Clever is as clever works.

Rich, over at Hello_World talks about a cellular company putting an ad for some services on the front of a hotel key card. He thinks it’s very clever, but…

Does anyone even look at hotel key cards? I’m not sure I could even tell you the color of the last one I had in my hands.

Still, you have to cover the card with something…

Better yet, how about making it so that it’s also a bus pass, or good for other traveler-oriented services around town?

Windows Mobile transition update

It’s been quite a while now since I switched to Windows Mobile, and an iPAQ 4700. I’ve had a few issues to overcome, and I think I now have it in a pretty stable state.

The folks who say that the grass ain’t any greener on the other side are mostly right. You gain things, you lose things. Overall, it’s about the trade-offs you’re willing to make. Here are some I’ve identified:

• There aren’t a lot of 3rd party apps, and even less that are solidly reliable. Webis Mail is flaky, slow, and prone to crashing. Egress too is somewhat flaky, but better. Neither are really dependable, but are clearly the best of what’s out there for this platform. On Palm there’s a lot more to choose from, although most of it lower in quality as far as features go.
• eReader is much slower to load the dictionary, and if you exit with out clicking the exit button (say, stop the program from the memory screen) it loses your place in the book. This is really, really irritating.
• The built in messaging is pretty nice, solid and fast. It lacks a few features, but overall I find it very usable.
• The built in web browser is pretty good, and is reasonably fast. I don’t find it mauls many pages into an unusable state.
• Things sync with Outlook very well, as you’d expect. None of the goofy first name, last name to last name, first name conversion silliness I’ve run into on Palm.
• Skype. I haven’t used it much yet, but that it will run is just too cool.
• PPC can sync with only two computers, at least, it can form partnerships with only two. I have a home desktop, a work desktop, and a laptop. One too many.
• The iPAQ 4700 screen is a dream. Large, high resolution, and easy on the eyes.

New course at Woodcraft

Woodcraft University has a new course - Bandsaw 101. I think bandsaws are far more complicated to tune than to use, but still it’s nice to learn new techniques. Also, if you’re contemplating whether to get a new tool or not, or are trying to decide between, say, a lathe and a bandsaw, these kinds of intro courses can give you a better idea of how much use it’s really likely to get in your own shop.