My new iPhone!! :D

Well, sort of... it's new for me, but it's old.



That's not an actual picture of the one I have, but you get the idea.

I got an unlocked/jailbroken old gen iPhone for my birthday. Whee!! It's been a ton of fun playing around with it. I do have some gripes about it though...

Battery life seems kind of short for me... or maybe I just use it way, way too much, but it seems to get drained pretty fast.

It can't send/receive MMS messages! WTF?! Why have a camera built in if you can't MMS your pics? I guess they figure that's what the e-mail capability is for... but most people I know don't check their e-mail much these days since they're all too busy on MySpace or Facebook or whatever other social website there is that sucks up all your time (I'm more of a Twitter via Twhirl person than anything).

Speaking of the camera, it's a huge piece of crap. Can barely take a good pic in less than bright conditions.

The calculator has no "backspace" key. It's one of the better cell phone calculators I've used since you don't need to hit one button multiple times to pick between +-/*=, but I do miss being able to backspace when I mess up.

You can't use text or e-mail in landscape mode. So it kind of makes it a pain to type on the tiny keyboard... and auto-suggest is anything but helpful... at least there's an app to turn suggest off.

Every time I plug it into my PC via USB it constantly disconnects/reconnects. So annoying!! I think my laptop might have bad USB ports, but none of my other USB devices have that problem at all.

Other than those things, I really like it. It's nice having a keyboard even though it's a virtual touch screen one... it makes text typing and web browsing a lot easier.

I love having the internet at my fingertips. I had it before with Opera Mini on my other phones, but Safari works really well and it's neat that I can have multiple pages open. And, again, the keyboard and touch screen interface make it easier to navigate. It's also great being able to switch between portrait and landscape modes easily while browsing.

It's nice that the weather app is free and works amazingly well. On my old phone, I think it was $7.95 for a weather application that wasn't anywhere near as good.

Maps rocks too! I had it on my W810i and my 3220, but it works so much better on the iPhone and I love that I can see real time traffic since I could never get the sigalert website to work that well on any phone.

Despite some of its shortcomings, I think the iPhone is still a pretty good phone for me. I'd still prefer one with an actual keyboard, but at least it's still better than hitting buttons a bunch of times just to type one letter.

Sorry for the lack of updates

This post isn't about anything in my home, but I've got some new pictures to share, which I'll post at a different time. But not this month!

This month I'm taking part in the Thirty Day Challenge. So it's sort of related to the whole "home" theme since I've been doing it from home. The challenge is 30 (actually 31) full days of tutorials on how to build your own business from the ground up. The best thing about it is that it's completely FREE! You won't have to pay a single penny to learn. They have a fantastic community that'll help you along the way in case you get stuck.

The 30DC is officially "live" during the month of August, but all the training videos will be available well after this month is over.

Anyway, I've got to get back to the challenge now, but if you're even curious about internet marketing at all, the 30DC is an excellent place to get your start! Hopefully I'll see you around the forums over at the TDC!

Taking laziness to new levels with the Logitech Harmony One Remote

I've been so busy and got a bunch more new gadgets to play with (I'll post about those sometime, maybe) that I forgot to post more about the Logitech Harmony One Remote I got from BzzAgent.com.

I left off talking about Logitech's amazingly effective device database. I still want to thank whoever added the Gamebridge to the DB. It's been great!!

The next cool thing about the Harmony One is that not only can you program all kinds of remotes into it, but you can also set up "activities" based on the devices you have programmed.

I have my remote control programmed for these devices: my Quasar TV/VCR, my Apex TV, a JVC TV, DVD player, ReplayTV, Xbox 360, GamebridgeTV, and my Lasko Digital Heater (that's right - a heater! It's good for more than just home entertainment products!).

What's cool about activities is that you can set one that'll turn on all the devices you need for that activity and set them up properly so that you can do them with the press of one button.



For example, I have a "Play Xbox 360" activity programmed into my remote. When I touch the screen to "Play Xbox 360" the remote will turn on my JVC TV, set it to Input 2 - Component, and also turn on my Xbox 360 for me. All with just one touch! Another cool thing about that is when you use the Xbox 360 "activity" instead of just browsing to the device in the menu and choosing to control it, it shows A, B, X, Y 360 buttons on the screen. Neat!



There's still some other stuff about the remote I want to write about, but that's all for now!

The Logitech Harmony One Remote Software and Device Database

In my last post, I gave some quick first impressions about the Logitech Harmony One universal remote control that I got from BzzAgent.com.

I've had it for a while now and have been using it, so I can give a lot more detail about it. I'll be spreading this out over a couple of posts because I can tell this is gonna get long. So this post will mostly be about the amazing device database.

I spent the first day charging it up:



The next day, I quickly set it up using the software that comes with it. The remote itself plugs into your computer via USB and the software connects to a huge user-editable database of devices that it programs the remote with. So if your device isn't in the database, you can program it manually and then it'll be added to the database for any other users who may have the same device.

On that note, I have a neat story related to the device database. I own an Adaptec Gamebridge TV, AVC-1410 with remote control. It's a USB video capture device that also lets you watch TV on your computer. Anyway, the remote I had that came with it only worked for me for about a day and then completely stopped working and I had no way to exchange it because the store I bought it from was completely out of stock. :(

So then I had an idea... why not see if I can program my Harmony One remote to work with my Gamebridge? Brilliant, huh? I thought so! :P So I searched the device database and, unfortunately, the Gamebridge wasn't found. Instead, it found a "similar device" so I gave that one a try. And... it also didn't work. :( Bummer.

That gave me another idea, I made a post on CAG, that said exactly this:

I have a request for any of you who have the Harmony One and a Gamebridge TV (AVC-1410 that comes with a remote). Can you program your Harmony One with the Gamebridge remote so that it can get added to the database?

I have a Gamebridge TV, but the remote has been broken for a while now. I tried adding "Gamebridge TV" or "AVC-1410" to the Harmony One, but it wasn't in the database and the similar remote it found doesn't work with my Gamebridge. It'd be nice to be able to use a remote with it again.

There's probably a really slim chance that someone reading this has both, but just thought I'd ask anyway.

I know a bunch of CAGs bought some Gamebridge TVs and I figured maybe some of them would also have the Harmony One Remote, so it was worth a shot.

Within the next hour, the Gamebridge showed up in the device database and it totally worked!!! So that's a really awesome way to use the device database. Make a request, and who knows what'll happen? Maybe you'll finally have a replacement for that broken/lost remote too!

That's one thing I didn't like about all of the other universal remotes that I've owned before. It either had the built-in programming for your remote or it didn't. Some of them you could program manually by teaching it the IR commands, but if your remote is lost or broken, then what? You're pretty much SOL. The internet & Logitech's device database completely came to my rescue! Thanks, Logitech and to whoever that person was who added the Gamebridge!

If you have any questions about the Harmony One, feel free to leave comments! I'll try to answer them in my upcoming posts.

That's all for now, stay tuned to this blog for more!