Cheers!

I can’t really say what was going through my mind that day. I’d pretty much only be able to say I kind of mentally shut down. Suffice to say, it was all we could do to make the best of the rest of my family’s vacation, even down to our return home. Flights were only just barely starting to get going again. We had tried to make a reservation. Within an hour after doing so, we were informed that it had been cancelled and we’d have to try again. I think something similar happened again the next time we tried.

So, between the reservation challenges, and knowing how awful airports would be even if we’d managed to make a reservation, we gave up and decided to rent a one-way vehicle to drive back home. This decision is the source of two positives I got out of the whole 9/11 experience.

For one, we drove through several states I’d never before visited, so having to drive let me see some of this country of ours, including a stop at Mount Rushmore—certainly an appropriate stop to make, considering the circumstances. Another positive was that I got to visit my friend Andy at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is the only time I ever saw him at that location before he moved to Kentucky.

Never forget.

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows

so we love

less well

so low
so level

wolves evolve

I doubt this will concern anyone since there have been only two others besides myself to sign up for an account since I started this site last year. The purpose of doing so is to not have to fill in your personal information when posting comments. Logging in keeps that filled in for you.

However, there’s very little comment activity here, let alone the fact that even the blogging that occurs is sparse. And I’m getting sick of the upsurge in the past few weeks of spam systems signing up for user registrations. So bam! I turned them off.

This does not mean I’m unwilling to allow someone an account. If you’d like one, contact me and I’ll set it up for you.

Before I get into it, I’ll acknowledge that for those of us who’d previously paid the Apple Tax for QuickTime Pro luckily still have the previous QuickTime Player application. It’s been moved to the Utilities folder—and thanks to someone at Apple who had the presence of mind to allow it to retain all its functionality.

As for the new QuickTime Player, I have numerous observations of behavior and gotchas. As much as Apple might have you believe that the new version folds in all the features that were available in QuickTime Pro, I most heartily assure you it’s only a half-baked effort:

1. Definitely the least important of my list, but what purpose does it serve to have jumped the version number of QuickTime Player from 7 to 10, banning versions 8 and 9 to presumably never see the light of day?
2. No preferences? Anywhere? Both the app preferences and System Preference pane for QuickTime are gone?
3. JKL editing is gone. This is the function that lets the J, K, and L keys act as the “shuttle” portion of video jog/shuttle control. In QuickTime Player 7 Pro, the L key plays forward and J key plays backward. The K key stops playback. Successive presses of the J or L keys will play increasingly faster in the current direction: 2x, 4x, etc. In addition, If playing forward at 2X and the J key is pressed once, playback slows to 1X.
4. Command+Left and Right arrows sort of serve as JKL editing now, but using them immediately starts at 2X playback. I find no way to play backward at 1X.
5. Also, use of Command+Left and Right doesn’t exist in Trim mode where it would be most useful.
6. I and O keyboard shortcuts to mark In and Out points for trimming are gone.
7. The playhead in Trim mode has no counter associated with it and you cannot drag it.
8. It is now impossible to find edit points based on the audio track since JKL editing is gone and Command+Left and Right arrows are mostly useless. In QuickTime Player 7 Pro, I have often swashed forward and backward in a small region of time to find an edit point just ahead of where someone starts talking, for example, hitting the I key to mark that spot as an In point when the playhead is where I want to start.
9. There was a trick of clicking the counter to switch to frame numbers instead of time. That’s gone in the new QuickTime Player.
10. The Information window is still the same but the Movie Properties and A/V Controls windows are gone.

There’s probably lots more that I’m not thinking about at this time, but will be sure to turn up soon. All I can say is, it’s clear that QuickTime Player 10 SHOULD NOT be regarded as a replacement for version 7 of QuickTime Player Pro, and those of us who used those features should keep our collective fingers crossed and drink plenty of the Kool-Aid that even if we have to use a different player application, Apple will not drop any possibility of using the features in any way, shape, or form in QuickTime.

I seem to recall this bug in Twitterrific 1.x for iPhone, and then it was fixed, and now it’s back in 2.0. When I post a photo to TwitPic, the accompanying tweet text needs to become the caption, and it currently does not.

This is actually intentional. In order to set the caption with your tweet text, the tweet has to go through the photo posting service rather than through Twitter. However, we’ve found that many of the photo posting services fail regularly – if this happened when you were posting a photo, this would cause your tweet not to appear on Twitter at all. So to make sure your tweet reaches Twitter we send it directly there rather than through the photo service. So while this doesn’t let you set the caption, it does give your tweet a better chance of reaching Twitter.

Please, someone tell me which one of us is crazy—me or the person who answered the support e-mail. Of course the text would not make it to Twitter if the photo upload failed! When someone uploads a photo to a service like TwitPic, pretty much the entire point of the Twitter post is to notify followers about the new picture. If the picture somehow fails to upload, the Tweet would be pointless because it would reference a picture that no one would be able to see.

Dear Icon Factory, please restore the the behavior of a corresponding Twitter post becoming the caption for a TwitPic upload (and any other photo service, where applicable).

The opinion to which I refer is: I loathe the fact that formatting e-mail in HTML (a.k.a. Rich Text) instead of plain text is far more prevalent than it should be. And I don’t even fault the majority of us who do the e-mailing. I fault e-mail application developers who now make HTML/Rich Text formatting the default.

STOP THAT!

The most common purpose of an e-mail is to send a few thoughts in written form to another person. Period. Plain text is all anyone needs for just about all their e-mailing needs.

There are many reasons to stick with plain text. For one, it’s more compatible across all e-mail systems. HTML/Rich Text is an interpreted and rendered format. It’s not as simple as just typing a few characters. Some sort of tag is used to apply some sort of styling to all the text, and it’s in those tags that problems can occur if one e-mail application represents a particular tag differently than another e-mail application. The result: what the sender sees is not necessarily what the recipient will get.

Second reason: bad ju-ju can live in those formatting codes. Never mind that virus scripts can work their way into that code—do you know how spammers usually know that you’ve opened (even if you didn’t read, but at least opened) their e-mail? They include a link to a graphic—maybe even just an invisible single-pixel graphic. The URL path to that graphic is coded so that every spam e-mail has a unique number. If the e-mail is opened, usually the e-mail application will call out to the internet to pull in that graphic so it displays in the e-mail message. Because the URL to that graphic is unique in every message, the spammers then know that the e-mail address associated with that URL number is a valid address because their server registers that the graphic was requested.

This is why I always use the option in e-mail applications to never automatically download images from remote servers. Entourage (and many other applications) includes a link that I can use to download the images later if I determine the e-mail is from a trusted source. But even for trusted sources, the e-mail message will look bad, with broken image link icons, when I first open it.

Third reason: size. I just sent three sample e-mails to myself, all with the exact same text. There was a header line, then there was several lines of repeating asdf asdf asdf asdf…

In the text-only e-mail, this message weighed in at 1.6 kilobytes. Switching to HTML formatting, the exact same text without a single change to formatting went up to 2.65 kilobytes. In the third sample e-mail, I still left the actual text alone, but I italicized one of the several lines of repeating “asdf” characters, and on the header line of text where I typed that it was a test e-mail, I boldfaced it, enlarged the size, and changed the typeface. Other than these style changes, I did nothing to the actual text. The third sample e-mail went up a little more, to 2.76 kilobytes.

Okay, yes. This is tiny. Why am I complaining about 2-3 kilobytes as opposed to 1.6? Because this is a very lightweight example. The content was very short and was was only comprised of text content. E-mails of more typical length will grow considerably larger. And, don’t forget all those silly e-mail themes that e-mail clients provide which throw backgrounds, colored graphical headers, etc. throughout the message. There’s also the many people who think it’s nice to have a graphic scan of their handwritten signature in the e-mail.

As a result, the e-mail file size begins to grow seemingly exponentially. It suddenly takes a few dozen kilobytes instead of just a 3-4 kilobytes to let me know that a meeting has been rescheduled for a half hour later in the day. Multiply this by the dozens and dozens of e-mails I process every day, and—well, let me just say that I have a cap on the maximum amount I can store in my work e-mail account, and I constantly have to purge the big stuff out of the Sent and Deleted Items folders.

People have been all abuzz about the Twitter notification e-mails that inform users of new followers. Twitter, for the love of Pete, please give an option to go back to text-only e-mails. The old text-only notifications were about 2 or 2.5 kilobytes. The new HTML-formatted e-mails that not only contain links to remote graphics (which show as broken image link icons since I don’t auto-retrieve them) but also has several graphics embedded in the e-mail are now 7-8 kilobytes.

Once again, I realize this is still tiny amounts, relatively speaking, and I’m going to get people telling me, “So what? Can it, will ya?” Fine. But if the size rationale means nothing to you, my first two rationales should do a bit better. Yes, there are some times where an HTML-formatted message is useful—and I have been known to use them in certain cases. Most commonly, I’ll use HTML formatting when editing an article that someone sent to me via e-mail. Text that I ask to have removed, I’ll change to red color, but leave it in place so the other person sees what text I asked to remove. Text that I want added, I’ll type in green. But, the times when HTML formatting is useful is generally the exception—not the rule.

My hope is that you’ll realize plain text is most adequate for the majority of your e-mail and that you’ll change your e-mail application to default using plain text, manually switching to HTML formatting on an individual message basis, as needed.

My query is whether anyone has had any experience doing this and might be able to lend a hand, if needed.

Either way, once I finally get it done, the old URL will eventually be phased out. But I’m not publishing the new URL until I get things working.

BAM! (with apologies to Emeril)

If you see anything wonky, please let me know, but upon my own cursory browse, everything appears to be fine.

Let’s define a text message, shall we?

From here on out, I’m going to assume we all know what SMS means. It stands for Short Message Service and is also known as a text message. So, I can now use “SMS” throughout the rest of this post, right? Good.

SMS is essentially the barrel-scraped lowest common denominator when it comes to resources required of a cellular carrier to support. The entire service is a holdout from texting pagers that people carried before cell phones got inexpensive enough for most people to carry. So, you may ask, how little a hit on resources do SMS texts take?

In terms of computers, a single character (such as the letter A) occupies one byte of space. Not one kilobyte—one byte! A kilobyte is enough to hold 1,000 bytes (characters). For the sake of simplicity, let’s not bother with the 1,024-byte math. It doesn’t matter for the purposes of my point.

So, how big is a text message?

Best I can tell, SMS has a 160-character maximum. Assuming that’s true, a single SMS would be 160 bytes. There’s certainly some overhead to that—you’d need at least an additional 20 bytes for the two 10-digit phone numbers involved: sender and recipient.

If that overhead is kept at a minimum, a single SMS would conceivably be less than 200 bytes, and I won’t even touch on whether or not the data is compressed or the fact that most text messages don’t use the maximum number of characters.

Assuming my supposition is remotely accurate, it means that a fully loaded SMS requires one-fifth of a kilobyte—or five texts per kilobyte. Scaling this up, since 1,000 kilobytes make up a megabyte, you get 5,000 texts per megabyte!

I’ll put a little more perspective on this. A typical MP3 audio file, such as a song, often weighs in approximately one megabyte per minute. In other words, the same amount of bandwidth a three-minute MP3 song would occupy is enough to carry 15,000 text messages!

Hey, I’ll give the cellular carriers a huge benefit of the doubt. I certainly know virtually nothing of the details for this, but suppose I took for granted that these carriers have to factor a minimum packet size. In other words, no packet of information (such as a single SMS) can be smaller than the minimum. Maybe that minimum is one kilobyte. On some hard drives I’ve used, I seem to recall the minimum packet size was four kilobytes. So let’s run with that.

To make a tiny packet of information (again, such as a single SMS) meet the minimum packet size, that packet will have irrelevant padding (such as, but not exclusively, zero-value bytes) added to it. Assuming a four-kilobyte packet, we’re talking more than three and a half kilobytes of padding on top of that 200-byte text message. Making an allowance for this hefty amount of padding is good for my illustration because it allows for a lot more overhead beyond the 200 bytes that may have to accompany a single SMS—something about which I’m admittedly uninformed.

So if a single SMS now requires a whopping four kilobytes, that’s still in the neighborhood of 250 text messages per megabyte or 750 in the space of that three-minute MP3 audio file.

Okay, Lee, we get it. What’s your point?

All I’m trying to say is the same thing many people before me have said. The amount of strain a single SMS puts on a cellular network can be likened to the amount of strain a single drop of water puts on a gallon bucket. Most people could never measure it! Why, then, does it cost more to communicate the same amount of information via SMS as it does to make a phone call.

Comparing SMS to smart phone data

To further illustrate how ludicrous this is, consider that most smart phones, such as the Apple iPhone, are offered with an unlimited data plan. You pay the monthly data fee, such as $20 or $30 as it is for the first- and second-generation iPhones, respectively, and you can potentially transfer hundreds of megabytes (or more) in and out of your smart phone. Apple even specifically capitalizes on this. Thanks to the iTunes Store being available on the phone, you can instantly snag multi-megabyte songs, iPhone applications which range widely in amount of data downloaded, etc.

Clearly, data plans take a far bigger hit on cellular network infrastructure than text messaging does. Yet, without a monthly SMS plan in place, you’re charged, typically, 20 cents for every one you send or receive. If you translate that price to data service, depending whether you consider a single SMS as 200 bytes or four kilobytes, the cost is now anywhere between $50 to $1,000 per megabyte! Even if you consider the packages instead of a la carte pricing, assuming AT&T’s 1,500 texts for $10 plan, that ranges between $1.66 to $30 per megabyte. Even at only $1.66, given the way smart phones can chomp through data, that’s a lot more than I’d want to pay each month for the data! But that’s what we would be charged if data were billed at the same rates as text messaging.

Are you starting to see how idiotic SMS pricing is?

All of the big is a huge digression from what is really on my mind. Time to completely shift gears.

I want to send texts inexpensively to Canada

On AT&T (and probably many other carriers), multiply the a la carte SMS rate by 2.5 to send a text to Canada—50 cents vs. 20. This is in addition to whatever flat rate you pay, if any, for a domestic SMS plan.

Funny: it wouldn’t matter if a web page I accessed was hosted in the States or in Lithuania, the flat rate for data access remains the same.

Up until now, I’ve been considering (more like contributing) the $20 flat monthly fee for AT&T’s package to get 100 text messages outside the States—specifically, in my case, to Canada. The reason I probably won’t do that, after all, is those 100 texts would be $50 if I paid a la carte, and I probably wouldn’t use all 100 any given month. In other words, paying individually probably would cost me in the same ballpark as the flat monthly fee.

No definitive answers

Before I did the math and realized AT&T’s international SMS plan is really not all the great a deal, there was one aspect about the package that I wanted to confirm, and no one was able to definitively tell me. What I wanted to know was, how would the incoming texts from Canada be regarded once I added the international plan?

When a domestic SMS plan is purchased, texts, including incoming, are counted against your monthly allotment. My allotment is unlimited, but it wouldn’t matter if I did have a limit. My point here is that I don’t pay for individual incoming texts—they are deducted from my allotment, unlimited or otherwise. Fortunately, even if the incoming text is from Canada, it still is simply counted against the allotment. For me, it means a person in Canada can text me all they want and I am not charged any differently. (At the moment, I return texts by using the e-mail gateway. Inconvenient, but free.)

The thing that AT&T is apparently incapable of telling me is, if I add the international package, do incoming texts from Canada continue counting against my regular (unlimited, in my case) SMS plan, or do they suddenly start counting against the 100 international package? If the latter is true, I’d suddenly be paying AT&T for the privilege of only being able to receive 100 texts from Canada instead of unlimited like now, minus however many texts I send up to Canada!

I’m not sure which I find more nuts—the idea that paying more money might result in fewer free incoming texts from Canada, or the fact that AT&T is either incapable or unwilling to tell me which scenario would happen.

No lie, the last answer I got after calling on different occasions was advice to go ahead and add the plan and see how the incoming texts are handled on my next statement. The representative said she put a notation on my account about my question with the vague promise that the international SMS fee for that month would be refunded if I was unsatisfied (meaning incoming texts counted against the 100).

BZZZZZZ. Wrong answer.

The person who texts me from Canada uses a Blackberry 8830 World Edition and has unlimited texts both in and out of Canada. I don’t know the rate for that, but I understand it’s pretty affordable and, if it were offered by AT&T for iPhone users, I’d be on it in a second. As it is now, this person sends me a text, and I use the e-mail gateway to reply. This means the person in Canada can’t directly reply to my message because it originated from Telus’ e-mail gateway server and not my phone number. In short, it means both of us are basically setting up a new message each time rather than easily hitting “reply” to the previous incoming SMS.

Like I said earlier, it’s inconvenient, but it’s free, and it’s what I’ll keep doing until I find a better way. Yes, I am, indeed, considering utilizing Twitter and private messages, but this is someone who really doesn’t want to maintain a Twitter account. I haven’t abandoned this as an option yet, but I’m not holding my breath.

***Addendum: As indicated in a the comment below, the actual sale hasn’t started yet. This entry will be updated again when it has.***

A friend and fellow ATPM colleague, Raena, sent an e-mail outlining a plan to sell some terrific books at discounted prices and contribute the proceeds to the bushfire relief efforts in Victoria, Australia. This is a very, very cool thing. Feel free to pass on this information.

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded:

“Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty. You’re crazy to go to Rome. So, how are you getting there?”

“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”

“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser.” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late.

So, where are you staying in Rome?”

“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome’s Tiber River called Teste.”

“Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump, the worst hotel in the city! The rooms are small, the service is surly, and they’re overpriced.

So, whatcha’ doing when you get there?”

“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and we hope to see the Pope.”

“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. “You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.

“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great! They’d just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”

“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I know you didn’t get to see the Pope.”

“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”

“Oh, really! What’d he say?”

He said, “Where’d you get the ugly hairdo?”

Today marked my 6th anniversary of blogging. Okay, you may have some cognitive dissonance over the fact that I don’t reliably blog any more ever since getting into Twitter, but the fact that I’m posting a blog entry about the anniversary should help quell any disparagement. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ll ever soon completely give up operating a weblog. I’ve only diminished how often I use it, because of Twitter.

In 2003, my first blog was D.T.P. by Lee. I had just barely managed to set up a Blosxom-powered site in time for the Superbowl which fell on the last weekend in January vs. the first Sunday of February as it does this year. That blog later gave way to The Second Initial, and then to this WordPress engine on ALBj.net which is used just for occasional thoughts that are too lengthy for the confines of a Tweet.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Before I start talking about the case itself, I’ll share a brief tale. I ordered a ZÜCA Pro bag via Amazon.com in mid-December. Ace Photo Digital was to fulfill the order and the estimated range for delivery was between December 17 and 22. The shipment did not arrive on the 22nd and I had to leave that evening because I flew out of Tampa for Alberta early the next morning. For the brief time I was back in Orlando after the Alberta trip, I stopped by my office Saturday night, January 3, and found that the mail room workers had left the box on my chair. I checked the tracking number to see what day it actually arrived, and the UPS site was unable to reveal anything. It seemed the tracking number was invalid. The next day, Sunday, I flew to San Francisco for Macworld, this time with the ZÜCA case. It wasn’t until my return a week later that I called UPS for help. The representative actually managed to figure out the correct tracking number based on my Amazon.com order number, and I learned that Ace Photo Digital did not ship the bag until December 22—the last day of the delivery estimate range—and that it arrived at my office December 29. Ace Photo Digital has not responded to my messages asking for a refund of the expedited shipping I paid for, and I have filed an Amazon A-Z Guarantee claim in the hopes of being refunded the difference.

Update – Jan. 20, 12:30pm: Amazon has processed my claim and I did receive a refund of the difference between standard and expedited shipping.

The shipping experience notwithstanding, as it turned out I probably wouldn’t have been able to use the ZÜCA during my Alberta trip anyway due to the amount of luggage I needed to carry, but traveling with it to San Francisco was a much different story—details to come in just a bit.

I am at a complete loss where I first learned of Zee-Ultimate Carry-All (aka ZÜCA) travel case. Whatever the circumstances where, I was immediately intrigued. I frequently take short trips and loved the idea of a travel case that permitted easy organization of my clothes and was easy to move around. More impressive is that the ZÜCA Pro is specifically designed to fit in the overhead storage bins of most airliners, as well as easily roll through the aisle between seat rows.

Note, the same is not true for the ZÜCA Sport which is intended to meet the needs of a completely different customer. Where the ZÜCA Pro is ideal for short business trips, the ZÜCA Sport dimensions don’t fit all airline storage bins, and instead of the zippered pouches that come with the Pro model which are ideal for storing clothes, the Sport version appears to come with an open space that is well suited for student supplies, sporting gear, or even transporting a small pet—all depending on which insert is fitted into the Sport frame.

(With the above explanation of the two models in mind, I remain puzzled why my case says “SportPro” on the front—opposite side of the open flap in the above photo.)

For my trip to the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, packing everything into just the ZÜCA and my backpack meant, for the very first time, I was able to fly with only carry-on luggage. Considering my luggage didn’t make the connecting flight on my return from Alberta and it didn’t get to me until the next day—barely enough time to wash and re-pack for my San Francisco trip—not having to worry about checked luggage was a thrill.

Yet, getting everything for a full-week trip to fit in just these two bags was a logistical challenge. I managed it, but having done so confirms that the ZÜCA is probably best suited for a trip lasting no more than an extra long weekend—not a full week. Fortunately, long weekend trips are reasonably common for me. Granted, airlines aren’t frequently involved for such trips, but the ZÜCA is a great case regardless what means of transportation is being used.

As the web site indicates, the ZÜCA Sport is only 8¾ pounds. Its combined L+W+H dimension is 42 inches which is within the Federal Aviation Agency’s requirements for carry-on items. The width easily passes between airliner seats, and, when laid on its side, slides perfectly into overhead storage bins. As stated above, I did not have this case during my Alberta trip, but based on how my backpack fit in the overhead bins, I’m pretty sure the ZÜCA would have fit even in the small commuter plane I took from Denver to Edmonton.

Five zippered pouches slide in and out of the main storage space of the case. The pouches are various sizes, designed to accommodate different types of clothes and other items. In addition, there is a one-quart transparent pouch that fits in a netted space at the top of the ZÜCA intended to store toiletries. Simply fill this pouch with containers of shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc. that are 3 ounces or less, and airport security gates shouldn’t give hassle to anyone.

The wheels for rolling the case by means of its 41-inch telescoping handle are, by no means, chintzy pieces of plastic found on most suitcases. These polyurethane wheels look as though they’d give professional inline skate wheels a run for their money. They are also recessed into the design of the case and don’t stick out very far, which means they won’t take up extra room when sliding the case into a narrow storage bin.

One of the coolest and most unexpected features is the design of the aluminum alloy frame. ZÜCA engineers managed to create a frame that keeps the entire case light, yet can support 300 pounds of weight. That means an owner can use it as a seat, and believe me, I did! At two different connecting airports, I made my way to the departing gate and found no empty seats in the waiting area. So I simply collapsed the pull handle and sat right on the ZÜCA. In spite of being made of aluminum metal, it really is not all that uncomfortable, especially when I positioned the case against a wall to use as a back rest. Granted, I wouldn’t want this case to be my seat for the duration of a flight, but for perhaps a half-hour wait to board a plane, no problem.

ZÜCA sells a wide selection of accessories to go along with their cases. If the thought of sitting on the hard metal frame is not appealing, a fitted cushion is available, as well as extra storage pouches and replacement wheel, including wheels with flashing LED lights.

Even though my backpack rested fairly well on top of the ZÜCA and against the handle while dragging behind me when walking, I’m considering looking at the ZÜCA Backpack. I’ll need to do some checking first, but it appears as though it may hold as much (or more) than my current backpack, and is designed to perfectly complement the case. It includes straps that wrap around the telescoping handle and keep the backpack from sliding off. 

Business travelers may be wondering how to store their slacks, shirts, skirts, blouses, etc. in such a confined space without causing a lot of wrinkles. ZÜCA has you covered there. In one of the outside pockets, every case includes an instruction card on how to pack clothing in a way to minimize wrinkles, and I can tell you that it works. The trick is essentially to fold just the sleeves of a shirt back, or fold pants in half once, and no other folds, Then, roll the garment into a tube that lays neatly in one of the pouches. Granted, I did not take any dress clothing on my trip to Macworld, but I was able to fit two pair of jeans plus a tee shirt into the two largest pouches, four more tee shirts in the next size down, and all my other personal items in two small pouches, plus my toiletries in the clear plastic container. ZÜCA specifically recommends wearing whatever you can onto a plane such as dress coats, shoes, etc. However, if I were only traveling for a day or two, I could easily have placed a second pair of shoes into one of the two largest pouches instead of pants.

At $285, the ZÜCA’s price may put it slightly out of reach of a casual traveler, but I can authoritatively confirm that this case can hold as much as mid-range suitcase that may cost just about as much money for a quality brand and possibly not even fit in airline storage bins. Even if you can find a suitcase that is a bit less expensive, the extra cost seems worth while when you factor the ZÜCA’s sit-ability and the possible elimination of ever having to deal with checked (and lost) luggage!

For trips lasting no more than an extended weekend, the ZÜCA Pro gets ALBj.net’s seal of approval. For week-long (or longer) trips, the ZÜCA Pro combined with perhaps one item of checked luggage is a worthy compromise.

ZÜCA Pro

• $285
• Available in Black or Dusty Rose
• Dimensions: 19Hx10Wx13L inches
• Weight: 8.75 pounds
• 41-inch telescoping handle
• Removable, washable, replaceable insert bag is made from water repellent ballistic nylon and coated with water repelling polyurethane.
• Color-coded packing pouches:
  • 2 Red @ 9.5×10.5×5
  • 1 Blue @ 9.5×10.5×3
  • 1 Orange @ 9.5×10.5×2
  • 1 Green @ 9.5×8x3
  • 1 Clear TSA-compliant toiletry bag

http://www.zuca.com/zuca_pro/

So far, I have only laid eyes on one Mac community personality that I recognized—Jason Snell, editorial director of Mac Publishing (they publish the US edition of Macworld magazine). I predict I’ll lay eyes upon many more over the next couple days and, with luck, meet a few of them.

Of course, as part of having acquired a media registration, I feel obliged to actually do some writing about the expo in the publication which supported my registration. Therefore, a report is scheduled in the February issue of ATPM.com authored by myself, Chris Turner, and Eric Blair.

Whether or not I post additional blog notes about the Macworld Expo is still a question mark, but there’ll definitely be frequent updates on my twitter stream, so be sure to keep track there if you want to follow what’s going on with my Macworld experience.

Portable Arts releases Grossinator 1.0 for iPhone/iPod Touch – Published on 01/05/09 

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Portable Arts has released version 1.0 of Grossinator, an iPhone/iPod Touch Human Sound Machine. Various unique features allow users to catch their victims off guard with over eighty sounds to choose from. Grossinator gives users their choice of over 80 human body sounds. Sounds are organized into three different sound categories, sounds from the mouth, sounds from the rump, and sounds from the nose. In each category, users can choose from different sounds grouped by type and play that sound.

Fairfield, New Jersey – Portable Arts has released version 1.0 of Grossinator, an iPhone/iPod Touch Human Sound Machine. Various unique features allow users to catch their victims off guard with over eighty sounds to choose from.

With all the rage about portable flatulence apps released on the iPhone, and the top iPhone app being one of these apps for two week running, Grossinator fills in the gaps where the others left off. Grossinator gives users their choice of over 80 human body sounds. Sounds are organized into three different sound categories, sounds from the mouth, sounds from the rump, and sounds from the nose. In each category, users can choose from different sounds grouped by type and play that sound.

The various types of sounds found in the Mouth category are breathing, burping, coughing, hiccups, laughing, screaming, slurping, vomiting, and yawning. Nose sounds include sneezes and snores. And of course, everyone knows what comes from the Rump category. Users can also set a delay for any sound so that they can manage a sneak attack on an unsuspecting victim. A sound can also be used to play hooky, imagine setting up a sound like snoring on a loop and timer, then putting it under your pillow.

Another unique feature of Grossinator, is that users can queue up their list of sounds to play one after the other. Imagine creating a list of sounds with delays and putting the iPhone in a locker, bag, or desk, so when some passes, it automatically begins to play the sounds in order. That will scare lots of friends when they walk by and suddenly hear a blood-wrenching scream come out of your desk or locker.

Features:

• Over 80 high quality sounds
• Sneak Attack Delay Feature for Sounds
• Looping Feature for Sounds
• High Quality Recordings
• Easy to Use, Organized Interface

Requirements:

• iPhone/iPod Touch
• iPhone OS 2.1 or later

Pricing and Availability:

Grossinator is only $.99 (USD) and available exclusively through Apple’s App Store.  Members of the press wishing to review Grossinator may contact Portable Arts for a complimentary license of the application.

• Seven disks that comprise Aldus (yes Aldus, not Adobe) Pagemaker 5.0 with a serial number.
• A complete set of install discs for Mac OS 7.0.1.
• LaCie Silverlining version 5.5.3/20. There are two disks each for System 6 and System 7.
• Old version of Suitcase…not certain of the version, but it’s circa 1991.
• AutoDoubler, circa 1992.
• Disks from a local computer shop back in early 90s that was offering free copies of System Update 3.0 (I’m assuming that was for System 7).

Can anyone fathom any possible interest in any of these?

The only bits of good news I’ve discovered are: 1) settings that we were informed might be lost weren’t, and 2) there’s now a percentage indicator of how full the hard drive is.

Let me reiterate. These two items are the only bits of good news, and only the second can be considered a feature improvement. All other “improvements” listed by Bright House I knew were of no consequence to me even before the update occurred.

So far, I’ve come up with a list of a dozen features I enjoyed from the old firmware that are missing in the update. I am sure there’s more than this list, I just haven’t noticed them yet. One is a feature I never realized I had on the old firmware, and now wish I had realized it.

1. I can no longer skip through favorite channels in the guide. Pressing the FAV button exits the guide and changes to the next favorite channel.
2. Keyword search is gone. I can only search by first characters of program title.
3. Guide no longer shows programs that were scheduled to record but won’t because of a conflict with a higher-priority recording.
4. Manual frame-by-frame advance is gone. (The 15 minute (second?) quick advance apparently is gone too, but I never knew this existed.)
5. Only a single Picture-In-Picture size is available. Prior firmware had small and large sizes.
6. I can no longer reorder the list of recorded shows in order to let desired shows be the lowest priority and, consequently, deleted in favor of a new recording. Yes, you can set a show to not be deleted, but sometimes I’ll record something that I may or may not watch. I used to move it to the bottom in order to let it be the one deleted if I need room for something else.
7. Pause mode screen saver I think is gone—not 100% positive. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that maybe it just takes longer to appear—but my bet is it’s gone. It apparently comes on after a longer period of time, but the screen saver is still there, except now it just floats a message saying to press a button on the remote control to continue instead of the still frame of where you paused.
8. Scanning forward and backward doesn’t move as rapidly as before (in other words, takes longer to fast scan through an entire show).
9. Not technically a feature loss, but a problem with the old firmware still exists…if a TV show produces a still image for more than a second or two, the audio will intermittently cut out until the show returns to a moving picture.
10. The position I last highlighted in menus and guides is not remembered. For example, every time I want to turn on captioning, I now have to hit Settings, arrow up twice, press select, arrow to “On,” and select again. Before the update, since I always left the settings position at the captioning menu item, I could just hit Settings, Select (to toggle ON/OFF), and Exit. Three steps. Done.
11. The position at which playback continues after fast scanning is far more unpredictable than before. I can reverse scan just for a second or two, then it play, and playback continues further forward than the point at which I started scanning backward.
12. In old firmware, I could highlight a particular show in the Guide, perform a title search, and that show would be “searched” by initial default, letting me quickly see future airings of that show. Now, searches always begin at the top of the alphanumeric list and I have to key in the letters of a show’s title, even if it’s the currently highlighted show in the Guide.

(The above 12 are the original dozen. All new issues I find are below.)

It might be understandable if there was only one or two odd things that I found over a long period of time, but the very fact that I came up with a dozen feature problems in only two days of typical use is completely inexcusable.

Mr. Craig Saari, Bright House senior director of engineering, you would please essentially every one of your customers by reverting all boxes back to the old firmware, provided it doesn’t zap out recordings like the upgrade stated it might (even though mine remained). Since I’m sure that’s out of the question, I feel a petition should be submitted demanding steep discounts on our bills until the features we previously enjoyed have returned.

I’ll be updating this entry with more feature issues I discover as time goes on. Book mark this page if you’d like to keep track, and add a comment if you’ve found something that I haven’t found yet.

Additional issues I discover will be continually added here:

1. Since the A, B, and C buttons were reallocated for other functions, I have found no other way to skip the Guide listing to the next 100 block of channels.
2. Can no longer specify in a series recording that a show should be recorded regardless what channel it comes on. (My recollection may be off on this one, but I seem to recall being able to specify “any channel” in a series recording prior to the firmware update.)
3. The show description in the Info window truncates longer descriptions with no apparent means to read the rest. Old firmware allowed me to page up/down through the description.
4. In the old firmware, if there was a recording conflict, when the first recording causing the conflict ended, the show that was not being initially recorded would start at the point where the conflicting show was no longer overlapping. In the new firmware, the entire conflicted show is not recorded, even if the priority recordings end.