There’s one big problem with being a technology addict…there’s always new technology.  When the Android OS was released and first came to the market in the T-Mobile G1, I wanted one.  But, I couldn’t go to T-Mobile (that’s a long story).  I ended up getting a BlackBerry Storm.  The Storm has been OK, it does a great job on email, but other things are a little lacking.  I do have to admit, that after the release of the 5.0 OS, it’s a lot better.

A friend of mine has been using the broad collection of image editing programs on the iPhone…making me jealous…thinking about an iPhone.

Then, Google updated the Android platform and Verizon decided to start offering Android phones.  The Motorola Droid is a very nice looking phone with an amazing display.

The operating system itself now has an improved contact manager with the ability to sync with multiple sources, Exchange support, combined inbox, improved camera application, multi-touch support (although it’s apparently disabled in the US), improved browser, and improved calendar.

For developers there is now a synchronization API, support for multiple screen sizes, a Bluetooth API, and more.

The real kicker here is that my mom and dad both got a Droid last night…on release day…before me.  It’s just not right.

I’m eligible for an annual upgrade in January, I guess I have to wait.  Maybe one of the new Snap Dragon-based phones will be out by then.  I can only hope.  Or, Verizon, are you listening?  Can you cut me a little slack and let me upgrade early?
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Update 2009-11-11 I got a Droid! Stay tuned…

Several people have asked my how I stay connected with so many blogs.  Currently, I check in with 38 blogs every day.  Often more than once each day.

If I had to visit each site individually, I would never do it.  I couldn’t remember all the URLs, or what the last article was I looked at on the site.  It would be a mess.

Luckily, I found the Google Reader (yes, I like the Google Kool-Aid).  This is a web-based tool that lets me keep current with all my blogs.  It’s nice, down the left side is a list of the blogs I follow.  For the blogs with new content, they’re listed in bold and the number of new postings is shown in parenthesis.  Much like the way an email program shows folders.

Clicking on a blog loads the postings into the right side.  You can have the postings shows as just a list, or a scrolling area with the full article content.  When you’re done, you can mark the articles as read.  The blog name will then go back to a normal font until there are new articles.

Google Reader makes it easy for me to keep up on my blog reading.  This is particularly true for sites that don’t get updated very often.

Adding a blog is really easy.  Just look for the syndication or subscription link.  Usually flagged with an icon like this: .  Just copy the URL, in Reader click “Add a Subscription”, paste in the URL and click “Add”.  You’re done.

You can even organize your blogs into categories if you like.

You can “star” individual articles so you can come back to them later, for example, I will star an article that I want to share with someone else or write an article about.  Anything I want to remember for later.  You can share articles and email them to others.  Very slick product.

The other thing I like is that it’s online.  I can access the same blogs from any of my computers and the read/unread status is the same everywhere.

How do you manage your list of favorite blogs?  Speak up in comments.

Get more at http://www.google.com/reader

I don’t know about you, but I love GMail.  I have grown so accoustomed to the idea of labels instead of folders that Outlook just frustrates me.  Why can’t a message be in more than one folder?

After I got my BlackBerry, I tried the GMail app.  Granted it looks nice and let’s you view messages in a threaded manner, access labels and stars, etc.  It sucks when it comes to getting mail to my phone.  It doesn’t seem to do push, and, it doesn’t have an icon in the alert area to tell me there’s new mail.  So, I abandoned it.  Access my email using imap works great.

Now, RIM has released the Enhanced Google Mail plug-in for BlackBerry.  This is a nice compromise.  It looks just like the regular mail/messaging applications and it gives to access to stars, labels, archiving messages, and marking spam even viewing conversations.

In this first picture, you can see the menu options added for Google Mail.  Since this is part of the standard messaging application, all other apps that extend messeging still work.

New menu options

When looking at your inbox, you can see stars and conversations.

With a message open, you can also see labels.

Now, there are a couple of limitations.  The sync of labels and stars is one-way only.  From the phone to your account.  This sucks if you are an active email user…but, it’s still better than we had before.

The other challenge is for people that have a Google Apps account…like me.  I did a bunch of searching on the net and found that RIM can deal with this.  You need to call support with your carrier, get bumped up to RIM support and ask them to set your domain for “GIMAP” (gee-eye-map).  This will cause BIS to recognize your domain as a gmail domain and all is good.

So, I’ve been playing with Google’s new Chrome browser today.  So far, I like the feel of it.  I do miss a couple of the IE plug-ins (oddly, the Google Toolbar is one).