Living the geek life

In the spirit of continually trying to use technology for simplifying and improving life, a few thoughts on my mind this weekend.

Just arrived today, a new toy: a nifty little (emphasis on little) folding Bluetooth keyboard called the Freedom Pro. You can find it at all the usual outlets; I would embed a link for you, but I’m actually using the keyboard to compose this blog post on my Nook Color tablet, and I’m not seeing an easy way to do it yet. It will probably be necessary, if I really need to include hyperlinks, to compose mobile posts using the word processing app in DocumentsToGo or some other Android app. Initial impression: great improvement over any touchscreen keyboard, but there seems to be a tendency for characters to repeat even when I know I only hit the chiclet once. Of coure I am a poor typist anyway (unfortunate for an IT director, I know); so maybe in more competent hands, this product would fare even better. Have not tried yet, but there should not be any reason why this little gem can’t pair and connect with all my computing devices, most notably the BlackBerry and iPod touch.

Next conundrum: seeing if I can use existing devices to tide me over until I get a replacement XM radio receiver in my vehicle. As my Facebook friends know, I paid the price yesterday for leaving my Vue unlocked in MY OWN DRIVEWAY, as some low life filched the SkyFi 2. The jerk has likely already found that it’s useless to him, but if his purpose was to hassle me, he succeeded. Gladly the phone support from SiriusXM was very kind and helpful. And I found a used replacement unit on eBay that I can plug right in to the intact cradle and wiring. Meantime, I wonder if there’s a way I can press my Pioneer inno into play for vehicle use. Or, I could use my XM Internet service on the BlackBerry and play it over my Blue Ant Bluetooth speaker. I have a trip to Cincinnati coming up soon, so we’ll see what I come up with.

Finally, I’m getting lots of good ideas from the latest edition of Lifehacker, the book that gleans the best tips from the web site of the same name. I bought the first edition in hard cover and implemented some of the hacks. I can see plenty of opportunities to turn up the geek and, hopefully, make life even easier. Maybe, more time to write blog posts?