Tag Archives: Cell Phones

Learning GPS Programs

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I had mentioned some time ago that I wanted to learn how to use MyMotion and TrackMe in order to have a tracklog of the bike trips that I’ve been taking. Well there really isn’t a better time to learn how these programs work than when you are taking a drive some place.

I’ll start with the most frustrating, which is TrackMe. It’s the better looking of the two programs, but that isn’t really an issue if it’s so much work. The first thing is that it seems that you have to check a lot of options inside the preferences/tools otherwise all you are really doing is reporting back to a server where you are. His server. Where you can log in and see where you are. That’s neat, I’ll give him that, but that’s not really at all what I wanted, so after a lot of trial and error I finally managed to check the correct boxes and have a tracklog.

Then the problem was saving it. That seems like it would be really easy, I mean you load up the program and hit the “play” button, and then you press “stop” and everything in between is the program recording your position at predetermined intervals, but no it is actually pretty daunting a task to save the file.

First you have to navigate through menu’s, but you have to play “pick the right icon”, since there are several icons that aren’t really intuitive at all. The design choice was really “less words more icons” and I don’t think that works very well when you are trying to learn to navigate the interface for a new program. Then you have to go through more menu’s to find where you can load “existing” and then save it. This is the file that I was eventually able to make, and honestly if you put me on the spot I can’t say that I know how to go through all the steps again to make that.

Next on to MyMotion. MyMotion is ugly, but it works. I was tracking by altitude in this tracklog, so when you look at it the line is solid red, because apparently I never changed altitude. I could be wrong about the red line, but looking at the tools and preferences it’s the impression that I get. I’ve removed that and have it logging by speed, so hopefully the next time I have a tracklog to share you will see the multicolored lines that represent how fast I was going.

The only real problem I had with MyMotion is that the track line actually stopped two points short of where I stopped. I don’t know what that means, but I fixed it. I was driving, so I’m not sure if it’s a bit more accurate on a bike or something. We will have to see.

Learning About Phones

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I believe the correct terminology for what I have now is a Pocket PC. I know that this isn’t entirely accurate, but the difference I see from a Smartphone to a Pocket PC is that the Pocket PC has a touch screen, but there are apparently Smartphones that have touch screens as well, so I’m not very clear on the distinction. What ever you want to call it I am still delving into all I can do with it.

I’ve already installed two software packages that will utilize the GPS. One is more suited for turn by turn directions. I will start using that immediately and some day I might never have to worry about getting lost. The other one is for the track log I want to make when I take the bike rides.

Then Jo got involved and now I have about a dozen more programs. I have tinytwitter, so that I can twitter from my phone more easily. If you aren’t already you should really check it out, it’s kind of a micro blog and IM rolled into one.

I have the Mundu messenger, and if I opt to pay the $11 I can have that for longer than five days. It works on both data and SMS, so if I ever decide that I don’t want to carry the data plan any longer I can switch to the unlimited SMS and still use this program.

I have a program that located where I am using the GPS and then shows the constellations I should be able to see from where I am.

I installed Opera and the flash plugin for that, because apparently it makes browsing a lot easier than using mobile IE.

There is so much to play with and I haven’t even had a chance to really delve into it all and play with it yet.

Phone Issue Resolved

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My Grandmother and I are now on the Family Plan with AT&T and we have phones being shipped to us. The cost of the equipment if we had gone through the AT&T website, which is cheaper than over the phone, would have been over $300, and instead I got it all for $77 going through Amazon.com.

My Grandmother, for whatever reason, really wanted the pink Sony Ericsson Walkman phone. That seems really trendy and what not, but she really wanted this phone. I don’t know. Maybe when she’s at church in the morning all the other old ladies and gentlemen pull out their cell phones and they are cooler than my Grandma’s, so she needed to upgrade to something flashy.

I on the other hand have gone way over and beyond any phone that I’ve ever owned and purchased the AT&T Tilt. This phone has all the buzzwords that you could possibly have heard in the past year. Touchscreen, full Qwerty keyboard, wifi, bluetooth, GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1, and probably some other things that I am not aware of right now. To be honest I don’t even know to what extent I will be able to take advantage of all these features. I just wanted them. I was going to get a phone with GPS anyway, and my choices were pretty slim, so why not go for the gusto and get all the features I could ever want or desire.

I am so glad that the phone issue is finally resolved.

Phone Fun

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My Grandmother was supposed to call AT&T and ask if there were any discounts that she could get, because she retired from there. She called and got the run down, and the short answer was “no”, but they did offer a family plan, and to be honest I’m not even sure if it is in fact called a “family plan”, that would save us some money.

The representative she was speaking to was extremely pushy about the whole thing. I am not a big fan of walking into a situation where the sales people make commission. I don’t care what the reasoning behind this practice is, I would prefer that I can shop at my leisure. I told my Grandmother to hang up, and I would think about it.

I decided that there was no real reason for us to stay with Verizon, since there are certain features that I am sort of interested in playing around with, not the least of these being GPS for the purpose of track log software, and so I said that we might as well.

She called, we are apparently signed up, and since we already have AT&T for our home phone and internet it’s going to be automatically added to our phone bill. I need a phone, because I need to cancel with Verizon.

Jo, Anthony, and I all end up driving out to the AT&T store in Fairlawn to look at phones and decide what my best option is going to be. Quickly, thanks to the fact that GPS was a necessity, the search for a phone was narrowed down considerably. Then those phones started falling out of favor quickly, one of them has a required $30 a month data plan, another phone is $250, and finally another phone is as wide as my hand, and quite hilariously that’s the one I was going to get, but it’s actually misconstrued in the pictures on the website (hint: the circle D pad is oval in the picture on the website for AT&T making it look considerably slimmer). The best phone ended up being the Blackjack II.

I must have spent quite a lot of time getting to that point and finally the sales person needed some information. I was getting the information he needed when time apparently ran out. The store closes at 8 PM. I had no idea, otherwise I would have felt a bit more decisive, and instead of playing with things in the store that I had no intention of getting I would have gone straight to narrowing down my search. I thought the store was open till 9.

Tomorrow I will have to resume this getting a phone thing. I’ve sort of thrown another problem into the mix, because I found that I could get a refurbished Blackjack II from the website for $60, but first I’d need to register on the site. That would require having an AT&T phone. So, things might become a little more complicated before they get resolved. This seems to be a pretty constant theme though. I’m thinking of adding it to the text at the top of the page “Family, Friends, Life, Problems with Consumerism…”