Handy Blackberry Apps

I’ve been meaning for a while to share some Blackberry Apps I’ve found useful. I’d also like to hear about any you find useful also!

Google Voice (http://www.google.com/mobile) – Lets you call people with your Google number set as the number they see. The nicest feature though is FREE SMS messaging!

Google Sync (http://www.google.com/mobile) – Lets you sync your Google calendar and contacts with Outlook.

Google Maps and Search (http://www.google.com/mobile) – Allows you to search based on your GPS location, and obviously, Maps helps you get where you want to go, though it is still occasionally inaccurate.

EveryTrail (http://www.everytrail.com/bbapps) – Tracks your location while you drive, run, bike, ride a horse, whatever. It will record your entire trip, including altitude changes, average speed, total distance covered, etc... You can also upload the trip to the EveryTrail website, Facebook and other social media sites from your phone, and can replay the trip later on the website.

DriveSafely (http://www.drivesafe.ly/download/) – Text-to-speech for emails and SMS. Just remember to turn it off after you get out of the car, or it may start loudly reciting the email your wife just sent you while you are in the middle of a meeting.

Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/blackberry) – Is awesome. If you don’t know what Pandora is, you don’t need this app.

WorldMate Live (http://www.worldmate.com/blackberry/) – The app is a bit of a beast, but it is very handy if you travel a lot. You just forward your itinerary email (most websites, like Orbitz, and travel agents will email you an itinerary) to trips@worldmate.com, and voila, you have all your hotel and airline ticket/confirmation numbers on your phone. It will also remind you when trips/flights are approaching. You can manually add items and book flights/hotels with it also. Oh, it will also tell you what the weather is at your destination. Did I mention the app is a beast? And there are more features in the paid version!

Urbanspoon (http://www.urbanspoon.com/blackberry) – A kind of restaurant slot machine. Tell it what kind of food you want, or how much you want to spend, and it will find you a restaurant based on your current GPS location.

UberTwitter (http://www.ubertwitter.com/bb/download.php) – This is my favorite Twitter app for Blackberry (so far, there are some other good ones in the works).

FourSquare (http://foursquare.com/blackberry/beta) – I’ve fallen out of the habit of using it, because I’m usually too busy when I’m travelling to mess with it, but it could certainly be fun at tech/security events. Some places will give you discounts for being “the mayor” as well.

Flattery will get you everywhere, Ms. Brown.

I popped into a Kayak Coffee just to see how decent coffee chains are is in the midwest (not bad, BTW). While waiting for my order, an eccentrically dressed older lady chats me up, and tells me I look like Sylvester Stallone. She asks if I'm Greek or Italian (I've had this conversation a few times before), and I point her in the right direction. She goes on giving complements, we speak a bit in spanish, and my order comes up. I mention I'm in town on a business trip, and I'm about to end the conversation and leave. She pounces (metaphorically) and tries to hock her CD, which I totally overlooked. 

She wants $15 for a burned CD with the title and artist scribbled with a sharpie? Pleeeeease. The CD labels her as a Jazz, Gospel, and "Chanter". I'm curious, so I pull out a twenty and hand it to her, expecting a five in exchange. Instead, her face lights up, and she exclaims her thanks, and announces that she can now have dinner tonight. Now I know I've been swindled. I trudge out to the car with my honey latte, and pop the CD into the dash of my rental. It has one looooooong track. She sings acapella throughout this solitary track. It is obviously the voice of the woman I spoke to in the coffee shop, Ms. Barbara Brown. She has a strong, clear singing voice, though it is the voice of an amateur, perhaps a lifelong church-goer and choir singer. The quality of the recording is surprisingly good. 

After listening to a few minutes of the CD, I'm not sure whether she's a bit crazy or not. She sings in the same key throughout, but there are no real lyrics. She simply repeats the same, chanting, melodic exercise, using a variety of religious words in different languages. She may be equal parts crazy, and skilled swindler.

Maybe the kids will like it. Perhaps I can upload it if anyone wants to hear what I got myself into. You leave me with odd mementos, St. Louis.

<SIGH> Back to work.

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

Just heard something I haven't heard in a restaurant in a long time...

"Smoking, or Non?"

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

Checking bags in Cleveland

I tried to take my larger bag through security, intending to check it
at the gate (and therefore not paying the fee). They looked at the bag
and started shaking their heads. "They let me check it at the gate in
Knoxville", I said, a bit defensive. They laughed and said, "we follow
the RULES here" before sending me back to the airline counters to
check my bag and pay my $30.

True story.

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

Bye Tennessee, see you Friday. Don't have too much fun when I'm gone.

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

My Son's Reading Obsession

I'm working in my home office, and my son wanders in. He mumbles to himself as he looks through the large built-in bookcase for something to read. "Hmm, Dinosaurs, no... Introduction to Physics... OK", I hear him say, as he wanders off with Introduction to Physics in his hands. Now, if he understands any of it by the time I finish working for the day, I'll REALLY be impressed.

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

At the 2010 Chinese New Year Celebration

Helena wan't feeling well, so it is just me and Enzo.

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

Listening to my old band's latest CD

Weird to listen to, as it has been a long time since I played with
them. I bring the bass on 4 songs, if I remember correctly.
www.myspace.com/johnadamthomasandthelonely45

Posted via email from Adrian's posterous

Antivirus has failed for long enough!

I just read on a LinkedIn discussion, about how Kaspersky created some fake executable files, and then created REAL detections for them. Within ten days, 14 other AV vendors had blindly added detection for these files as well!

I've been a strong anti-AV advocate for as long as I've been using computers. In corporate environments, I feel it is a necessary evil, as you have little control over what risks individual users might take. On personal machines, however, I've always felt that AV is more of a disruption than the potential risk of getting a virus. What do I hate so much about AV software?

• It Doesn't Work - I've set up my friends and family with a variety of AV software over the years, and they still get infected.
• Performance - Depending on whether you have an AV client with a small footprint, like the new Panda Cloud AV software (which I recommend if you are looking for a good free AV client), or a full big-vendor suite, there will be a performance cost. It doesn't seem to be much with the smaller clients, but I've seen the larger ones make a computer completely unusable.
• Add-Ons - Speaking of big AV suites, some of these come with an unbelievable amount of crap that you neither asked for, or needed. They even have the gall to include software that "improves your PC's performance". You could be installing VPN, Backup, Tune-up, Email proxy/scanning, web proxy/scanning, web filter, firewall, encryption, file shredding, and who knows what other software, when all you wanted was anti-virus. I've seen systems with 30+ active processes belonging to the anti-virus vendor suite.

I am the "Virus Sanitation Engineer" for my family and friends. Do I put AV software on their machines? Absolutely. Do they still get infected with malware anyway? Absolutely. I think that a few precautions can make AV software largely unnecessary.

• Use a Web-Based Email Client - Not only do all web-based email clients scan attachments and emails for malicious files or content, but most malicious content sent via email will not execute when opened in a browser.
  
• Delete or Ignore Anything you Don't Explicitly Trust - I know you're curious, but really, don't click it. Don't open it. Just delete it. If you are really that curious, take precautions before checking it out.
  
• GMail - GMail also has a nice feature that can help protect you: Weary of that Powerpoint presentation or Excel attachment that has been forwarded to you from people you don't know? Open it in Google Docs. Any malicious office macros embedded in the document won't run.
  
• Don't Use Internet Explorer - There may be a day when it is safe to use, but we're not there yet. Until then, use Firefox with the NoScript add-on installed (best scenario), or Chrome. Or Safari. Or Opera. Just not IE. The last TEN infections I cleaned up for friends and family computers were all due to Internet Explorer use.
  
  Though it isn't a 100% guarantee you will never get infected, these four simple suggestions have worked extraordinarily well for me, and my wife (who was already doing what I suggest here before I even met her!).
  
  As for the enterprise, I'm hoping whitelisting and other technologies that work on a principle of trust, rather than maintaining a database of known malicious software, will eventually be able to replace antivirus software.
  
  

Penny Arcade Censored

Penny Arcade has long been one of my favorite comics. In fact, I'm shocked to notice that I've now been reading Penny Arcade for more than seven years! Anyway, I've printed out some of my favorite comics to use as bookmarks over the years.

Tonight, my son (a voracious reader) noticed I was using a comic as a bookmark and took interest in it. Many Penny Arcade strips are not for children, and perhaps not even for the weak-hearted. I tried taking the, "oh you wouldn't get the humor, you'd have to understand x and y for it to be funny" route. He was not discouraged, and continued trying to sneek peeks at it.

This particular strip just had some bad language in it, and I thought he might actually be old enough to get the humor, so I decided to make a quick sanitized version.