Tag Archives: Tech

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Time to upgrade Trixbox to 2.2 tonight

I’ve mentioned recently that Trixbox released their final 2.2 version. I’m running 2.1 and have been enjoying a great amount of success with that version. If it ain’t broke, do I need to fix it? I’ve always been on the bleeding edge of things so my gut says yeah, I need to upgrade. It’s a real problem for me. I always need to try the latest firmware, software, version of whatever I have. Sometimes it has gotten me into trouble, (with my wife), but it will just gnaw away at me until I do something about. That’s the case with the recent release of Trixbox 2.2. I’ve been watching the forums and I believe tonight is the night to make the jump.

(gawd, I hate that Rhapsody’s Comcast client takes FOREVER to load; don’t they know I am trying to stuff while listening to some ‘tunes!?!?!?)

So, anyways, here’s what’s new in 2.2:

Some of the things I like is the “dashboard” that is the first thing you’d see when logging as ‘admin.’ The UI looks pretty sweet. On my existing system, I catch a memory leak from time to time that affects my system’s performance, so I like being able to see that sort of info on the front page. The Web UI to administrate the network will help a lot of people who may not know how to configure network interfaces. My setup isn’t typical for most home users. You can read about it here.

The update instructions can be found in the Trixbox forums:

You can NOT run trixbox-update.sh to upgrade to 2.2!!!

Upgrade via the package manager by installing tbm-GUICore or by running yum update at the command line.

I picked the “yum update” route. Man, I wished I made a backup before I started. I had to update 177 packages at 225MB.

You see, here’s my problem. I can really only work on this stuff at home when everyone is in bed. It’s already midnight and if the family wakes up to an inoperable phone system, we might as well put in the order for a new land line; shudder! But, the downloads are flying by, this may not be too bad. Might be time to refresh my Vodka. In case you are interested, I use VNC to admin my boxes from my WinXP system upstairs; the UNIX and Linux boxes are in the basement.

While this is continuing to download, I feel like we finally have a chance to talk. You know what pisses me off? Here’s a list (unrelated to the the actual update):

  • People who don’t put shopping cars back into the cart coral at supermarket parking lots. You are one lazy mo-fo.
  • People talking on cell phones in high speed, high density traffic. Get a headset, dumbass.
  • News reporters (on TV) who use their hands too much when giving a report. By the way, does it really make a story more interesting if you are standing outside of closed office of something you are doing the piece about? Lame.

I could go on, but the downloads are almost finished. Let me refresh my drink while it finishes up. Oh man, 385 packages are now being updated! How painless will this be??? The updates are done. I am going to make the assumption that I need to reboot. I hope it comes back up!

It came up, but if I went to a web browser, it looked like the older version. What did I miss? If I go to Asterisk menu, I am getting MySQL errors like the password is wrong. However, if I go to the “Asterisk Info” page, it appears with the UI seen in the video.

[nativecode=Access denied for user 'asteriskuser'@'localhost' (using password: YES)] ** mysql://asteriskuser:XXXXXXXXXX@localhost/asterisk

This requires more investigation! I had changed the default password when I initially set all of this up, but I can’t remember what the original password was for the user.

I couldn’t find it anywhere on the web and I couldn’t log it, so I tried installing phpwebadmin, specifically tbm-phpmyadmin.noarch. I was able to reset the password to the one I had specified in:

  • /etc/asterisk/manager.conf

I rebooted once I reset the password. After the reboot, I was able to call out okay, but it was too late to try calling in, (and risk waking up the boss). So far so good.

I had installed Munin manually last go around, but now when I tried to access it via the TB interface, I got a spewload of errors. Small potatoes. I’ll worry about it later.

I’m wiped out so off to bed… and more later as I delve into this project.

EDIT: Part II of this can be found here: Trixbox Upgrade part II

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is that a chumby, or are you just glad to see me?

I got a Chumby. When I first saw this thing on a friends desk, I was like, “what’s this goofy thing?” then when I got my hands on it, I was like, “holy geez, this is way cool!” I finally got this thing working at home. There is a “bug” where it freaks out if your router is doing anything besides 802.11b. Once I set my router to “b” it worked great.

This is a great idea. You should read what this is all about. Taken from Chumby’s website:

The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, celebrity gossip, weather, box scores, blogs — using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.

Chumby

I’ve been really big on taking the Internet experience out of the computer room into your living space, and this thing suits the bill.

The widgets are all Flash-based… and i don’t know Flash… yet. But after playing with this thing for a day or two, I’m ready to learn. I got a lot of ideas for widgets that would really make this thing a necessity of life these days… at least for me.

I got this from work, specifically the Earthlink Blogmaster, Dave, (thanks, Dave!). I saw it on his desk and asked him what it was. He passed it to me and sent me packing. I think this has a ton of potential for some really cool uses. Time to find a good book on Flash.

Quick! Get me the number to the Patent Office!!!

Lo and behold, Wikipedia to the rescue…

This is what is on my Chumby, right now.

EDIT: I created a page separate from this one since it was causing huge load times.  You can find it here:

  • What’s on my Chumby!
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wordpress upgrade and other things

So, with the release of WordPress 2.2, I took the leap and updated tonight. It went really smooth and I seem to think there might be a performance gain, but it could be the vodka. You might have noticed that I am using the K2 theme, which has a slight issue with WP 2.2. You can get the fix here. It worked as advertised. If you are using WP-Cache you probably need to delete your root out of the cache to see the change.

Today, I was really glad I had my GPS unit, the Mio c310x. Twice today, I had to get somewhere fast and having the GPS let me bypass traffic and cut through other neighborhoods. It was cool saying, “hey, this is a load of crap… I’ll turn here…” and get me around the BS. Today in Atlanta, there was really heavy rain around the very beginning of rush hour and that set traffic home off to a terrible start. If only we had TMC like Europe has then is would trump Google! Maps on my Treo. I don’t think the c310x has the support for TMC, but that might be something to consider in my next GPS purchase.

BTW- I’ve done a considerable amount of stuff to my Mio over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable talking about them here. Let’s just say I am ready for a trip to Europe…

With regards to the Cheap-o HTPC, I’ve come to the conclusion and recommended to my brother-in-law, that an original XBOX is the way to go. For roughly under $100US you can find one on Craigslist, Ebay, or at a local pawn shop and easily hack it and put XBMC on it. He’s not a big game player, so he’s really only interested in the media capabilities. I’ve suggested a couple of places for him to find one and offered to hack it for him, so I’ll update as time goes on.

I also noticed that Trixbox 2.2 is out now. My Trixbox server is 2.1. I honestly don’t know if I’ll upgrade since it’s one of those things; if it ain’t broke… don’t fix it! If you read the thread over in the Trixbox forums, there is a way to upgrade despite what the first post says. We’ll see.

I’ve also been learning a lot about the business side of this. More on that, too.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about innovation and technology and how it affects my and my family’s life. I’ve started writing up a doc highlighting some of the key points, but I am not sure what I plan to do with it when I’m done. Maybe I’ll post it here… but I wouldn’t count on it.

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using a heart rate monitor (HRM) successfully….

Man, I should be doing my real estate class or practicing my German, but since I was getting back to exercising after a couple month hiatus, I need to refresh myself and I can get on my soap box.

I’ve had three different HRM’s over the years and I think that each one has been an improvment over the other. The first one I got, I got from Aldi’s for $20. Hey, I figure that it was worth $20 bucks to try it. I was hooked. There was a little learning curve as I learned about the watch and my own body. I was able to see improvements and I minimized my injuries and colds I would get when I pushed myself too hard.

I lost the chest strap on the Aldi’s HRM, and I got a Polar A5. It was a step up but more designed for walkers. Still, I really enjoyed it. I liked being able to see how many calories I had burned on my workouts. My next watch I got on a good deal. I next got a Polar F6 and passed the A5 to my wife.

The F6 was even more impressive since you could upload your data to Polar’s website and track your goals, Lose Weight Exercises, etc. Pretty cool!

Now, using a HRM successfully depends on a strong beginning. The most confusing thing was trying to determine my base heart rate. The first two HRM’s said to simply take your age and subtract your age and multiply that times 60%, 70%, and 80% to get your zone. This is fine if you have never Lose Weight Exercised but this doesn’t take into account your level of fitness. I have been running for years and following this method I was barely breaking a sweat, It was apparent I needed a better way to determine my base HR. Now, you might want to know why the base HR is so important. Once you have your base then you can determine what zone you want to target:

Target Zones

60 – 70% of max HR Weight Loss, building endurance

70 – 80% of max HR Weight Management, improve cardio fitness

Like I said, the Age-Based formula is only good if you have been a couch potato for the last five years. If you have been doing anything… and I recommend this formula anyways, I recommend Karvonen formula. Basically, you take your heart rate in the morning as you are laying in bed for three mornings, average them together, use that number for the basic calculations and you can get dialed in to your personal fitness level.

More details can be found here:

It took me some trial and error to get it right, but I understand it now. In fact, I made a spreadsheet that I’ll share here for you to use to calculate your zones in both the traditional method and the Karvonen method. You can view the spreadsheet here:

Finally, I was suprised at how well the Polar OwnZone works. I have used it and was suprised at how close it was to the results I got from the Karvonen formula. While the OwnZone might be a no-brainer if your unit supports it, I think it is still important to know the logic behind it.

A HRM will let you maximize your Lose Weight Exercises and help you avoid getting hurt or getting sick. In the summer when I push myself on seven or eight mile runs, I would almost certainly get a little cold. A HRM and some L-Glutamine helped prevent that.

Finally, let me close with a story that I think will illustrate why I think a HRM is important for people starting out running or cycling. One day, when I was on a long run in the summer, I caught up to a guy who was walking but wearing running gear. I passed him on my steady pace only to be passed by him while he was running much faster than I. Then, about two minutes later, I passed him again while he was walking. Then he passed me again running fast. This went on another four times until finally we ended up at the same red light.

“I just started running!” he said. This novice runner didn’t have any concept of pace. He was heading down a path of injury or over excertion and didn’t know it. Typically, novice runners will go this route and get hurt or discouraged. A HRM takes the guesswork out and gives you a detailed view into how your body is doing regardless of your fitness level.

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foobarred POI’s on my Mio c310x

Man, I really messed it up. Hopefully, by reading this you’ll avoid the problems I had. First a little background. I am drinking wine from Aldi’s and have been messing with this darn GPS unit for some time. Wait, before you go further, you should be aware of my other posts regarding POI’s on the Mio c310x:

Now, I should point out that I just heard a song from Ian Brown and now Cat Power is playing. She’s awesome. (a little known fact amongst Comcast HSI users is that you get a free subscription to Rhapsody. If you ain’t using it, you deserve a punch in the stomach.)

So, back to my problems with the POI’s… I tried installing ALL of the Starbucks in the US and it caused me to exceed the available space I had on my unit (internal memory, not the SD card). The file was truncated and several of my POI’s had zeroed out coordinates. For awhile there, every time I tried exporting / importing the iGO database, I was getting errors from IGO POI Explorer. I was just about to do a hard reset when I had a thought..

Via ActiveSync, I renamed the existing iGO.db to iGO_old.db and I copied over a db from yesterday. I then restarted the unit and it saw the db just fine. When I started up iGO POI Explorer, it imported / exported the db just fine. I must of had some corrupt data in the existing db.

I added the various POI’s I wanted to and I tried something different:

  1. If you are using iGO POI Explorer (Beta) AND ActiveSync, I think this will make sure you have the latest file.
    1. File -> Export -> iGO Database to device (via ActiveSync)
    2. It should work.
    3. Restart MioMap (I realize now that it is NOT necessary to restart the whole device, rather just MioMap should be fine).

I was worried I would have to do a hard reset, but alas, all is well.

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POI’s on the Mio c310x, part II

Just when you think you got it licked, someone builds a better mouse trap. Or at least another way to skin the cat. All snappy sayings aside, I came across this post over that the GPSPassion site:

In case you don’t feel like clicking over there, allow me to give you the reader’s digest version. OhMioMy came up with a way to quickly generate LAT and LONG from a .csv file, presumably from your contact database. Aside from that, it’s very similar to the directions I posted the other day:

He points out some different tools. I have to say, that I think it’s a good way to go about it, but I think I can simplify it even more.

A lot of this is from OhMioMy’s post so I am certainly not taking credit for his work but some of my steps are different.

First, check out this site, which uses Yahoo!’s GeoCoding API.

In step one, you can download an Excel template. Do that and you can see the format. Remember, that I was focusing on trying to help Realtors with the challenge of showing homes in an efficient manner. Here in Georgia, real estate professionas have access to either FMLS or Georgia MLS. Since I am a Realtor myself, I have access to FMLS. I checked and even though you can view available houses on a map, they don’t have any way to export addresses to a file. (If either MLS site would like my expert consulting advice on this, please let me know! lol) Therefore, I think the best you could do is to copy & paste the address info into this template found on batchgeocode.

So, let’s try this out and see if it will work as well as I think it would. In my previous post, I suggested you put your addresses in Google Earth. How about just putting your addresses in the Excel template. You can download the info I put in the sheet for this example here:

  • Excel Example Atlanta

So here’s what I did. I had the Excel file opened, selected my info and copy and pasted into the page on http://www.batchgeocode.com/. I did step three which is to validate my data, and it found what it was supposed to, (since it was “tab” delimited). I ran step 5, and the Geocoding magic happened and it looks good. I see my LAT and LONG fields. The map the site generated looks pretty good, too.
<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br /> Notice that you can save or export the file into a Google Earth kml file; do it! I picked “Save to Disk” so it wouldn’t open up Google Earth. Now, connect your unlocked Mio to your PC and let ActiveSync do it’s thing. At this point, you should now have IGO POI Explorer open. Then Import the “Google Earth KML file (*.kml; *.xml).” In my case, it downloaded to my default folder and was called “BatchGeocode.kml” so make sure you find it. No problem, POI Explorer imported it and it looks fine. The comments field are a little wonky, but I can live with that.Note; I had some problems when I fired up iGO POI explorer before ActiveSync. I was able to “restore” the database and finally import my POI’s… YMMV!
You should see something like the following:

At this point I’d rename “BatchGeocode” to something that makes sense. Sticking with the theme, I’ll pick “ATL Example.” Then, drag & drop into the “iGO POI Database” top level. At this point, I’d restart the c310x twice just to make sure the iGO.db syncs up. Keep the POI explorer open. Sure enough the POI’s were imported and now on my Mio:

 

POI import

POI import 2

So, I think this works well, and is perhaps easier and more light Lose Weight Exercise than using Google Earth. I hope this helps and comments are welcomed.

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POI’s on my mio c310x

Update 240407: Be sure to check out some updated instructions in this earlier post: POI’s on the Mio c310x, part II! Both ways work, it’s up to you!

My sister-in-law recently bought a Mio c310x from Frys.com; they have them for $189 free shipping, (until supplies last). It’s different enough from her old(er) Garmin, there is a steep learning curve. I guess if you get used to one UI, then it might make it more challenging to learn a new one. I was over at her house tonight trying to show her how to input POI’s, Points of Interest, into her Mio via the PC. It was a little challenging since I began to forget how I set it up and by the time I got it going we had to leave. So I promised her I would write something up. This should help you get up and running for adding your POI’s quickly and painlessly. First, you need some things before you begin:

(Leah, if you are reading this, you are already past this point. You got everything you need!)

By the way, I should mention that as Realtors, I am keeping that sort of functionality in mind. The overall goal is to make a list of properties or addresses and visit each one in the most efficient manner. Oh, and this is all Windows based. So far, I haven’t seen any way to do this on a Mac.

I’m not going to get into the how-to’s to install ActiveSync or the rest of the software. Here’s what you need to do once you get all the mentioned software installed.

  1. If you haven’t already created and save a POI on the c310x itself. You need to do so. the iGo software looks for a specific database file that doesn’t exist until you do. Simply go into the “Map View” or similar (depends on what skin you are using), and find an address. If you are in the Map view, you should automatically get the bottom menu that pops up and says, “Save POI.” If you save it, you will have your iGo.db file that we need to have initially on your device.
  2. Fire up Google Earth. Select “My Places” and select “Add” and choose “Folder.” Name the folder something useful. In my example, I named my folder “List of POIs.” Next, in “Search” box, make sure the “Fly To” tab is selected. Enter your address here.

  3. As Google Earth zooms in, you should see your address in the lower pane in the “Search” box. You can click and drag that entry into the folder you made in step 2. Repeat for the other addresses you want.

  4. Next, you need to export the folder to a file you can read into the iGo POI Explorer.
    1. Right click on your folder from Step 2 above.
    2. Choose “Save As” and pick a place and a name where you can find it and remember what it was called.
    3. You are done with Google Earth… for now. Close it up.
  5. Next, connect your Mio and have it connect with ActiveSync. I would suggest have it connected for the next steps.
  6. Fire up the iGo POI explorer program. If you haven’t gotten it setup yet, go to Tools -> Options and make it look like the following:

  7. Next, import the file you made in Step 4.
    1. In iGo POI Explorer choose File -> Import -> POI’s from File. In the “Files of Types” menu from the Import window, choose “Google Earth KMZ file (*.kmz)”:

    2. The folder now should appear outside the “iGO POI Database.” Drap it into the top level “iGO POI Database so it appears with your other POI’s. After you do this, it should show up in the main tree and all of your addresses you entered are shown as coordinates. Pretty slick if you ask me:

  8. Now, I found I need to restart my Mio twice. How you restart it twice is up to you, but I don’t see the changes unless I do. So, after the second restart, fire up Mio Map. Choose your favorite method of looking at the Map or Cockpit and check out your POI’s:

    display_6.jpg

    display_7.jpg

  9. Notice how the address are ranking from closest to furthest. At this point you can just choose to “route to” the next closest POI. You can set up a “route” if you want. But this should get you going.

Perhaps in my next post, I’ll continue about setting up a route with the various POI’s. I hope you found this helpful.

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The maps, man. it’s all about the maps

Okay, I’ve been reading up on this, so I think it will work. As you might have read, we went on a Florida vacation to Orlando. We are in Atlanta and drove our Eurovan down. I am also using my new Mio c310x and trying to put it through its paces. Yes, the maps are two years old, but come on… roads don’t change that often. Actually, the condo we rented was in a new neighborhood so it wasn’t on any maps, even Mapquest. However, Google! Earth did have an image of it. So I created two POI’s; one for the house itself and the intersection that was on the map. It worked well.

On the way down, we met up with my brother-in-law who we were sharing the rental with. So our caravan of, well.. vans, continued on down to Orlando. Traffic was really bad in Georgia due to the construction. It appeared they were repairing bridges but it took much longer than it should since it was stop and go for most of the ride in Georgia and traffic only reached the speed limit for a few minutes at a time. At one point, we put our faith in the GPS and took it off the highway. It was a nice diversion and we saw some of the small towns that are famous in Georgia. We got back on the highway near the Florida border and started making up for lost time.

 

Then, we saw some thick, black smoke up a ahead. The road was closed and we were about 3/4 of a mile from the actual closure. We could see firetrucks and other emergency vehicles. At one point, a flat-bed tow truck with sirens came racing up the side of the road with a back-hoe on it. The smoke died down and we were ready to get moving again. Then, more smoke on the other side of the road. The fire had jumped the highway somehow. We were parked on the highway for about 1.5 hours and everyone was walking around and talking. It was actually really nice. The weather was perfect in the mid 60’s and there was a pretty good breeze blowing. Plus, a fire always smells nice when there is just a little nip in the air. Someone said that they heard from their Mom that it was brush fire and an accident (unrelated apparently) that caused the road closure. Looking back, I wish I took more pictures since it was pretty cool. My brother-in-law took video.

In the second picture, you can see the blackened area that was burned. We drove by and could feel the heat from the fire. This was about one mile from the end of the Florida Turnpike; they waved us through and did not collect any toll. When all said and done, what should have been a seven hour trip took just a hair under 13.

The trip was great and we all had a wonderful time. We all enjoyed Disney and had a nice time puttering around the Orlando area.

While we were down there, I got the bright idea to start recording our tracks doing various things. This is the return trip from Orlando. Don’t worry, I edited the ending point so you couldn’t figure out where I live if you didn’t already know.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

If this works, you should see Google! Map of our return trip above. I have a couple of other maps to add but it is late and I’ll just update this post probably tomorrow.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

The above map is the very beginning and about the last 1/4 of our day there. We spent around 13 hours there and just the recorded tracks covered 6.5 miles. That’s a lot of walking. We estimate that we all walked over twelve miles over the course of the day with waiting in lines and what not. I think the line is broken up since I specified 300 data points in the route. By default, the Mio updates the route every one second and I think maybe for walking, it might make sense to change that to a higher number.

<br /> Sorry. If you’re seeing this, your browser doesn’t support IFRAMEs.<br /> You should upgrade to a more current browser.<br />

The above route is when we went to a place called the Mercado, which is now about to be demolished. It was a great place. In fact, it was one of the only places that I felt like no one was trying to get into my wallet. If you look at the northern end of the track, you can see where we went in and looked around only to find a ghost town. It was sad. This place was great. In the middle you can see where we played miniature golf. And near the bottom you can see where we had dinner and I walked around with the twins outside while the rest of the folks finished their meals. Again, the track must be broken up since the settings hit the 300 data point limit.

I really wanted to post these maps as a proof of concept. I think it worked okay. WordPress seems to have some indigestion around the iframes but that is something to tackle on another day.

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my mio c310x

I finally got a Mio c310x. Surely you’ve already heard about how hackable this GPS unit is and all the super slick things you can do with it. And hacking it was really easy.

I’ve had a hand-help GPS unit for a while now. I have a Garmin eTrex Venture. It’s okay and I sure used it a lot for Geocaching, but I’ve been really dying for a auto-based GPS unit. I had to travel to Dallas with a few people from work and a friend brought his Mio c310x he got on Black Friday 2006 for ~$150. I was so impressed with it. My sister-in-law had a Magellen c320 (I think) and I played with that a little when she first got it, but I liked the Mio and its internal, rechargeable battery.

Shortly after that, I heard Clark Howard talk about how useful a mobile auto-based GPS unit was and how cheaply they could be found for. He made a lot of sense! Taken from his website:

GPS units are cheap and easy to use

Do you remember when GPS units were something only the very wealthy could afford? A built-in unit was about $2,000 and a portable unit was about $800. Times have changed quite a bit. Clark recently bought a portable unit for less than $300 and it’s possible to find them for under $200. The more expensive units will tend to have the hard drive built-in to the unit, while the less expensive ones have an SD chip. And there are good and bad factors to both. But they are so simple to use and they have a memory of all of your addresses. These are hot gifts this holiday, so think about one for your loved one. Or wait even longer and they are sure to go down even more.

My wife finally gave me the go ahead to get it after I sold some old Directv receivers, so I went to Fry’s with the kids and picked one up. Of course they tried to sell me the 3-year extended warranty. When I stopped laughing I told them I wasn’t interested. I paid for it and got the kids in their seats and opened it up. It had a 75% charge out of the box and I used it to navigate me home.

I breifly took a look at the manual, but I’m a touchy-feely sort of guy so I’ve been playing with it six ways to Sunday. It isn’t perfect and now that I’ve played with it for some time, I am very happy with it. I don’t know if any other > $200 GPS units come close but I am very happy with it.

Out of the box, you can play MP3’s with it. Hoo-hum. The software that came with it reminds me of the old Sony software they had for mini-disks; not very useful. But there are hacks out there you can really have a lot of fun with.

The best way to move files back and forth is with Microsoft’s ActiveSync which is for PDA’s running Windows CE. This works flawlessly. Couple this with an external card reader, (the Mio is usb 1.1), and you can be rocking and rolling in no time.

One of the negatives you’ll hear about the Mio is that the maps are just over two years old. Still, I haven’t had any problems yet getting around Atlanta and North Georgia. The maps have been good without any real big noticeable problems.

I put the included suction-cup mount in our van and use the Mio on my lap or the passenger seat when I am in the other car. It picks up the GPS signals really good. I can even get a lock inside the house. I don’t quite understand it, but I like it. It makes it easy for planning routes beforehand.

An SD card is key for having any fun with this unit. You can put the unlocking script on the SD card and you can backup and export your track logs. I am able to import my track logs into Google Earth. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. I’ve always liked so see where I went overlayed on the Google! maps.

Once you hack your Mio c310x you can do any of the following:

  • Play movies
  • Add voices
  • Edit and plan POI’s on your PC
  • Play games
  • Install TomTom or other nav software
    • The general opinion is that MioMap is better than TomTom
  • Use ActiveSync
  • Access the Windows CE environment
  • Change skins

It is just a fun thing to tinker around with. My sister-in-law just ordered one from Frys.com for $189 plus tax (free shipping). I’ll help her get it all set up.

One of the coolest things that I like is that iG0 released a beta application that will allow you to edit/import/export/sync via ActiveSync POI’s (points-of-interest). My sister-in-law and I are both Realtors so this will be very handy when showing properties.

Here’s a list of the links I have used to make it this far:

I forgot one very important link: