Year: 2005

Traffic Alerts on Your Cell Phone

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

After finding myself unexpectedly stuck in traffic on my way home from work one too many times, I thought to check whether I could get traffic alerts e-mailed to me (after all, there’re websites which track traffic, so I thought there was at least a chance someone might offer an e-mail option). I did some searching but I couldn’t find anyone that had traffic alerts over e-mail.

Then it occurred to me that traffic alerts sent to my cell phone would be even better — that way, I wouldn’t even have to be near my computer to keep up-to-date on any traffic anomalies. I wasn’t very optimistic about finding much, though; sending alerts via e-mail is one thing, but having a traffic-alert service with an integrated SMS gateway on the back-end seemed like a tall order. Nonetheless, I searched anyway — and, sure enough, there is such a thing. Apparently, MSN has a free MSN Alerts service which can send traffic alerts (or other updates) to one’s phone.

The process is fairly straightforward. First, you’ll need an MS Passport account. Then, just load up the MSN Alerts page and choose the “Add Alerts” link which is on the top of that page. The only tricky part, if you can even call it that, is that the traffic alerts are under the “MSN Autos” header (though, to be fair, the subheader does say “Receive real-time local traffic incidents from MSN Carpoint”).

From there, the options are up to you. After choosing your metro area (“Dallas-Ft Worth” in my case”) you can select from what looks to be several dozen metro regions (which, on my list, starts from “Abbott”, goes through ”Euless”, and continues right through to “Wylie”). In my case, I just chose “Dallas” ;). And, from there, you also have a choice of delivery times, delivery days and traffic incident severity; I set that last one just to “High” since it was mostly the accidents that I cared about and I didn’t want to rack up too many text messages needlessly.

I’ve been using MSN Alerts for a few days now and it’s working out well. Granted, it sometimes tells me about accidents on roads on which I don’t drive — c'est la vie — but the alerts on roads which I use have saved me a few times from driving into a block of traffic. And, other than traffic alerts, some of the other alerts offered have been handy as well; I’ve also signed up for breaking news alerts (under the “MSNBC News” header) and a Dow Jones stock alert (under the “MSN Money” header). There’re also alerts for sports and so on, but those didn’t interest me enough to use up my text messages for those.

Autoblog on Speed Channel’s WRC Coverage

Ashley Bischoff12 Comments

In a post last month about how Netflix tried to recommend a pregnancy workout disc to me after I had added an autocross driving disc to my queue, I made an attempt at describing WRC (World Rally Championship racing). However, I came across an entry at Autoblog (a car blog in the Weblogs Inc family) that painted a better picture:

I personally think that the WRC is the most exciting race to watch, and the more you guys care, the more chances they’ll show it live in the US. Here are the reasons to care: It has fast drifting turns, spectacular scenery, death-defying leaps over blind crests and some dude in the passenger seat reading out the turns to a guy driving at 100mph who hasn’t seen the road before. These guys have balls, real manly ones. Oh, did I mention awesome crashes into trees? Yeah, they got that too. For those of you who want to start watching, the WRC Magazine show airs on the Speed Channel.

After reading over that, I really began to ponder whether I should sign up for DirecTV sometime (or some other television service which includes Speed Channel). Really, I’m not even sure what my options are, Speed Channel-wise. I’m pretty sure that DirecTV carries it, but might Comcast Digital Cable or Echostar carry it as well? Oh, and just to clarify a minor thinko in Autoblog’s post — the drivers have seen the roads before, during the pre-race “recce” (however, in the midst of a race, the driver steers largely on the faith of the directions blurted to him by his navigator in the passenger seat).

Foxit PDF Alternative to Adobe Reader

Ashley Bischoff13 Comments

While browsing BetaNews over the weekend, I came across Foxit PDF Reader. It’s a PDF reader and that concept may seem a bit redundant at first since Adobe has a PDF reader that works fine, eh? Well, the only problem is that the basic Acrobat Reader could read PDF documents years ago and yet Adobe needed something to put in the new versions…

So, for the last few years, Adobe has released new versions of their PDF reader, adding obscure features which only served to slow down the app for the rest of us. That's where Foxit’s PDF Reader comes in. In contrast to Adobe's PDF Reader which — at least on my system — weighs in at 70 MB (?!), Foxit PDF Reader is about 2 MB. And, it’s just a single .exe file, so there’s no complicated install, either; just unzip and go.

I must say, I was skeptical of of Foxit Reader at first. I mean, how could such a small app display the same documents that needed a 70 MB app previously? Well, I was pleasantly surprised — this thing loads almost instantaneously and it properly rendered all of the documents which I tested with it. On top of that, my mouse wheel actually works this time around (for some reason, my mouse wheel was perpetually ineffective in Adobe Reader).

The only downside to Foxit PDF Reader is that it doesn't support PDF-based forms. Sure, you can view the forms (and print them if you wanted to) but it doesn't support filling out the forms right within the PDF Reader. So, at least for those rare occurrences, it’d make sense to keep Adobe Reader tucked away somewhere. On the other hand, Foxit Reader does have a feature which is similar and, depending on the situation, may be better or worse than native form support. In what they call “typewriter” mode, you can type on top of any part of a document. So, yeah, you could fake filling out a form by placing text right on top of the form fields. More importantly, you can add your own text to any form this way — whether or not they were designed with PDF form support.

PDFs used to be a real drag; I never looked forward to having to open them. But, I can open a PDF document faster than I can open a Word document these days — and I never thought that would happen. (And if you're up for it, I’d recommend trying the 1.3 beta over the current release; I’ve not had any problems with it.)

Word Endings — -ible vs -able

Ashley Bischoff21 Comments

I was talking with my friend Liz the other day and she mentioned that someone had asked on the Glen Mitchell show about whether there was any rhyme or reason behind why some words end in “able” (such as “comfortable”) while others end in “ible” (such as “horrible”). Before I get to the answer, though, here’s the scoop on the Glen Mitchell Show for readers who aren’t in Dallas — the show airs on Dallas’ local NPR affiliate and each Friday show features call-in questions which other audience members are invited to help answer. It’s a bit like Ask.MetaFilter but on the radio (HHOS).

Anyhow, you wouldn’t think that there’d be any reason behind such word endings, but there actually is (well, mostly).

  • If the root is not a complete word, add -ible. (aud + ible = audible)

  • If the root is a complete word, add -able. (accept + able = acceptable)

For example, “laugh” makes sense on its own, so that becomes “laughable”. On the other hand, “elig” can’t stand on its own, so that one’s “eligible”. Then again, English just isn’t allowed to be that easy ;), so there are some exceptions, such as “irritable” and “inevitable”.

Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1" LCD For About $400

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I’ve been keeping tabs on Dell’s 2005FPW 20.1" LCD ever since I first heard about it on Engadget. Other than price, the big problem with most LCDs — as I see it — is that most of them have a fairly paltry resolution. I mean, sure, a 19" LCD may sound nice but what good is it if it can only handle 1280x1024? But, that’s where the 2005FPW comes in. It’s 20.1 inches and has a resolution of 1680 x 1050 (with a 12ms response time, if you’re curious).

I also found a comparison between this monitor and Apple’s 20" Cinema Display at AnandTech. Apparently, they use the same LG.Philips panel and, unsurprisingly, they perform about the same. Granted, Apple’s display may have the edge on aesthetics but AnandTech concludes by saying that the “UltraSharp 2005FPW is the display that we have been waiting for”.

This was sounding pretty good so far, but then I found an item on DealNews which further sweetened the deal — you can get the 2005FPW for about $400 + tax through a series of coupon codes:

Once again, the Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor costs $749 at Dell Home. Add any item to bump your order over $750 (e.g., this CD-R media) and apply coupon codes “S0BDZ6HBTFDPSL” and “79VT3767HP833W” to drop the net price to $396.85, not including the cost of the extra item. With free shipping, that ties last week’s listing for the lowest total price we’ve seen. The 2005FPW sports a native resolution of 1680x1050, 600:1 contrast ratio, 300 cd/m2 brightness, an integrated 4-port USB 2.0 hub, and S-Video, composite video, DVI, and VGA inputs. Offer ends May 23 at 7 am ET, but these coupons will likely hit their limits sooner.

Though the item appeared on DealNews on Friday, I only saw it today. I wasn’t sure if the coupons were still valid, so I just tried adding the LCD to my cart and applying the coupons — it worked! But, at this point, I had other matters to consider. Firstly, did I really need a new LCD monitor? ;) I already have a 19" CRT at home and at work and it dawned on me that a one-for-one replacement wouldn’t give me much. Just to be sure, I Googled for some “LCD vs CRT” comparisons and came across this Monitor Buying Guide at C|Net.

As I can see it, it basically works out like this. LCDs are thinner, have no refresh-rate flicker and a crisp image; but, they’re also more expensive and their color rendition may be inconsistent. CRTs, on the other hand, are relatively inexpensive, have good color rendition and they can easily display varying resolutions; however, they’re energy inefficient and it’s apparently barely impossible to get perfect screen geometry.

Looking over the pros and cons, the upshot appears to be that I could get perfect screen geometry without convergence problems but that it’d cost me $400. And, at this point, I think I’m going to pass. Don’t get me wrong, this LCD from Dell looks pretty sweet and I’d almost surely buy one if I didn’t have a 19" display but, of course, I already have a 19" display.

Maybe I’ll just wait for Dell’s 24" UltraSharp 2405FWP? Its 1920 x 1200 resolution would be definitively larger than what I have now. However, its $1200 price tag — which is cheaper than the $1500 for Apple’s equivalent-resolution display — is still a bit out of my reach.