A Cell Carrier Goes Underground

One of the most frustrating things about a long commute can be going into a subway and losing your phone signal. So an ad like this one can be rather hearkening:



I have T-Mobile and my G1 has been getting better coverage on the Blue Line subway in recent weeks. Unfortunately, this improved coverage doesn't help as much for data usage. T-Mobile's 3G coverage is already relatively slow to begin with and my G1 tends to drop to EDGE speeds in a subway so checking email and web browsing can be slow. On the other hand my Palm Pre tends to lose both voice and data in the subway so T-Mobile is ahead of the game here.

Wherein My Obsession With a Lone Flowerpot Continues...

I guess it's another sign that winter is coming when the Chicago Cultural Center switches from weird flowers to nothing to pine:

Halloween in Daley Plaza

This Halloween I went to Daley Plaza for "Chicagoween." The place looked great.



And there was a showing of Young Frankenstein.


Funny movie but I was a little disappointed. Last year they had live entertainment.

Then Pyrotechniq came on to the stage....

Those Clouds Are So Red...

So I was out for a walk at sunset and the sky was an incredible color....

Yep, Summer's Defintely Long Gone

It was actually a pretty nice day in Chicago today. But heading home I encountered a pretty stark reminder that we're well into fall and winter is coming. Granted the cold weather of a couple of weeks ago was a clue but seeing the planters at the Chicago Cultural Center—which I had previously made fun of—empty was a little sad.

XKCD Does it Again

I hate to say it, or rather write it, but yeah this is more accurate....

Firefox Gets Proactive

I don't use Firefox as much as I used to. Chrome is just so much faster that I almost invariably turn to it first. But Firefox's rich collection of add-ons is so useful that when I have time and feel like some random web surfing, I'll usually fire up both Firefox and Chrome and use them side by side.

Tonight when I fired up Firefox, I was confronted by this dialog box. A bit aggressive no? Actually no. It turns out that Microsoft's Firefox add-ons expose Firefox users to malware attacks. I'd noticed this little piece of news this morning and by nightfall when I fired up Firefox, it was already uninstalling the Microsoft add-ons. That's a pretty fast turn around time for cleaning up a problem which was only recently discovered.

Now if only Firefox could identify the add-ons that are slowing it down....

In Praise of Hard Buttons

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Winter hasn't exactly come early to Chicago but it is unseasonably cold right now—cold enough that I've had to break out a jacket and gloves. This kind of leaves me in a bind gadgetwise. I still love my Palm Pre and am satisfied with its little sliding keyboard but the cold weather makes it less useful when I'm out in the cold. While the Pre is a slider phone a perfectly usable little keyboard, when the slider is closed the Pre is basically all screen with a single button that does only one thing. Other than turning it on and off and changing the volume, all other interaction with the Pre is through its screen. Normally this is no problem—in fact it's normally quite enjoyable. But when you are wearing gloves suddenly it becomes impossible to interact with the Pre.

Now contrast that to my older T-Mobile G1. The most recent firmware update gave this phone a new lease on life by making it fast enough to be usable again. And now the cold weather is is making it a lot more relevant for me because it has something that the Pre lacks—real hardware buttons. The G1's trackball is very responsive and allows me to interact with the phone quickly and efficiently. The home button allows me to get to the G1's "desktop" and access my shortcuts. And finally, the back button helps me get around the phone even faster.

I've always felt that the G1 was something of a evolutionary odd duck. Not as pretty as the iPhone or as elegant as the Pre but an interesting phone because it shows the potential of Android as a phone OS. With the release of the Pre and its webOS operating system, suddenly the potential of Android doesn't fascinate me aas much as it used to. But the ability to scroll through a bus tracker web site on a cold day without having to take off my gloves doesn't need to be fascinating, it just needs to be quick and efficient.

Today's Windows Error at a Public Place...

...comes to you courtesy of the Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line train station at Clark & Lake. At least it wasn't a Blue Screen of Death and it's not like Chicago is hosting the Olympics.

My New Old Phone

Ever since upgrading to my Palm Pre, I haven't had much use for my T-Mobile G1. Sure, I kept it because sometimes it's useful to have a second phone but for the most part my G1 has been semi-retired. But a funny thing happened last week. Google pushed out an update to the G1's Android operating system.

I was pleasantly surprised as a rumor had been going around the interwebs that the G1's hardware was too puny for the latest Android update. More importantly, the update seems to have fixed the G1's number one problem. It has suddenly become a much faster device. It's not as fast as my Pre is on its best days but it's definitely competitive.

This is a pretty exciting development. The G1's problems had soured me on Android but now with its latest update, I'm starting to de-sour.