Apple’s recent upgrade to the iPhone software introduced the ability to install applications from the AppStore. One of the free apps allows users to access and update their WorsPress blogs from the iPhone.

The absence of cut and paste and a larger keyboard will keep the iPhone from being a great blogging tool, but it’s handy for quick updates

Mark

Caught this critter on my way home Monday night about two miles from home

Hong Kong Phooey was one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons when I was growing up. There were only 16 episodes ever made, but I must have seen them all more than a few times.

Back in the real world, I just returned from a two-week webMethods consulting assignment in Hong Kong. My wife joined me after the project was over for a few days of vacation.

I took this photo from Victoria Peak on a foggy evening after we enjoyed a great dinner there.

I enjoyed the big city life of Hong Kong and was truly impressed by how late the sidewalks and restaurants are crowded with people. At 11:30 PM there are still hundreds of people going about their normal routines.

However, after living in the wide open west of Colorado for over 10 years, I must admit that I found the relative quiet of Stanley Village and Repulse Bay much more enjoyable.

Update: Several months ago, I was contacted by someone from the French publication Nature & Progrèsfor permission to use the “Hong Kong Island at Night” photo in a future edition of their magazine. My only request was to be given credit for the photo and to receive a copy of the magazine when it was published. Well, it arrived last week. Wow, does that mean I am a published photographer now? I need to add that to my resume!

Now this seems like something for the techno-geek who has everything!

… We get to play baseball!”

That quote, from Dennis Quaid’s Jimmy Morris character in Disney’s The Rookie, captures pretty well how I feel about going to work when working on something interesting. I can’t believe I get paid to do something so much fun. I wake up early, stay late and generally become a technology-focused dweeb at least until I get past the fun figure-out-how-to-do-something-totally-new phase.

I do feel incredibly lucky to have a job that I like almost all of the time. It’s even better when that job happens to be in town and doesn’t involve too many frequent filer miles.

From the Associated Press

The Air Force’s new F-22A Raptor is such a dominant fighter jet that in mock dogfights its pilots typically take on six F-15 Eagles at once.

Despite the favorable odds, the F-15s, still one of the world’s most capable fighters, are no contest for the fastest radar-evading stealth jet ever built.

“The F-15 pilots, they are the world’s best pilots,” said Lt. Col. David Krumm, an F-22A instructor pilot. “When you take them flying against anyone else in the world, they are going to wipe the floor with them. It’s a startling moment for them to come down here and get waylaid.”

The F-22A officially became ready for combat this month with a squadron of 12 Raptors on standby for worldwide deployment at Langley Air Force Base, Va.

I first read about KMaps several months ago on the Treonauts blog. Having gotten hopelessly loss recently while traveling out of town, I decided to hunt it down and get it fired up on my phone.

KMaps brings the power and ease of use of Google Maps to your Treo smartphone (and coming soon to Blackberry as well). It has a simplified user interface tailored to mobile use, but basically provides the same tiled mapping interface (minus the satellite and hybrid views) as the brower-based verion.

More screenshots

KMaps is a java application, so you’ll need to install the IBM Websphere Anywhere Micro Edition Java virtual machine recommended by Palm. This software was included on the Software installation CDROM that came with the Treo, but can be downloaded for free by navigating to http://www.palm.com/us/support/jvm/ , filling in the form, selecting your device and downloading WEME571.zip and following the installation instructions (they are fairly simple).

Once Java is installed and configured by changing the Java memory and thread size parameters, you are ready to install KMaps. Withing a few seconds of installing the app by syncing my phone, I was pulling up a Google map of my house and plotting directions to the offices of my next prospective client.

My wife and I were in downtown Denver last night for an anniversary dinner and we used KMaps to find the exact address and phone number of the restaurant. I’m only sorry I didn’t have this a few weeks ago to save me some frustration while driving around Atlanta.

The best thing about KMaps is that, for now anyway, its totally free. You will need a decent data plan, of course, but what avid Treo user doesn’t already have one of those?

KMaps has been so succesful that it was recently acquired by ULocate. The developer of KMaps, Ivan Mitrovic, is in the process of testing out the port to Blackberry and I’m sure he’ll be expanding KMaps more in the future.

You can download KMaps from the ULocate KMaps downloads page.

My darling bride gave me a new gadget for our anniversary yesterday. It’s a Delphi MyFi XM Radio.

I’ve activated the radio and browsed through a few channels, but need to spend some quality time with the manual to see how to get the best reception up here in the mountains.

A common end-of-year task for many humans (most of us have PC’s now, i think) is updating their virus scanning, anti-spyware, anti-spam software.

My subscriptions to Norton’s Antivirus licenses on my laptops and desktop ran out a few months back so I did a bit of research and selected F-Secure Anti-Virus 2006.

I had been enjoying occasional trips to the F-Secure blog for a few months and was very impressed by their passion for detecting and sharing information about new viruses, trojans and spyware. Basically, I conducted the research mostly to confirm my general impression that these virus geeks up in Finland really knew their stuff and that my collection of PC’s would be in good hands with there software.

Even if you are using another vendor’s tool, I’d recommend adding F-Secure’s blog to your list. I’m not aware of any mobile viruses to hit the PalmOne Treo family of smartphones, but when they do (and they will) F-Secure will be the place I will go to protect my phone.

Here are a few of my favorite posts from today’s visit to the F-Secure blog:

Today was a travel day. Somewhere along the line I read a copy of USAToday. The article on “Early Adopter Technologies” caught my eye not only because I use almost every one of the technologies listed below, but because, apparently, so do many of my fellow Coloradans.

Four of the 25 counties that contain the highest percentage of tech-centric households are in Colorado, in the booming Denver region. Six are in the Northern Virginia-Washington-Baltimore corridor. And three are in Utah, in the Salt Lake City and Provo areas. Also among the top 25 are counties in Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan and Texas.

Early Adopter Technologies - the percentage of U.S. households that have the following technologies: