Exit171… it’s all about the journey

Since I’ve been on my health kick, I’ve been eating bananas daily. I had to post this because I tried it and it really surprised me (yes, one of those simple things in life). Who knew?!

I’ve been opening my bananas stem-side first all my life. On Friday, David showed me how monkeys open bananas. They pinch them on the other end. Boy, it’s a lot easier. I’ll never open a banana the dumb way again.

[via Boing Boing]

Guess which stock I’m thinking about!

I’m really starting to like Skype lately. So much that I just signed-up for a SkypeIn phone number with voicemail. Honestly, I think their client support and voice service quality has been very good lately. Add in the recently released video calling capability (Windows only), SkypeOut, conference calling, and even U3 USB flash drive support, and you’ve got a great feature set. I guess eBay buying Skype last year was a good idea.
From a hardware perspective my Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset has been working well with Skype on my laptops — Fujitsu S2020 Athlon XP, HP LiveStrong Turion 64, and an Apple PowerBook G4. However, I still have to test the video calling to see if it’s as good as Apple’s iChat AV. I’ll try that with a couple webcams I have laying around (an Apple iSight and a Phillips). I also need to test everything with my Verizon Wireless Broadband (EVDO). That’ll be a good useability test for when I’m on the road.

As for the competition, the Gizmo Project looks very appealing, but recent voice tests I did with Javiso were disappointing. The audio quality wasn’t even close to Skype. I plan to keep close tabs on the Gizmo Project, since the features they’re offering look VERY interesting. However, it appears to be a little rough around the edges for me at this point.

I plan to start using Skype as my primary instant messenging (IM), voice over IP (VoIP), and video calling client moving forward. I need to consolidate and it looks like Skype fits the bill. Hopefully my friends and family around the world will also consider adopting Skype — only about 5 million other people on the planet are already using it! As a famous blogger likes to write… “Don’t Get Left Behind!”.

In a previous post I mentioned portable apps and how I’m able to carry some applications and data on a 2.5″ external USB hard drive and also a USB flash drive. That’s been working out well, but I decided to explore a little further and check out the new U3 USB flash drives.

U3, announced in 2005, is a new platform developed by SanDisk and M-Systems and is starting to get some attention. It allows you to load applications and data onto a USB flash drive and access them via a user-friendly GUI on (almost) any Windows PC. The attractive thing about U3 (and also portable apps) is that you can access your apps and preferences without installing anything on a local hard disk or relying on the Windows Registry. You plug-in, use your apps, and unplug when done — without leaving anything on the machine you just used. This has a lot of potential and could be very interesting to road warriors or employees looking to run some personal apps on a computer at work. U3 is similar to what I accomplished with portable apps and PStart, but U3 offers a nice user environment and a development framework for ISV’s.

A handful of companies are now offering U3 smart drives and applications (they’re packaged a little different from a portable app). A bunch of new drives were announced recently at CES, but most are still making their way to the market. Some of my favorites are the U3 drives from SanDisk (one of my longtime favorite flash companies) like the 2GB Cruzer Titanium, 4GB Cruzer Micro, and 4GB Crossfire, but those won’t be available until March or April.

Since I couldn’t wait for the SanDisk drives, I purchased a 1GB Memorex TravelDrive U3 for $99 at Best Buy. I realize $99 is not exactly cheap for 1GB, but the portability and the fact that these drives have no moving parts makes it worth it. “Thumbdrive” is a great description for some of these drives — the Memorex is small!

One tricky thing to note about selecting a new U3 drive is that it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate them from the “regular” flash drives that have been on the market. A few of the flash manufacturers have kept very similar or even identical names with the new U3 drives. Be sure you compare manufacturer SKU’s if you intend to purchase a U3 drive online or you may end up buying a standard flash drive. If purchasing in a store, make sure the packaging explicitly states “U3″ somewhere.

As far as I know, there’s no easy way to convert a standard flash drive to a U3 drive (yet). U3 drives have two partitions on the drive — one which “looks” like a CD-ROM to Windows and another for apps and data (which can be password protected/encrypted for security). This is a bit different from a standard flash drive where the whole drive is yours to use as you please.

The 1GB Memorex TravelDrive U3 is working out very well. I easily installed U3 versions of FireFox 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5, OpenOffice 2.01, EssentialPIM, Skype 1.4, Trillian, Migo (sync software), Preclick PhotoBackPack, and McAffee AntiVirus. Most of these apps were installed directly from the U3 website and a couple came pre-installed. Even with a good amount of personal data loaded, I still have >200MB free. Another thing to note… all of the apps I’m using ARE FREE!

As for usage flow, when I plug-in the drive into a USB port I’m presented with a password prompt (which can be turned off) and then the U3 LaunchPad automatically loads. App loading takes a few seconds (which is dependant on flash drive speeds and whether you’re plugged into a USB 1.1 or 2.0 port). Once the apps are loaded everything looks as if you’re running off a locally installed copy of the program. Most people won’t be able to discern that they’re running off a flash drive, unless they’re running an I/O intensive app. When you’re all done you simply click on EJECT on the U3 LaunchPad… apps shutdown and the USB drive is dismounted — all without leaving any data or program remnants on the local PC! Slick.

I love the concept of U3 and portable apps — carry it with you and run your stuff anywhere you have access to a Windows PC. Although most power users will likely opt for a standard USB flash drive and the many portable apps being released, most newbies will find U3 appealing — it make things simple… and who doesn’t like simple?
Hopefully we’ll see U3 for Linux and Mac OS X in the future. Be sure to check out U3.com and PortableApps.com for more info.