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Since Christmas I’ve had a very nice Bluetooth speakerphone on my visor. It works really well, but I still needed to have my phone easily reachable so I could dial out, plus I have to actually push a number when a call comes in due to a phone service I use. I’ve been using a cheap holder that mounted to the window with a suction cup and it worked okay for what it was, although it seemed to fall down with some regularity.

Now I’ve entered the world of the iPhone. This means a few things:

• I want to plug the iPhone in to my stereo while driving so I can listen to podcasts and keep the iPhone charged up.
• The iPhone has GPS built in, so it’s inevitable that I’ll eventually buy turn-based GPS software and will want to have the iPhone where I can see it.
• The iPhone has voice dialing, but you still need to push and hold a button to initiate voice recognition.

For those reasons I really wanted a better mount that was more centrally located in my car and to my radio. After a lot of searching around, I determined that the king of such systems is ProClip. All the reviews I read had nothing but praise about the functionality and build quality. Naturally there’s a downside with such stuff, and it’s the price. The mount I wanted would have cost about $120 after shipping. Ouch. But then again, I’m tired of buying cheap crap that doesn’t really do the job and breaks after not too long. I started rationalizing my purchase.

In the meantime I kept looking around. Eventually I discovered that ProClip was running a contest through Twitter. That’s right up my alley! I entered (as @drthunder, the Twitter account I use to follow businesses) and I won. Very nice.

The ProClip system consists of two pieces: a car mount and a device holder. That way you can get a car mount made specifically for your vehicle and installation is solid but not permanent. Then the device holder attaches to that car mount. Buy a new car and you just need to get a new car mount. Buy a new device and you just need a new device holder. Here are the two unopened pieces:

(All but the last two pictures on this page were taken with my iPhone. It’s what I had on me and I didn’t have time to set up a fancy photoshoot with lights.)

ProClip has several different options for iPhone device holders ranging in price between $25 and $80, and the one I wanted is the most expensive choice. The reason it’s so expensive is because it’s adjustable so it can be used if the iPhone is in a case, it rotates, and it has a dock with the iPod connecter built in. I don’t use a case but I wasn’t sure at the time if I would stick to that, rotation is useful with a GPS system, and I wanted a dock so I could drop it in and take it out quickly.

Here’s a shot of all the parts. On the left is the iPhone device holder and on the right is the vehicle mount made specifically for my 2002 Toyota Corolla:

The first step is installing the metal car mount. In my case it clipped in just above my radio and at the top of the center console. First I inserted the little wedge they provided to make the gap in the console a little bigger, then I simply slipped the bottom part of the mount in and then the top. It was quite simple and maybe only slightly more difficult for me than normal because I have an aftermarket radio that fits kind of oddly in the radio slot. But it worked fine.

Clearly I could take this mount right back off and no one would ever know it was there. However, it’s also very solidly mounted. Nothing’s going to bump or jolt this thing off the dash.

The next step was to install the metal base of the device holder. It attached to the car mount with four small screws for a nice, solid connection.

After that the device holder itself was attached using one screw through the center. This is the rotation point where the whole thing can be rotated 90º and can also be slightly tilted and swiveled for a better view. The tighter you attach this screw, the more firmly the holder is held while turning and adjusting. Here is a shot of the completely installed mounting system:

I mentioned that this mount will hold an iPhone whether it’s in a case or not. The solution to that is that the sides of the mount are adjustable in and out. The mount is made specifically for an iPhone, so pushing the sides completely in results in a snug fit for a naked iPhone. Loosen a few screws and the sides will slide out a good distance. You insert your encased iPhone, squeeze the sides back in, and tighten the screws, resulting in a snug fit.

Here’s a shot of the mounting system with my iPhone mounted up:

I’ve used this system for a few days now and it’s everything I hoped it would be. Very solid and very easy to slip my iPhone in and out. Yes, it blocks a good bit of one of the vents, but that’s not a big concern for me. I can still read the dash clock and use my radio with no problem.

I highly recommend a ProClip system if you have a device you want to mount in your car. They have a huge variety of automobile mounts and a huge variety of device holders. It’s quite likely that they’ll have a system that’s made specifically for whatever you’ve got, and it really is worth the price.

For quite a while now I’ve had an iPod Shuffle 2G nearly permanently attached to my sleeve with earphone cables routed up through my shirt. I use this to listen to podcasts and audiobooks any chance I get, such as driving or walking somewhere. It works pretty well for me and I get an amazing amount of content consumed that way.

A couple of weeks ago a new iPod Shuffle 3G was released. It’s quite a bit smaller and has 4 times the storage as my 2G Shuffle, but it didn’t take me long to conclude that what I had was sufficient and working. Besides, Apple decided to move all the controls for the new Shuffle to the earphone cord, which has been a very controversial move. Until the 3rd party manufacturers catch up and release adapters and earphones with the controller built in, you are stuck using Apple earphones to really use the Shuffle. For a long time now I’ve used a particular model of Sony earphones (mostly because the cord is short) and I wasn’t sure I’d be happy to change.

But then my wife, of all people, unintentionally said something that made me rethink things. We were at the Apple Store (the kids like to visit, go figure) and I’m not even sure what she said. But whatever it was made me focus on a new feature of the new Shuffles: playlist support. The old Shuffles simply held a bucket of files and would play them randomly or sequentially depending on how you flip a switch. That worked okay for me, but every time I sat down to sync the durn thing I had to do a bit of manual labor moving files around. The new Shuffle works with playlists just like every other iPod out there. I’m a power playlist user, and have set up several “smart” playlists to automatically organize my podcasts and books just the way I want them.

Maybe one of those new Shuffles would be handy… I could organize my podcasts and books into playlists… And with the extra space I could even throw some music on there just in case I ever wanted a break from the spoken word… Hmm….

After a few days of deliberation I broke down and popped over to the Apple Store and picked one up.

Now that I’ve used it for 24 hours I can report the following:

• It’s definitely small. There’s really nothing to it. It’s like a small clip where they tacked on an iPod as decoration as an afterthought. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/iPod-Shuffle-3rd-Generation/673/1
  
• It took me a while to find the right configuration for how to wear it. Before, I wore the old Shuffle on my sleeve and routed the earphone wires up through my shirt and out the collar. I tried several different configurations for the new one, including clipping it to my collar with the wires on the outside of my shirt, clipping it to my collar with the wires rolled up to shorten things up a bit, and clipping it to my sleeve like before. None of those options really was working out too great. Then I realized I didn’t really need the Shuffle itself handy and I clipped it to a belt loop. Success! I routed the earphone cable up through my shirt and out the collar and it was the perfect length.
• The controls on the earphone cord work out perfectly for me. They’re always right there in easy reach near my neck.
• The controls themselves are a lot easier to work than I had initially thought they would be. It sounds complicated, but within about 1 minute it’s all second nature.
• The earphones work fine for me. I know a lot of people have ears that won’t hold them in, but mine hold them just fine. The quality is certainly good enough for my podcasts and books, and truthfully is plenty good enough for my music also. I’m not too critical about such things when it comes to earphones.
• Like all Apple products it comes with a year of AppleCare. This also covers the earphones, which is good because I can be pretty hard on them since I have them strapped to my body for such long periods of time. So long as they’re not obviously damaged by something stupid like closing them in the car door, I can just walk in to an Apple store and they’ll hand me a new pair.
• My old earphones were the in-ear noise “isolating” type. While I thought they were comfortable, I never put more than one in at a time so that I could still hear the world. The Apple earphones are the earbud type and don’t really isolate you from anything. I discovered I like this a lot because I can have both earbuds in and still be aware of everything going on around me.
• Playlist support is fantastic. Exactly like all other non-Shuffle iPods. I set up 3 or 4 playlists to sync and it’s all fully automatic now.
• To manage music and playlists without a screen, the Shuffle has VoiceOver. It can say the name of the item currently playing, as well as speak the playlist names out loud so you can move between them. It works quite well. I was playing an Italian opera at one point and had the Shuffle say the name. It sounded pretty good to my non-Italian-understanding ears. English words sound great because it uses the natural sounding voice that came with MacOSX 10.5. (Windows users get a different voice.)

I’m surprised and pleased that I like this little thing quite a bit more than I expected. No, it’s definitely not for everyone. But if you do have a place where something like this can fit in, give it a try.

There’s a new free iPhone/Touch app out for Chipotle. Naturally, you can use it to find the Chipotle nearest to you, but the real meat of the application is actually placing an order and paying for it! Then you supposedly just walk in and pick up your order with no waiting.

I’m a person who hates drivethrus with their inevitable messed up orders, so an app like this has a lot of appeal. I’d like one of these for all the places I might shop, not just the retaurants. How awesome would it be to poke through a well-designed Target app, for example, and just run in and pick up your purchase later in the day?

The Chipotle app has a few quirks that they’ll undoubtedly work out in an update, but it works okay. I feel sure it’s going to help them sell a ton of burritos — with some of them going to me.

Update 1/13/09: The app was so popular it had to be removed from the App Store temporarily.

This morning I shaved with my brand new shaver, a Braun Series 7 - 760cc Shaver. This was quite an event because I never dreamed I’d spend $200 on a shaver. Okay, that’s not entirely true. If you know me then you’ll probably think, “I can easily see him spending that much on a silly gadget,” and it’s true.

Why did I ever spend that much money on a shaver? It all started when I was watching one of those “how it’s made” shows on TV with the kids. This particular episode showed how electric shavers are made at the Braun plant in Germany. It started by showing how all the male employees shave every morning at the plant instead of at home, and they use all the new designs in lab rat fashion. Then they showed the latest design, the Series 7. The technology in this thing intrigued me, and it really did look like a pretty good shaver. I looked it up on Amazon, gulped at the huge price, dropped it on my wish list (which I primarily use as long-term memory) and forgot about it.

Except I didn’t forget about it. I kept going back to that Amazon page, looking at it and reading about it. But this wasn’t just silly drooling, I had a good reason. Unfortunately, I am allergic to many, many things, and this has the regrettable effect of making my skin frequently itch. For the last several months my face has gotten progressively more itchy after shaving with my Remington electric shaver. I would shave, take a shower, get out of the shower, and my face would be an itchy mess. Reading the reviews of this Braun Series 7 shaver, I saw that many of the comments referred to how gentle it was on the face. I was very intrigued by this, but still — $200?

Finally all the pieces came together. I was getting very tired of having an itchy face every day and Amazon offered a $50 Amazon gift certificate with the purchase of the shaver (an offer which has since expired). I pulled the trigger and felt guilty about spending so much, but hoped it would be at least somewhat worth it. Yesterday the shaver arrived.

I didn’t get to open the box until the end of the day, but I was eager to get it plugged in and charged for use this morning. I should have taken pictures of the unboxing — it was definitely packed like an expensive device. There really wasn’t a lot to the contents. There’s the charging/cleaning base, a cleaning cartridge, the shaver in a very nice travel shell, the power cord, and the instructions. I quickly flipped through the instructions to get it plugged in and charging and went to bed to read further.

What surprised me was how short the instructions are. Yeah, sure, it’s just a shaver, but typically with a high-priced electronic device you get pages and pages describing the wide variety of buttons and displays, and I expected no less for a fancy $200 shaver. I have read (and have nothing to back it up) that products produced for sale in America sell better when they have more buttons and displays (look at high-end dishwashers and washing machines), but in other countries the appeal is the opposite, with high-end devices expected to be smarter and thus easier to use.

This shaver comes with a fairly substantial charging/cleaning base. After shaving you simply drop it in the base and push the large button on the front.

The shaver itself has a big LCD display on the bottom that shows the charge remaining in the battery, how clean the shaver is, and when the blades need replacement. It monitors how dirty it is and communicates this information to the base. The base then picks the appropriate cleaning cycle, from economy to deep clean. Pushing the button on the base starts the cycle which takes 30 to 40 minutes, thoroughly cleaning and drying the shaver. The shaver actually runs a few times as part of this process (at least at the beginning of the cycle), so it’s not exactly silent, but not overly loud either. The shaver is also charged while in the base.

It’s certainly easy to do and saves me a few minutes in the morning. Getting the shaver perfectly clean appeals to my personality, and I don’t mind spending a few bucks on the cleaning cartridges every once in a while. They are supposed to last around 30 days each, but you could extend that easily by rinsing the shaver in the sink every other day instead of doing a cleaning cycle every day.

The cleaning cartridges are easily replaced by simply popping open the base, sliding the old one out, and sliding the new one in. The cap from the new one is used to cover the old one, which you then toss out. The base has a set of lights that reports on the current status as the current cartridge gets dirtier and eventually needs replaced.

As I mentioned, the shaver also came in a nice, hard travel case. The travel case is a form fitting hard-shell around the shaver and will provide it very safe protection. If you were to only travel for a few days you could simply take the fully charged shaver and throw it back in the base for cleaning and charging when you returned home. A charge is supposed to last something like 50 minutes total. For a longer trip, the cord that plugs into the base will also fit directly into the shaver so it can be charged that way. You can also easily clean the shaver under a stream of water so there’s no need to try to take the base with you.

On to the important question: How was my shave this morning? Very nice! The shaver is relatively quiet and seemed to shave fairly closely. I know from past experience over the years trying several different brands of electric shavers that it takes a couple of weeks for your beard and your technique to adjust to get the best shave. What I got this morning was pretty good for a first shave. But the most important part was that it totally lived up to the hype about it being gentle. I finished shaving, dropped it in the base, took my shower, and instead of having the usual face-on-fire feeling, my face felt perfectly fine. No itchiness whatsoever. For me, that makes the shaver worth every penny.

Highly recommended.

Apple offers a set of web services they dub MobileMe.

It’s a nice set of services for which they want $99/year. As a full-fledged geek, I have to admit I’m intrigued by MobileMe because it sounds like a fun set of things to play with, and it’s even possible I’ll cave someday and try it. But $99 is a lot of money to spend every year. I’m going to tell you why I really have no need of this, and maybe why you don’t either.

I’ll cover the services one-by-one:

• Email

  MobileMe: With MobileMe you get a new email account with an “@me.com” extension. They have a very nice web interface to access your email, and it also has an IMAP interface so you can use any email client such as Apple Mail on your Mac or email on your iPhone/Touch. Setup on an Apple device is particularly easy.

  

  My Solution: I have my own web host with Dreamhost, and with that I get total and complete control over my email. I have several domains so I can have addresses that end in “@crooks.net” or “@scrooks.net” or a few others. Because of that, I can give individual web businesses a unique email address, and if they start spamming me I can then just send any email to that address to the trash. When email comes in it’s easy for me to automatically check it for spam, send it to multiple locations, put it in a specific folder, or anything else. There’s also a way to access my email on the web, although the interface is not nearly as slick as the MobileMe email web app. I’ve already got email thoroughly covered.

  

  Solution For Others: Gmail seems to give you about the same thing as MobileMe mail, and a lot of people are happy with that. It’s free. I personally don’t like the idea of leaving all my email eggs in Google’s or Apple’s basket, but that’s just me.

  

• Contacts

  MobileMe: MobileMe will keep your contacts in sync between your iPhone/Touch, Apple Mail on the Mac, and Outlook on a Windows PC. They also provide a very nice web app to access your contacts.

  

  My Solution: To be honest, I don’t really have that big of a set of contacts, and I don’t really need to access them that often. I keep the Contacts app on my Mac up-to-date and it gets synced to my Touch whenever I plug it in. Good enough. In addition, Spanning Sync, a solution I use for my calendars (see below), syncs all of my contacts to GMail. I’ve never once looked at them there, but it’s easy so I do it anyway.

  

  Solution For Others: If you use GMail for your email, you might as well use it for your contacts also. Like me, you could use Spanning Sync to keep your computer contacts in sync with GMail if you have that need.

• Calendar

  MobileMe: With MobileMe you can create multiple calendars for whatever groupings you want. They have a very nice web interface to access your email, and it also syncs nicely with either the Apple Calendar app or Outlook. The calendar syncs wirelessly and fairly immediately with an iPhone or Touch.

  

  My Solution: Our whole family lives in Google Calendar. It offers up as many different calendars as you want, it’s free, and it’s got a very nice web interface. I also use Spanning Sync to keep the Google calendars in sync with the Calendar app on my Mac. From there my Touch is also kept in sync whenever I plug it in. I can make changes anywhere and the change gets synced everywhere. I would still have to use Google Calendar and Spanning Sync even if I used MobileMe, simply because the rest of my family is on Google Calendar. I have no real need for changes on my Mac to be pushed wirelessly to my Touch.

  

  Solution For Others: Google Calendar is the way to go. It’s great.

• Gallery

  MobileMe: MobileMe makes it easy to put photo collections on the web in a very nice interface to share with others. You can post pictures directly from your iPhone, and if you use iPhoto on a Mac syncing the pictures is a snap.

  

  My Solution: I really have two solutions for this. For personal family photos I use our family web site where I’ve installed a few pieces of software. It’s not nearly as easy as the MobileMe stuff, but I’m in full control and I like that. I also have a SmugMug account that I use for all other photos. It’s got a terrific interface and many, many features. There’s also a nifty iPhone app that lets you directly post your iPhoto shots. I may eventually punt on putting pictures on our family web site and just use SmugMug since it’s so nice.

  

  Solution For Others: There are numerous photo hosting sites out there, but I still recommend SmugMug even though they charge a small yearly fee. Their service is just too good.

• iDisk

  MobileMe: MobileMe provides 10GB of synced file storage. You can have these files sync to your Mac and Windows PCs. Files can be put in a public area so anyone can get to them if you want. Bookmarks and some system preferences can also be synced between Macs.

  

  My Solution: I recently discovered Dropbox. Dropbox works much the same as MobileMe sync, with files automatically syncing as they’re changed on any Windows or Mac PC. There’s also access from the web, along with public access and a decent interface for sharing photos if you want. They are working on an iPhone/Touch app, but it’s not out yet. With Dropbox you get 2GB free, and can pay a monthly fee for much more space if you want it. I personally sync all of my documents (no media files) and still only use 10% of 2GB, so the free version works great for me. One thing I’m still missing is syncing of browser bookmarks and Mac preferences. I’ve looked a long time for a good cross-browser syncing tool and haven’t found one, but I think foxmarks, a tool for syncing Firefox bookmarks, will soon support multiple browsers. And it’s really not that hard to live without Mac preferences syncing — I don’t have that many Macs.

  

  Solution For Others: There are a few file sharing options out there, but I’m going to have to recommend Dropbox.

It really doesn’t seem like I’d get much added value for $99/year, and that’s why I’ve never signed up. Apple seems to keep tweaking and adding things to MobileMe, so maybe someday they’ll do something that really grabs me. Until then I’ll do without.