Workers Without Cubicles

The Vancouver Apple store in the Pacific Centre Mall opened for business this past weekend. I was in Toronto, attending the MESH conference (thanks to commandN) and couldn’t make the opening day, but I was there Sunday morning.

Interesting thing about Vancouver: it’s a very sleepy town. They get started pretty late in the morning here, at least compared to Toronto and Ottawa. So when I showed up at 11 AM on Sunday morning I was a little disappointed to see how few people were in the store. All the better for me though, because I got to browse without having to push my way through a crowd.

Drooled over a MacBook Air, even though it’s completely impractical for my needs. Besides, I already have a completely serviceable MacBook Pro. I also eyed the new version of X-Plane for the Mac, but decided I was probably better off with one less thing on the credit card this month.

We went for lunch, and when we returned at 1 PM the store was packed full of people. I’m sure the other retailers on the upper level of the Pacific Centre love the new store - there normally isn’t a lot of foot traffic up there, but the Apple store (and the nearby H & M) really draws a crowd.

It’s nice to see so many people interested in Apple today. I say that not because I’m an Apple fan, but because Windows has been synonymous with computers for so long, that it’s great to see people realizing that there are alternatives out there. Whether it’s Mac, Linux or something else, the greater the diversity of the computer world, the more innovation, interoperability and open standards we’ll see, and that’s a good thing.

Personally, I’m happy that the store is there because it’s about 3 blocks from where I live, and I need to get a battery replaced under warranty soon. The downside is that there are all kinds of shiny new toys to purchase, all within walking distance!

Gadgetry, General apple, macintosh, vancouver

We picked up an Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard on the weekend and I wanted to share my first impressions with you.

For starters, it’s not a full-size keyboard. It lacks separate page up/page down keys, along with a numeric keypad. It is also very thin - I would estimate that it is no more than 4mm thick for the most part, except for the cylindrical portion at the back which holds the batteries and bluetooth antenna. The battery compartment also serves to elevate the keyboard to a comfortable angle for typing (at least for me).

How does it feel? Pretty good actually. The keys themselves are full-size and normally spaced. I find that the design mutes keyboard noise quite nicely - while you definitely get audible feedback when you’re typing, your neighbour isn’t going to hear you too.

The keyboard was super-easy to pair up with my laptop over bluetooth. The right-side of the battery compartment is an power / bluetooth discovery button. All it took to pair up with my laptop was a single press of this button and then following the normal procedure in the “Setup up a Bluetooth Device” area in the Bluetooth System Preferences panel. OS X prompted me to type a 6 digit code on my keyboard, after which it paired with the Mac.

Working with the Nokia N800

I also had no problems pairing the keyboard with my Nokia N800 internet tablet device. Actually, the Apple keyboard + N800 makes an almost unbeatable portable blogging system. I was happy to discover that the Nokia can be driven entirely from the keyboard, with almost no need to resort to the touch screen. I wish I had a setup like this back when I was an on-call system administrator 8 years ago!

N800 tip: Make sure you select a Hardware Keyboard type of pc105 in the control panel. Otherwise the keymappings will be all wrong (it defaults to a Nokia bluetooth keyboard of some sort).

Downsides to the keyboard? Well I can’t think of anything major right now. I’ve been told that I can expect excellent battery life so we’ll see how that goes. I suppose some people might dislike the feel of the keys, and the lack of a separate numeric keypad might be a show-stoppers for others. But for me, this is a perfect little keyboard that I’m looking forward to using on a daily basis.

Gadgetry apple, bluetooth, macintosh, n800, nokia

We got tired of paying Telus (our local phone company) a lot of money for what seemed to be little service. I started looking at alternatives and decided to give a voice over IP solution a whirl. By now most people are familiar with VoIP: phone service over the internet. Basically, a VoIP provider acts a gateway between the regular phone system and the internet. You’re probably familiar with services like Vonage - you sign up for a monthly plan and they send you a little box which connects to the internet and your regular house phones. Their plans were certainly cheaper than the regular telephone company’s plans, but I found Vonage’s sound quality to be spotty - no doubt because I live in Canada and the calls were being routed down into the US (where Vonage is located) and back up here.

I’ve found a better way to manage my phone system, and that’s to do it myself. Using a free package called TrixBox, I have been able to run my own phone system using a spare computer. It handles everything from phone greetings to voicemail, can ring both my cell and my house phones simultaneously when a call comes in, and gives me excellent call tracking reports. I can see exactly how long I’ve spent on the phone and compare it to previous months. And best of all, it’s dirt cheap. You still need a VoIP service provider, but since you are handling all the "extras" (voicemail, caller waiting, etc) via Trixbox, the phone plans are cheap. I pay $2.50 per month for my phone line, plus 1.1 cents / minute usage. That means for a typical month, my phone bill is about $12 CDN.

I’m going to put together a small how-to document, but in the meantime be sure to check out the following links:

TrixBox - I use this software to run my phone systems
voipinfo - A great resource for all things VoIP - lists service providers by country/region.

Business, Gadgetry phone, voip