Honestly, when I first started using Kayak, I asked to myself, what else could you possible need (short of complete transparency into when prices will fall)? But I pretty much left it at that since I knew that was next to impossible.

Well, Farecast not only scoures the web to find you all the deals on flights, it also tries to predict where prices are going to go. And as if that wasn’t enough, you can sign up for Farecast alerts that notify you on when is the perfect weekend to take that trip to Buffalo, NY.

On a sidenote, yes, I know this blog is horribly out of date and I haven’t posted in over a month, don’t worry, yet another re-design is in progress.

Brilliant!

Here are some of the layouts that I conjured up.

Design #1

Design #2

Design #3

Any Feng Shui experts care to comment?

After only about 2 weeks of being on Textmate, the number of entries I have published have gone up drastically. Whether those entries are all quality is a different question. However, it does go to show that when you use tools that you actually enjoy using, your productivity goes higher.

 

In case you haven’t tried the Textmate blogging bundle yet, I highly recommend it. Not only does it let you write your blog entries, you can even Post directly from Textmate!

With the hundreds of different disparate internet “properties” that Yahoo! provides, it’s easy to get lost and give up. But I bumped into Yahoo Travel the other day and was pleasantly surprised!

Yahoo Travel gives you the most popular spots in a given city, integrates amazingly with Yahoo Maps and even has a Trip Planner that let’s you plan out all the places you want to visit. When it comes to great product integration, Yahoo is one of the last places that comes to mind, but in this case, they’ve done a brilliant job.

AND, for a change, the goal of the site is not to get me to invite as many people as possible to come back to it so that I somehow get more benefit from the site itself. It’s a simple utility, it takes some input, gives me some great info in return and then politely gets out of the way.

This is the kind of site that if they had a “Donate” button, I wouldn’t mind throwing a few bucks at them.

Here’s the “Walk Score” for my new digs:

So why is it that I still haven’t bought an iPhone?

$700 for a thing of utility, not of fashion

I like to get the latest and greatest phone, regardless of how much it costs because I see it is a thing of fashion. Sure it’s got the features, the functionality, probably is the slimmest and slickest thing on the market, but most importantly, I’m the only person with it, it’s bleeding edge, and I like that. Forking over $700 for a piece of equipment that everyone else is carrying just is not appealing to me.

It’s new, it’s different, but for how long?

Here’s my biggest fear about the iPhone. It definitely does have some crazy features, instant access to the internet, etc. It does introduce a whole new way of looking at a cell phone and a whole new way of interacting with the cell phone. And I think that’s what makes it so exciting, the brand new interaction that it requires. Because of this, it reminds me a lot about the Nintendo Wii that is collecting dust in our living room right now. It introduced a brand new way of interacting with video games, and it sold like hotcakes. But here we are now, where most people I know haven’t touched their Wiis for a few months now. After $700, I’d hate to see the iPhone meet the same fate…

So what’s the verdict?

There’s a new iPhone user in my office every single day. I think I’m going to hold off on the purchase for now. On the other hand, if Mom and Dad wants to buy it for me as a gift, then hell yeah, bring it on!

And then, I discovered this Textmate Blogging bundle, which has been hiding from me all these months. I pretty much use Textmate for everything from my Rails development, to taking quick To-Do items during my meetings.

Even cooler is the fact that Textmate let’s me use Markdown to format my blog entries. Way cleaner than embedding ugly HTML.

We’ll see if this new simpler way of blogging actually increases the number of blog entries I post on a monthly basis…

The hardware for the Q is amazing, nothing out there can beat it’s size nor it’s looks. However, as the PC Mag review best put it, the software is really what is holding the Q back. The OS has a severe learning curve as far as navigation and use is concerned; considering Microsoft is calling it Windows Mobile version FIVE point O, I expected a much more refined interface and user experience.

However, looking passed the slightly quirky interface, I eventually got the hang of it and started making use of all that the Q has to offer. First and foremost, the Q works just fine as a phone, it fits in my pockets well and it doesn’t look like a brick stuck to my face when I’m talking to someone on it. Judging just by that, it already has a leg up on the Blackberry that I used to own.

As far as the e-mail is concerned, for some reason the Mail application cannot handle POP3 access with GMail, it connects fine, downloads messages, but does not show any of the messages properly in the Inbox. In the case of e-mail, the Q is no where near Blackberry’s push technology. It is better used to check your email occasionally, but not for being on top of your email at all times.

As for making use of the always on Internet access, I found the Google’s xhtml based home page to be the best asset. I was able to configure my “home page” from my computer to include my GMail account, the top news, and even the weather. I then went onto my Q and loaded up the Google page, giving me a perfect portal of all pieces of information that is important to me. I was also able to access GMail’s mobile version, which worked very well on the Q as well. Kudos to Google for having a better interface for Microsoft’s phone than any of the pre-programmed Microsoft bookmarks in Internet Explorer.

For the times that I’m in the car, I was able to use PdaNet to go online right from my laptop (using the USB cable). Apparently there is a hack online for enabling Internet access via Bluetooth, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. Although it’s not blazing fast, the EVDO connection scored pretty well on the Speed Tests considering I was on some random highway in the US browsing the web at anything above 14.4kbps.

Motorola and Verizon has promised an upgrade to the Q’s firmware, which will hopefully iron out a lot of the rough edges to this device. Overall, this is a good device with a lot of potential providing Microsoft get’s their act together with Windows Mobile.

For the other Q users out there, following are some helpful links:

1. QUsers.com
2. Howard Forums
3. NewsBreak – an awesome RSS reader for WM5.0