.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Red state vs. blue state software for your PDA and laptop
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.OTHER
.SUMMARY For whatever reasons (and they’re twisted), we didn’t manage to kill this article. So, it’s in this spirit of newly discovered brotherhood (and grits, did we mention the grits?) that we bring you our review of red state vs. blue state software for your PDA. To be fair, we’ve discovered we really love grits, and, frankly, there’s been no really good hate mail for months. And, with all the warmth made possible by a sunny Florida summer, we bring you Red vs. Blue, state edition.
For all my life, at least until recently, I’ve lived in blue states. I was born in New York, grew up in New Jersey, went to engineering school in Massachusetts, went to grad school and did my early professional work in California’s Silicon Valley, and spent most of the 90s and the first five years of the 21st century in New Jersey again.
But last August, seeking to escape the snows of the Northeast, Denise and I moved to Florida, and we’ve been slowly aclimating ourselves to the world of the red state.
Some red state life is really nice. For example, when you leave a Wal-Mart, the nice people often wish you a blessed day. That’s a lot better than the New Jersey Wal-Mart employees swearing at you in ten different languages. In fact, people down here are generally more polite. The lawn guy likes to randomly show up without warning and preach at us, but he does a fabulous job trimming the grass and laying down mulch.
It’s in this spirit of newly discovered brotherhood (and grits, did I mention the grits?) that we bring you our review of red state vs. blue state software for your PDA and laptop. To be fair, I’ve discovered I really love grits, and, frankly, there’s been no really good hate mail for months. With all the warmth made possible by a sunny Florida summer, I bring you Red vs. Blue, state edition.
.TEASER We have absolutely no self-control this week. Tap here to see for yourself.
.H1 Red state software
It’s difficult, really, understanding red state software unless you’ve really lived here for a while. Then, eventually, themes begin to take form. First and foremost is The Bible. And no one does the Bible on PDAs better than Laridian.
.H2 Get thee to a Bible program
Laridian sells MyBible 4, as shown in Figure A.
.FIG A If it’s your Bible you want, it’s MyBible.
MyBible allows you to go directly to any verse in the Bible, search your Bibles and books by word or phrase, open up to three windows at once to view Bibles and books side-by-side and much more. The program even lets you choose the Bible you want, including:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET American Standard Version
.BULLET The Amplified Bible
.BULLET Darby’s New Translation
.BULLET English Standard Version
.BULLET Holman Christian Standard Bible
.BULLET King James Version
.BULLET The Message
.BULLET New American Standard Bible
.BULLET New International Version
.BULLET New King James Version
.BULLET New Living Translation
.BULLET Revised Standard Version
.BULLET Today’s New International Version
.BULLET Today’s New International Version – New Testament
.BULLET World English Bible
.BULLET Young’s Literal Translation
.END_LIST
Sadly, neither the Mac Bible nor the TTL Databook is available, but you can’t have everything. A four out of five.
.RATING 4
.H2 It’s all about NASCAR
If you’re a red stater, then you think about NASCAR. A lot. Personally, anything with a big motor that is descended from the moonshine runners of the prohibition era has to be cool. If you want to keep track of the upcoming races, consider the free RaceSched, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Bruce Richards has written a great little program.
RaceSched is a great little program that lets you track the race schedules by downloading some schedule files. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the schedule files have been updated since 2005, netting the program a three out of five.
.RATING 3
.H2 Finger-lickin’ good
You ain’t lived ’til you’ve had great barbeque. Down here, I’ve found quite a few great barbeque restaurants, plus, of course, I’ve now got a kickin’ Weber grill right in my own backyard. When it comes to barbeque, there ain’t nuthin’ that beats the ol’ BarBQ Buddy, shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C BarBQ Buddy helps you plan your feast.
This Pocket PC software is chock full of features, from a graphic that shows you where everyone’s food is on the grill (a real problem, as I discovered when I cooked eight steaks at once for my family!), to precision grilling times. BarBQ Buddy is perhaps just a little too high-tech for the true grilling purist, but good steak is always worth good software. A four out of five.
.RATING 4
.H2 Be your own NSA
Do you yearn to be part of the NSA? Do you feel the need to eavesdrop on calls and conversations of suspicious Americans, like that guy down the street who reads the New York Times each day? Well, now you can. With IamBigBrother, shown in Figure D, you, too, can spy on your neighbors, friends, and family.
.FIGPAIR D Record everything and you be the judge.
With IamBigBrother, you can secretly monitor all incoming and outgoing email, instant messages, chats, websites and more. Once the product is downloaded and installed, it is totally hidden, and only you can access it.
As described by the company:
.QUOTE Our software runs in stealth mode where it is not detected by the user of the computer. It captures everything from chats and instant messages to email, web sites and much more. It can even take a picture of the screen when certain words are typed!
Some notes: this product may well be illegal, immoral, or unethical. But if that’s good enough for our President, that’s good enough for us! We’re not going to rate this product because, really, how can you rate that sense of security you get when rights are infringed? It’s priceless.
.H2 Keep George W. Bush in your hip pocket
We couldn’t wrap up our red state revival without the all-important George W. Bush restrospective. Written by Klaus Nahr of Germany, BushCheney04: The Bush Record, shown in Figure E, is a multimedia extravaganza of George W. Goodness.
.FIG E Klaus and George go way back.
It’s a screensaver for your Palm OS handheld and a celebration of quotes and pictures, a lovingly crafted tribute to an American leader from some guy in Germany. Yeah, I couldn’t rate this one, either.
.H1 Blue state software
If you’re one of them northern liberals, you know the sorts of software that’ll appeal to you. Soft, namby-pamby stuff. In the interests of fairness (when, really, us red state folk can just squash ya’ll like the bugs you are), we’ve got some blue state software for you all to whine about.
.H2 Them damned rights and stuff
So, yer one of them people who goes running to that pesky Constitution all the time, eh? As we all know, but some of us have seemed to forget over the past few years, the United States Constitution is one of the most powerful, moving, and freedom-inspiring documents ever written. If you’d like to carry a copy with you, as shown in Figure F, now you can.
.FIG F No matter how small the print, the impact of the document has been huge.
How else could we rate it? We give the United States Constitution a five out of five.
.RATING 5
.H2 Protecting privacy
Them blue state people all seem to want them their privacy. I don’t personally understand it, but if you’re a BlackBerry user and you want to make sure all your communications are secure, consider the PGP Support Package for BlackBerry, a tool that extends PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption support to BlackBerry devices.
As shown in Figure G, this is an enterprise-level product. But hey, big business isn’t limited solely to Haliburton, now is it?
.FIGPAIR G You can get PGP encryption for your BlackBerry.
PGP has always been a very solid solution, and we give PGP Support Package for BlackBerry a four out of five.
.RATING 4
.H2 Going for Brokeback
There’s no way we can compile a red state vs. blue state compendium without at least one Brokeback Mountain reference. So if you need to take your Brokeback with you wherever you go, you can now play it on your PSP (PlayStation Portable) in UMD (Universal Media Disk) form.
Weirdly, you can get this movie in UMD form from Amazon U.K., but not from Amazon in the U.S. I’m not even going to bother with a conspiracy theory here. And, because it had a plot (I’m not big on movies with plots), we’re going to avoid giving this one a rating as well.
.H2 Planning your family
Back in 2005, we ran a complete review of Woman Calendar, shown in Figure H.
.FIG H Woman Calendar can help you keep track of your health needs.
While the program can be used for family planning, it’s also a very important tool for all women managing their health-related details. The program is useful in monitoring menstrual cycles, predicting and charting ovulation data and fertility times, printing ovulation charts, scheduling and documenting doctor appointments, and maintaining other health-related information.
At the time, we gave the product a four out of five review.
.RATING 4
.H2 Become the liberal media
If you’re a blue stater, you already have a liberal media bias. But as we all have seen in the past few years, big media doesn’t necessarily mean responsible media anymore. In fact, the citizen journalist may well have a far more far reaching impact on mass communications than most people expect.
Into this world of personal mass communications, we bring you HBlogger, shown in Figure I.
.FIG I Blog directly into your favorite blogging program.
HBlogger’s a neat little beast because it will allow you to enter your blog entries right from your Palm OS handheld and post them to your favorite blogging site. So far, HBlogger supports Live Journal, Blogger, Movable Type, UJournal, DeadJournal, Blurty, NeedlessPanic, Plogs, Caleida, GreatestJournal, TypePad, and Weblogs.
A very interesting product, we give HBlogger a four out of five.
.RATING 4
.H1 Wrapping up our shootout
Whether you’re a blue state liberal or a red state conservative, or a blue state conservative or a red state liberal, or even a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, there’s software for your every leaning.
Now, I know I’ve undoubtedly insulted someone, somewhere out there and you’re already working on sending me letters about it. Before you take all that time, let’s recap. Back when I suggested our readers go out and vote, I got hate mail because, somehow, voting was a liberal activity.
Back when I suggested our readers stand up for their rights when it came to the use of digital media, I got hate mail because, somehow, rights were something only those "limp-wristed" (yeah, that was in the email) New York liberals care about. And back when I suggested that readers might want to learn additional job skills because it’s good to keep up with the latest technology, I got hate mail for that, too.
I’ve gotten pretty little messages of hate from preachers, prisoners, pathologists, and photographers. I’ve also gotten wonderfully complimentary mail from the same categories of readers. Bottom line: I’ve pretty much seen it all. Write if you want, but you’re probably not going to learn me anything my lawn guy hasn’t tried to teach me already.
Go forth, be blessed, and for Christ’s sake, have a damned sense of humor.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on MyBible, visit http://www.laridian.com.
For more information on RaceSched, visit http://www.pdabruce.com.
For more information on BarBQ Buddy, visit http://www.mobiledynamo.com.
For more information on IamBigBrother, visit http://www.iambigbrother.com.
For more information on BushCheney04, visit http://palmbox.de/BushCheney04/index.htm.
For more information on a PDA version of the U.S. Constitution, visit http://www.thequickster.com/products/#tcotus.
For more information on PGP Support Package for BlackBerry, visit http://www.pgp.com/products/universal/blackberry/index.html.
For more information on the Brokeback Mountain UMD, visit http://amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/B000EF7XMY.
For more information on Woman Calendar, visit http://www.beiks.com/woman.
For more information on HBlogger, visit http://www.normsoft.com/products/palm/hblogger.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
