I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.

Frogpad
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 4:59 pm on Thursday, 30 September 2004

Here’s an interesting way to get your data in …

FrogPad.

Picture here.

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MMS for Pocket PC Phone
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:31 pm on Monday, 27 September 2004

My wife has just got a new Ericsson K700 mobile which is preconfigured for MMS (or picture messaging).

MMS appears to be an SMS notification and then a HTTP pull from the device.

Anyhoo, while googling for the settings on my iMate I noticed an entry on geekzone that pointed to Club iMate.  They had not only an iMate (XDAII) upgrade but the Vodafone carrier settings as file upload.

Upgraded, configured, MMS’ing.  To easy.  Worthwhile upgrading, seems to be better bluetooth support.

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Bloggers Discount
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 9:49 am on Monday, 20 September 2004

Heres something we’ll see more of.

A discount for recommending a product in your blog.

Suddenly your google page ranking is monetized.

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Virtual Mail Boxes
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:25 pm on Saturday, 18 September 2004

Ed
likes what we’re doing in Version 2.0

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Luxembourg
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:16 pm on Saturday, 18 September 2004

Just back in London after 2 days in Luxembourg.  Lux is my now favourite European place.  Right from when we flew over you could tell it was special.  It’s people sized, clean, beautiful old buildings mixed with stunning modern architecture.

Feels a lot like Wellington with clear central zones and has a village atmosphere.

Even the taxi drivers were considerate.

Our contact j-m has a fully restored e-type in his car fleet and the best personal wine cellar I’ve ever seen.  He’d designed his new house around his undergorund cellar.  Man space.

Probably not a party place, but as a location to base yourself for business Lux is head and shoulders over other places I’ve been to.

I’ll be spending more time there I suspect.

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UK Cars
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:07 am on Wednesday, 15 September 2004

While power walking London I have seen a bevy of dream cars you don’t normally see on the streets of Wellington. 

I love cars so I have to be careful not to walk into anything when something special drives past.

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Hair today gone tomorrow
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:56 am on Wednesday, 15 September 2004

One of the things that has always amused me is the names of hair dressing salons. 

For example:

Well I say the best one in Kensington yesterday…

The Head Gardener.

Brilliant.

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Skype for Pocket PC here
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 11:04 am on Saturday, 11 September 2004

Consumer driven P2P VOIP goes mobile…

http://www.skype.com/download_pda.html

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New Sauce
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 10:46 am on Saturday, 11 September 2004

It’s time to say goodbye to SharpReader.  A faithful mistress she has been for the past year but her lack of ability to move with the times means I have to trade her in for something a bit more saucy.

Sauce Reader is hot and is my new RSS squeeze.

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.Mobile Contacts
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:38 am on Thursday, 9 September 2004

Following a link from www.GeekZone.co.nz I installed the trial version of .Mobile Contacts for my Pocket PC.

It provides a 1 finger interface to your contacts.  Review with screen shots here.

Its a great idea because driving contacts while walking (or driving) is almost impossible.

The UI is really nice.  The scrolling is fantastic.  Only issues are:

However this is very slick PPC software. 

.Mobile shows that there is plenty of opportunity to look at how people use devices in practice and deliver software that really works.

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Pound Sign ‘£’
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 9:28 pm on Tuesday, 7 September 2004

I was looking to change my keyboard mapping to maybe substitute my seldom used ‘^’ for a ‘£’.

Seems that it isn’t that easy.  To get pounds I have has to go to [Control Panel] \ [Regional & Language Options] \ [Languages] \ [Details] \ [Add...] English(UK)

Then under [Language Bar] select option to display on tool bar.  Then you can select the UK keyboard and <Shift> 3 equals ‘£’.

Anyone know an easier way to just assign the pound sign to my standard keyboard?

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UK Accomodation
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:42 pm on Tuesday, 7 September 2004

John O’Hara from the NZSA gave me a great tip a few months ago about getting cheap UK accomodation.

PriceLine.com The way it works is you name your price and put in your credit card.  As soon as you get a hotel that will do a deal at that price you’re committed and your card is processed.  So you can’t shop around or chosse the actual hotel.

Usually I go for a 4 star around Kensington.  4 stars in this area can be £90 - £180.

Priceline is in US dollars and is one of those annoying everyone must live in the USA sites so you have to pretend to be American, so pick a state and valid zip code.  NZ details for everything else seems to work.

I usually start around $60.  Priceline will check to see if it can place any rooms.  I’ve got one at $US70 before but today got a message saying there are rooms at $90 (approx £45). It’s quite seasonal. I checked the hotel on the web and their best price was £97.  So better than half best price!

I don’t know how that works for the hotel, but when your paying in Kiwi peso’s that’s a huge saving.

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100 x 100
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 1:04 pm on Tuesday, 7 September 2004

I’ve just been invited onto the HiGrowth Project Advisory Council.

www.higrowth.co.nz

They have great dinners!  Looking forward to working with the other people on the team.

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A company of 1
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 8:20 pm on Sunday, 5 September 2004

Check out this article on Micro-ISV’s.

I think technical people can learn business but going the other way later in your career is difficult. 

And you can JIT (Just In Time) the business stuff - or get a partner/mentor.

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Rip, Burn, Sync
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:45 pm on Sunday, 5 September 2004

Windows Media Player 10 is now available for download.  The UI takes a
step forward for ease of use.  Apple has certainly thrown MS a challenge
and they are responding.

Ease of syncing is a clear goal, but it appears that out of the box
connectivity to iPod’s is not there.

Update:
Noted on Omar
Shalin
:

http://beta.music.msn.com/help/ipod?

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Nice Touch
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 7:35 pm on Sunday, 5 September 2004

Air New Zealand’s online booking system creates vCalendar items for you to download into Outlook.

Normally the first thing I do after booking a flight is create the Calendar items and it takes a bit of effort to get the international time zones right.

Nice touch!

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Chicken or egg
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 10:01 pm on Saturday, 4 September 2004

Apple flips the marketing of the new flat panel iMac.

From the people that brought you the iPod…

If I didn’t program I’d have a Apple.  I started with an Apple (II), I’m sure I’ll finish with one.

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