I picked up a Garmin eTrex Legend last night for a couple of camping trips we have scheduled.  One of the primary things I want to do with it is to geotag our photos.  There's a 3rd party Google map module for the Gallery program that we use, so I hope to get this set up.  I think it will be quite fun to see where some of our photos are taken.

I bought a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer today ($89 at Wal-Mart.)  The pen is a great size, and has this slide out USB thing (instead of a cap.)  Unfortunately it also includes this really crappy U3 software.  Some people may like it, but I just wanted it gone.  After a bit of Google-ing, I found a link to the uninstall page on the U3 website.

After asking you about a thousand times (ok, really three or so) if you really want to remove the software, it gives you a download to a u3 uninstall.exe.  You need administrator privs to run it.  It seems to work just fine, and I now have a shiny new data storage device.

Technorati Tags: U3, SanDisk, Cruzer, USB

This flight has power in it. I'd have to say that the DC power adapter is one of the best technology purchases I've made. $59 for power in the car and the plane. Too bad, I've read through all my news feeds.

My tablet batteries suck. I know one of the prices of an ultra-portable is power but I now get less than 2 hours to a charge. This plane does not have power outlets. I need a third battery. With kids and such, we always get a tax refund. Maybe I should get a new battery this year.

Mary wants me to get a new iPod, so she can have my old MP3 player. She still doest know I bought the nano. Maybe I should give her the GMini anyway.

Well, most of them at least. There's a list posted here. Halo, and Halo 2 are both on there. Neither Star Wars Battlefront II or Lego Star Wars are listed. I guess I'm not going to be in a real hurry to upgrade. Its not like we have the money to spend right now anyway.

This one looks nice as well.  Its an aluminum case with a cutout for the hold switch, click wheel, and dock connector/headphone port.  The screen is covered with a Window.  The only thing I don't like is that there's a large hinge on one side, and a clip on the other.  NOT a bad price at $27.

The iKeychain nano case looks really nice. Its milled anodized aluminum, with a play through design. The click wheel and screen aren't protected. There's a hole on the bottom for headphones. Unfortunately, the hold swich and dock connector are covered up. The hold switch isnt' that big a deal for me, but covering up the dock connector may be a deal killer. I'd hate to have to take it out of the case every time I wanted to sync or charge.

Prices range from $39.95 to $64.95 depending on the color.

Remember that wooden nano case I linked to a while back? Well their site now has ordering information. € 75 for the case itself. € 10 each for the outside monogram and the inside inscription. € 8 for worldwide shipping. For a total of € 103 or $124.58 according to xe.com. Yikes, that's half the cost of a 4 GB nano. I don't need that much protection.

I ended up ordering a couple of skins from DecalGirl.com. I ordered the crystal skin, the black skin, and some screen protectors. All in all it was less than $15. They arrived yesterday, and I just finished applying them. I tried the crystal skin first. I was mostly worried about the already present scratches showing through, and looking like crap, but that just wasn't an issue. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it smooth enough to look good. One of their recommendations is to heat it with a blow dryer. I don't have ready access to one (at least I couldn't find one in my wife's half of the bathroom) so I trotted out to the garage and used the heat gun. It still didn't really get smooth, so I tossed it. Only $4, so no big deal. Applying the black one went much better. Its not quite a glossy as the original nano, but considering how scratched mine was, I'm not upset. I'll let you know after a while how they last knocking around in my bag.

One slightly odd thing about their site. They use an IE icon as their favicon.ico. It looks a bit strange in Firefox.

ipodnano

Carl blasted me for not having a DVR, and thinking that $2 videos from iTunes might be a good thing

Every month or two I think about calling Dish Network (our content provider), and ordering a DVR, but then I realize that their closed format isn't really what I want. We have four satellite receivers, and the chances of me recording the program on the receiver I later want to watch it on are pretty slim. Actually, with a five year old, the chances of me being able to watch some things at home are pretty slim (unless I stay up later than I care to.) What I really need is a DVR that allows time and place shifting. Two requirements are that the video must be a decent resolution, and must have decent (or no DRM.)

Actually Microsoft's Media Center is almost perfect. I love the idea of Media Center Extenders. I love the idea that I can download full resolution videos to my Tablet, Pocket PC, or a dedicated Portable Media Player. The new DRM coming down the pipeline really scares me. Vista is going to be a huge blow for the Media Center, and a lot of people won't like it. The biggest thing that's holding me back from building a MCE box is money.

Now, where's that Lotto ticket?

I'm still trying to find the right case for the iPod nano.  Here's a couple of interesting ones:
This one looks really cool.  Its a wooden nano case by miniot.  The top has an initial carved in it, and there's a two line carving inside.  No word on price, but I can't imagine they will be cheap.

snakmove.com has a really sweet looking diy case.  Ok, so not really so sweet looking, but its a PDF that you can print and cut out.  I guess you tape it together.

The only thring Trey is asking for for Christmas is a RoboRaptor. This thing looks interesting, but the reviews are mixed.
PC Magazine likes it. The article has a video, but I couldn't get it to play.
Robot-dreams.com has a couple of interesting videos. moving around the room, playing with the dog.
I guess we have a couple of months to decide.

According to BetaNews, DishNetwork will release several new portable video players with the abillity to copy recorded shows from your Dish Network DVR over USB.

I wonder how long it is until some breaks that protocol.

I just headed over to OrigienXBox360.com. The tree now has a ton of flags hanging on it. I clicked the British flag. It finally gets you to a quiz, but unfortunately filling out my personal info, only gave me European countries to pick from. I guess it will open in the US later today.

Scoble muses a bit about what's going to be hot this Christmas. His take, 4GB iPod nanos, and 802.11a routers. What?!? "Why are these hot? Well, if you have an Xbox 360 and a Media Center. Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to talk about those yet." Looks like XBox 360 is going to have 802.11a support. I guess not everyone has their house wired for ethernet.

Do you often use someone else's PC, and need to access your own apps? There's a whole culture out there around apps that will run off a USB key (portable Firefox for example.) Steve Makofsky of The Furrygoat Experience has taken it a step further and developed a launch script for the Pocket PC emulator that will run from a USB key. You can even install Pocket PC apps to the key. I don't have a use for this, since I carry a Pocket PC, but its cool anyway.

My mother has a Verizon cell phone which was broken, and needed help picking out a new one, so we went to the Verizon store yesterday. Eventually I was left on my own, and decided to play with the laptop that they had Broadband Access set up on. The laptop was totally locked down, so I couldn't find out too much, except to see that the stregnth meter was at about 75%, and browsing was painful. They had several bandwidth tests in their favorites, so I tried them all. Clicking each page caused a wait of at least 30 seconds before the next page even began to appear. The tests all showed 100 kbps, but I can't believe it was that fast. It felt slower than dial-up. I can't imagine paying $60 a month for it. The surprising thing is that several of the blogs I read have it, and they love it. Maybe my expectations are too high?

Battery Life I believe Apple's 14 hour claim. I used the nano continuously yesterday from 6a to 5p, and still had 20% or so on the battery meter left. I couldn't find a text readout of the battery level, so I'm having to gauge off the little picture.

Volume range It has really good range on the volume. It can get loud enough to match the volume of broadcast radio through my casette adapter in the car. It also has really good sound even at very low volumes through headphones.

Ease of use All those people who already have iPods already know this one, but the interface, and the click wheel are awesome.

Bootability My desktop is set with USB as the first boot option. I have a few USB keys that I use for different purposes. Well, the nano is clearly bootable, but not with any OS that an X86 machine understands. I accidently left it plugged into the desktop while I rebooted after the iTunes update, and it tried to boot from it. It didn't get very far, but it also didn't throw a Non System Disk error. It just put up a single line of gibberish. I wonder if Bart PE Builder would boot off of it?

I probably shouldn't have, but I did it.  I went to the Apple store today, and bought a new iPod nano.  I got the 4GB black one.  Its amazingly tiny, and beautiful.  With the gloss black, and chrome back, its a serious fingerprint magnet.  I'll have to polish it regularly with my eye glasses cloth.  I think it along with a pair of headphones will fit inside an Altoids tin with plenty of room to spare.  that might make a nice discreet case.  It came with a pair of white headphones, and a white USB cable.  I don't plan on using the headphones, because I have a nice pair of Sonys.  I wish the USB cable wasn't white.  It really doesn't go with the black nano.  It also came with a CD of the driver, and iTunes 4.x.  I had to download the new iTunes 5 from apple.com.

I filled it and charged it today.  More impressions tomorrow, probably including a battery test (at least enough to find out it it makes it a whole work day.