I have been really loving the Android-based T-Mobile myPhone, I’ve gotta say. Okay, the name is kind of dorky, but the phone has been awesome. I’ve slowly gotten used to the soft keyboard, although I’ll never be as fast or accurate with it as a real keyboard. But this is the first phone I’ve had that feels like a real computer, versus a phone with some computery functionality wedged in. I love that applications can reach out and access the GPS or contacts data without asking me about it all the time, and that they can put widgets in the top bar with the temperature, or notifying me of something important I need to pay attention to. So far my experience with this phone has been fantastic. And the battery has even been lasting all day, with heavy data and minor GPS usage. Win!

But it took quite some time to find the right Exchange app. The “Work Email” app that comes with the myTouch is competent at pulling down your email, but that’s about it. It didn’t handle contacts well, nor the calendar, nor tasks. The phone is really designed around using Google Mail, which I use, but not as my primary email system. For that I use an Exchange server that I pay monthly for, and it has made my life so much simpler that I am loathe to replace it!

I went through three or four Exchange apps, as well as a few small apps that claimed to just do contacts, or just calendar, and I only found two that worked well: RoadSync and Touchdown.

I used the RoadSync beta for two or three weeks, and it almost did exactly what I wanted. Email worked great and was pushed to the phone quite rapidly. Unfortunately there was no Tasks synchronization, the Calendar didn’t work and the Contacts did not synch all the information I needed (addresses, for example). After a few weeks I grew to not trust the app to synch data back that I had entered on the phone, and the lack of a useful Calendar really blew it for me. I liked a lot of things about RoadSync though, and when it’s out of beta I’m sure it will be a strong app, as they are definitely planning all those features.

Touchdown, on the other hand, has been rock-solid and already does everything that I want. It has solid Tasks and Calendar integration, it copies its Contacts to the phone and synchronizes them, and the email does HTML. I can rely on it for everything, it seems; it really has been no different than using a Windows Mobile phone. What makes me happiest is that it integrates into the phone in the same way as the stock mail and calendar apps, so I get alerts in the notification bar just as I do with Google-based mail and calendar events. And they are kept separate, which I don’t care about it either way, but I know some people need.

So if you are doing a Google search to try and find which Exchange-based app to use, I recommend stopping your search here and buying Touchdown. It was $19.99 when I downloaded it, and it is money well spent.

I love typing test games… here’s a pretty simple one. Actually it is more of a straight-forward test than a game. Give it a shot!

105 words

Typingtest

I find myself using the Google Chrome web browser more and more these days. I downloaded it just to have a look, and what was immediately obvious was how fast the darn thing is. It is fast to start up, and fast to load a page. Literally, while my PC is booting into Windows XP, I can start up Chrome and start reading the morning news. My PC will be happily chugging along in the background, starting up all manner of processes, while I’m happily chugging my coffee and reading gamasutra.com. Try THAT with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

The downside of using Chrome though, is that it doesn’t yet have a way to synchronize bookmarks. This is one of the fundamental features which makes Firefox valuable to me – using the Xmarks add-on I have my bookmarks synchronized between my home PC, work PC, and laptop. This ability is as valuable to me as using an Exchange server to keep my email and contacts synchronized. It is just one of those no-brainer things that I don’t want to have to think about.

So for now, I go back and forth between Chrome and Firefox. Which is kind of irritating. Apparently Firefox 3.5 will speed things up, so we’ll see if I get sucked back over to the Firefox camp. And I don’t even want to look at Opera or Safari. I have enough browsers to think about already.

CNet has a piece up today about the closing of Virgin Megastore. Here in San Francisco, Virgin is at a major intersection, so its disappearance will leave a gaping hole in the storefront cityscape. At the opposite end of the same block is the other gaping hole, where CompUSA once stood.
We went into Virgin this past weekend, looking for bargains. But it was still hard to justify buying any music. Yes, Rock Band was cheaper than we’d ever seen it, and yeah, 15% off Blu-Ray discs was nice. But I was trying to figure out in just what universe 20% off a $18.99 CD makes sense. First off, $18.99 for a CD, are you *kidding* me? 20% off puts it around $15. I think I’ll just go to Amazon and buy the MP3 album for $8.99.
Virgin has been on its last legs for a long time, but I am sad to see it go, just as I was sad to see CompUSA go. I didn’t love either of them, but it was nice to be able to go somewhere and peruse! Neither of them was able to successfully change with the growth of the Internet, and the troubled economy was just the last nail of a series of nails in their coffin. I’m hoping Fry’s sticks around, at least!!

Texas Instruments has a pretty entertaining series of videos up on their website, called “Thank an Engineer”. I realized long ago that the engineering gene has pervaded by entire being – I can’t go near something that is broken without wanting to fix it, or near any non-optimal hardware solution (squeaky door, slightly askew toilet seat, etc) without feeling the need to grab a screwdriver and go at it. So, thanks to TI, for honoring engineers everywhere!