Happy New Year!

Pearls Before Swine

The comic strip Pearls Before Swine posted a nice comic strip about BlackBerry users. Looks familiar?

CarFinder for BlackBerry

Who can forget the classic Seinfeld episode where they spend the whole time looking for their car in the parking lot? Sometimes I feel that way coming back from a flight and not remembering where I parked my car. Since I fly almost every week, I find myself going to the spot I parked my car some other week

What you can do with this little application, is to set the location of the car before you leave it, and then when you need to return to the car, use the compass functionality to get to it:

So you can either just write down the number of the spot where you parked or be a techno-geek and use your BlackBerry for this! From your BlackBerry, browse to http://bb.Neosistec.com/carfinder to download this.

Enjoy this clip from the Seinfeld episode:

Sync gCalendar with your BlackBerry

Google released an application to synchronize your Google Calendar with the BlackBerry. Best of all is that the synchronization works both ways, so you can always look at your updated calendar on your computer or your BlackBerry.

From your BlackBerry browser go to http://m.google.com/sync

Sony's Apple Remote Control

One more nice concept project for today. This one comes from Sony and not from Apple. The design is pretty slick and could be a very center piece on your coffee table. The idea is that you every member of the household has their own "Apple". Each has a slightly different shade of green so you know which one is yours. You can program your Apple with the functions that best suit your TV watching needs and the nice thing is that it responds to motion gestures. For example, rotate it to the left to lower the volume and rotate it to the right to raise it. The bowl they reside in is not just for decoration and it actually recharges the remote!

WYSIWYG Cell Phone

Here is a cool concept cellular phone from Pei-Hua Huang who is an industrial design graduate student in NC State University. "What You See is What You Get" is a concept cell phone that uses a transparent frame as a viewfinder instead of depending on the screen while taking pictures. So you see the picture you get is what you see through the transparent frame.

Free Themes for BlackBerry

Themes4BB.com  is a great site that has free stuff for your BlackBerry. Just register for free and you'll have access to: Over 400 BlackBerry themes, hundreds of BlackBerry wallpapers, free applications, MP3 Ringtones and more!

Videos for your BlackBerry

If you got a micro SD card for your BlackBerry you probably want to fill it with some media to take with you on the road. The first choice would probably be to fill it with MP3 files, but what about some movies? Videos4Blackberry is a great source for this. You'll find there many TV shows to download in a BlackBerry format and even the latest Victoria's Secret Fashion Show so you can watch it on the road

Google Mobile Blog

Google started an official blog to discuss all of their mobile applications and see demos of what they look like. This is great since you use to have to keep on checking on your own to see when they release a new version of one of their mobile applications and typically there wasn't a lot of information of what is new in the build.

One good post you can see there already is about the Google Mobile Updater for BlackBerry which makes it simple to stay informed and up-to-date when there are new versions or products for your BlackBerry.

Tourist Remover

I am sure this happened to you at some point: You are trying to take a picture of a nice building, the nice view or some object but there are dozens of people walking by and getting in the middle of your shot. So you can wait for everybody to walk by and quickly take a shot, ask some friends to stop the traffic or come up with some other way to clear your shot. The good people at futureLab are trying to address this specific problem. They are offering a free online image editing tool called Tourist Remover that allows you to take a few images of the same object and ignore the fact that you have people going through and then let their application remove the unwanted objects.

How does it work? All you need to do is take 3-10 pictures of the subject (you don't even need a tripod for this), upload the images to their application and then Tourist Remover averages the pictures and removes anything that only appears in one of the shots (like walking people or moving cars). The application will not remove items that show in more than one shot (like a parked car), so make sure to upload shots that the objects that you want to be removed show only once.

Here's an example of the input pictures of a Ferrari:

And the output:

Gmail 1.5.1 for BlackBerry

Google just released a new version of their mail client for the BlackBerry. This version now supports notifications on new mail (Gmail has its own entry in the Profile menu now). It also provides full access to your Gmail contacts and spam folder.

From your BlackBerry browser go to http://mobile.google.com and download the new mail client.

Nissan GT-R Inside Look

I blogged last month about the upcoming GT-R from Nissan that will hit the USA early 2008. Nissan now gives an inside look into the production line of this great car. Enjoy:

Free Spreadsheet for BlackBerry

Simprit is offering GridMagic Community Edition which is a spreadsheet editor for your BlackBerry. The best thing about this is that it is absolutely free for "non-commercial personal and educational use".

GridMagic is compatible with Microsoft Excel files, so you can open and edit attached Excel files from your email (the free version is limited to 50kb files...) or synchronize your spreadsheets from your desktop to your BlackBerry SD card.

The Real eTicket

After shifting the industry to eTicket and being able to check-in online and printing a boarding pass in your home printer, Continental is taking the next step and this week started a test program that allows the passengers flying through Houston to board flights using just a cellular phone or smart phone (like your BlackBerry).

Instead of a printed eTicket, you will be able to just show the TSA agent a code that Continental sent to your cellular or PDA. This is a two dimensional barcode which stores the passenger's name and flight information. The TSA screener will have a handled scanner to confirm the bar code's authenticity and check your photo identification.

Your Personal (FREE) Assistant

As we get older there are more things to remember which means there are more things to forget. For those of us fortunate enough to have an assistant, things are a bit easier and there's always someone there to remind you of what you need. For those of us who don't, you need to deal with Outlook and create tasks, meeting reminders, notes and all. What if instead of all of this you had a free assistant that would be available 24x7 for you and do all this for you? This is exactly where Sandy comes in!

This free service is great, especially if you are on the move all the time and have a BlackBerry with you (or any other smart phone with mail access). After you sign up for this service you will receive a mail address, from there all you need to do is send an email to Sandy with what you need to remember, do, schedule and she'll make sure to put it in the right place and remind you when needed.

This service is very easy to use and it simply recognizes some basic commands and tags, for example:

• Remind us to call Mom on her birthday on 9/16/07 @yearly @birthday
• Remember the plumber's number is (415) 555-1212
• Remind me I have a Marketing meeting on 3/14 at 1-2pm
• Remember JFK to SFO, United #302 Mon 3pm EST - 5pm PST @travel @"West Coast Sales Conference"

You can also subscribe via Outlook 2007 and it will automatically add appointments, reminders, and to-dos to your calendar.

Redeem Your HHonors Points

As a diamond member of the Hilton hotels family I know that the hotel points stack up very quickly when you travel every week. The biggest problem is that when you travel every week the last thing you want to do when you are on vacation is to travel some more, so it's always nice to see that companies let you use the points/miles for something else (even that the value will probably be less...)

Hilton HHonors is offering a new way to redeem your reward points with their new HHonors Rewards Store. In their store you can purchase more than 5,500 products including merchandise from Apple, Canon, Sony, Tumi and more. You can also get gift cards to 35 different retailers such as Saks, Best Buy, Borders, Macy's and more.

Technorati Tags: Hilton,HHonors

In-Shoe Metal Detector

I have posted before about the new scanning machines that are being tested in some airports by the TSA. In a post 9/11 era I guess there's no end to the methods you can milk money out of the federal government. All you need is some creativity and that is exactly what MagShoe is all about.

This system is a metal detector designed to test your shoes and ankles in 1.2 seconds without removing your shoes. It is currently being used in Madrid, Budapest, Prague, Mombassa, Nairobi and Bratislava and will soon receive the seal of approval from the TSA, so don't be surprised if you are asked to step on one of these any time soon.

Technorati Tags: Security,TSA,Travel