Like last year, my tech arsenal this year consists primarily of my iPhone and GPS. New on the trip this year is my iPad (since I sold my EeePCs). I have my Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad so I can type e-mails, and I also bought the camera connection kit on eBay so I can offload the photos I take from my camera. My new apps for the trip are:

• Scenic Map Grand Canyon: we’ll be hiking the Grand Canyon tomorrow morning and might use this for map and GPS information.
• Photogene: for photo editing and batch uploading to Dropbox.

No March Madness apps this year since my Dayton Flyers lost to Richmond in the A10 championship game and then were eliminated by Charleston in the first round of the NIT. But forget basketball … it’s time for some baseball!

5:40am (EDT): I’m at my gate in the Tampa airport waiting on my flight to Atlanta.

8:00am (EDT): I’m getting ready to board my next flight here in Atlanta … got to watch the sunrise from my last flight:

I’ve got the exit row all the way to Phoenix. Ahhhh, leg room!

9:20am (EDT): they were having problems with the in-flight entertainment system on the plane so they had to restart it. Heh, it runs Linux!

9:40am (EDT): apparently there’s a famous bald eagle named Challenger on our flight (down in the cargo hold, nice, no first class for him).

10:30am (MST): found my brother in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport and am waiting for my checked baggage. I spotted Challenger waiting too:

11:30am (MST): we’re at Goodyear Ballpark! The weather and view is fantastic, as usual.

Bob Feller is being remembered with a big banner out in center field. I’ve also read the team will wear commemorative patches on their sleeves during the entire regular season.

3:38pm (MST): the Indians lost to the Reds 5-1. Today’s attendance: 5,181. They let everyone go down on the field to “play catch” after the game, which was pretty cool.

We’ve got a long 4-hour drive ahead of us to our hotel at the Grand Canyon, so it’s time to hit the road!

7:00pm (MST): we stopped at Freddy’s in Flagstaff for dinner. Then we hit the Wal-Mart next door to get some supplies for the Grand Canyon tomorrow. We also picked up some running pants because it is cold up here! There’s even snow on the ground in places.

9:45pm (MST): we’re in our hotel room at the Maswick Lodge in the Grand Canyon National Park. It’s been a long day (I got up at 4:30am EDT and it’s now 12:45am EDT back home) and we want to get up early tomorrow to see the sunrise, so it’s time for bed.

It was Father’s Day and the ladies wanted me to have a special breakfast before we hit the road so we headed over to Sublime Doughnuts which was already hopping:

I had a mocha filled A-Town and we also picked up a half-dozen to take home (assuming they would make it the entire way). Back in the car we got back onto I-75 and continued south. Those last few hundred miles seemed to take forever as we got closer and closer to the Tampa area but finally made it. We got the car unpacked and cleaned out and then basically collapsed, sad that the trip was over but happy to be home.

Luckily I had the foresight to take tomorrow off so I have one more vacation day to recover from my vacation!

GPS statistics after Day 9:

We drove over 4,300 miles (which beats our 2008 trip by about 1,300 miles) through 13 states, spending about 73 hours in the car (3 full days!).

My nüvi (combined with our iPhones) was invaluable on the trip primarily for navigation but also for finding nearby cool places to eat or go (thanks to the POIs I had loaded before the trip). That being said, we still pulled out the road atlas a few times when we wanted to see the “big picture” so paper maps aren’t dead yet!

I was able to get some cool statistics out of Gas Cubby on my iPhone as well. No surprise that my best tank (27mpg) was through the flatter states like Indiana and northern Illinois on Monday, but I’m happy that I can still get an average 23mpg out of my 2003 Highlander with over 120k miles on it.

Once that was done (I opted for the lifetime subscription so I can update up to four times a year), it was time to get all of the waypoints and routes into the unit. Now I’ve loaded points-of-interest (POI) files into my GPS before, but for this trip I delved a bit deeper into the setup and use of POIs to make them (hopefully) more helpful and useful during the road trip.

First, I needed Garmin’s latest POI Loader utility. Next, I grabbed all the POI files I wanted from POIFactory.com. Finally, I read Gary Hayman’s Garmin Tricks, Tips, Work Arounds, Hints, Secrets and Ideas website. It’s a little hard to look at, but wow it contains a huge amount of well-organized information on working with your GPS and POI files. With my new-found knowledge of the inner workings of POI files and the nüvi, I was able to load the individual files onto my GPS and configure the proximity alerts accordingly.

For example, some files (like locations of Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, or Starbucks) I loaded just for reference, with no proximity settings. The rest stops file I set up so that we’ll get notified when we’re within 2 miles of a rest stop along our route. The other files, like cool places to visit, offbeat tourist attractions, or specific restaurants, I set up as TourGuides so that if we get within a 10-mile radius, it will trigger a proximity alert and then we can decide if we want to divert to that point.

I also experimented with Garmin’s MapSource product. I’d seen this before when I purchased map updates for my old StreetPilot, but never actually used it. For this trip, instead of manually typing in all of our hotels and destinations directly on the nüvi (which can be a pain with the touchscreen), I just entered them into MapSource on my PC, categorized them, set icons, and then downloaded everything to the GPS at once. Pretty slick. When we’re done with the trip, I should be able to download the track we drove and see exactly where we wandered during our 9 days in the midwest.

We hit the road in just five days …

We’re in the early stages of testing the iPhone with our corporate e-mail infrastructure: Microsoft Exchange and GoodLink. Since my AT&T account has been upgrade-eligible for some time (the last time I “officially” upgraded was when my Treo 650 was the hot new device), my boss told me to go ahead and get an iPhone (16gb model, but I paid a little out-of-pocket to get the 32gb one since my current iPod is 30gb). I need to start learning how to use it so I can eventually support it as we roll the device out to other users in the office. It’s been two weeks now since I abandoned my trusty Treo 680 and I had some free time while on vacation last week to really spend some time with the iPhone. Here’re some of my thoughts …

What I Like

• the design and form factor: the iPhone is truly a beautiful thing to look at given it’s mostly screen and a single home button. Even with my Otterbox impact case on, it still fits comfortably in my pants pocket. I miss having a physical keyboard (see “What I Don’t Like” below) but the buttons that are present make sense.
• it’s a widescreen iPod: when music is playing and a call comes in, the music fades away and then the phone rings. When you’re done with the call, the music fades back in, picking up where you left off. One minor nit here, though, is that if you have the e-mail notification sound enabled, your music will fade briefly to play the mail sound, which isn’t necessary (the notification should just be suppressed). I replaced my old Belkin Tunebase FM with the new version for the iPhone so I can charge the device in my car and still listen to podcasts while driving. It includes a speakerphone for handsfree and a single button that works like the home button on the phone: click once to pause/play, twice to go forward a track, twice and hold for fast forward, three times to back a track, thrice and hold for rewind. I like being able to turn the phone sideways and watch video podcasts in widescreen too (although scrolling through podcasts is uncharacteristically choppy).
• the GPS: using the built-in GPS and compass for location-based/direction-based services is really slick. Pulling up Google Maps and watching the blue dot move along a highway as I drive is like a scene out of a spy movie. Check out Yelp’s monocle feature for a perfect example of augmented reality using these features.
• the camera: I’ve been stuck with the VGA (640×480) camera in my PalmOS devices for so long! It’s great to finally have a mega-pixel camera (with video even!) that takes pretty good pictures. I love the geo-tagging feature too.
• the speaker: being able to play music without headphones or external speakers is a definite plus.
• oh yeah, it’s a phone: when held up to your ear, the screen turns itself off. Take it away from your ear, and the screen fades back into view. You don’t have to navigate through a voice response system to record your voicemail message or retrieve your messages, just tap the buttons on-screen. It’s those little things that continue to impress me. Of course, I haven’t actually used it a lot as a phone since it does so much other cool stuff.

What I Don’t Like

• the keyboard: no one can argue that the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is better than then Treo’s. Typing on glass just isn’t the same. I’m getting better at two-thumbing it, but I still find typing (quickly) a frustrating exercise.
• iTunes: I haven’t looked into this much yet, but having to use iTunes to sync and customize the phone is a pain, especially if you’re using more than one computer. For example I sync my iPhone with my main desktop machine at home. While travelling over Thanksgiving, I had my laptop with me, but could not use iTunes on it to manage my phone. This is really going to be a pain at work when I’m trying to configure multiple iPhones for people in the office. I found the iPhone Configuration Utility but still need to read up on enterprise deployments.
• syncing (or lack thereof): requiring iTunes also makes it difficult for applications to sync their data for backup. Palm had HotSync and conduits which allowed third-party developers to create custom “tunnels” in HotSync that were basically transparent to the user. To sync my eWallet desktop with my iPhone data, I have to open each application (on my PC and the phone), and then start the sync over Wi-Fi (totally outside of iTunes). A kludgy workaround due to Apple’s control freak design. Even the photos and videos you take on the iPhone don’t sync down to your PC through iTunes, instead you have to use the built-in features of your PC since the device appears as a plain storage device (although you can sync certain folders of photos back to the iPhone from your PC if you want to carry a certain collection around).
• I miss the clickwheel: using my iPod in the car without looking was pretty easy with the clickwheel. I was even pretty good at skipping most commercials (half a turn on the wheel was about 30 seconds). The iPhone isn’t as easy since it doesn’t have a lot of buttons. Yes, you can use the home button to skip tracks, or FF/RW, but for more accurate positioning you have to use the on-screen scrubber with your finger, which is pretty dangerous to do while driving.
• lack of customization options: sure I can drag the app icons around to different pages, but I can’t rename them, can’t leave empty spaces on the grid, can only assign a few different options to the home button, etc. Sure, I could mess around with jailbreaking and probably address some of those concerns, but I need to be able to support this device at work so I can’t deviate too much from the delivered experience.
• battery life: forgive me … I’ve been using a Treo on the Edge network for almost 4 years and battery life was pretty darn good. I’d only have to charge it overnight and it was good for all day. 3G and all the other cool stuff I can do on my iPhone really sucks the battery dry quickly. When I had my separate iPod and Treo, it didn’t matter if my iPod died while listening to music during the day since my phone still worked. Now that I have this single device I need to be more careful about making sure I keep it charged. The lack of a user-replaceable battery is a downer too. It’d be nice if I could just buy a new battery and put it in myself instead of having to send the whole phone back to Apple for a “repair.”
• fingerprints: it really sucks that 5 seconds after taking this beautiful shiny piece of technology out of the box it’s covered in my greasy fingerprints. The matte finish screen protectors I got at the AT&T store do a decent job of hiding them, though, and make the screen a lot less reflective and not so glassy to the touch.
• it’s delicate: this will take some time to play out, but the Treos were solid. Not that I drop my phone a lot, but when I do, it’s usually in a bad way. The Treo might have gotten scratched or scuffed, but it kept on working. Little plastic tanks. I’m not so sure about the iPhone. I already dropped it once onto concrete but luckily I have that impact rubber case and it landed screen up. The folks in the office are pretty hard on their devices (based on the drawer full of broken phones in my desk) so it’ll be interesting to see if the iPhone is up to their abuse.

What Apps Do I Use?

There’s an app for everything, right? Another of the big draws of the iPhone is the thousands of applications available in the iTunes App Store. One of the first things I had to do was find iPhone equivalents of the applications I used on a daily basis on my Treo. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

• What I used on the Treo: eWallet
• What I switched to for the iPhone: eWallet ($10 for iPhone, or $20 usable on multiple devices including PC)

Like anyone, I have a lot of passwords, logins, and various personal private information I need to carry around with me. To keep all of this sensitive information secure and portable, I’ve used Ilium Software’s eWallet application for many years. Luckily this switch was easily since Ilium has PalmOS, Windows Mobile, PC, and iPhone versions of  eWallet, and now I’ve used them all. Migrating my data was simple, although synchronization between the desktop and iPhone versions is a little cumbersome since you have to initialize the sync on both devices at the same time over Wi-Fi. Still, being able to access all of my passwords, accounts, and other stuff I store in my wallet on the iPhone is great.

• What I used on the Treo: ListPro
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Evernote (free)

I also keep a lot of random information on my handheld: gift ideas, vacation days, clothes sizes, various house information/measurements, lists of all sorts! So Ilium Software’s ListPro was another application I relied heavily on, using it both on my Treo and desktop PC. Unfortunately, Ilium hasn’t produced an iPhone version of ListPro yet so I had to search for alternatives. I ended up trying Evernote, which has iPhone and PC versions (in addition to many more, including via a web browser). Evernote requires you to create an account on their website, so technically your notes are being stored on their servers and then synced with your different devices. You can store text, images, documents, etc. but keep in mind the only notes you can actually edit on the iPhone have to be plain, unformatted text (so no checkboxes, bullets, etc.). Creating notes on the iPhone has the benefit of automatic location tagging, using the phone’s GPS. The basic free service has a limit on how much you can upload a month, so there’s a premium service you can pay for without those limits and also includes things like extra security. I had to manually copy/paste all of my lists out of ListPro into Evernote, which was a bit of a pain, but it did give me the opportunity to clean up and re-organize some of my lists.

• What I used on the Treo: Tasks (GoodLink)
• What I switched to for the iPhone: iMTasks ($7)

With GoodLink on my Treo, my e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from Outlook were all synchronized in near real-time. The iPhone handles the e-mail, contacts, and calendar, but not the to do list or notes. I am a heavy user of Outlook tasks so I really wanted those synced to my iPhone. For whatever reason, Apple decided not to bake that in. Instead, I had to purchase RERLSoft’s IMTasks app. Once I entered my Exchange information, the app downloaded my to do list and keeps it synchronized (although only while the app is open). Hopefully the forthcoming GoodLink client for the iPhone will include this, but for now this was a must-purchase function for me. RERLSoft has a version that includes Outlook notes synchronization (and also allows you to manage your out-of-office setting), but since I’m using Evernote now I decided to stop using Outlook notes altogether.

• What I used on the Treo: TealAuto
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Gas Cubby ($5, free lite version available)

Some other data I keep on my phone is car information: gas mileage, repair history, etc. On my Treo I used TealPoint’s TealAuto application to store and track fill-ups, repairs, maintenance, etc. Without an iPhone version, I tried out a few of the vehicle apps in the App Store, including the free “lite” version of Gas Cubby and eventually ended up purchasing the full version. Using the Windows version of TealAuto, I was able to export all of my data from my Treo into a CSV file. Then, using App Cubby’s unsupported import feature, I was able to load it all into Gas Cubby. The import only supports gas events, though, not maintenance, so I manually entered our 2009 maintenance events into the app later (not a big deal since there were a lot less of those compared to fill-ups). If you’re a multiple iPhone home and purchase multiple copies of Gas Cubby, you can even keep the data synchronized across devices, which is a cool feature.

• What I used on the Treo: iSilo
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Stanza (free)

If you read this blog you know I do a lot of reading on my PDA. There’s not a version of iSilo for the iPhone so I had to try out a few free e-readers. I settled on Stanza. Using the desktop version, I was able to convert the book I’m reading from the Baen free library from HTML into a format for the Stanza reader and transfer it to my iPhone. Having the larger, higher resolution screen on the device is great for reading. Plus you can change font sizes, colors, and themes (black on white, white on black, textured, etc.). I’ve also installed Amazon’s Kindle Reader (free), in case I decide to purchase some new e-books. No need for a Kindle now! Interesting, though, that Stanza is actually owned by Amazon. I wonder if eventually they’ll combine these apps?

• What I used on the Treo: tussh
• What I switched to for the iPhone: iSSH ($5), iRdesktop (free)

Why do I like remoting into my Linux server from my phone? Because I can, of course! iSSH let’s me login to my Ubuntu box at home via command-line or tunnelled VNC. The free iRdesktop utility lets me connect to my Windows servers at work when I have my iPhone connected to the VPN. Amazing. There’s even a free Citrix client (but I haven’t gotten it to work properly yet).

• What I used on the Treo: iRogue
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Rogue (free)

My daughter loves playing iRogue on my Treo and I like it too, so of course I needed the iPhone version!

Some other apps I’ve purchased/installed include:

• iEmergency+ ($1) allows you to store your emergency contact information (phone numbers, medical info, etc.) in a single place and also has a helpful utility for adding ICE information to your iPhone’s lock screen.
• Using VIP Access (free) means I don’t need to carry around my PayPal football or VeriSign Secure Card since my iPhone can now act as my security token.
• The iPhone doesn’t allow for multiple e-mail signatures when you use multiple e-mail accounts. JohnHancock ($2) lets you create and switch between as many as you need. There doesn’t seem to be an elegant solution, but this app at least provides one.
• RedLaser ($2) is an amazing barcode scanning application. Point your iPhone’s camera at any barcode and the app will pull up a list of prices from other stores. The latest update even uses the GPS to find local prices. If nothing else, it’s fun to play with.
• Chess with Friends (free) and Words with Friends (free) from New Toy, Inc. are basically chess and Scrabble games you can play “online” with other iPhone users. Really cool for playing with friends or relatives who live far away. We used both of these games in the car on our recent Thanksgiving holiday trip to play games without having to pass a single iPhone back and forth.

What Do I Think?

The iPhone is a really slick device. The first few days were rough for me, since I was really set in my ways with my Treo and doing things in a certain way. Over the past two weeks, though, as I’ve had time to get better acquainted with my new shiny toy business tool, I have to admit it is a well engineered piece of hardware and software. Now I have a single device that really covers all the bases. Pretty incredible.

Got any other must-have/must-try apps for me, or other iPhone advice, tips, or tricks? Leave me a comment!

My new GPS is the Garmin nüvi 265WT which has a 4.3″ widescreen touch display, voice directions (with text-to-speech), Bluetooth, a built-in FM Traffic receiver, and a few other cool features.

Navigation and General Usage

The thing I liked the best about my StreetPilot was the user interface. It was simple, clean, and good looking. The nüvi sports that same simplicity and shiny UI that makes it easy and fun to use:

The large buttons make it easy to navigate using your finger and the touchscreen, and the widescreen format allows the nüvi to show more information on the screen without it getting in the way of actually seeing the map as your driving. One new feature I like is the indicator of the current road’s speed limit (although as you can see above I was going slightly over that on my way home from work this evening ). Another benefit of the widescreen model is a QWERTY keyboard layout instead of the alphabetical one used on the StreetPilot, which makes text entry a lot faster.

The standard text-to-speech voices are present so the unit will read out street names when giving directions. You can also download other voices (and car icons) from the Garmin Garage. There’s not as wide a variety of voices available as there are for my sister’s TomTom unit though (even NavTones only has a total of 3 voices compatible with Garmin units).

In addition to the normal method of entering destinations (by address, by name, by coordinates, etc.) you can upload geotagged photos to the nüvi and have it calculate the directions to that location. I don’t see myself using this feature very often unless I’m just looking for some random place to go. I may, however, introduce my daughter to geocaching, as using the Garmin Communicator plugin for my browser in conjunction with the Geocaching.com website makes it really easy to send cache locations to the GPS (and there are apparently quite a few caches near my house).

Bluetooth

The built-in Bluetooth radio lets you use  your mobile phone with the nüvi for hands-free calling. I had no issues pairing my Treo with the GPS and then using the touchscreen to place a call.

You can answer incoming calls too, of course, and even “transfer” the call to your phone if you don’t want to use the speakerphone. Voice quality was pretty good on both ends. The nüvi even downloads your call log and address book from your phone allowing you to browse and dial from the device instead of looking at your phone (although the address book part didn’t work for me since I don’t use the Treo’s native contacts application). If your phone supports voice dialing, you can do that through the nüvi as well. Another neat feature of pairing your phone is that every phone number on the display turns into a hyperlink you can use to place a call. So if you’re stuck in traffic on your way to your dinner reservation, you can simply tap your destination’s phone number on the screen to call and inform them you’re going to be slightly late.

Traffic

Of course, you should have been able to avoid that traffic in the first place! My StreetPilot supported traffic information, but you had to purchase a separate receiver and pay for a subscription. The nüvi comes with an integrated FM Traffic Message Channel receiver and a free lifetime subscription to the service (but there’s a catch, see the next section below!). My minor nitpick here is that the receiver is not “integrated” into the GPS unit itself but is part of the power cord. Thus, you can’t get traffic information unless your unit is plugged in with the car lighter adapter. I guess this makes some sense (you don’t need traffic information if you’re hiking or riding a bike), but I was disappointed that I have to have that bulky cable plugged in as I usually just have the GPS mounted to the windshield without the cord.

That aside, the service is a neat add-on. The traffic indicator on the map screen (see the upper left-hand corner of my first screenshot) will change color (green, yellow, red) to indicate the level of traffic ahead. If the nüvi detects heavy traffic along your way, it may automatically adjust your route around it. You can also get an overview of all of the traffic in your area:

And then see where it is in relation to your current location:

Advertising!

The nüvi 265WT comes with a free lifetime subscription to the FM traffic service, but “free” in this case means “ad-supported.” That’s right, spam on your GPS!

Tapping on the “offer” will show you a list of nearby locations associated with the coupon. Tap on the location and you’ll be routed there. It wouldn’t be so bad if these only appeared on the traffic screen shown above, but these little pop-ups will also appear on the main map screen while your navigating! Ugh! The only way to disable them is to disable the traffic receiver, so if you want traffic information you’re going to have to deal with the ads. So far I’ve only seen these two Best Western ones, so it’s possible I might change how I feel about this depending on what kind of ads I see. It’s not like these are targeted to my preferences, though, so I’m guessing they’re going to be more annoying than useful.

Other Misc. Features

ecoRoute is Garmin’s new addition to their software  aimed at increasing awareness of how driving habits affect things like your gas mileage. You can set up your vehicle profile (city/highway estimated mileage, gas type, and local cost-per-gallon) and then get detailed usage reports, like this:

This trip information is also stored in a CSV file you can download from the device and then load into your favorite spreadsheet to do some more analysis if you want. ecoRoute also adds a “Less Fuel” option to the traditional “Fastest Time” or “Shortest Distance” routing options. There’s even an ecoChallenge game that tracks your driving during a trip (how fast you accelerate, brake, keep a constant speed, etc.) and then rates and scores you at the end with the hope that you’ll try to beat your top score by changing the way you drive. That part reminds me of my wife’s Toyota Camry hybrid which has similar driver feedback mechanism to encourage eco-friendly driving habits.

I also like the nüvi’s built in screenshot feature (which I used to capture all of the images in this post), and the ability to easily change the boot screen. No more using xImage!

Finally, when connected to your PC via USB, the nüvi shows up as a 1.8gb flash drive making it extremely easy to transfer files to and from the device. 1.2gb of that is taken up by the system software and maps, but that leaves roughly 518mb on-board for custom vehicle icons, voices, POI files, photos, etc. The nüvi has an SD slot as well, but with all of that free space I probably won’t need to use it as much as I did with my StreetPilot.

We’re going on a quick weekend trip up to Atlanta this weekend (to see Good Eats Live!) so I’m sure I’ll have some more comments after I put the nüvi through its paces on a real road trip. So far, though, I’m really impressed with it.

This morning, I fired the unit up on my way to work, as I am wont to do (mainly to see my estimated arrival time). Imagine my surprise when, as I was driving on I-275 North over the Howard Frankland Bridge (which goes over the bay), the GPS display looked like I was driving over land instead of water:

Yes, this is a minor thing since it’s just a display issue (the routing and navigation is working fine), but it’s really annoying since this was an “update” (that cost me $60) which clearly has some sort of corruption in it. If I zoom out far enough, eventually the correct map is displayed:

But I shouldn’t have to deal with that. And who knows what else is messed up?

I tried re-installing the map update from scratch, resetting the GPS, changing map views (3D vs. overhead) and detail levels, etc. without any luck. I’ve opened a support ticket with Garmin and am waiting to see what they have to say.

The Pre has a 320×480 high-resolution touchscreen display, built-in 3G/GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, a 3 mega-pixel camera, 8gb of user storage (the most on any Palm handheld ever), an accelerometer (for screen rotation), and the Treo’s familiar keyboard (it slides down from under the screen, or rather, the screen slides up). Though I hate to say it, it’s basically Palm’s version of the iPhone. The market seemed to like what it saw … shares of PALM jumped 34% today!

webOS looks slick … and finally Palm has a multi-tasking operating system! I just hope it’s faster than Windows Mobile (my Treo might not have 3G or be able to run two applications at once, but the user-interface speed blows away any WM6 device).

So, any bad news? First, the Pre will initially be available only on Sprint (CDMA), in the first half of 2009. Hopefully other carriers (like AT&T) will follow. Next, and I couldn’t confirm this, it doesn’t look like there’s any backward compatibility with PalmOS. There is a huge library of third-party applications out there and none of them will run on the Pre. I’m sure developers will jump on the platform relatively quickly, though, and it’s probably better to leave the legacy of PalmOS behind (how about a PalmOS emulator for webOS? ). No Flash support either. I’ll bet it has cut-and-paste though!

There’s a lot more good information over on Engadget (except pricing, which hasn’t been announced yet) and some videos of the Pre in action from Gizmodo. For now I’ll have to wait and hope that my next smartphone is going to be a member of the Pre family.

Heh, there’s already a wiki page.

Palm is finally starting to do some advertising, and the latest round of Santa’s Gone Centro videos are pretty funny.

I’m looking forward to CES next week as Palm will finally be unveiling it’s new Linux-based Nova OS and supposedly a new smartphone to run it. Nova will be the first new version of Palm OS since Garnet was originally released in 2002! I love my Treo but sometimes wish I had some of the cooler features that other phones have, like 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, etc. The new Nova devices might be the answer to that prayer.

We got up early and hit the road, driving through the morning fog in the northern Georgia hills.

Driving through Georgia and Florida takes forever, but we finally made it home shortly before 6pm. Vacation is over!

Final wrap-up:

According to my Garmin StreetPilot c340, we covered about 3,000 miles, crossing 12 states, spending about 53 hours in the car (over 2 full days!) on our 10-day road trip.

Looking at my receipts, the cheapest gas was $3.88/gal at a station in Virginia, and the most expensive was $4.19/gal at a fill-up in northern Ohio. My best tank averaged 27mpg (the stretch from Ohio to northern Tennessee) and the worst was 23mpg (Tennessee to Atlanta … going up and down all those mountains!).

Whew. Vacation was fun, but it’s good to be home …

While it’s not flat and PDA-sized, and doesn’t have some of the fancier “kitchen sink” features of the higher priced units (like widescreen format, MP3 playback, photo viewing, Bluetooth, customizable icons, etc.) it’s the perfect device for me. I was looking for an in-car navigation system, not a portable navigation/entertainment/PDA system (check out Garmin’s Nuvi line if you’re looking for something like that).

Time to do more driving!