Picking the Best Mobile OS for You

When you're on the road a lot, you need to make sure your mobile phone can do all that you need it to, and in a way that fits your style.

If only picking a smartphone OS were as easy as picking a desktop platform. For many, deciding what to stick on your desktop or carry around on your shoulder is a bit of a religious experience. Your mind is made up, practically from birth. If you switch from PC to Mac (or visa versa), you know you’ve made a significant shift in your technology habits. Thankfully, switching handheld platforms is not nearly as traumatic. Still, you may be locking yourself into 2 years with the same device so the decision should be made carefully.

“Two operating systems run more than 95 percent of the world’s computers, but dozens of systems are behind the 2.5 billion mobile phones in circulation…” There are too many directions to turn for smartphones alone. Palm? Windows Mobile? S60? Blackberry? Linux? iPhone? How do you choose?

Get the whole story: Web Worker Daily

Portable Internet Radio

This is something new. Internet Radio broadcaster Slacker, has come up with a portable device which can carry your favorite radio stations with you, on its hard disk, or by WiFi or Satellite. Pretty cool.

For now, users can only get to the free streaming radio stations through a browser, but soon will be able to subscribe to a $7.50 per month plan that will eliminate advertisements and the six song per hour skip limit. Farther down the road, Slacker will release a portable device with a 4 inch display and 2 - 120GB storage capacity for between $150 and $350. The device will be able to download and store content via WiFi and USB, and play back streaming content via WiFi or through a Satellite connected docking station for your house or car.

Sounds like they've got a pretty good music library, too. I'm listening to the Classic Rock station now and haven't had to skip a song yet!

Via: Engadget

Portable Storage for a Portable Family

These days, our entire lives are on the computer. We've got digital photos, digital videos, digital music, e-mail, blogs, documents, financial records, calendars... You name it, it's on the computer. And if you are living a portable lifestyle, you've probably long since abandoned the desktop PC in favor of a laptop. But laptops are not an ideal repository for all of those precious digital keepsakes and archives. Your laptop is constantly at risk of being stolen or damaged, and unless you've got an excellent backup policy, your data is at risk as well. Although I highly recommend doing so, even storing important archives to an external disk drive or DVD doesn't solve all of your problems. They fill up, get lost, get damaged, and tend to become a hassle to lug around with you wherever you go.

A new service called Tubes may help to make your most important files more accessible to you and your contacts. According to the website, Tubes gives you 2GB of online storage space, to be divided up into "tubes" of related content. You can invite your contacts to create Tubes accounts and access your tubes, and you in turn can access tubes created by others. Using the Tubes desktop client (currently available for XP and Vista, and with a OS X and Web client in the works), you can easily add important files to your online repository, by dragging and dropping them onto a tube. They'll instantly be shared with anyone else who can see the tube, and it's always kept in sync, allowing you and your contacts to work collaboratively on any file. In addition to sharing files, you can apparently also share bookmarks, songs, and photos. I think it'd be nice if there was some sort of blogging, or chat functionality, but perhaps the creators decided it was better not to reinvent the wheel. It's also not clear from the website how you work with your files once they're in your repository, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a straightforward process. Everything else about the client looks pretty self explanatory.

Unfortunately, since I'm a Linux user, I can't test this out for myself, but I'd like to know what you think of Tubes. Is it worth it? Is there something better out there? I'd like to hear about it!

The Universal Content Delivery Platform

The Dream
In my quest to become completely portable, I've oft fantasized about what my ideal computing, communications, and entertainment platforms would be like. They must encompass both my business and personal needs, be free of any dependencies on proprietary platforms or services, and be as portable as I am. Hopefully, some day the rest of the world will share my dream and we'll see these fantasies brought to reality. Today, lets talk about my vision for a "Universal Content Delivery Platform".

In the physical world, there are essentially four major types of content: audio, video, images, and text. Content can be delivered either live, or after the fact, and it may be published to a general audience, sent directly to specific recipients, or exist in the form of a dialog. Content may be something as grand as an award winning motion picture, or as simple as a text chat between me and my wife. My dream platform would take all of this into account and all content could be transmitted or received by the user through any of a number of different devices. For instance, when sitting at my desk, I could be sending and receiving content with my trusty rusty laptop. If I'm in the car or plane, I may use the console embedded in the dashboard or the seat in front of me. If I'm on foot, I could use my hand held device or the nearest public kiosk. If I'm on the couch in the living room, I would of course want my content on the big-screen.

The Content Portal
A content presentation device does me little good without a system for organizing all the world's content and filtering out the junk I'm not interested in. Because individual devices aren't suited to this task, content must be organized and filtered through a central content portal. The content portal is a two-way gateway, enabling me to receive content produced by others, and to transmit content that I have produced. The content portal is always on, always watching for new content that I am interested in, always serving the content I have produced. In order to accomplish this lofty goal, all content portals must speak the same language and provide a few necessary functions.

My portal will give me a globally unique address. This address is how other people find me, send me content, and find content I've published. People I trust will add my address to their contact lists and will be able to see my presense information. I'll be able to use my address to log into any 3rd party applications, and those applications will be able to contact my portal to make sure I am who I claim to be, and I'll be able to provide sensitive information to those applications through my portal, rather than having it stored on the application's server.

My portal will give me an Inbox and archive everything I've ever sent or received. My portal will process and filter all received content before delivering it to me. This will keep out unwanted junk such as spam and viruses. It'll also block real time communications requests from people I don't want to hear from, and prevent me from being bombarded by requests when I'm busy. If I don't want to, or can't respond to a real-time request, my portal will take a message and put it in my Inbox. My portal will manage my subscriptions. It will look for and retrieve any new broadcast content I want such as news and entertainment, then deliver these to me through my Inbox. My portal will make sure content is delivered in a format my device supports and a language I can read.

My portal will manage my address book. I will add my contacts addresses, and my portal will do the rest. Information my contacts want me to see will be instantly updated in my address book. I'll be able to see content published by my contacts just by looking at their entry in my address book. I'll be able to see my contacts' presence in my address book, and request a real-time conversation, or send a message. I'll be able to see a complete archive of content sent to and received from the contact from within the address book.

The Device
Whichever device I might be using, while I'm in front of it, I will be able to access all of my content. Whether it's a big-screen display intended for video playback, or a handheld device intended for real time voice conversations, all devices will need the same basic functionality.

My device will be wirelessly connected, whereever I am. Worldwide acceptance of a wireless data standard will enable my device to go online from anywhere I am. Where wireless connectivity is not available, hardline "kiosk" devices will often be available. Specialized, non-portable devices, may also take advantage of a hardline, especially to enable fast retrieval of high-bandwidth content. When I can't be connected, or don't want to be connected, my contacts will be able to leave me a message, and new content will still be received by my portal.

My device will be able to play back high resolution video and multi-channel audio. My device will be able to record audio and video, and take pictures. Every device is potentially an entertainment device or a communications device, so in order to enable this, devices will be powerful enough to scale large format content to a small display (or visa versa).

My device will be secure, requiring me to log in to connect to my portal. Obviously, security is a must, and all connections will be encrypted. Devices can lock after a certain period of time, allowing only pop-up notifications and incoming real-time communications requests to be accepted without a password. Untrusted devices can be automatically locked out by the portal, while trusted devices can be allowed to remain online indefinately. The portal can scan devices for spyware and malware before allowing a connection.

My device will cache content for rapid retrieval. Any content can be stored in a cache file on the device. This is useful for high-bandwidth content such as video. No master copies of any data are kept on the device. The portal is the authoritative copy.

My device will have a familiar interface, and be in my language. Devices will download UI skins from the portal and display an interface that the user is familiar with in his language. All devices will have the same widescreen aspect ratio, and the UI will be scalable, making it fit as well on a small handheld device as on a large display.

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If you share my dream of a connected future, or if you have ideas of your own, please let me know by leaving a comment.

How Do I Find Customers?

I consider myself a freelance consultant. I'm currently on a 6 month contract-to-perm position, but when my 6 months are over, I'll be faced with the decision to either give up on the freedom of being independent, or settle into a permanent position. Given my track record, I'll probably choose the former. So a few months from now, I'm going to be on the job market again. I actually kind of enjoy the hunt. Putting my name out there and talking to recruiters gives me a bit of a rush. But what about those of us who would rather have the potential clients come to us?

Web Worker Daily just posted a terrific article answering the freelancer's toughest question: "How Do I Find Customers?". Apparently, it's all about building your reputation, and making yourself visible. The article contains some very good advice. Advice I'm going to make an effort to follow. We'll see how it works for me!

Finally! Google Maps for Windows Mobile

My morning commute consists of sitting on a bus for an hour, followed by sitting on a train for 45 minutes. Needless to say I've got a lot of time to keep on top of my blog subscriptions using my favorite mobile app: Google Reader. Google has just made my Motorola Q a little more useful by announcing the availability of Google Maps for Windows Mobile. This app has been available for awhile for Java, Palm, and Blackberry phones, but now there's an official release for Windows Mobile devices. All I can say is, it's about time! You can get this handy tool by browsing to http://google.com/gmm from your phone and installing the CAB file. It's as simple as that. You'll then have access to all the same great features that make the full Google Maps a terrific application (and a few that the main app doesn't even have), such as Real Time Traffic, Turn by Turn directions, local business searches, and integration with GPS devices.

To give credit where credit is due, Google isn't the first to come out with Google Maps for Windows Mobile. A few weeks ago, I found a free tool called Map4PDA that has much of the same functionality, but can use not only Google Maps, but Yahoo! Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Ask.com Maps as a data provider, and has some special functionality built in for Realtors and users who are house hunting.

Making the decision to go portable.

I was a navy brat. I grew up moving from town to town, not living anywhere for more than a couple of years. I made friends, I left friends behind, I made new friends. I didn't choose that lifestyle, it was chosen for me.

Now, as an adult with a family of my own, I have discovered that I've got the bug. Having never lived in the same house longer than five to six years, and usually not longer than two or three, I find that I get restless if I stay in the same place too long. I long to roam.

As a young bachelor, this was easy. I hopped between full-time jobs for a few years until I discovered contracting. Being a contractor gave me a higher level of income, which I spent travelling. On a whim, I even relocated to the Republic of Panama and tried my hand at being an entrepreneur. I loved every minute of it, even though I didn't make enough money to keep it going. So I came up with the idea of living in Panama and working short term contracts in the US, making enough money to live the high life in between contracts.

That's when I met my wife. We very quickly fell in love, made plans for our life together, got married, and got pregnant. We quickly discovered that my plan to live in Panama and travel to the US for a few months at a time was not compatible with pregnancy and family life. So we applied for residency and moved back home to the good old USA. I took a full-time, W2 job with benefits. We bought a house, a car, and hatched the next generation.

Now skip ahead a few years. I've got the itch. I need to get moving again, but I've got a family now. What am I going to do? Well, I'm lucky. My wife has always wanted to see the world. That, and the fact that we're already living 4000 miles away from her childhood home and the vast majority of her family, means that she's got no particular desire to stay put. This is good. It makes my decision easier. It's time to get back into contracting and start living "The Portable Lifestyle".

This blog will follow my journey. I'll post about everything that happens to me and my family as we become a portable family. Life changing decisions, tax strategies, enabling technologies, insurance, travel tips, and being a contractor are all topics I'll cover. Hopefully, others who have the travel bug will be able to learn from my lessons how to make money and see the world at the same time. And hopefully, those who have gone through this before me will also throw their thoughts into the mix. Maybe I won't have to learn all my lessons the hard way.