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Michael Gartenberg


Life is a series of hellos and goodbyesAugust 15

As I'm sure you all know, JupiterResearch is now a part of Forrester Research.  It's been a great (if, somewhat bumpy) ride at Jupiter over the years but with this transition, for me this part of the ride ends. After much thought, I have decided not join my colleagues at Forrester and instead will be pursuing other interests.

My last day at Jupiter (er, Forrester) will be today, Friday, August 15th. I'm going to take a little time off and rest for a bit, but I'll be back soon and tell you all what's next. You can follow my adventures at gartenblog.net, on twitter.com/gartenberg and reach me at gartenberg AT gmail. Or just give me a call at 201.862.0443. Talk to you all soon.

I wish all my colleagues at Jupiter good luck and much success as they become part of the Forrester organization. It has truly been an honor and privilege working with you side by side over the years.

Vongo -RIPAugust 12

With a whimper and not much of a bang, Vongo is closing the doors. The service had some potential at launch way back in Jan of 2006 when along with Windows Media 11, MTV Urge, and the Toshiba Gigabeat (before MSFT caught Zune fever). They are still looking at offering "white label" services but this pretty much closes the door on the service for the most part. RIP

Blackberry Bold in the houseAugust 7

Have the new Blackberry Bold in the house. First thoughts? Excellent. Love the fit and finish. New updated UI is wonderful and it's fully loaded with all the features and radios you'd expect in a flagship device. My software build isn't final (should have an updated build shortly) so I won't get into a formal review just yet.

Typing one handed is not funAugust 6

Typing this with just my right hand. Yesterday my left hand started acting oddly (i am of course a lefty) and with enough pain that I actually called and made an app't with a doctor for today. This morning, my fingers were not working well at all, I did a few meetings this morning in NY and then went to see the doc. After a long wait for an X-Ray and some tests, doc says it doesn't *seem* to be a big issue and is likely related to long sessions with laptops in coach as well lots of mobile device use (he yelled at me when I was twittering waiting for the X-Ray). Looks like I will likely need a cortizone shot and was told to stay off the keyboards for a few days... what this all means is posting and twittering as well as email responses are going to be light. Going to see how well Vista speech recognition really is.

 

UPDATE - just dropped my coffee cup... hand couldn't hold it. That was not good. Might call doc back tomorrow.

Laptop Mag's XP OLPC Experience is Not MineAugust 6

Cant' speak to the exclusive nature of Laptop Mag's running an OLPC running XP as I've been running one here for several weeks. I am finding a totally different experience with performance and load times much different  and much better than the Laptops folks are getting. I checked with MSFT and it seems there's came from the OLPC folks directly (mine came from MSFT) and our builds it seems are different. Overall, I think the hardware itself is just lacking (my first unit developed keyboard problems after a few days and needed to be swapped out) and the overall performance is hardly going to meet the needs of the uber user. It is much better than the stock OLPC OS IMHO and I imagine much more useful as well.

I have had a few students use the machine and my next phase of testing will be to give it to an elementary student to use for a bit when school starts. Will keep you posted here.