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If you’re getting tired of throwing your personal electronics in the glove compartment or cup holder, you may want to check out ProClip. They offer custom, non-permanent mounts for all types of personal electronics. You first select a mount using the year, make and model of your vehicle. From there, you select the specific mount for your device (e.g., phone, PDA, GPS, MP3 player, etc.). Put it all together and you have a customized mount for your car.

Along with options like tilt and swivel, they offer mounts that also allow you to charge your devices. They even offer choices to accommodate multiple devices on a single mount. ProClip also has you covered if you’re looking to reuse a device mount for more than one vehicle.

I recently acquired an iPhone mount for my car and have been extremely pleased. The installation was very simple, and I didn’t have to drill any holes. I chose a mount that allowed me to keep my phone charged while driving AND without removing it from the case. Now, I simply drop my iPhone into the mount/dock and never have to fumble with the charge cable. It looks very clean, professional and integrated on the dash of my car.

So if you’re out looking for something a bit nicer than the usual cup holder or cigarette lighter accessory, consider taking a look at the ProClip site. I’m considering a mount for the other car. I’m very impressed with the quality and durability of their product and feel sure about recommending that others take a look.

Have you been backing up all your music, home movies, and personal photos to CD-R or DVD-R media? For safety’s sake, you might want to consider moving that data to a hard drive.

According to this article: Checked Your CD-Rs Lately? on Tech ARP, you might want to verify your data is still intact and recoverable. Dr. Adrian Wong describes that a number of his archived CD-R’s, which are less than 10 years old, are coming up corrupt or difficult to read.

Dr. Wong’s overall conclusion is that, despite what the manufacturers say about lifespan, you should use caution if you’re storing important files to CD-R’s. “If you have something important to keep, back up OFTEN and use MULTIPLE storage options!” Follow the link to his article above, it’s a good read.

Today it has become cost effective to backup to a hard disk drive. The cost per gig of storage has become incredibly affordable. Aside from choosing an external USB hard drive, consider storage that offers some RAID features in the form of NAS (Network Attached Storage) or perhaps a Windows Home Server.

Here are a few links to manufacturers that offer a variety of storage options. From desktop to rack mounted NAS solutions, proprietary RAID options with considerable flexibility, and even drives that will float in the water and withstand a fire.

Buffalo Technologies

Net Gear

Data Robotics Inc.

IO Safe

Well. . .with the official release of the iPhone 3GS and after a good bit of personal deliberation, I have chosen to go back to AT&T. Not entirely thrilled over THE COST, but the weight of some professional efforts and convenience stacked up against the competition. All things considered, my experience with Sprint has been pleasant and I will miss them for their service and fair pricing. For this round, here are a few things that I'd like to share about the experience. . .'cause sharing is caring.

MobileMe (formerly .Mac)
So, what were some key turning points? Nowadays I try to keep track of umpteen calendars day to day, so synchronizing was pretty big. Even though I had wireless sync options with Windows Mobile, I found I was not re-sync-ing regularly. Since I already had a MobileMe account, which syncs all my calendars and contacts auto-magically (when connected to the net), I found myself carrying the iPod Touch. During business hours, I was walking around like Dilbert's Techno Bill. Eeeesh. Now I'm back to just one piece of personal electronics to schlep around. Again, the convenience was HUGE. Once I got the iPhone, I configured the MobileMe account info. Before I knew it, all my contacts and calendars were there. All the numbers in my dial history and text message threads were updated with names. This was VERY CONVENIENT.

VPN
Virtual private networks (VPN) are used to establish a secure connection to business/corporate/private networks. It was nice that Apple provided this functionality as part of the iPhone operating system. With very little effort, I was able to configure the iPhone to connect to a VPN. After downloading a few FREE apps from the App Store, I was able to remote-desktop to a machine. It's not something I'd do all that regularly on a small screen without a real keyboard, but it was nice to know that in a pinch I could log onto a server and troubleshoot. The geek in me says it's impressive to see.

Battery Life
It's not a big surprise that, similar to my previous phone, the battery life isn't fantastic. So far, it looks like the guy reduces to less than a 1/4 power by late afternoon. I'm thinking that any phone that offers Bluetooth and wi-fi is not going to last a full day. Remember, there aren't any options to change out the battery to something with more capacity either. I haven't had the phone for more than a week, so we'll have to see how well it holds up before I end up exercising any techniques for power conservation.

E-Mail -> Text Messaging
If you don't already know, most cellular carriers provide your phone with an e-mail address where you can receive e-mail as text messages. Some people use this as a workaround to international text messaging charges. Unfortunately, during my phone transition, I lost this functionality (at least initially). I have some computers set up to send messages to my phone, so losing this functionality became problematic. Once I discovered this wasn't working correctly, I initiated some calls to AT&T support. The short story goes like this. . .I spent a cumulative 4+ hours on the phone and in the store to try to resolve the issue, and no one could help me resolve the problem. It appears that the concept of sending an e-mail to a phone was new to all the support staff. Thankfully, it looks like it's working now. Per the guy at the store, he thought it might work after a few days, after allowing time for my phone number to port over to AT&T completely from Sprint. Perhaps that was the case here?

Anyway, here's a list of e-mail domains you can try for your carrier. Just put your 10-digit phone number in front of that @ sign.

ALLTEL - @message.alltel.com
AT&T - @txt.att.net
Sprint - @messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile - @tmomail.net
Verizon Wireless - @vtext.com
Virgin Mobile - @vmobl.com

So far the iPhone experience has been good. The screen is sharp and the 3G data service (HSDPA) works well when it's available. Having already owned an iPod Touch helped the transition too. From what we hear, MMS and tethering are supposed to be formally offered by the end of the summer. I'll miss the keyboard and multi-tasking that I had on my previous Windows Mobile phone. I took a close look at the Palm Pre but couldn't live without some specific functionality right out of the box. I see its potential, and I'm really interested to watch how it matures.

For those not familiar with tethering when it comes to cell phones, the following link does a good job of describing what it means. If you're feeling lazy about clicking, it's basically connecting a computer or networking device to a cell phone to utilize its internet connectivity.

What is tethering?

All that said, a colleague (and fellow Sprint Mogul user) pointed me to a Windows Mobile software application that specifically provides tethering. That package is WMWiFi Router. Similar to the Cradlepoint I mentioned in an earlier post, this software will turn a Windows Mobile device into a WiFi hotspot. More specifically, depending on what type of connection options your phone offers (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, USB), it will allow you to use the data service connection of your phone with multiple networking devices. After surfing the site and hitting a few reviews, I decided to try out the demo.

So. . .I'm very impressed. Although my phone doesn't have the Rev A (faster EVDO) firmware, the speed over the phone was very usable, and the install AND config ran flawlessly.

As some of you may know, I've been on the EVDO bandwagon for a while. Recently, I've been using a Novatel U720 to get me online. It has served me quite well on both Mac and PC platforms. It wasn't until recently that I found myself interested in acquiring an EVDO router to share the EVDO connection. Why? 'Cause sharing is caring.

I've been aware of the options and alternatives but didn't feel very compelled to drop any dough on such a device. Well, when it came down to connection competition (e.g., being the individual who gets to use the laptop while traveling because you have an internet connection but somebody else wants to use it so they can check their e-mail but then don't want to give it back because now they want to look something else up to entertain themselves because you're not as interesting as you thought you were, etc.), it seemed like it might be a good idea.

Enter the CradlePoint CTR-350. This slick portable piece of technology "creates a Secure WiFi Hotspot" using a broadband-enabled cellular phone or modem. In other words, this allows more than one person to use the EVDO connection.

It was very easy to set up and currently appears to be running pretty swiftly handling 2 users. BRILLIANT!