No War?

The graffiti on the poorly kept face of a vacant retail store in Eugene Oregon caught my attention this morning as I left a local café with my steaming latte. Is this image prophetic? Are we on a “One Way” street to War?

I took this photo with my Nikon Coolpix 4300; a great camera for amateur photographers or even the digital enthusiast.

Location Based SPAM

I read an article today by Rafe Needleman (Business 2.0) on the topic of location based content, right on the heels of an article from ZD Net about efforts to deal with the SPAM nightmare that we all manage daily. I started to think about the potential nightmare awaiting us. Location based SPAM!

My on-line life is beset with SPAM. Seriously, it has a negative impact on my life and it's destroying or at least damaging the overall usefulness of my favorite killer app; e-mail. I wouldn't survive the daily mail call without SPAM Assasin and Mail Washer; popular tools for filtering junk bits and bytes. Eventually, the government or an independent organization of men and women in black cloaks and food prep hairnets of some kind will step in and solve the problem but lets be careful about making an already bad problem worse by painting flashing targets on our backs. Can you imagine what it would be like if your PDA went nuts every time you drove past the local K-Mart? I can hear LIL PIM now (my Toshiba e740 PDA), "Blue-light special, exit at the next off-ramp to save on sanitary napkins." My god; marketing genius is going to be the end of the civilized world.

Read Rafe's informative article. The spotlight project, Arena; a program focused on providing sports fans with location based applications, has promise but I'm afraid it's going to lead to Taco Bell commercials on my cell phone as I drive through my small town home in the Pacific Northwest.

Theme Your Pocket PC

www.pocketpcthemes.com is a great place to grab a new theme for your Pocket PC if you're interested in spiffing it up a little. Hundreds of high-quality themes are available for the picking and they're nicely organized.

If you haven't started messing with themes for your Pocket PC head over to Microsoft's Pocket PC site and grab the free theme generator. It will even help you build a theme of your own from scratch.

Belkin Charger for LIL' PIM

My Toshiba e740 a.k.a. LIL' PIM is a power hog in comparison to my old Palm V. I've been out of the office for a few weeks enjoying the holidays and the other day my LIL' PIM started displaying a nasty message about the status of his power supply. I think he even told me that he'd trash my data if I didn't feed him soon. This surprised me because I had only used him a few times here and there to get a phone number or build a list for the grocery store. How could his battery be dead?

I can think of a number of reasons why the battery may have died unexpectedly. Excuses LIL' PIM might use if asked.

• LIL' PIM was "on" more often than I thought because he tends to activate himself while in my pocket. Why? I don't know.
• I didn't actually charge him fully before leaving for the holiday.
• LIL' PIM is the PDA equivalent of a Suburban.

I'll probably never know why the battery seemed to last all of about fifteen minutes over the holiday break. Time will tell. Perhaps LIL' PIM stayed out late at a party or two. Or, perhaps he was using his IR port to talk to a sexy little Tungsten T without my knowledge. One way or the other, he needed juice and quick.

The cradle where LIL' PIM usually gets his action was at the office and out of reach. A quick trip to the local Office Depot had me a little concerned about what it was going to take budget wise to solve the problem. Office Depot wanted $49.99 for the Toshiba brand e740 charger. Another $29.99 for a Toshiba brand USB sync cable. No way.

A trip to Circuit City accidentally resulted in one of those rare miracle solutions. I was browsing around, looking for some after-market duds for LIL' PIM, and I browsed past the Belkin accessories section. Something called a USB Sync Charger caught my attention. Basically, a USB sync cable that would allow me to sync my PDA with any USB equiped computer, and a charger that hooks up to a 12v car adapter. Not bad for $19.99 but I hadn't planned on charging my PDA in the car while out of the office. I don't think LIL' PIM would appreciate the winder conditions. Then the miracle happened. Circuit City also carries a Belkin USB Travel Charger that converts the sync charger into a full-blown AC powered charger for $9.99. So for a total of $30 I got a car charger, an ac charger, and a sync cable for my e740. Beats $80 worth of Toshiba brand accessories to do less.