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Bluetooth, Shakers, Google Maps and Random Images |
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Tuesday, 14 November 2006 |
This past weekend we traveled to Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill Kentucky. I'm generally not a fan of living history sites (to me they seem corny and forced) but this one I enjoyed. The simplicity of purpose of the shakers (wikipedia has a good overview of what they are all about) was alluring enough to keep them going for quite some time. Two communities still exist. I took along the camera and managed to get some shots I'm quite pleased with. Have a look if you get the chance.
Bluetooth, a technology that allows you to connect devices within about 30 feet of one another wirelessly, has always seemed like a good idea to me. Until now, I've not found a useful implementation of it. Bluetooth headsets I've tried were always buggy, unreliable and required pairing whenever you wanted to use them. That all changed when I got my new car. The Bluetooth integration with the car works how you would want it to work. Pair the phone once, then every time you get in the car the phone and the car pair up without you doing anything. The car downloads your address book. If you get a call, the radio cuts out and the caller ID shows up on the radio display. Press a button on the steering wheel to answer and start talking. I hear that Bluetooth enabled printers are equally handy, especially for laptop users.
Also, there is a misprint in the manual. I'll mention it here in the hopes of saving other E90 3 series owners from the same frustration. To store voice dial entries the manual instructs you to say "store name". You can say that all day and the system will just ask for another command. After a bit of googling around, I discovered the correct command is "save name". Also, the official line from BMW is that blackberry devices with Bluetooth are not supported because they do not support the hands free protocol. It does work, you just need to upgrade the Blackberry OS on your phone to 4.1 which adds support for the handsfree protocol.
I had an opportunity to sit down and get google maps installed on my phone. It's as good or better than most handheld GPS systems I've seen and it's free (it will even display traffic info on the map!). You can get more info about it here, or just go here and enter your mobile number to have google send you a text message with a link to install all the mobile google apps on your phone (search, gmail, and news are also available). As usual, google didn't do anything that wasn't possible before, they just made the interface so damn good you will actually use it.
Finally, in Blog Ho! improvement news, I've embedded the Gallery random image block on the left hand column. Enjoy.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 November 2006 )
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