Technology
Yesterday, I became a happy iPhone 4 user. The following tells it all, sung to the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird"
| Back up Outlook files and so leaving RIM, here I go Bye Bye Blackberry Where a better phone waits for me RIM gave no love to Outlook 2010, see Signal is strong on AT&T No one at RIM would engage me, |
 |
I can’t imagine why Microsoft didn’t work harder to get RIM to offer timely support for Office 2010. (And I hate the iPhone+Apple+ATT monopoly that locks me out of getting an iPhone because AT&T refuses to build out coverage in Northern New England).
After months of silence, RIM has announced 32 bit only support “targeted for” August. And no 64 bit support until 2011. Targeted is a weasel word. My perception is that RIM has crappy programmers and/or figures most people don’t care about either Office 2010 and/or sync.
They’ve posted the following (linked above):
Overview
Currently, BlackBerry Desktop Manager 5.0.1 does not support Microsoft Outlook 2010 64-bit version for mailbox connectivity and synchronization of organizer data such as Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Memos. The next release of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager provides support for Microsoft Outlook 2010 32-bit version only. This release is targeted for August 2010. Support for Microsoft Outlook 2010 64-bit version will be available in 2011.
June 22 press release from Toshiba announces an effort to “ promote a new SD card that integrates Wi-Fi wireless communication with data storage capabilities. The forum, the "Standard Promotion Forum for Memory Cards Embedding Wireless LAN"* has been founded by Toshiba and Singapore-based Trek 2000 International Ltd.. ‘
But they want to make this 802.11b/g and not the faster 802.11n (which is backwards compatible with b/g.
As any photographer knows, RAW files are huge, and even the JPEGs at Fine and Super-Fine resolutions are pretty big.
Eye-FI has done it right and offers SDHC cards that utilize 802.11n.
Why in the world would Toshiba (or anyone else for that matter) want to slow people down? This may be a price based decision. I sure have no interest.
If someone knows where I can buy the Apple iPad Camera Connector, PLEASE let me know. I just grabbed another brass ring off the iPad carousel.
Eye-Fi on its own is cool enough. Send digital photos from your camera to your desktop via 802.11n (2.4 GHz only) for editing, to various online photo sharing sites, Facebook, and so on. It sure beats connecting cables or removing cards from a camera.
I thought that the advertised free iPhone app for Eye-Fi (available in the App Store of course) might be useful on my iPad since its function is to send photos from the iPhone via 3G to your desktop or a supported online photo sharing site (Facebook, Flickr, MobileMe, Picasa, Smugmug). And I was right.
Surprisingly, there was virtually no setup to speak up. You authenticate by entering the credentials for your Eye Fi account and the little app “just works”. Once I logged in, the computer showed an additional tab on the left labelled iPhone (which I promptly changed to iPad). A settings window popped right up (and it can be accessed at any time) that let me specify a folder hierarchy and type and some other options.
Back on the iPad, since there is no camera and because I don’t yet have my hands on the camera connector for iPad, I was able to upload photos stored on the device. I used this feature to take the screen captures I made of the Eye Fi functionality on the iPad and send them to my desktop for editing and inclusion in this post.
Well, I can’t take a photo with the iPad as I said, but I sure can choose an existing photo and upload it. I just selected my Saved Pictures folder on the iPad and selected three images. The two above and one showing all the saved screen shots (appears below as iPhone005.JPG inside the Windows Explorer image).
I could tell the image uploads were completed via both a tool tip in the system and the Eye-Fi center window below.
Here’s the Windows Explorer view.
Yup, this is way cool. I really want to get my hands on that iPad Camera Connector. I’m relishing the thought of all my pictures being uploaded and ready for editing on the home computer when I walk in the front door at the end of a day of photo shooting.