Cursive writing, now a legacy?

I still remember my childhood days when my grandmother used to discipline me when my cursive writing went bad. The next generation may not have this opportunity of knowing, let alone learning cursive writing in school. I read this article about several states (Indiana being the recent one) adopting a program that makes cursive writing an optional skill set and keyboarding or typing skills are a mandatory in the school curriculum. I was thoroughly disappointed after learning this fact and can only hope that schools in these states will continue to teach cursive writing along with typing skills since this is up to the school to decide.

Handy Trip Organizer

Mark Dixon's weblog is one of my most regularly monitored blog. In his recent posts, he pointed to Tripit which is an automatic online trip organizer that conglomerates all the information from your email itineraries and generates a single trip summary. All you need to do is register and keep forwarding your email confirmations and itineraries to plans@tripit.com and rest is taken care of. This is particularly helpful when you have booked flight tickets, hotel and car, all from different websites. The final consolidated trip summary you receive from tripit also contains - weather forecasts, map information and driving directions. Best part of this service is that you can view your trips from your mobile handheld through the mobile site. You can always sync your outlook calendar to your mobile but this product makes it much easier to get to your trip plans all at one place!

Tulips in "Holland"

Enjoy the Tulips in the picture taken with my iPhone on a rainy day
trip to the Dutch village in Holland, MI. Typically Tulips bloom
around end of April and start of May which is a good time to visit.
Entry fee to the garden is $7 and $12 for the Dutch village.

Mobilize Your Blog with Plusmo

I had successfully created a PlusMo widget for my blog. You can now subscribe to my blog (and several others if you want to!) and read my posts instantly on your mobile phone. You will have to register at PlusMo if you are a first time user. In case you are interested in mobilizing your own blog, follow the steps listed below:

• Set 'Allow Blog Feeds' option under Settings->SiteFeed to full and click Save
• Register at PlusMo and select 'Mobilize Blog' under Publish and click the 'Get Started" button
• Select the Button of your personalized choice and enter http://yourblogname.com/atom.xml in the Blog URL field and click next
• Script will delivered for using it in your blog home or website.

Gift Worthy!

My wife gifted me an iPhone for my birthday earlier this year. I have been enthused the way it has improved my communication especially when I am on the move. I have started mobile blogging again and my last post (and the picture) about the Pistons game was infact posted from my iPhone! I had read some reviews about the poor quality of the camera in the iPhone, unavailabilty of the zoom functionality and inablity to capture video. Other downsides mentioned include that the iPhone was not prepared to be business ready, but with the release of iPhone firmware version 2.0 and SDK slated in June'08, hopefully most of these issues will be resolved. All those issues apart, I have been using this gadget for various purposes on the go - GPS locator, video iPod, google maps, weather, news, stock market fluctuations. Specific third party applications (which will be supported by Apple in the future) help me find a movie theatre, restaurant based on a zip code or find the latest score of an ongoing match - be it Cricket, Soccer, NBA or NFL. Of course! All this with the touch of screen. I have come across people who complained that the touch screen is only for people with slim fingers, which I believe is not true as there is an option to maximize the viewing area before you make click. One other thing I really miss in the iPhone is the radio option. Many people have already complained about this missing feature in the iPod. Most of the cool third party applications for iPhone are listed in several blogs, websites and run into hundreds in number. I have my home screen already running into three pages which would be an overkill on the memory space once these applications become native. I plan to make a comprehensive basic list of these applications that I find very useful in my future posts.