USB flash drive usefulness?

I own a 2 GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro. The sheer fact that it is so ridiculously small, and has more storage than many of the computers that I’ve owned (and probably more processing power) gives it a pretty high geek factor. But what the heck can you do with these things that’s really useful?

Using it as just storage seems silly. There is so much free online storage now, and networks are so ubiquitous that using a flash drive solely as storage seems silly. You can get 5 gigs of free online storage at box.net. There are many other similar free storage services, as well as for-pay services that offer huge storage capacities, and there’s even Amazon S3 if you want to take it to extremes.

About the most useful thing I’ve done with mine lately is to use it as a backup disk with Apple Backup. Even that will seem a little silly very shortly, since I just ordered a new Airport Extreme, and I have an external 250 GB USB 2.0 drive sitting at home waiting to be used as network storage. I won’t even have to plug anything into my laptop to have it backed up, it will just happen automagically every night.

My collegue Jim, an IT ninja, says that he would use it to boot TinyLinux for some IT support tasks. He’s the first person I’ve actually known that actually would do this, and it’s probably one of the most viable uses I can think of.

Yeah, there are portable apps for OS X, Linux, and Windows, but how many people really use them beyond the initial geek coolness factor of saying you have FireFox on your keychain?

Vista lets you use a flash drive to “improve system performance”, presumably by using it as cache, swap, or hibernate storage (or all of the above). But soon, that’ll just be integrated into everyone’s laptop. Now, If I could have a complete operating system and my currently saved workspace all on a flash drive that gave me instant-on-and-resume-my-workspace on any machine, that might be useful.

But, unfortunately, that doesn’t exists, and I can’t come up with anything really useful to do with mine. I think the days of the USB flash drive are numbered.

MBP Waterfield sleevecase

Here’s what I ordered:

• Horizontal Sleevecase, size 15-2
• flap (see below for the bonus)
• d-rings and suspension strap
• horizontal piggyback

The short version is that this thing is bullet-proof, carries just enough beyond the MBP itself to be useful as my sole commuting bag 90% of the time, and the attention to detail is impressive.

The first thing I can say that I liked about my new Waterfield sleevecase is that I ordered it on Monday and it arrived on Wednesday, and I didn’t have to pay for extravagant shipping. That was just USPS Priority, which was one of the lesser expensive shipping options (USPS Priority is underrated, IMHO, but that’s another blog post).

The overall design, and as far as I can tell, the materials, have not changed, and that is a good thing, as it should be as bullet-proof as my tibook sleevecase. The case fits my MBP like an Assos jersey. That’d probably be “like an Armani suit”, but since I’ve never actually worn one, I figured I’d go with the cycling reference. Once again, the interior neoprene suspension design is genius.

D-Rings

The d-rings, shoulder strap clips, and piggyback clips are all metal. The ones on the shoulder strap and sleevecase are quite beefy. The piggyback clips are less so. I’d bet money that they sturdier than equivalently sized plastic clips, though. They also have nice release levers to help you open them since they are so small—very nice attention to detail.

Shoulder Strap

The suspension strap is a very interesting design. I couldn’t find many pictures or a detailed description of it on the site before buying, but I decided to give it a go anyway, betting that if I wasn’t happy with it, I could try to exchange it for a regular strap.

The strap has 3 sections that are sewn together. The two ends where the clips are attached are standard heavy duty shoulder strap stuff. The key is the center section. The underside is made of a very soft and grippy rubber that really does keep it from sliding around. Second, the pad is stretchy, but has another strap sewn onto it that acts like a damper. That’s probably impossible to visualize, so think of the springs and shocks on your car. The first is for absorbing impact, the second for keeping the springs under control. It’s a clever design. I can’t really say how much it changes the dynamic of carrying the bag, but I can say that overall the shoulder strap is very comfortable.

It is also adjustable in two places, instead of just one, which allows you to position the pad correctly no matter how long or short you make the strap. Attention to detail.

Piggyback

The piggyback is my favorite part of the package. It lets me carry the extra bits that I need, which makes the sleevecase usable as my daily commuter. It clips to the same d-rings as the shoulder strap, and it holds more than I thought it would. I’ve carried the following without having to cram: MBP power brick, ipod and headphones, small moleskine and pen, cell phone charger, and a Balance Bar. The inside is lined with some super-soft alien material, and has one large main compartment and two smaller pockets. The zipper is metal (a good thing, imho) and has a zipper pull tab that I can easily grab while wearing gloves. The piggyback also has a small rain flap (details, I say!). It’s a lot of usefulness wrapped up into a svelte little package.

The shoulder strap can be attached to the piggyback, so you can carry just the piggyback by itself if you’re so inclined.

In my experience so far, the case and piggyback work together very well. I was afraid that the piggyback would bounce around while carrying the bag, but it doesn’t. The on problem I’ve found with using them together is that the piggyback actually covers the flap on the sleevecase in a way that makes it difficult to open the flap. This hasn’t been a big annoyance so far, and it might be possible to work around it by attaching the piggyback on the back side of the sleevecase and carrying the case with the flap facing toward your body. I may give that a try if the interference becomes annoying.

My only other gripe so far is that I wish the sleevecase had some sort of small carry handle (also one of my complaints about my Timbuk2 messenger), but I knew that before I bought it, so I can’t complain too much.

Bonus

One bonus that my previous sleevecase did not have is the slash pocket on the back. I’m guessing that you get this when you order the flap. Regardless, I’ve found it to be extremely useful so far. It is the perfect size for my aluminum clipboard, or any of several music books.

Conclusion

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase, and I think it’s gonna just right for my daily commute. It’s more streamlined than my Timbuk2, and still holds the few extra things I need.

Accidental bus wardriving

Yesterday on the bus ride home, I popped open the MBP to watch the latest BSG (sorry, couldn’t resist the acronym alliteration). As I typically do, I started to crank down the screen brightness and to turn off Airport in order to conserve power.

When I pulled down the Airport menu, I was surprised at the the huge list of wireless networks. Some are obvious, like “Brueggers_Free_Wifi”, “WifiPittsburgh”. Others are interesting because they are obviously wireless routers being used in their default configuration, probably without WEP or WPA. I don't approve of stealing wireless, but it would be interesting to see which ones are open. I didn’t try, though, since the bus was moving and I’d probably be out of range in a few seconds.

Waterfield

I've had a Waterfield sleevecase for my aging tibook for nearly six years now. The case still looks like it did the day I received it, even though it's been all over the US, and in and out of my Timbukt2 messenger (another product that I'll probably buy again when the time comes) more times that I can count. The thing is darn near indestructible. I have no doubt that my tibook is still in working order without major dents and gauges because of that sleevecase. The outside “shell” is ballistic nylon, and the inside is a magically suspended neoprene pouch that holds the laptop and acts like a shock absorber. Subtle, but ingenious and effective.

Now that I have a brand new MacBook Pro for work, I needed to get a case for it. The tibook sized sleevecase doesn't quite fit. After looking around at a few others and comparing features and prices, I decided to go with another Waterfield sleevecase. I wanted to be able to carry it as my sole commuting bag this time, so I went with the full deal: flap, strap, and piggyback.

After I ordered it, I was reminded of another reason that I like Waterfield so much: customer service. I got a personal email from Gary. In the email he asked how I found out about Waterfield, so I responded telling him about my experience with the tibook sleeve, and he responded with another personal email. It's pretty clear that not only do they make great stuff, they actually care about it. I feel very confident that if I have a problem with the new case, they'll make it right. That goes a long way to making me want to be a repeat customer in the future.

The case should be here this week, so I'll probably post a bit more about the it then.

Two useful cameraphone things

Over the past few months, I’ve been using my cameraphone to capture our weekly grocery lists. We have a small whiteboard on the side of the fridge, and as we think of things over the course of the week, we just write them on the whiteboard. Then, when it’s time to go to the store, I just snap a pic of the whiteboard and head to the store, where I can view it with one of the builting image viewer apps (more recently Nokia Album, which is much nicer). That basically lets us write down stuff whenever we think of it, without my having to recopy the list into Backpack, or heaven forbid, paper.

Since we’ve started a few new projects, we’ve been making quite a few runs to Lowes, Home Depot, and various other specialty stores to look at everything from fixtures to tile. Sometimes it’s convenient for me to do that during the day, so I’ve been snapping pics of various styles of tile and borders, shelving systems, etc. Then I either bluetooth them to the laptop or send them to flickr directly with ZoneTag and we look at them full size to pick out things or to narrow the field so that we can make fewer trips or make decisions more quickly when we are able to return to the store together. For example, I took pics of all the shelving system components so we could start designing some shelves for our soon-to-be-remodeled closets.

Ohhhh, now I get it!

A few days ago, I started using Callwave to manage my mobile voicemail, mainly due to the flood of voicemail from my job search, but also because I think Cingular’s voicemail system could do with a serious usability overhaul (why do I have to listen to the entire message before deleting it??).

It turns out that Callwave’s system is very similar to Cingular’s. Most of the voice prompts are exactly the same. It does, however, fix some of the things that annoy me the most about Cingular’s voicemail, so the familiarity with some incremental improvement is nice. It also does other cool things like send you text messages with useful info about new voicemail messages like the caller’s number (and caller ID info, if available!), and the message duration.

I discovered the real usefulness of it yesterday when I was sitting at my computer checking Gmail, with my phone turned off, and I got a new voicemail email from Callwave. My phone was off, and I still knew who called, and was able to listen to the voicemail without turning the phone on. Ohhhh, now I get it.