Jonathan Hensley | The Blog | JHensley.org

Here are some recent :

• Google Sync for BlackBerry: Now with contacts
  You asked for it, so here it is. We're happy to announce that in the latest update to Google Sync for BlackBerry, we've added two-way contacts synchronization. This new functionality will enable you to sync your handheld's built-in address book with your Gmail contacts. This all happens in the background and over the air, so your information is always up to date, no matter where you are or what you're doing.
• PC Magazine Goes 100% Digital
  The January 2009 issue (Volume 28, Issue 1) of PC Magazine will mark a monumental transition for the publication. It is the last printed edition of this venerable publication. Of course, as with any technology-related enterprise, this is not the end, but the beginning of something exciting and new.
• Spice up your inbox with colors and themes
  Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.

Available starting today is the new BlackBerry Storm from Verizon Wireless.

I was a reluctant BlackBerry convert when my company switched from Windows Mobile devices… but I was sold on BlackBerry within a couple weeks. If I was on Verizon Wireless I would definitely be lobbying for a Storm. This phone looks pretty awesome from Verizon’s guided tour.

So, I’m browsing around Dell.com yesterday and I happen to see this little projector. The specs on this thing are crazy. It fits in the palm of your hand and weighs in at less than a pound!

Other than size, the things of note I see here are the fact that it uses the same power adapter as the new Dell Latitude E series notebooks and it uses LED instead of a bulb. Check out Dell’s intro video below.

• Businesses warming up to the iPhone
  the iPhone is making a guerrilla attack on the business world, brought into the corporate world by influential executives, CIOs rethinking their approach to deploying technology, and younger workers who move seamlessly between their personal and business lives.

  There are several high-profile businesses, such as Genentech and Disney (both with strong ties to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, of course), that have declared their intentions to work with Apple on deploying iPhones inside their corporations. That seems to be having the effect of increasing the overall number of business smartphone users, however, rather than turning the iPhone into any kind of "BlackBerry killer."

Here are some interesting links from today:

• Silicon Mountain Allio HDTV Has Built-in PC, Blu-ray, More
  That new HD LCD TV is great, but you know it really needs? A DVD/Blu-ray player, for starters. Also, if you could toss in an Intel Core2Duo processor and a terabyte of storage, that would be nice. And while we’re at it, I’m going to need a wireless keyboard and mouse, plus a split-screen feature, so I can multi-task. Got all that? Good.
• iPhone twice as reliable as BlackBerry? Dream on
  I love my iPhone and have never felt tempted to return to the BlackBerry, but I was still rolling my eyes at TechCrunch’s report of the iPhone being “twice as reliable as the BlackBerry”. After all, my iPhone crashed in four different applications in a 45-minute period this afternoon.Of course, the referenced SquareTrade study covers hardware malfunctions, not software malfunctions. In this, perhaps it is true that the malfunction rate for Apple’s smartphones after one year is only 5.6 percent, while Research In Motion’s phones crap out 11.2 percent of the time.

  But in day-to-day usage, I’ve found my iPhone software to be far less stable than the ugly-but-reliable BlackBerry software.

• Google can now OCR all PDFs
  Google has a new system that scans Acrobat PDFs on the web for words using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Similar to its process for using OCR to detect words in PDFs that have already been OCR processed, the new system will do the same for scanned documents posted online that haven’t yet undergone OCR.If you have scanned PDFs and are interested in having them converted into text, you can upload the images to your website and take advantage of this service.

  Simply follow the instructions for how to use Google OCR from the Digital Inspiration website

• Top 10 Things to Look Forward to in Windows 7
  While the next iteration of the ubiquitous Microsoft desktop operating system, Windows 7, isn’t a dramatic overhaul of its predecessor Windows Vista, it does fix several sore spots and add a few welcome features. Rumor has it that Windows 7 will drop in the middle of next year, but last month Microsoft released a “preview” tester build of Windows 7. After living in the Windows 7 Preview for a week now, several features and niceties jumped out at me which promise to make Windows a better place to work come 2009. Let’s take a look.