Garmin ecoRoute

In this post, I mentioned that Audi and Nissan are working on navigation systems that will give fuel effecient routes.  Garmin is also doing the same thing for their portable navigation units.  They are adding an ecoRoute routing type.  Navigation units with ecoRoute will have a setting that lets you specify the type of car you have. Then it can provide you with an effecient route.

The best thing about this is that they are making this available for all compatible devices.  I need to download the web updater to see if this will be available for our Nuvi 680.

[via CNET's CES blog]

Loopt

A few months ago, I signed up with Loopt.  Loopt is a social network that allows you to share your location, and status, with your friends. I didn't do much with it, as I didn't want to spam my friends with invites for yet another social network. A few weeks ago, some of my friends got Loopt account, and I guess they saw that I had a Loopt account and they sent me an invite, so now I have people to broadcast my location to.

 So far, I am not impressed.  Maybe it is because I am updating status from my iPhone.  Since Apple hasn't released support for applications running in the background, I need to constantly launch the Loopt application in order to update my status.  What I really want in a location based updating service is something that I can set the frequency that my location is sent the service, and only if I want to change my status would I have to launch the application.

The other problem I have with Loopt, and other location base social networks, is that I have to maintain a seperate friends list.  I have accounts on too many social networks,  (Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, flickr, Google Friend Connect....) so I don't want to manage another list of contacts.  Ideally, Loopt would use Google Friend Connect/Open Social or Facebook Connect, and then get the friends list that way. 

Google Notebook vs Google Reader Notes

I am an avid user of Google Reader.  A while ago, Google added the ability to share an item with a note.  I assumed that this note used the same mechanism as Google Notebook, even though I wasn't a user of Google Notebook. 

Today, I tried out Google Notebook from my phone, as I wanted to jot down some ideas that I had.  I was expecting that the notes that I had written from Google Reader would be there.  They didn't appear anywhere in Google Notebook.  It looks like the notes from Google Reader and the notes in Google Notebook are completly seperate (which I think is pretty silly).

WHS Task Viewer

I have intalled several add-ins and programs on our Windows Home Server.  I have been curious about how loaded the server is.  The WHS Task Viewer will show you what your CPU load, and physical and virtual memory usage is in the Windows Home Server Console.  Previously you would have to logged in via RDP and launched the system viewer.

From my  brief view of my system, it is not overloaded at all.

[via We Got Served]

Reboot over RDP

Normally when you log into a Windows PC via RDP, Windows disables the Restart and Shutdown commands from the Start menu.  This is a pain, especially if you want to force a reboot.

This post has the instructions on how to reboot a PC over RDP.  Here is the command that I use:

 shutdown /r /f /m \\

Kodak EasyShare W1020

We bought a couple of of Kodak EasyShare W1020
picture frames for gifts.  These are 10" picture frames that can, in addition to displaying photos from memory cards, can display photos from flickr and KodakGallery. We wanted to use these frames as a way to share pictures with family members.

The initial setup of the frame was pretty straight forward.  Once you turned on the frame, it detected all of the wireless networks.  When you select one, and enter the password, it waits for a PC or Mac that has the Kodak software installed.  When you install it, you will be able to configure various channels.

The problem that I had was getting flickr to work.  The firmware that was initially installed has support for rss photos feeds.  I was never able to get any of the rss feeds from my sets to work.  But the built in flickr feeds worked fine.

I noticed that the frame tried to update its firmware, but the upgrade failed.  There isn't a menu option to manullay upgrade the firmware, so I just tried to power cycle it.  On the next boot the firmware upgrade was successful (version from 10/2008)

Efficient navigation routing

A while ago, I mentioned that it would be good if a GPS device would give navigation directions that would maximize fuel effeciency.  It looks like Audi and Nissan are working on something like this.