andrewbuonocore.com

I installed SPB Traveler on my Windows Mobile device, it didn’t last more than a day before I removed it.

The most comprehensive piece of software for managing travel itineraries is Worldmate but their licensing is nothing short of thievery. As if the initial price is not bad enough, incredibly, that only gives you use of the software for a year, after which you have to pay another huge fee.

So, when SPB announced Traveler, I thought that Worldmate’s grip on the travel market for Windows Mobile was over but sadly it is not.

SPB traveler is a good-looking applicaton, as are all SPB applications but in terms of functionality it falls way short.

My main gripes:

The only form of transport handled is flights
No hotel management
No flight schedule lookup
Crazy time management which is non-configurable.

Essentially you have a calendar input tool with some pretty pictures and weather lookups.

The time management is a real puzzle. I spend most of my time in Zurich, Switzerland but for me, London is home. Now, Windows Mobile does me no favours when it comes to time zones so I work around it by keeping my time zone as London and changing the time every time I fly.

I have no interest in comparing times between London and Zurich. If I make an appointment for 19:00, it is 19:00 regardless of time zone. While I am in London and make an appointment to meet someone in Zurich at 19:00, I don’t want that changing to 20:00 when I change the time zone on my device, so I leave it.

SPB Traveler does the same. If I book a flight from Zurich to London, the departure time is 19:05 and arrival is 19:45 (both local times) and that is how I want it recorded. Traveler inserts a calendar entry for 18:05 to 19:45 because it converts the departure time to the time zone set on my device, as if I want to keep track of the departure time of my Zurich flight using the London time.

I don’t.

I have no option to keep times as local times, as entered. It makes it useless for me.

SPB applications have started to fall short of what I would call full functionality. Pocket Plus is a great application, same with Diary and Backup but recent additions like Insight (the RSS reader) and Traveler do not cover their ground well enough for me.

I hope Traveler improves because Worldmate does not deserve to survive without competition. Their pricing structure simply cannot be defended.

I had a question for the AuctionAds support team and I am pleased to say that they came back with not only a speedy answer, but a very interesting and useful one.

I asked about the criteria for getting the correct ads to display on low-traffic sites. Specifically, sites that have just been set up.

AuctionAds support explained that the default ads (What’s Hot On Ebay) are displayed if your site has not had a visitor (to whom the AuctionAds ad has been displayed) within the last 10 minutes.

The AuctionAds site mentions that this happens on low-traffic sites but this is the first time I have had the timing parameters confirmed, so it’s very useful information.

To avoid this problem, I created a simple page that auto-refreshes every 8 minutes (which AuctionAds said was OK) so my sites satisfy the sub-10 minute criteria in their early days.

This is a podcast from last year’s Podcast And Portable Media Expo. Every week or so, one of the presentations is made available via this feed.

I have to say a lot of it is awful. People standing up and shouting “KNOW WHAT? NOW, YOU ARE THE RADIO STATION!”.

Useless.

This presentation from Ben Williams is the worst I have heard so far. I have tried to listen to it several times but I find it too awkward, too uncomfortable to stick with for too long.

It seems to have no structure. It is peppered with things like “and another thing I like to do is” but it seems more self-indulgent than helpful.

I was at the first Expo in 2005 and many of the presentations were like that. Speakers didn’t really seem to think they needed to be that professional and I am afraid this is how Ben comes across.

For balance, I also gave up on Paul Colligan and Leesa Barnes (who I think is the worst one yet) but the talk given by David Lawrence is superb. He is one person I do admire because he gets on with it and then shares his success stories.

In addition, several of the presentations are no more than adverts, particularly the one with 3 Podtech staffers on the panel. I would have walked out.

I have a ticket for this year’s Expo but it is likely that I won’t be able to make it (so I need to find a way of selling my precious room at the Ontario Airport Marriott).

Just a little bit of fun I noticed whilst searching on the Adobe site.

Well, I am done with MediaCoder. Even for free software, it is a waste of money.

I consider myself a well advanced Computer user across all flavours. When it comes to Media, I am a very proficient Adobe Premiere user, as well as After Effects but MediaCoder is the most frustrating, least user-friendly piece of software I ever (try to) use.

I have installed it three times only to use it once on each occasion and get rid of it immediately once I saw the results.

I used it tonight to split a Windows Media video file into smaller chunks for transferring to a client. It did the chunking alright, into 6 files that would not play.

I give up with it. if anyone can use this software and get anything other than a full recycle bin, I would love to know. At the moment I just think Mediacoder is a great advert for paying for your software.

Today I am pleased to announce that automatedblogs.net is launched.

It is a service that allows people to build their own farm of fully automated blogs. They generate advertising income via Adsense and affiliate links.

The price is just $5 per week which is paid via a PayPal subscription and the user supplies a hosting account, domain name and blog category.

Find out more on this excellent service at automatedblogs.net

testing link to automatedblogs.net

trying out todoist

trying to solve a https issue

Waiting for an ebay auction to close, then carrying on with my video work.