Tracking my activity & sleep with the Fitbit

By Mack D. Male · August 17, 2011 at 3:00pm

From the first moment I came across the Fitbit, I wanted one. A gadget to track how active I am and how much I sleep? Sign me up! The FAQ does a good job of describing what the Fitbit Tracker is:

The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing, even bras.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, Fitbit doesn’t allow orders if you live in Canada, so that’s why I had never purchased one. But recently I came across a tweet from a fellow Canadian who said that he had successfully ordered a Fitbit by emailing the company. I gave it a shot, and was very pleased with the service! They took my credit card information over the phone, and a week or so later, my Fitbit arrived.

The Fitbit tracker is pretty small. If I’m wearing shorts or sweat pants around the house, I wear it on the waistband. When I’m wearing jeans, I attach the Fitbit to the small coin pocket. It’s very much a clip-it-and-forget-it kind of gadget. At night I use the provided wristband (which feels like it is really cheaply made but it gets the job done).

By default the Fitbit tracks the number of steps you take, the distance travelled, your “activity score”, and the number of calories you burn. At night you put it into activity mode before you go to sleep (by holding down the one button until the device says “Start”) and then it tracks the amount of time you’re asleep and the number of times you wake up. You can also use the website to track the number of calories you consume, your weight, heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels, and more. The Fitbit comes with a small USB base station that I leave plugged into my computer. Anytime I come within a few feet of the base station, the Fitbit wirelessly syncs the data up to the website. My only nitpick here is that you need to check the website to see the battery level of the device – it would be better if it could appear on the device itself. On the plus side, it easily lasts over a week without charging.

One of the first things I did was check the number of steps it was recording. I’d count 100 steps and check to see if the Fitbit got it right. The most it was ever off on these tests was two or three steps, so it’s pretty accurate. You can enter stride length and other settings in your profile, but I haven’t bothered.

I started out tracking my food on the website too, but that didn’t last long. I found it too cumbersome to find foods or create new ones to match what I’m eating. I don’t feel any need or desire to count calories, so I guess it’s one area where you get out what you put in! I am tracking weight, body fat %, and body water %, however. I picked up a scale that calculates all of those things for $30, so it’s trivial to step on it in the morning and record the results.

The website is pretty great at visualizing the data it records, and it even lets you compare with other Fitbit users. But they also offer an API. I used the awesome script from here to get all the data via the API into a spreadsheet to create the charts below.

Here are the number of steps recorded for each day since I got the Fitbit:

On average I have been doing 9359 steps per day, just under my goal of 10,000 per day. Of course there are good days and bad days, as you can see!

Here are the number of hours I have slept each night:

My average during this time period is 6 hours, 45 minutes, again with some days better than others. The Fitbit also tracks how long it took you to fall asleep. That has just verified what I already knew: I can usually fall asleep in minutes!

Here are the number of awakenings per night:

I’m not entirely certain what an “awakening” is. Did I just toss and turn enough for it to register? Generally I don’t wake up very often, though it looks like I had a few restless nights.

Another thing the Fitbit tracks is your activity score, which is based on how active you are. It also records this by category. Here’s the average breakdown for me during the last few weeks:

What this means is that 71% of the time I am awake, I’m not moving very much. I guess this isn’t surprising – I know I could be more active! I walk quite a bit, but that’s about it. A lot of my time is spent on the computer. In fact, I know exactly how much time:

I use RescueTime to track my computer usage, so I was able to compare the data. Of the time that the Fitbit recorded I was sedentary, 47% of it was spent on the computer. The rest of the time would be eating, reading, watching TV, driving, coffee meetings, etc.

It’s probably too early to say that the Fitbit has had an impact on my activity or sleep, though there have been days where Sharon and I decided to go for a walk just so I could get closer to 10,000 steps. And I did buy the scale because of the Fitbit. So at least now I know where I stand!

I imagine one day all of this and more will be tracked automatically without needing to wear a little device (who knows what they’ll come up with). Until then, there’s the Fitbit. I’m really happy with it so far, and I would definitely recommend it!

Review: WIND Mobile Data Stick

By Mack D. Male · August 11, 2011 at 8:23pm

Back in May I was contacted by a company representing WIND Mobile to see if I would be interested in test driving a data stick for free. I don’t often get contacted for things like this let alone accept them, but I liked the idea of the mobile data stick given my interest in wireless technology so I accepted. This was the pitch:

We’d like to offer you a free WIND Mobile Data Stick with two months of unlimited service to help you stay connected wherever you go. Your readers look to you to stay informed on the latest tech trends and Edmonton happenings – so whether you’re writing from this year’s Fringeopolis, or you want to share a new social media trend with Edmonton’s blogosphere while you’re on the go, if you’re in a WIND Zone, you’ll have access to the internet – and to your readers. All we ask in return is that if you like it, tell people about it.

I said I’d write about it either way, hence this post!

The data stick arrived right at the end of May, and I used it a few times throughout June and July. Setup was really simple – I was up and running in a matter of minutes (I didn’t have to do any activation steps, that was already taken care of). The main task was to install the software. The USB stick itself is manufactured by Huawei and the software they provide is pretty generic, it just gets branded for each carrier. I really dislike installing any extra wireless software on my computer – I prefer to let Windows handle everything. Aside from the dated Windows XP look however, the software thankfully didn’t cause any problems.

Clicking ‘connect’ was all that was required, though I did find it useful to look at the statistics from time to time. As you can see it has the ability to send text messages as well (after all, the data stick runs on the same network as your cell phone). I didn’t use that functionality – it seems kind of unnecessary when my phone is never far away!

I purposefully avoided doing any detailed speed tests with the data stick. If I were to buy one, I wouldn’t be downloading torrents or anything like that, so I figured I’d just test my “normal usage”. That means things like email, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc. In general, I was happy with the performance!

The first time I used the data stick was at the Questionmark office, actually. We were in the process of moving from the 8th floor to the 5th floor, and we had all kinds of issues getting our Internet connection moved. And once it did get moved, it would drop all the time! We got it all resolved eventually, but I used the data stick quite a bit while waiting for a technician to show up, so that worked out well.

Not long after that, Sharon and I were guest speakers at a Travel Media Association of Canada retreat focused on social media. I think I could have connected to the wireless they had arranged, but it was easier to just use the data stick. With lots of browsing and demos, the connection worked really well! I never had to wait longer than normal for something to load. The only odd thing I noticed was with geo-location – Twitter would identify my location as Vancouver rather than Edmonton!

The first time I used the data stick for tweeting/blogging was June 11 at TEDxEdmonton 2011. If you were there, you probably saw me down front in the middle, live-tweeting the presentations. There wasn’t any wi-fi available so having the data stick really came in handy. I could have tweeted from my phone I guess, but looking up links, videos, and the other stuff I was including is just so much easier on a laptop. All of that went really well, but I ran into issues when I tried uploading photos to Flickr. The upload speeds were abysmal, and I eventually gave up and plugged in to a wired connection during the breaks.

I also found the data stick useful in a couple of volunteer situations. I am the secretary on my condo board, and we have meetings in our shared room on the main floor. It doesn’t have wi-fi so it was handy to have the data stick to get access to download files and look things up! Another situation was during a meeting for the new Slow Food Edmonton site that I am developing (no it’s not up yet). We were at Credo which usually has excellent wireless, but for whatever reason on that day it wasn’t working. I was able to connect with the data stick though and continue with the meeting as planned.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned above, I was really pleased with how easy it was to setup and use the data stick. For my “typical usage” testing, the performance was great. I just wouldn’t upload photos!

The thing is, on most days I’m never far from a wi-fi connection. My home office, the Questionmark office, Credo, Transcend, etc. – they all have good wi-fi connections. While it was certainly useful to have the data stick available for those times that I didn’t have wi-fi, I don’t think I’m on the go often enough to justify it.

Three months with Windows Phone 7

By Mack D. Male · April 23, 2011 at 4:51pm

I wrote about my first week with Windows Phone 7 back in January, and I meant to post an update but never got around to it until now. I’ve had my new phone (LG Optimus 7) for about three months, which I suppose means it is no longer new! I’m still really loving the platform, but I do have a better sense of what’s missing and what could be improved.

Photo by suanie

Fortunately I didn’t have to wait very long for the “NoDo” update (poor AT&T customers) so I have been enjoying copy & paste and the other benefits for a while now. It works as expected, without any issues. The only oddity is that the paste icon disappears after you paste something, and you have to swipe to get it back. I did notice an improvement in speed after the update, but that’s pretty much it. Oh the GAL for my one Exchange 2003 account now works as well, which is handy.

The real update is known as “Mango” and is slated to be delivered later this year, perhaps as “Windows Phone 7.5”. It’ll contain a ton of new features, such as IE9 Mobile, Twitter integration, improved SkyDrive integration, third-party multitasking, more Live Tile functionality, and improved software capabilities (making apps like Skype possible). Obviously IE9 will make a big difference to the overall experience, and the Twitter integration is nice, but I hope they fix a number of the outstanding issues in addition to delivering new features (such as the problems with Live Tiles).

There’s a giant wishlist thread on the Microsoft Answers site, but here are the things I’d like to see improved:

The camera app needs to be fixed to remember my settings. It’s so annoying to select anti-shake every time I want to take a picture.
Apparently custom ringtones are coming in Mango (finally I get a basic ring) and I hope it also provides the ability to change the ring volume independently of the other sounds (like alarms or reminders).
SkyDrive integration in the Office Hub would be great, so that I can open and save documents on SkyDrive. OneNote already syncs with SkyDrive, but not the other document types. Fortunately this is slated to come in Mango.
On the topic of the cloud, I’d love to have Windows Live Mesh support, if only to synchronize bookmarks in IE (which I already do across my computers).
I still can’t quite believe that Windows Phone 7 shipped without a Windows Live Messenger client. An official client still doesn’t exist, though there is a third-party one available. This is a pretty glaring omission, especially considering there are official clients on other mobile platforms!
There are a few things I’d like to see improved in the calendar app. A weekly view would be really handy, and the ability to sync more than just the primary calendar for an account would be great. I’d also love for both the calendar and Exchange to support the colored categories. I use them all the time in Outlook and Outlook Web Access and would love to see them on the phone.
An option for a unified email inbox would be really useful.
Something needs to be done with the Bing Maps app. I never use it, because it is so useless for me. Why do I have to specify “Edmonton, Alberta” for it to know I mean the Edmonton I am actually located in? It has my location information! Other issues include:
- I have to enter actual addresses, rather than business names (which I can do with Google).
- Directions only work maybe one out of every five attempts, and take forever to load (directions always load, and quickly, with Google).
- There is no ability to get transit directions (which I can get with Google).
Maybe the solution would be to have a Google Maps app, but that doesn’t seem likely, at least not an official one.

It has been really encouraging to see the number of apps growing significantly, though it would be great to see a few more “official” ones (like Skype, coming after the Mango update). I still haven’t found a news app that I really love, nor a weather app (I am using The Weather Channel right now because WeatherBug’s live tile stopped working). That said, the apps I use most are all there and work really well (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc). The only app I have issues with is Flickr, it always seems to crash for me. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a few apps as well, such as TuneIn Radio and LG’s QR Reader.

Overall I’m still really happy with my decision to go with Windows Phone 7. It helps me get things done on the go, easily and efficiently. It is also fun to use (Sharon and I play a lot of Fruit Ninja)! The platform works well today, and the future looks bright!

My first week with Windows Phone 7

By Mack D. Male · January 24, 2011 at 8:44pm

A week ago I finally decided to replace my aging BlackBerry Curve with a more modern smartphone. I have been talking about this for a while, and for the longest time I was pretty convinced I would join the iPhone crowd. As I thought more about what I wanted in a mobile device however, I started leaning more toward Windows Phone 7. That’s ultimately what I decided to go with.

I don’t think my decision should shock anyone – it is fairly well-established that I am a Microsoft fan! As a result of that, Windows Phone 7 made sense for me for a variety of reasons:

I hate iTunes. So much so that I haven’t installed it on my new computer (which means I haven’t synced my iPod touch in months). All of my music is organized on my computers using Windows Media Player, which IMHO is a much better app than iTunes.
I have thousands and thousands of songs, photos, and videos all organized on my Windows Home Server.
I have an Xbox 360 that truly is the centre of my home media experience. It plays everything from my Home Server, and is my portal into Zune, Netflix, and other services. And though I am not a huge gamer, I do use Xbox Live regularly.
All of my email, calendar, and contacts are in Exchange (both personal and for Questionmark).
I use Windows Live quite a bit, such as to sync OneNote notebooks.
I’m a Microsoft platform developer, so the idea of being able to easily port existing code to the phone platform is appealing.

So for those reasons, it made sense to go with a device that is definitely going to work with all of my stuff. But there were some other key reasons that I was attracted to Windows Phone 7 as well:

The “hub” concept made a lot of sense to me, especially the “People” hub. It integrates with both of my Exchange accounts, with Windows Live, with Gmail, and importantly, with Facebook. So far, this is the killer feature for me. I simply added all of my accounts, and now I have one master contact list, without duplicates, that is updated on-the-fly when friends update their Facebook information. It’s incredible.
Xbox Live integration is such a smart idea, and is really well implemented for a first version. A few simple clicks and I had Fruit Ninja on my phone, and as soon as I started playing I was earning Xbox Live achievements. That’s a big value-add.
Everyone has an iPhone!

Once I had decided that Windows Phone 7 was the way to go, I started looking at devices. I have to admit that it’s nice to not have to worry about this extra step in the iPhone world. I wanted to stay with Telus, so that meant I had a choice between the HTC 7 Surround or the LG Optimus 7. I went with the much more attractive-looking LG phone:

I would never use the SRS slide-out speakers on the Surround.
The Optimus 7 features Gorilla Glass, yet is still slightly lighter and smaller than the Surround.
Specs otherwise are mostly the same (which is the case for most Windows Phone 7 devices).
And importantly, the LG Optimus 7 received a positive review from Engadget.

As a nice surprise, there are a few LG-specific apps that are really cool too. Notably, the “Play To” app flawlessly plays photos or videos I capture on my phone on my Xbox. Really awesome for sharing with others without having to go to the computer. Engadget was right, the Optimus 7 feels solid and well-made. The only thing I don’t like about it is that the USB cover is hard to open.

I’d say my first week has gone incredibly smoothly. I remember the first few weeks with my old BlackBerry Curve – figuring out how to accomplish stuff was difficult at best. But even Sharon, who swears by her “dumb” phone as I like to call them, had no problem picking up my Windows Phone and figuring it out (she loves Fruit Ninja). It’s incredibly intuitive. Here are some of the really positive things from my first week:

Setup was simple and painless. In a matter of minutes I had all of my accounts syncing and was on to downloading apps.
One of the things I hated most about my BlackBerry was notifications. If I missed a call and someone left a voice message, I would have FIVE notifications: the blinking red light (which I don’t miss at all), an entry in the call log, a message, a text message, and an icon that shows that I had voicemail. Windows Phone 7 is just simple. A simple update on the lock screen and the live tile, and that’s it. If I happen to be using the phone when a text message comes in, there’s a “toast” notification at the top. Tap it, reply, press the back button, and I’m right where I left off.
Wireless synching with the Zune software is awesome (podcasts sync automatically in the morning, for instance).

Of course, there have been a few negative things:

I would rather sync music to my phone using Windows Media Player than the Zune software. At least I didn’t have to do anything to get Zune to recognize my existing collection.
The volume control on the phone is annoying. I want to set the ring volume separately from the keyboard volume and separately from the alarms volume. Either it can’t be done or I am missing something.
Bing Maps, at least as it currently exists on the phone, sucks. I can’t ever get it to find places let alone directions. I really hope they do some work on the app.
The camera app doesn’t seem to remember settings, which means extra taps to get what I want.
There are some basic apps that should have been included, like Weather, Stocks, and a Timer. I shouldn’t have had to download them.
I don’t like the ringtones. Why can’t I just have a plain old ringing phone? I don’t want music.

And yes, I have a wishlist:

More apps! I know this will happen over time, but it is the most attractive thing about the iPhone. Most of the apps I use regularly (Twitter, Facebook, etc) exist on Windows Phone 7, but there’s not much variety right now.
More advanced calendar settings would be nice. For instance the ability to ignore categories from a particular calendar, or to sync multiple calendars from Google Calendar.
I wish the “Share” feature of the camera supported Twitter (or could be customized to support other services).
Opera Mini. I use Opera everywhere, and I love the ability to sync bookmarks, speed dial, and other settings across devices. I’d love to see Opera Mini on Windows Phone 7.

Overall, I’m really happy with my Windows Phone. So far at least, I can confidently say it was the right decision for me. I can’t wait to see the platform grow and evolve!

My Dell Inspiron Mini 9

By Mack D. Male · April 3, 2009 at 10:23pm

On January 1st, I decided to order a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. I had been reading a lot about netbooks, and was in the market for something smaller to carry around. My aging Toshiba M200 Tablet PC is fairly small and light, but it’s still quite big compared to a netbook. I went on the Dell site, customized my order, and waited for my new netbook to arrive.

And waited, and waited.

After my original ship date of January 21st was delayed, I tried to be patient. When I called for an update mid-February, I learned that my order was going to be cancelled and re-entered because of a software conflict with Adobe. I told Dell to forget it, and I cancelled my order completely. I then hopped on the Future Shop site, and ordered the same computer (minus the integrated Bluetooth) for about $100 less. It arrived a week later.

My Mini 9 has the integrated webcam, is black, and runs Windows XP. I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB, and the hard drive to 32 GB (the Mini 9 uses an SSD). Even with the extra components and shipping, the total price was only about $500.

I’ve been using it for a little over a month now, and I really like it. In no particular order, these are my favorite things about it:

Small and light. The main reasons for getting a netbook, obviously!
Clean, solid design. So many netbooks have a big gap between the screen and keyboard, and that just drives me nuts. The Mini 9 is solid with smooth, rounded edges.
Quiet and cool. Partly because of the SSD, the Mini 9 doesn’t have a fan. It runs extremely cool, and never makes any noise.
It’s fast! Resume from standby, boot up, shutdown, etc. are all fairly quick. The only slowness is from some applications that don’t work well with SSDs, such as Outlook.

Nothing is perfect – here are the things I don’t like about it:

The battery life is pretty good at about four hours, but I wish it were much longer.
The keyboard is small and hard to get used to. I still have to hunt for the quote key, located at the very bottom. I often close windows by accident when I try to type an exclamation point and hit the Esc key instead. There are no F11 or F12 keys or functions. If I could redesign the keyboard, I’d get rid of CAPS Lock and the context-menu button, would move the quote key to it’s proper place, and would give the right Shift key more space.
There are two LEDs on the front, one with the power icon and one with a battery with a lightning bolt in it. The battery light only comes on when the device is dangerously low on power…I’d rather it lit up when the battery was recharging too.
It has an external display port, but the resolution it outputs is pretty weak.

Overall, I’m quite happy with my Mini 9. It was relatively inexpensive, comes with me almost everywhere, and works perfectly for surfing, checking email, blogging, and Twittering.

I appreciate my iPod touch more now that I have a BlackBerry

By Mack D. Male · January 30, 2009 at 9:21pm

I recently became a member of the CrackBerry crowd. My last three year contract ended in November, and I figured it was time to get something better than my old Motorola phone. I was thinking about the iPhone, but since I already had an iPod touch, I ended up going with the BlackBerry Curve. So far, I love it. Text messaging is much better, email access is fantastic (obviously), and I can hop online from anywhere if need be.

It hasn’t been a perfect experience however. I’ve run into a number of issues trying to figure out how to do things – simple things that took no time at all to figure out on the iPod touch. Here’s a small list of them:

One of the first things I did was open up the browser. It took me a ridiculously long time to figure out how to enter an address though! Eventually I figured out the menu button and the “Go to” option, but I found the iPod much easier – just scroll up and there’s the address bar.
Another problem was deleting messages. Very quickly I figured out how to delete a single message, but I couldn’t figure out how to delete multiple messages at once! I ended up searching for it, and found the CAPS button trick. The iPod was much easier – nice big edit button, which reveals checkboxes beside each item. Just really intuitive.
Settings are another issue. Changing the background on my iPod took barely any effort at all, but I once again had to Google for help with the BlackBerry. The menus just seem to make more sense on the iPod.
I like to keep the unread messages count cleared, and one day it was stuck at one. I checked the email inbox, the text messaging inbox, and both were empty. I once again turned to the web and found out that missed calls show up as unread messages! I then opened up the Call Log, but it didn’t clear! Turns out they show up as messages in the combined inbox. Confusing design.

There have been other issues of course, but these few stuck out. In general, I think the interface on the iPod/iPhone is just much more intuitive. I guess that’s not surprising, given Apple’s reputation for good design, but it still caught me off-guard.

Most of my searches end up at the the CrackBerry.com forums. I’m clearly not the only one who has run into these issues! Thanks to everyone who has contributed there – you’ve made it much easier for me to get up-to-speed with the BlackBerry!

REVIEW: Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

By Mack D. Male · January 5, 2009 at 10:23pm

Usually I’m not in the city on boxing day, so I don’t have much experience with finding post-Xmas deals. I did venture out this year however, and managed to snag a fairly good deal on a new mouse and keyboard at Best Buy. Listed at $199.99 CDN, I picked up the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution for just $99.

Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

I had been using a plain old Dell USB mouse and keyboard since my last cordless Logitech mouse died about a year ago. It used two rechargeable AA batteries, but would consistently kill them with just a couple hours of use. The Dell mouse worked fine, but it’s most advanced feature was a scroll wheel. The Dell keyboard also worked well, and had some handy media controls on top, including a volume dial. Other than that however, I found it incredibly loud and the keys sometimes stuck. I knew it was time for a new mouse and keyboard, but it wasn’t a high enough priority for me to go searching.

I’m really glad I found the deal and picked up my new mouse and keyboard. The MX Revolution mouse has both a tilt scroll wheel and a thumb wheel (for more precise scrolling), back and forward buttons, and a search button. Best of all, it comes with built-in batteries and a charging stand so that I never have to change batteries. The keyboard includes the standard layout, plus media controls on the left and an integrated LCD screen on the top that can display the date and time, temperature, media information, and more. Both devices use Bluetooth.

The mouse feels very comfortable, and the soft built-in palm rest on the keyboard is a nice touch. The keys are incredibly quiet compared to my old keyboard, and feel very smooth. So far the battery life on the mouse has been great (haven’t had to charge it yet). The scroll wheel took a bit of getting used to (it turns into a hyper scroll wheel when you have a long document) but now I really like it!

I’ll admit that the LCD screen isn’t incredibly useful, but it is pretty darn cool. Based on the first week of use, I think I’m definitely going to like this mouse and keyboard.

Netbooks are trendy

By Mack D. Male · October 31, 2008 at 11:12pm

dell inspiron mini What kind of computer do you use? Most of my work is done at a desktop or workstation; a tower attached to three monitors. The rest of the time I’m using either my laptop or tablet. I’ve also got a little Sony UMPC but it doesn’t get used much. It was kinda cool for a while, but it’s not all that fast. And once I got my iPod touch, that pretty much fulfilled my small device needs.

My favorite to use is probably my tablet, even though it’s the slowest of the bunch. I think I like it mostly because of the form factor – it’s pretty small for a laptop (at 12 inches) but large enough that I don’t sacrifice a keyboard or full operating system.

A couple years from now though, my tablet might seem rather large thanks to the netbook trend. What’s a netbook? From Wikipedia:

A netbook is a small to medium sized, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient laptop, generally optimized for internet based services such as web browsing and e-mailing. Netbooks are also sometimes, but rarely referred to as a sub-subnotebook.

The form factor of a netbook is smaller than that of a notebook and they are very light in weight (usually 2 to 3 pounds). Common features include a small screen (usually around 7-inches to 10-inches diagonal), wireless connectivity, but no optical disc drive, and a smaller sized keyboard (usually 80 percent to 95 percent of normal size). There is also a trend of using solid-state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives.

Maybe it’s just me, but every second article on technology these days seems to mention netbooks! The blogosphere made a big deal this week out of the fact that Windows boss Steven Sinofsky demonstrated Windows 7 running on a netbook. And today, PC World declares that netbooks will soon cost just $99:

Subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-note will soon cost as little as $99. The catch? You’ll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract. The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone.

A monthly service fee for mobile broadband doesn’t appeal to me at all, but a $99 netbook certainly does. Heck, I’m already tempted by the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (pictured above) and it’s nearly $500! If the cost of components fell enough so that a netbook was about half that price, I’d have no hesitations about picking one up and I doubt anyone else would either.

Netbooks are definitely trendy, but I think this is one trend that will last. A small device to check email, read and post blogs, and update Twitter is something that appeals to lots of people. Okay maybe not that last part

Revisiting iGoogle

By Mack D. Male · October 16, 2008 at 10:15pm

igoogle Like most people who spend a lot of time online, I sign up for new services all the time. Some of them I end up liking quite a bit and using regularly (such as Twitter, obviously) while others I just forget about. Until recently, iGoogle was firmly in the latter category.

iGoogle launched in May 2005, according to Wikipedia. I’m not sure when I signed up, but it likely wasn’t long after that. As you probably know, iGoogle features gadgets that you can drag around the page. Each gadget has a specific purpose – for example, a weather gadget or a calendar gadget.

Three things prompted me to give iGoogle another shot. Many of my coworkers use iGoogle as their homepage, and I kept noticing it during LiveMeetings and such. The second thing was Sharon talking about her favorite iGoogle theme (she calls it “so cute!”). And finally, Google launched an update today:

Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Since I only used the old version a couple of times, I can’t really say whether or not the new release is a step forward or backward. I can say that I like it though! The only hiccup at the moment is that dragging gadgets around using Opera 9.6 doesn’t seem to work properly.

I’m giving iGoogle a real chance this time, and I’ve made it my homepage. Any amazing gadgets I should add? All the ones I have right now are fairly mainstream, such as the Google Calendar gadget or the Weather gadget.

Why July 2008 will be the greatest month ever

By Mack D. Male · June 9, 2008 at 3:04pm

Is there any doubt that July is going to be the greatest month ever?

July 1: A brand new, 6000-square-foot Apple Store opens in West Edmonton Mall.
July 11: The iPhone 3G goes on sale in 22 countries, including Canada.
July 18: The movie I am most looking forward to this year is released: The Dark Knight

Oh yeah. July FTW!