Go back to File > Folder > Properties for “Contacts”… and click the “Home Page” tab
7. Enter the following URL into the “Address” field: https://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager — and click OK
   

And that should do it! You’re now able to manage your Google Contacts directly from Outlook. The only loss of Outlook functionality I can think of with this trick is the ability to create a new contact directly from an Outlook email. If you can think of other issues, please leave a comment.

Enter Yahoo Pipes. Yahoo what? Pipes. Yahoo Pipes. Never heard of it? I’m sure you’re not alone. It hasn’t exactly garnered a lot of press. From the Pipes Overview page:

[Yahoo] Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.

Yeah, I know - I hate the word “mashup,” too. But this is actually useful.

I use Pipes to consolidate RSS feeds by topic. Example: my Typography News pipe includes eight different RSS feeds from typography-related blogs. All feed items are then sorted by date and de-duped based on item title.

Once saved, Yahoo Pipes produces a single RSS feed for the entire pipe, which I can then add to my laptop, my desktop PC and my smartphone. Now when I run across a new typography blog, instead of adding the RSS feed to each of my devices, I can simply add it to my Typography News pipe and access the content no matter which device I’m using.

If you’re struggling with RSS feed overload, give Yahoo Pipes a try. It’s free, easy and useful (and don’t worry, Yahoo is not pulling a Belkin and paying me to write this).

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?

Solution (after much digging): Windows Live Mesh, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Nueva Sync Google Sync for Windows Mobile and a couple connectors.

I’ll take you through each device to show what sync application(s) I’m using, I’ll explain why everyone - geek and non-geek alike - should check out Microsoft Live Mesh, and how Microsoft dashed my hopes for using the newly-relaunched Live services to sync calendar and contacts across three Microsoft platforms. (Yes, I’m slightly bitter.)

Calendar and Contact Syncing

File Syncing

Three words: Microsoft Live Mesh. Yes - it’s still in beta - but it works like a dream. Each device (including Windows Mobile) requires a small piece of software which runs quietly in the background. Once installed, just right-click on a folder you want to share across the devices, select “Add folder to Live Mesh…” and from then on, every time you change the contents of the folder - by modifying, adding or deleting files - those updates will be made across all devices. I can even sync my phone’s picture folder, so new photos are automatically (and wirelessly!) available to my PC and netbook.

Equally as useful as device synchronization is Live Mesh’s “desktop in the cloud.” Login to Live Mesh from any Internet-connected machine and access the synced folders. This is extremely useful for me when I’m at school and need to print documents in the computer lab. I no longer need to remember to copy my docs over to my USB stick before I leave home; because I have my school-related folders automatically synced to Live Mesh, the latest versions of all of my documents will be waiting for me wherever and whenever I need to access them.

Why Not Microsoft for Calendar and Contact Syncing?

These are three Windows-based devices that need to be synchronized. You would think Microsoft would have a way to do this. Apple has it with Mobile Me. Google has it with Android and Google Calendar. I thought, “With the new Microsoft Live relaunch, surely there will be a way to use Live as the cloud service that syncs my three devices!” Nope. Wrong. Here’s why Live fails:

• Live Calendar does not sync with Outlook Mobile’s calendar
• Live Calendar does not sync with Outlook calendar. The folks at Live make it sound like it does, but it doesn’t. The Outlook Connector simply makes the Live Calendar visible as a second calendar within Outlook, just as you would view any ordinary iCal calendar.

I hope that Microsoft will soon figure out if it wants Windows Mobile to play in the consumer space. If it does, maybe - just maybe - it will offer a user-friendly way to synchronize calendar and contacts across multiple Windows devices.

If you’ve found a different (or better) way to keep your devices in sync, or if you completely disagree with something I’ve written, please leave a comment! We geeks love to learn new things.

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.

But a couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to start leveraging Twitter for my employment search. So I set out to grow my number of followers (the more followers I had, the more people I could network with for my job search). I started following people that were retweeted and replied to by people I’d already been following, and within four or five days, my follower count had doubled! And of course I felt compelled to follow those that were following me - that’s just common Twitter courtesy.

And the result of this project to increase followers? Misery. I now hate reading Twitter updates. My feed is full of junk from people who love to hear themselves talk (or see themselves type)…the hype machines with no substance…human marshmallows…the people who only care about getting as…many…Twitter…Followers…as…possible. (Anyone else picking up on the irony here?)

So it’s time to get back to basics. Time to prune the list of people I follow. I expect my follower list to drop as I prune, but that’s okay. Over time, maybe the number of people following me will grow, maybe it won’t. If it does, I hope it’s because of my content and not because they simply expect me to follow them back.

p.s. If you’re looking for great Twitter content, try following HotAmishChick. I have no idea who the writer is, but he/she is absolutely hysterical!