In practice

One benefit of writing In Theory is the abundance of unsolicited information I have gotten from the comments. I have learned that you say "30-year old" and "80-page paper", not "30-years old" and "80-pages paper," that Michael Chabon has written a most beautiful and insightful essay about Berkeley, that the noun of "to pronounce" is "pronunciation," and much more.

Now I am going to try and see how it works with solicited information. Google analytics tells me that a lot of you readers use windows (for shame!) and I am sure that many of you have cell phones. So, what is a good piece of software to connect a phone to a windows computer via bluetooth?

Here "good" would include sending text messages and reading received ones through the computer, editing and "sync-ing" contacts, moving files to (ringtones) and from (pictures) the phone, and having a decent interface. Bluephone for Mac does all this, plus lots of cute things, such as pausing iTunes and showing a notice when there is an incoming call.

Synccell moves files, "syncs" contacts and sends text messages, but it cannot read text messages, and the interface is disastrous. Mobiledit supposedly does all the basic things, but it can't read the file system of my phone (and their forum is full of users having various complaints about upload and download).

These are such commonly useful functionalities, there has to be a program that does it well. Isn't there? In fact I am surprised that Google hasn't come up with a beautifully designed application that integrates with Google Calendar, Google Talk, GMail, and so on.

[Theory post to follow soon.]