Thank you, Jon.

My sister's Thrive is here. It's interesting to handle a tablet with a different form factor. I don't believe Apple has any sensible point suing the panties off of Samsung, but the Thrive is clearly not like either of them. I don't think my sister will be disappointed that it's thicker than mine, and the rubberised back should make it feel like it's rugged on purpose.

I'm disappointed by the charger having a non-standard form factor, but I notice it came with a mini (or micro, didn't look real hard) cable. I suppose if I actually do research I'll find out if it can be used for more than data transfer.

I can't believe I can't work out what to install for her. A peril of having five thousand apps on my own devices. I need to focus on her productivity as a fanfic reader and a university lecturer and a lover of movies. In whatever order.

Speaking of my own devices, the Galaxy Nexus is behind on shipping, my backup phone won't boot, and my "primary" has a pain in its diodes down the left side. Thank god it auto-rotates, but that still only fixes a little. The Home button is busted, and bits of the screen are highly sensitive, so it takes a million tries because of over or under-sensitivity to do the littlest things.

I'm sorely tempted to buy a phone with a return policy to hold me out until the Nexus comes. This is fucking me over so hard. But that's...immoral. But this is the place I get myself into buy finding a price for the phone that's at least $50 less than anywhere else I've seen over the past 2 weeks.

the charger having a non-standard form factor

Wait, what? I don't know the exact dimensions, but it looks like a standard EIAJ coaxial power connector to me.

Isn't everything moving towards USB? That was the standard I meant. I can use one plug/car charger for my phones, iPod, Nook, and tablet, although I do need different cables. I got very acclimated, and was surprised to see a laptop-looking charger for a mobile device.

Will it charge over USB? I have to admit I've only been poking around with software. I only just found the covered ports.

No charging over USB, sorry.

It's great that it's got all those ports, but it's a damned shame when vendors can't work out how to minimise cables. I get the Apple explanation for how much more functionality they're pumping over their custom connectors.

I don't know what's up with Samsung, though. Or what Toshiba's reason is. It's so nice, at least, to be able to minimise my travel stuff by getting the higher powered Tab compatible car charger and USB plug, and then only fiddle with cables. But it's still too much. I need three cables to support my habit.

My sister doesn't know from shit, so she won't be bothered, I don't think. Except maybe for car charging.

Android File Transfer works on the Thrive! I am so jealous.

When the fuck is the MTP shit going to get resolved for newer devices, dammit? Samsung's restrictions are ridiculous. I can only transfer media files from my Mac, but anything from my PC?

MY PC IS IN THE OTHER ROOM. Don't fuck with me.

triple threat:

Have any of you guys used Dragon Go! I've only played around with it, but looks very nifty. I asked to "Give me a car" and it rapidly did a range of things. The main return is google results, flanked by WIki results, Twitter results, pictures, music videos, youtube, map of businesses with car in the name...

Let me try something else.

"Nearby French restaurants" give me Yelp results in my neighbourhood, flanked with OpenTable results, maps, google, wikipedia, and bing phone numbers.

"Movies with Tom Hardy": Fandango listings, flanked with IMDB, google, wikipedia, and a Pandora and Last.fm channel.

Definitely interesting...I love what the siri challenges have brought forth.

"Movies with Tom Hardy": Fandango listings, flanked with IMDB, google, wikipedia, and a Pandora and Last.fm channel.

I love living in the future. It makes objectifying Tom Hardy so much easier.

I'm trying to configure VOIP on my sister's tablet (using GrooveIP), and noticed something on mine--I don't see where Honeycomb lets you set individual ring tones. Am I missing something? I dig that they're not looking at this as a phone, but there must be a way around it.

My sister now has a Florida phone number. I hope she's happy. And now she can make free calls to and from the US that have no cost, as long as she's on a Wi Fi network.

And we can text each other for free again!

I wonder if she'll get over her Google evil issues and just use the damned software and services.