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Last night I posted about the Asus T91MT, already tempted by such an inexpensive convertible Tablet PC device.  Well, earlier this morning, a Twitter buddy, Rodfather, just posted a link to an intro video for the Asus device that makes the T91MT even more tempting.  Even though the video is clearly a simulation and doesn't show how things actually work on the T91MT, I was impressed by two things in the video: 1) it seems that Asus has implemented palm rejection, which I didn't think they would do in a netbook, and 2) there's multitouch, and Asus has a kiosk-y UI and built-in apps that seem to make good use of multitouch.  I like this trend of manufacturers putting a "skin" over the device's OS to make things easier to use, or faster to boot up.  Since the T91MT is going to be a Windows 7 netbook (the first one, IIRC), you will have both the ease of use of the "kiosk OS", and the power of a full Windows OS (or Linux if you decide to change things up) for when you're not just browsing or checking e-mail.  Perhaps now I will finally get a netbook of my own.  I'll be watching the T91MT with great interest!

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The Kindle PC app (beta) is finally here.  I had to load it immediately on my Toshiba M200 to test it out, and for a version 1.0 app, it's not too bad.  There's a lot of wasted space on the screen with those gray margins on the left and right, but you can tap in those areas to go forward or back a page.  Luckily for me, I can also use the M200's little joystick to turn the pages.  This is going to be fun to use on a large and high-res screen (though the M200's screen seems so dim compared to my MacBook).  Can't wait for the app to drop for the Mac.  This app is another reason why a Mac tablet form factor would be an awesome thing to have.

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Random shot of paused TV. Anyone know which TV show this is? Bonus
points if you know what episode it is. :)

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Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I was totally waylaid by the
flu or something earlier last month and am still recovering. For about
a week I had flu-like symptoms, and then the following week I got a
nasty cough that basically prevented me from getting any real amount
of sleep for several days. Only very recently have I been able to
sleep a significant amount through the night.

All of this illness totally sapped all my energy and made me feel
apathetic towards doing much of anything. My iPhone was the only thing
keeping me occupied during this time, as I wasn't interested at all in
setting up my laptop, even though it's a trivial thing to open the lid
and set it on one's lap.

Even now I'm still slowly getting back into the swing of things, but
not totally feeling up to doing things like editing and/or scanning
pictures from our recent CA trip, or catching up on my oft-neglected
RSS feeds. So far following Twitter and FriendFeed have been as much
as I've worked up to the past few days. I've done some chores around
the house, but even light stuff like laundry and loading up the
dishwasher tire me out (more than usual!) more than I anticipate.

So please bear with me... Still working on getting better here. If
anyone has any Android 2.0 devices they can spare for a week or two,
I'd love to intersperse my recovery with some gadget reviewing. :D
(Well, it was worth a shot...)

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http://thenextweb.com/appetite/2009/10/31/twitter-lists-2-rss-tin/

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I first noticed this when I e-mailed a blog post to Posterous a while
ago with a screenshot in the middle of the entry. I just chalked it up
to some random mistake, either user error because I had posted really
late at night, or perhaps some error with Posterous (though that's
clearly not the case, looking back).

Well, today I had taken a screenshot of a shopping list and sent it to
the hubby since I'm stuck at home sick, and it had one item that was
truncated. I explained what the truncated item was below the
screenshot, as well as some additional info unrelated to the list. The
hubby just called to ask about the truncated item, and I told him what
it was, but also said that I had explained what the item was below the
screenshot. Then he asked a couple other questions that I actually had
addressed in the rest of the e-mail, and I realized that this might
actually be a problem with Mail.app. I just looked at the mail in my
Sent mail folder, and the e-mail doesn't have any of the text I added
under the picture.

Has anyone else noticed this issue? Not sure if I should somehow
submit this as a bug report to Apple, with only two examples that I
know of.

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Taken outside a "Too Cool" shop at the Yorktown Mall.

Little Twin Stars were my absolute favorite Sanrio characters when I
was little. Forget Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars was the
awesomest. :) Sadly, I don't think you can find LTS merchandise
anymore, at least nothing major like a bag, pens, or plush dolls.

When I got older, I moved on to Badtz Maru (he is so awesome), but
even now Badtz has been moved to the back burner. :( Anyway, seeing
Little Twin Stars sure brought back good memories. :)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

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The hubby set up the route to the Metra station, but I'm not sure if he was actually able to find the particular station we go to, or if he had to route it to the known address for the station.  Either way, it was incredibly slow and laggy positioning us while we were on our drive.  And it kept wanting to route us to Rt. 59 (since the address is on 59), even though we were taking an alternate route that avoids 59.  I'll forgive it for stubbornly trying to route us to 59 because a lot of GPS devices get stuck on a route like that.  However, what is unforgivable is that it was too slow in recalculating the route.  If I were relying on this to get me around a place I didn't know, I would miss a lot of turns.  By the time it figured out my new position and recalculated, I would be "off-route" again, having just driven past the street it wanted me to turn on.  Now I realize that sometimes GPS devices don't do well at figuring alternative routes once you've ignored the original route it calculated, so I won't hold this performance totally against it.  What I will hold against it is its performance routing me back home.

Now, I was initially impressed because when I told it to route to my home address while I was on my way back there, it actually knew where my home address was.  IIRC, MotionX GPS Drive uses NAVTEQ data, so it should know my address.  Google Maps, which uses TeleAtlas data instead, doesn't know about my home address, because TeleAtlas data, even after 4 years of this address existing (it was a new-construction home in a new neighborhood), STILL doesn't know what to make of my address, so I have to use an address that the hubby figured out is the closest nearby valid address. :-/  SO STUPID.  Anyway, GPS Drive had that going for it.  And it picked the correct route home.  Where it utterly failed was getting the timing right for each turn I had to make.  From the location I set up the route, I had to drive straight for 2.something miles, and then turn left.  Well, I was driving a normal speed towards the intersection where I had to take a left and GPS Drive didn't tell me to turn until I was already turning.  Actually, it told me to prepare to turn left while I was mid-turn, and then immediately told me to turn left.  The next remaining steps are quite close together, so the timing is crucial, and the nav app failed to give me directions in a timely manner.  I would've had to be driving 10 to 20 mph under the speed limit to match GPS Drive's timing, and I'm not even sure it'd be able to keep up then.

Keep in mind, though, that this is the very first time that I've used it, and I have no other nav app to compare it to beyond Google Maps.  And that's not a fair comparison since Google Maps doesn't have spoken turn-by-turn directions.  However, Google Maps does keep up with my current position, even if it does jump around a little bit due to the iPhone's relatively weak GPS antenna.  I've used Google Maps a lot as my nav app, even though it doesn't have voice guidance because it at least can show me where I am on the map when I'm in unfamiliar territory. 

I'll be playing around with GPS Drive more, but its sluggish performance at keeping track of my position is a huge strike against it.  After all, that's a major component of using a GPS device, at least it is to me.  First big thing is getting the route correct, which GPS Drive is currently scoring 1 for 2.  The second big thing is giving accurate voice guidance so that I don't have to look at the screen, for the most part.  GPS Drive is a big 0 for 2 there.  You may think I'm being harsh, comparing GPS Drive to something like a Garmin or a TomTom device, but I think that with the way all of these iPhone apps are trying to position themselves, the comparison is valid, since many people are going to consider getting an iPhone nav app instead of a dedicated device (as I am considering) because of price and convenience.  And while MotionX GPS Drive currently trumps the other nav apps in price, if it can't deliver on all aspects of navigation, then people aren't going to want to rely on it as their dedicated method of navigating, especially not in a place where they really have no idea where they're going. 

I should mention that I am running GPS Drive on an iPhone 3G.  So I don't have the compass of the 3GS.  And perhaps the processing power of the 3G compared to 3GS is a factor in GPS Drive's positioning.  If it has better performance on a 3GS, I would be curious to hear about this.  But if that is the case, and GPS Drive isn't optimized to work properly on a 3G, I would be quite disappointed to hear that.  We'll see if GPS Drive can redeem itself on future routes.

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