How smart is your phone?

It's been a while. Whatever, we push on.
I seem to remember writing an interim post but it appears to have vanished into "the ether" about the same time I was having issues with Edublogs. But more on that later.
My trusty Treo 680 has served me very well thank you for the last few years but is starting to get a bit raggedy around the edges. Heck I've dropped it more times than I care to remember. Bottom line, I was in the market for a new smartphone and was surveying my options.
Now it may surprise some of you to know that I don't really fit into the "average" category when it comes to "technology needs" and the smartphone was no exception. So here's the list...

• Preference for hardware keyboard. Used to love "graffiti" on the old Palms but you just can't hammer out text as quickly as you can on a hardware QWERTY. Something about feeling those keys.
  
• 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity (and ability to handle proxy server at work. Yes I'm talking to you Blackberry Bold)
  
• A decent camera that can capture photos and video
  
• Decent voice recorder
• Capcity to view and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets or run software that does
• Expandable memory slot desireable
• 3.5mm audio slot desireable (to fit my Senheiser noise cancelling headphones)
• Under $1000 (as far under as possible) unlocked with option of outright purchase
  

Of course it would make and recieve calls, SMS and whatever but truth be known I don't use the phone that much. I don't even like answering the phone really. The PDA functions, camera and documents though are a differnet story. With WI-Fi on board I was hoping to throw email into the mix there as well. Unfortunately if you are chasing a smartphone with a hardware keyboard and Wi-Fi around $1000 there aren't many options so check back later to see if you guessed right. There may even be a prize (seriously, who are we kidding?!)

Great news for presenters

As of 24-Feb 2009 OmniDazzle is a free download. This is super fantastic news for anyone who presents regularly or takes a lot of screenshots for documentation and "how to" tutorials. It comes with "plug-ins" such as Bullseye to track the mouse, Scribble to annotate and highlight and Flashlight, Focal point, Cutout and Zoom to draw attention to specific areas of your screen. The fact that this app is now free is not good news for products like Mousepose from Boinx Software. Sure, Boinx offers a richer set of features but it also has the US$17 price tag. Unless you're a hardcore screen presenter or have already purchased Mousepose or similar (like me) 24-Feb may just have been your lucky day.
The Omni Group people are a bunch of OS X developer ninjas who have dedicated themselves to "creating good software" for over 15 years. Check out their other offerings while OmniDazzle downloads in the background. You won't be disappointed. OmniGraphSketcher is currently on my "trial list".

Feeling the pressure

Well I have been very surprised to hear that there are more than 3 people that subscribe to the feed or visit this site (thanks Mum!) I have never bothered to track stats by pushing my feeds through Feedburner as I was pretty sure it would be underwhelming. Now it looks like I have doubled my readership so I'm feeling the pressure to expand and provide more content. Edublogs has been irritating me of late (slow, flakey, membership fee issues) so I'm working on a shift. If I have to pay for an ad-free service I figure get your monies worth.
Watch this space.

Getting your shortcut on - Office 2007

Screenshot Tour: The keyboard shortcut goodness of Microsoft Office 2007

In the new Office suite, Microsoft has thrown together a powerful and intuitive keyboard shortcut framework for navigating with the Alt-key

I am sort of letting a cat (Lifehacker) out of the bag and disclosing on of my uber-valuable sources with this one but you have to stick to your principles and "share the love." What can I say? One of my main services is "Human meta filter." It's for Windows peeps only so OSX folk have to just suck it up.
I love my keyboard. Quicksilver is one of the first things I install on my machines. So even though I am not a regular user of Office 2007 I am totally loving what Microsoft have done here. If you take a look at the screen shot photo gallery that Adam Pash has put together, every time you press the alt key little keyboard shortcut letters appear above menus and buttons. Super nice! A very elegant way (IMHO) to reveal the shortcut and help new and transitioning (from older versions) users become more familiar with the interface.

Webspiration beta window closing

Got a little note in my inbox today informing me that Webspiration beta sign ups are closing Wednesday 18-March. Now this will be US time so Australian readers will have until maybe midday depending on what time zone "the switch" is in.
So get in fast people before time runs out on this awesome service and you have to pay top dollar for it.