nice weekend...

fantastic as the g'town win may have been, it was topped by cullen (fly and back) and luke (breast) nailing junior olympic qualifying times at the swim meet. cool.

hoyas down duke. sweet

(ok... so i took a quick snap with the mobile from the game and shot it to the blog, but, well, it just didn't do justice to the storming-the-court spectacle - so i'm randomly borrowing someone else's image from flickr to replace mine. gotta say, if i had to pick one game to have been at this season - or any other in the recent past - this was definitely it.

brennan's somewhere out there in that sea of humanity by the way...)

music service hampers mp3...?

interesting little tidbit...

...Verizon's Music Service Hampers MP3 Ability - Yahoo! News...

whither bluetooth, music? nah... granted, at first blush, this might seem to echo earlier decisions to disable bluetooth in some devices, with, per the opinion of some, the goal of controlling content/services and related "walled" revenue. but that's apparently not the case. near as i can tell, this appears to be a temporary disabling of non-vcast mp3 functionality until non-vcast content can be integrated into a single vcast interface. but it's not even that really...

if you're so disposed, you can apparently convert mp3 to wma, transfer to the phone, and get vcast playback (vcast platform relies on MS media player 10 software which, of course, supports wma, but not mp3). or, if you don't want to take this extra step, and don't mind what i understand might amount to a dual music interface on your device, the folks at pcsintel (linked) outline what appears to be a pretty simple 5 step hack (for one handset anyway) to turn non-vcast mp3 support back on.

hmmm... it shouldn't be this complicated. ideal: have tunes (legitimately acquired), have device, put tunes on device, listen, enjoy.

tuesday, must be copenhagen...

...just passing through, with a post-holiday, seasonably-appropriate willy nelson signature lyric twanging over and over again in my head. on the road again indeed...

Yahoo! Go for Mobile

Yahoo! Go - Get Started on Your Mobile

interesting (see final paragraph). useful little app. particularly if you have an affinity for the yahoo! brand and are familiar with yahoo! services or otherwise strongly identify with your yahoo! ID.

the app (downloadable here) - specifically for nokia series 60 devices - is quite elegant (although a bit larger than your average .sis file - a whopping 1.8 mb). installation is a breeze - the beauty of the open symbian/nokia series 60 platform. configuration is quite simple, which includes launching a couple of additional installs for synching, installing the IM client, etc.

in terms of functionality, mail is nicely integrated into the nokia messaging menu. mail management options are simple, intuitive - you can easily reply to or forward messages, or even file mails directly into your pre-established yahoo! folders which now appear in the nokia inbox options menu as a result of having installed the yahoo! client. slight downside: incoming yahoo! mail gets dumped into the same inbox as incoming sms and mms messages (duplicates appear in a dedicated yahoo! folder within the messaging menu as well), which makes things a bit cluttered. but, as said, it's easy enough to file and/or delete messages just as you would from a fixed terminal. bottom line on mail: i used to have to launch my browser to access y! to check my yahoo! mail on a static basis - now i get it pushed to me. sweet. and, near as i can tell, the yahoo! app does not seem to be interfering with my secure corporate push e-mail running on the same device.

as for calendar synch, seems wrinkle-free (haven't yet synched address book, but assume same). photo synch likewise (first time you use the photo synch you have to go through a quick install process - but it's automatic and seamless). as i'm already a regular user of shozu app for uploading images to flickr (also in the yahoo! camp) - from which i can share, post to blog, etc. - i'm not sure this new yahoo! solution in its current state will compel me to switch. but cool nonetheless.

the IM client (another quick install on first use) is also quite elegant - seems to look and act a lot like the agile messenger client, except that the latter allows simultaneous presence on multiple IM services (aol, msn, yahoo!, icq). for whatever reason, despite a decade-long history and strong affinity with yahoo!, i'm still more likely to use my aim moniker than any other so i'm gonna probably stick with the agile messenger solution for the nonce. but hey, that's just me. this is a pretty slick client if you're a yahoo! messenger junkie.

what i found perhaps the least intriguing piece of the package was the search/bookmark menu. it looks pretty, but once you click on an option - sports, finance, weather, movies, whatever - it launches your mobile browser, where you sign in at the familiar y! prompt, and then you get the familiar y! screens. nothing wrong with that, mind you, i've been accessing y! from the phone for ages. thing is, not sure why i'd want to toggle back and forth between the yahoo! search/bookmark menu and the browser to go from, say, finance to weather? for now i'll just stick to my existing y! bookmark in my browser and access the way i always have.

so, all of that said, and bearing in mind that this is an early, preliminary review based on limited exposure to the app/service (no doubt with experience i'll discover yet more value, and perhaps a shortcoming or two), all-in-all i'd say yahoo! go appears to be quite a handy little application that should serve to make the mobile internet experience yet a bit more user-friendly, for yahoo! afficionados and newcomers alike...

...as for what all of this may mean for the mobile business ecosystem, that's another thing altogether. note that this yahoo!-nokia news comes out of CES the same day that google-motorola announced some sort of association. whole lotta changin' dynamic going on...

back to work...

...following a truly great winter break. didn't go anywhere. just stayed home with the family, caught a couple movies with the kids, went out to dinner with the whole brood a couple times, spent christmas and new years' eves at the in-laws, etc. oh, and wiped/re-partitioned a pair of hard drives (fun). all-in-all, great family time. can't wait 'til beach week in august...