I suffer from gadget envy. I do, really. It started early on, when a friend and I would disassemble tape recorders to see how they worked (I still have no idea). More recently in my life, I’ve found blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget, both of which fill my ever present desire to accumulate more electronics, necessary or not.

Earlier this year, following my Dad’s footsteps, I purchased a Treo 650. Big time gadget.

When purchasing a gadget of this kind, that carries a hefty price tag, it’s important to make sure that your significant other understands the reasoning behind it. You must sell it’s many uses, and you must paint a picture of a very dire and likely future without said gadget. I sold it well, and I even believed the hype myself.

Fast forward to now. I am a geek yes, but also a freelancer. As a freelancer I am always looking to make my work load easier to manage, and to make my stuff more available. The Treo was going to help with this, since I can now sync my calendar, to-do’s, memo’s, files, music, podcasts and what not with the phone, making all that available all the time. That is, if you remember to sync. Or if you’ve got enough room on the SD card. Then there’s all the problems with syncing on a Mac. Calendars don’t come across right, contacts don’t have their groups anymore, and more. It becomes as more work, even though the phone is supposed to help reduce it all.

One thing I did when buying the Treo, was to switch to T-Mobile. I was able to get us a great phone plan, as well as unlimited internet for the Treo, all at a pretty affordable price. Considerably more affordable than any of the other carriers out here. So now I’ve got solid Internet at my desk, as well as just about anywhere I go. So how do I make that into something I can actually use?

So far, Gmail and Backpack are two ways I’ve simplified my life. Gmail now offers a mobile version of your Gmail account, and it’s just great. It allows me quick access to my email, with a lot of the features that the full-fledged version I get at my desk does. Mobile Gmail gives me keyboard shortcuts, which is a god-send on a small device. There’s a lot more about mobile Gmail I plan on writing about, but for now let’s just say I am a veryhappy user.

The second was Backpack.

I’ve been using a free plan ever since they launched, only recently upgrading to a paid plan. Backpack is another site that has a mobile interface, allowing quick and easy access on the phone. I now keep Backpack pages setup for all aspects of my projects. When an email comes in that I need to track, I can forward it with it’s attachment to that projects Backpack page. With all of my project info accessible from anywhere, I can now be more in control of what I am doing. It’s been really wonderful.

So now I have a “Smart Phone“, that really is kind of overkill. Ultimately, all I really need is a Treo-like device that has a great screen, fast connection, and the qwerty keyboard, without all the extra OS stuff. As more web services become available, and allow for mobile access, we’ll not have a need for local storage of info, since it will be distributed globally via the Internet.

I’d love to hear how you use your phone. Click the title of this article to go to the comments page, and let me know.

We had a chance to go camping last weekend, and we took it. Last Friday, we packed up the little Honda Civic with clothes, toys, food, beverages, and anything else that came to mind, and left town for Sequoia National Park. After a five plus hour drive, we hit our campsite, in the beautiful Kern Valley, right next to the Kern River. We met up with some family and friends, and took over two camping spots. We slept in our tent, and my son Lucas slept in his own tent this trip, thanks to Grandma and Papa!

Saturday was a lazy day, we hardly left the campsite. We hung out in front of the fire pit, talked, napped, and enjoyed the beautiful valley around us. The Kern River was about 2 hundred feet from our campsite, which made for a nice background for sleeping. The river was fairly high, cold, and moving quickly, but we saw a few brave souls venture downstream in kayaks despite all that. That night we made friends with a few other campers, and stayed up late enjoying the company.

Sunday, we ventured out across the river to hike the Whiskey Flat Trail, which was less than a half mile long. On the way back, we forked off the trail, and ended up on a beautiful rock outcropping into the Kern River. We lounged here for an hour or so, enjoying the cool river air, and the great rapids that formed in the river. The rock was some sort of shale, which made great skipping rocks.

We left Sunday evening, the rest of our group stayed on through Monday. If you are in California, and are wanting to explore some of our national parks, I’d recommend the Sequoia National Park.

I love Flickr. I use it fairly often, and I really like the site as a whole. It’s a wonderful way to share photos with friends, family, and the world at large. The creators have done a bang-up job of keeping the site useable with the flood of users it’s had since it opened. If you’re looking for some time to kill, Flickr is a great way to do it. Flickr recently made some upgrades to the site, and I really like what they’ve done.

One thing that’s always bothered me about Flickr though, is keeping track of comments made on photos. You get no notification when someone comments on a photo of yours, and the same when you leave a comment on someone else’s photo. If you’re like me, busy, it’s hard to remember to check in on pictures you’ve commented on to see replies. Well, I’ve found a simple, and not completely perfect way around this. RSS.

In the new navigation of your Flickr page, you will see in the drop down menu “Comments You’ve Made”. This takes you to a page that lists by date comments you’ve made on other people’s photos, as well as any replies. This page has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. While this isn’t as nice as an email reminder, it’s better than nothing. I’m a heavy RSS user, so it’ll fit into my flow fairly well. People that haven’t caught on to, or aren’t interested in RSS yet, will not gain as much.

Similarly, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for your own recent activity page, which will give you notice when someone comments on your photos. Again, for the RSS users out there.

I’m sure these are old hat to die-hard Flickr users, but I just found them, and so others like myself may benefit from this.