Delivery Status is a dashboard widget with a very simple purpose: to help you track packages. You can set up multiple widgets to track multiple packages. It covers just about every shipping service and you can even track orders from companies like Amazon and Apple. Nice, but it gets better.

With version 4.5, the genius(es?) at June Cloud added a sync service. Your package info can be synchronized with their server. Why? Naturally so all your packages can also be tracked on your iPhone or iPod Touch. No manual sync required. It just works. And its awesome.

Did I mention that this is all free?

Why? Who cares. Just get it.

Speech recognition always seems to be on the verge of having a big impact, only to recede into the shadows after each breakthrough. The latest arrival is the latest update to the Google app for the iPhone which adds voice search capabilities. The idea is quite promising and seems to be reasonable well designed. After launching the app, you lift the phone to your ear. The accelerometers in the iPhone sense the movement and the phone starts listening to your speech. You speak your search words and Google translates it into a text search.

This morning I was in a conference about pancreas transplantation and had a few lingering questions, so I decided to give it a try with the search words “pancreas transplantation”.

My first attempt yielded “sexy costumes.” Not exactly what I was looking for. Yes, I am sure I want to delete my search history.

With a second try, I got “transportation.” Close, but not quite.

The third and fourth attempts failed completely.

With the fifth, Google returned “Michigan”.

To be fair to Google, all this was done while I was walking to my office, but I spoke clearly and slowly.

Finally, I tried again in the calm of my office. The first attempt couldn’t be processed by Google, but another try finally got the correct results.

The speech recognition is supposed to get better as more people use it, but so far I’m not terribly impressed.

Google Flu Trends: “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.”

Nice use of Google’s power…

Not much to do when the power is out in you office and the laptop battery is dead.

Having exhausted the options on a borrowed deskto, there was only one thing left to do…

Since trying out MacSpeak Dictate, I found a useful feature called “text macros” which allows you to link a block of text to a voice command. Say the command, and the text is magically inserted. One problem: MacSpeak applies it’s own rules to the formatting of the text, so words may not be capitalized the way you originally entered them. Solution: use an AppleScript instead, which can also be linked to a voice command.

I’ve been searching high and low for how to get AppleScript to type a block of text on command. There’s the “keystroke” command but this is extremely slow for entering a lot of text. The solution I came up with involves saving the current contents of the clip board, inserting the text you want to insert on the clipboard, and getting AppleScript to paste it. Finally AppleScript restores the original contents of the clipboard. I had to use a delay before restoring the clipboard because sometimes the restore goes through before the text is pasted.

tell application "System Events"
	set currentClipboard to the clipboard
	set the clipboard to "Ishir Bhan, M.D., M.P.H."
	keystroke "v" using {command down}
	delay 1
	set the clipboard to currentClipboard
end tell

To include line breaks in your text, just use \n.

For years, I have been subject to the unrelenting control of the consumer electronics market. I have been forced, by what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand,” to purchase every new shiny gadget that comes along. I have been a slave to the whim of the Silicon Valley CEOs.

Not this year.

Not this time.

No, my friends, today I declare my independence from these forces of oppression. This timing is no accident. Not only is today Independence Day, but in exactly one week, Apple will release the iPhone 3G. Many assumed someone who waited in line for eight hours for the original model and who uses the tag line “iPhone therefore I am” on his blog would be roped into queuing up for the second coming. They are wrong. 

I don’t need their so-called “high speed” wireless data service. I’ll take my time. I don’t need their GPS. I know exactly where I am. And where I’m going. And it’s not to the Apple store. Or the AT&T store. 

We live in a free country and I intend to exercise my freedom.

Thank you.

And God bless America.

I’m an internet junkie, I admit it. Like a drug addict, I need a constant stream of internet flowing into my brain or I start to undergo withdrawal. It doesn’t even really matter what I’m reading, but that steady stream of new information keeps me going. I knew it was bad several years ago when my home internet connection, a cable model, stopped working one evening. After a couple hours of internal debate, I broke down and went back back to work just to get an hour of surfing in before returning home.

You think that’s bad? It’s gotten worse. Since I got my iPhone, the internet is basically sitting in my pocket, its siren song only an arms length away. I find myself almost unconsciously reaching into my pocket to pull out my phone whenever there is some downtime (an elevator ride, a walk down the hall, or even a lull in the coversation). It’s a bad habit and I know I have to stop, but at least I can admit the problem.

I normally hate traveling to hotels because inevitably there is some horrendous internet setup where the company tries to gouge addicts such as myself. Typical prices seem to be $10 a day, meaning that within the course of a typical stay I’ve spent as much on access as I spend in a typical month (and, of course, my home internet fees don’t magically disappear during this time). The worst I’ve seen was in Barcelona, where truly unlimited access from within the hotel cost 27 euros. Even I had to draw the line there…with the declining dollar, that’s just criminal.

I arrived in Chicago for a conference last night and was surprised to see the Holiday Inn advertising “Free Highspeed Wireless” access for all its guests. I was overjoyed, but as is typical with these offers, there’s always a catch. They say you get what you pay for, and that’s pretty much what I’ve been able to eke out of this service. The access point, ironically named “stayonline”, drops my connection every few minutes. When I manage to get a signal, the experience allows me to reminisce about the “good old days” of 2400-bps modems. Yes, it’s slow.

Maybe I’ll be forced to actually go out and explore the city.

With my iPhone close at hand, of course.

It is with great frustration that I find myself using Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. After years of putting up with the sluggish Office 2004, loyal users are rewarded with this piece of garbage. Though there are admittedly some improvements in the apps themselves, there is some inexcusable bugginess in the interface that is driving me nuts.

Microsoft Word is the biggest culprit so far. It generally misbehaves with Spaces. Windows will relocate to a new space for no good reason. Sometimes windows will not come to the foreground when clicked. This is not a general problem with Spaces, but is unique to Word as best I can tell.

Excel is giving me a rather unique problem at the moment. I have an external monitor hooked up to my MacBook. When I put an Excel window on the external monitor, it won’t let me drag it to the top of the screen. It only lets me drag it as far as the top of my internal screen, which is only about 2/3 of the way up the (larger) external display.

Microsoft tried to add new functionality by pop-up ribbons in both applications, but I have yet to find anything useful hidden in these interface monstrosities.

The educational version of Office also fails to connect to Microsoft’s own Exchange servers. Given the prevalence of Exchange use at academic institutions, this is mind-boggling.

The last complaint is admittedly not a bug, but rather a foolish feature restriction. The former issues are completely inexcusable and are likely completely due to Microsoft’s non-standard development practices. Add to this the fact that the apps are slow to launch, and I think there will rapidly be an emerging market for non-MS office apps.

Tesla: Is the Tesla Supercar Soon to be a Thing of Electric Car Fiction?. “…it seems the group is making moves to cease operation…”

If true, this is really too bad. Though I am a happy Prius owner, I’ve been yearning for a true electric car that can bypass the pump completely. I know there are Prius out there, but this was to be the first truly high-end electric that could shatter the perception that electrics are somehow inferior to their gas guzzling cousins. We can always hope that hydrogen cars start materializing soon. I like the idea of exhaust that is just water. Hmmm…I wonder if we have more humid cities in our future.

(Via Gizmodo.)

The Microsoft Zune has not has an easy introduction to the iPod-dominated digital music player market. The much-maligned music player is perhaps best known for including brown among its color options. Microsoft included WiFi in their original Zune, but the use was of questionable utility at best. Instead of using WiFi to do something obvious like connect to the internet, a genius at Microsoft decided it should be used only for “squirting” songs to your friends, so they could listen for 3 days or 3 plays (whichever came first). Aside from the restrictions of a system that sounds like a car warranty, the obvious problem with this scheme is that it requires someone with another Zune who has similar music tastes to yourself. If if it just required another Zune, that would be a tall order. I have yet to see one outside of an electronics store.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m a fan of competition. Though I generally like Apple products, I think it’s appropriate for the company to work for its success. The new Zune still doesn’t connect to the internet (unlike Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch), but does allow for wireless syncing. Initially, this didn’t seem like a particularly brilliant idea either. I’m still not convinced its essential for a music player, but it makes a lot of sense for a device like the iPhone. I like to keep my iPhone in my room when I’m sleeping in case I get a call, but it’s not necessarily convenient to keep a computer in the same place…and it’s easy to forget to sync before leaving. With a laptop, this is particularly important, since it’s not practical to leave a sync cable attached as can be done with a desktop. Hopefully Apple will add this functionality in a future update.