Nerd, nerd, nerd or Commute Tech

nerd [nurd]

-noun
Slang.

1. an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.
   

-verb
Slang.

1. to engage in activities that causes others to smile plastically, nod and say "Oh, sure, uh huh" followed by them apologizing for having to leave the conversation because they just realized they agreed to meet a traveling Shammy Cloth salesman at their house and they don't want to miss the opportunity.
   

Ask anyone who knows me and knows that I quickly and enthusiastically refer to myself as a nerd. With this understanding of my internal workings it then is no surprise that in an attempt to reduce the pain of an Extreme Commute I would attempt to create a supporting gadget infrastructure. That's generally how I approach everything with the exception of God and my marriage. Tammy is supportive of my nerdology but she has my satisfaction meter happily pegged and requires no gadget augmentation.

One of the technologies I've always been interested in but really never had a reason until now to dig into is GPS. We are currently playing around with a couple of devices with GPS and a couple of interesting applications of it. Lets' start with the obvious GPS application, turn by turn directions. A couple of birthdays ago Tammy got us our first GPS receiver and we became instant fans of no longer having to think about how we were going to get somewhere. Punch the address in and listen to Doris tell you where to turn.

Just as we really started to get used to having this device at our disposal we parked under the Convention Center in Seattle with the GPS prominently displayed in the window. It was December (I think we were at the ACT to see A Christmas Carol) and the ride home was pretty cold without a passenger side window. Lesson learned. The replacement we chose was the Garmin nűvi 265WT. Here's the list of features we like about it.

• When the annoying lady tells you where you are turning next, she doesn't just say "turn in 100 feet". Most people, us included can't judge 100 feet while moving and really it's for the best that we aren't practicing our distance estimating skills while driving don't you think? What it does say is turn in 100 feet on Maple Street. The name of the street keeps the instruction in the wheelhouse of driving a car and keeps your brain from having to translate.
  
• Built in traffic alerts were a big part of choosing this model. It works by reading traffic information on an FM frequency and the service works in most populated areas. It does a pretty good job of guessing how much of a delay is on your path and trying to route you around it. I've had it guess wrong a couple of times so we've gotten used to taking what its saying and planning our own detours in areas we know. It has tried to tell me to take the Ferry from Seattle to Port Orchard a couple times. The only other downside to this feature is that you have to plug the GPS into the 12 volt power adapter to receive the traffic data.
  
• It has a built in Blue Tooth speaker phone that works fairly well. I recommend not trying to set that up while the car is in motion though or you may inflict your technology on others.
  

All in all we are pretty pleased with Doris. The device is tough, and well made. The screen is large and easy to read. You can update the maps via the SD card port on the side however the cost of the updates made me do a quadruple take!

For Music Tammy and I employ different solutions, one the results of learning lessons from the other. Since we are talking about a commute that combines more transportation methods than just a POV the only really solution is a portable one. Now as rad as the Walkman was, today the MP3 player is king. My first foray into this ground was the iPod Nano. I could go on and on about the ups and downs of this device, about how I love the size and the interface and how much I despise iTunes, but that just devolves into a "My dad can beat up your dad" conversation eventually, so I'll pass. Before I talk about where we did land though, let me take a second and talk about some things that led us down the roads we chose.

• How the device connects to other stuff, namely the car. There are 3 basic ways you can make an MP3 player make noise through your car speakers.
  
  • Plug the headphone out jack of the MP3 player into an Aux port in your head unit. This of course requires that your car's audio system has an Aux port to do that with. We replaced the head unit in Tammy's old car with an aftermarket solution mostly for that feature. Our Elantras have this as a standard feature.
    
  • Buy an FM transmitter that plugs into MP3 player and broadcasts to your FM radio. Aside from the extra wires and power needs, this has just never worked well in my experience. The quality is just bleh.
    
  • Stay in Apple land and use the iPod interface found in many current car stereos. This is, by far the most elegant solution out there. The cable that you plug your iPod into also recharges the device and you can control the iPod using your car stereo's controls. I had this in my last car. The downside, for me, had to do with all the stuff I couldn't stand about iTunes/Apple.
    
• Capacity is a huge consideration with MP3 players. For you nerd's of another sort out there, this is basically how many songs the device can hold. If you are just starting to think about MP3 players this will seem like just a measure of how many hours of music does one person need before they get back to their house and can put different stuff on. On the surface that's a very valid way to look at this. However, another consideration is how you use the device. We put thousands of songs on ours, which allows us to group songs using playlists to suite the mood. There are some really terrific love songs out there, but when I'm behind the wheel of the car at 6 AM at the end of a long week of sleep deprivation I want nothing but songs that go THUMP until the car is parked or I turn the wheel over.
  
• Form factor. This is just shorthand for how big and heavy is the thing. It may occasionally be useful to have a device heavy enough to stun small game animals, but short of all forms of commercial food distribution disintegrating for some mysterious reason let's stay true to the term "portable". I did push the edge for a time with a device by Archos but it really didn't fit the portable definition.
  

Tammy is currently using an 80GB Zune. I like this device. It works well, and gets an A for capacity. The big disappointment however is the Zune software. I'm not sure what it is about the business folks who drive projects like iPod and Zune, but there's a word they should all find the definition for and attempt to obtain some form of aversion therapy to avoid. That word is "Proprietary". Yes, I know, you need to separate yourself from the competition and all that, but let me give you a couple other words that in the long run will let you win a respectable share of the market. Value, Quality, Functional. Notice I didn't say anything having to do with ascetics? Looking cool is pretty low on my list and if you can't get the other 3 don't expect me to buy your gadget! So, some pain, but Tammy uses her Zune daily and likes it.

After seeing Tammy work with the Zune and my iTunes experience I went to a more generic solution the Creative Zen X-Fi. This device is small and light with incredible sound quality. It holds 32GB which is plenty. The only downside is that the buttons have a cheap plastic feel to them and the center button in the pad really requires a deliberate push to activate, on mine at least. The other feature that I was really excited about, built in wireless networking, turned out to be a flop. It's not that it doesn't work as advertised; it just isn't as useful as I'd hoped.

Something that both Tammy and I love about our music players is the music services that are available. These services allow you to subscribe to their entire catalog of music. Think of this as a lending library (with no limit to the number of items you can have out at one time) that can stop the songs from playing on your device if your subscription isn't kept up to date. If you are the type to buy one CD a month chances are these services will be useful to you. I use Rhapsody and short of some quirks here and there really like having that much music to choose from. Tammy uses Zune Pass (yup, here's our friend "Proprietary" getting in the way again). The one positive side to Zune Pass is that each month she gets song credits that allows her to keep 10 songs per month. Now if we could just get Zune to play nice.

Lastly fellow gadget fiends are the cell phones. Now I'm not going to get into a full blown cell phone discussion here, but I do want to talk about something I've been playing with lately and that's the GPS on my cell phone. I have a HTC Touch Pro 2 that I've been using for a few weeks now. Other than the standard features of every email enabled cellular device out there, I've been having a nerdy time playing with a service called Accutracking. The brick-o-cell phones you see out there these days have 2 devices in them that provide some interesting applications. Now for you conspiracy buffs out there (and well those of you who are actually hiding from the Government) you are about to cringe like you've never cringed before. These devices have both a GPS and nearly constant access to the Internet. This means, with the right software you can use your phone to keep running track of where you are at all times.

Ok, stop there. I know, I know, you all just inhaled through your teeth and screamed (as Tammy's friend Elaine would pronounce it) "AWHOUGHT?!?!?!" which is southern for "WHAT?!?!?!?!". For that whole line of thinking let me say one thing, off button. What I want to talk about here is the practical commuting application of this, not the misuse of it to round up all the folks who can't figure out when it's smart to use something like this or not. So, Accutracking is a service that combines both these abilities of my phone by periodically checking my location on the GPS and then uploading that location to their service. Using that data they plot my location on a map along with the speed I'm travelling at.

They offer 2 compelling features with their service in the form of email alerts. The first is a form of fence that allows you to draw a circle around a particular location on a map and any time the client passes in or out of that circle it sends email. We use this to warn Tammy when I'm getting close to her in the evening. As I approach the RTC she automatically gets an email saying that I'm approaching. The other feature that might be interesting to parents of driving age teens is a speed limit alarm that will send email when the GPS exceeds a specified speed limit.

Well, this post has gone on forever so I'm going to finish up. I'll probably talk more about gadgets for commuting in the blog because I can't really help myself. Take solace in the fact that you can always click the X and that if you post a comment asking Tammy to pick on me for you, she probably will.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!