Gone are the days of writing down your mileage and gas stops in a paper book. With Blackberries and iPhones and other smartphones reproducing daily, it only makes sense to do it the web 2.0 way, online. Right? Thats where the cool tool of MyMileMarker comes in to play. The site offers free accounts and two ways to update your mileage and fill ups. Online through a traditional web browser, or via your web enabled smartphone and their mobile (mymilemarker.com/m) site.

Granted, the mobile site is little more than a form you can fill in, but you can list multiple vehicles and specify which one you’re gassing up at the time. Its a pretty handy little thing. BlipSocial offers something similar in its blackberry app, but there isn’t any outcome of it from what I can tell while MMM actually helps forecast your future usage as well. Its kind of cool to be able to see the trend in gas prices (especially over the last couple of weeks) and locations, as well as mileage. One of the things it lacks is a way to differentiate between city and highway miles (which can vary greatly).

I had signed up for this a while ago, but I haven’t had a chance to use it as I completely forgot about it until I was going through the list of people I’m following on twitter. You can bet, I have already bookmarked the mobile site on the Bold and will be trying it shortly. I do wish there was a native Blackberry app that made it a little nicer to use (but then I’m a little picky). Who knows, maybe this will help me save money on gas by keeping a better eye on my fillups leaving some extra money in the account so that my golf clubs can actually get used sometime this decade (no, I wouldn’t call what I do playing…).

Does anyone else out there track your mileage? If so, how do YOU do it?

M3 is in beta

So I’ve had the Bold less than a week and I have already tricked it out with a pretty cool theme and some much needed software (such as Rove Mobile’s Mobile Admin). I’ve been a fan of the iBerry themes from bPlay for a while (I had the iBerry Today Plus theme on my curve) and I came across the
iBerry Neo Today Plus theme and I have to say, apart from the background I like it a good bit. The fact that you get the messages, calendar and the call log on the main screen as well as your top Apps rocks. Even cooler is the fact that the app menu on the home screen stays hidden until you roll over it is a big plus (that way you don’t loose any real estate on the main screen). The icons it comes with are pretty cool too.

One of the other things I was delighted to see the Bold come with was Sudoku. I started playing this game a while ago online and I wanted to find a good version of it for the Curve. I found Sudoku by Magmic at bPlay as well and I have to say its a good, challenging game. I finished all the easy level games and have been slowly working on the medium level games. They’re a good bit harder, but if you’re a wiz at the Sudoku, then they shouldn’t be a problem at all. You can find the game for about $4.99 and its worth every penny.

What games do you like on your BlackBerry??

I got my first blackberry curve a little over a year ago. It was one of the original 8300’s at&t let out in to the wild. I quickly upgraded it to the 8320, the version with the GPS and I loved that tool. I won’t call it a phone, because RIM (research in motion) made it so much more than that. I could administer my Windows servers and Linux Boxes from it. I could chat with my friends via gtalk, aim, facebook, twitter. I could even record video with it (after I upgraded the firmware to a beta version). It took a lot for me to give it up. Until RIM came up with the BOLD. Granted, its not an iPhone, or the yet to be released in the states Blackberry Storm, but the BOLD is everything an admin or executive could want and more.

It came while I was out of town (I received notice via email on my curve) and I had to wait until today to get at it. It was quickly unboxed and up and running. I even managed to wait most of the day before I put the latest beta release firmware on it. Needless to say, the speed enhancements between the 3G and the wi-fi make this phone perfect as it is. The fact that it has GPS built in is even better. I’m still working on finding the perfect theme for it, and installing all the must have apps, but so far I have AIM, Gtalk, mobileAdmin, gpsed, viigo and some others installed. I haven’t purchased the iPhone Theme for BlackBerry yet. I had it on the curve, and I’m not sure if I want it again. It was a nice theme, but it doesn’t feel right.

I’m working on finding the rove screenshot tool again, but I haven’t had any luck yet, I don’t know if I can rescue it from the old laptop, but I’ll try. As soon as possible, I’ll post some screenshots, and maybe some video.

So its been a while since I’ve really posted. Yes, I did some twitter updates while in Vegas (which is a cool place to visit) and yes, we did go see O. It was, as I have said, completely bizarre and I do not ever need to see it again. Parts were wonderful, other parts left me with a profound sense of WTF?!?!

When I got back to work, the moving had begun and now, my office is half of the room we keep the servers in. Wouldn’t be too bad except for the noise of the fans and the AC always pumping out cold air. Kind of reminds me of my time at National Net. I’m finally at a point where i have somewhat workable space again (which is pretty hard to do here…) and I was browsing the Crackberry forums when I noticed something about an OS beta for the 8310 (the Curve from ATT with GPS) that enabled video taking and Youtube playing on it. So naturally I was intrigued. I downloaded the sucker, installed it and sure enough, I was able to record video on my curve.

AWESOME!!

Thats what you get when you hold the phone at arms length. Could be better, could be a lot worse. I did have to go through and clean it up a bit, but otherwise, I like the 4.5 os so far.

I’m also trying out a service called gpsed. It seems to be a better way to track with GPS than Blackberry Tracker and it allows for photo uploading and GPS tagging as well. So all the better. Check back soon and I’ll have more video and a link.

I’m pretty impressed with the camera that RIM has put in the bb curve. It takes some damn good photos, doesn’t it? The smut in the image of the sunset is from my car window (its on the inside and I’m too lazy to clean it…) and not the camera itself. I believe they put a 2mp camera in the phone (which is superb by phone standards) and its take photos comparable with a standard digital camera.

I wasn’t sure about the camera when I first received the device. In the past, the cameras have been novelties, something that was fun to play with, but you were better off with a real camera. Not so sure about that any more. it seems that with a 2gb memory card, I can do some pretty good photography. It has up to a 5x zoom on it, flash, and even a little mirror to help me with self portraits (which is always a hard thing to take).

You can see more of my BB curve photos HERE and if you have any of your own you want to share, I’d love to see…

This is the second season my fireworks crew has done the Friday Night Fireworks at Turner Field after the Braves Games. Lately, its been hot out there (this past Friday was over 100 degrees) and the show has had its share of problems, but we’re to the point where its setup by 6pm at the latest on Friday afternoon (well before the game time).

I took some photos last Friday with my Curve to see how well it would do and to see if I could get some good shots of the product as it left the racks. Well, i think i did. What do you think??

More Photos from the Curve

So, I was reading BBcool today and I came across two stories I wanted to share. First, MLB.com has made it easier to get the latest baseball scores on your blackberry. For sports fans, this may not be as good as being at the game, but for scores at a moments notice (they’re constantly updated) its pretty good.

Secondly, while its not the final nail on the iPhones business coffin, it is a good start. Nasa has said no to the iPhone in its corporate IT policy and yes to BB devices. Hopefully this will start a trend in the business market as more and more organizations realize that while the iPhone is pretty, its not practical for business uses. Go NASA!!

I had a nokia e62 and I loved it. Using mobile exchange, it would sync with the exchange server and sync my calendar, contacts and email as they changed. It was small, and light and it had an awesome battery life (it lasted for over 30 hours, 26 of which were spent on a barge a mile out at sea…). But recently, I had the opportunity to upgrade to a Blackberry Curve and I did. Here’s how I feel about it.

The Curve is smaller and lighter than the e62, it has a camera on it and a trackball for navigating its interface. Its sleek, well designed and it has a ton of useful features (did you know that there was a version of google talk for the Blackberry??). The only issue I have with it is the lack of native exchange support. My email, contacts and calendar still sync, though i have to use the blackberry exchange services, which don’t exactly operate like MS Exchange Activesync. This and the lack of decent themes are the only down side to this phone so far.

The picture quality is quite good (I just need to stop shaking my hand…) and yea, it sends email ok. Battery life seems to be about normal, I get a little more if I log out of gtalk on it…. Its a nice, compact smart phone that works. Over all I’m happy with it, but I’ll give it another week or two before I decide if I’m going to stick with it or not.