Author: Tim Probst

Early adopting super geek, musician, father, resident tech guru.

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A little over a month ago, something different happened on the way home from one of my occasional trips to Washington, DC. Prior to calling Group A to board, a large group of older gentlemen in matching yellow shirts began congregating in the pre-boarding area and eventually boarded the plane.

It turns out that I was on a plane with a group of World War II veterans going home after visiting their memorial courtesy of Franklin County Honor Flight, a not for profit group dedicated to making sure the remaining WWII veterans in the Saint Louis area who are willing and able to visit the World War II Memorial are able to do so at no cost to them.

As I boarded the plane and headed to the back passing row after row of veterans, I could tell that they had experienced a wonderful day. You can see the pictures from that day on the organization’s web site. Even Bob Doll was there! Well, it turns out that their day was not quite over. Once we had reached cruising altitude, the leader of the group took over the microphone duties from the flight attendants and began recognizing each veteran on the flight one by one giving their rank and a description of where and how they served in the War. It was an incredible experience. After everyone had been recognized, the veterans received a well-deserved round of applause from everyone on the plane. I will not soon forget my flight with some of the best from the Greatest Generation.

If you’d like to learn more about or donate to Honor Flight, visit Franklin County Honor Flight in the Saint Louis area or the national site for the Honor Flight Network.

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Since Steve Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC in June, I have been waiting patiently (well, quite impatiently) for the new and improved .Mac which has been rebranded as MobileMe. Based on the keynote and guided tour, MobileMe finally looks like the mail, address book, and calendar applications I expected from Apple when they launch iTools and .Mac so many years ago. As a user of many devices and computers on a daily basis, I have always struggled with keeping everything synchronized. Perhaps MobileMe will finally provide the solution for which I have been looking.

My big question now is, will MobileMe provide enough functionality to convince me to move all of my email, contacts, and calendars from Gmail and Google Calendar to the MobileMe platform? This will be no small feat considering how long I have been using both of those Google applications. The one big plus for me will be the ability to use desktop applications on my Mac and Windows machines. Right now, I can use Gmail on the desktop using IMAP, but having to move messages from one label to another can become annoying and cumbersome. Google also has sync applications for Google Calendar that can sync with Outlook, but I have found the functionality to be buggy at best. To me, neither of these solutions is good enough, and they tend to take away from my productivity and enjoyment of the applications.

If MobileMe can truly deliver on its promise of providing a consistent user experience on my Mac using its built in Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications, my Windows machine using Outlook, and the Internet, I will be a very happy camper. My guess is a lot of other people will feel the exact same way. We’ll know any day now if MobileMe is really Exchange for the rest of us.

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I’m sure a lot of you have seen the outrageous and too-weird-to-be-true emails that have been circulating the Internet for over a year now regarding Barack Obama and his family. I find the one that claims he is secretly a Muslim especially amusing. Most of these emails are started by fear and rumor mongering Republicans who are scared to death that they’re going to killed in November. The problem is the people who continue to forward these lies to everyone in their address book because they do not have enough intelligence or common sense to realize that if something sounds completely outrageous, it probably is.

To fight these lies, Barack and his team have published a website called Fight the Smears to debunk the rumors and nonsense. You can find it at http://www.fightthesmears.com/. Here you will find the smears that have been circulating the Internet and evidence to prove them wrong. You can also submit new smears that you receive through email.

The Obama campaign has taken advantage of technology like no other campaign in history, and this is just another example of its leadership in the Internet space.

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If you had the choice between a rock festival featuring Arcade Fire, Wilco, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen and a pop festival featuring Madonna and Elton John, which one would you attend? Come on, be honest.

Now, let me ask another question. Which concert do you think would be in support of Barack Obama? If you said the rock festival, you’d be right on. The bands at the rock festival are insanely cool, current, and relevant just like Barack. The bands at the pop festival are lame, dated, and completely irrelevant just like Hillary and McCain. To be completely fair, John Mellencamp is supporting all Democrats, but seriously, he wouldn’t be caught dead playing a gig with Madonna and Elton John on purpose.

Indiana, North Carolina, let’s finish this thing. Listen to The Boss and the rest of the rock stars and vote for Barack tomorrow. You wouldn’t have to admit that you went to some lame pop concert on purpose.

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I just read an article in today’s Beacon News from Aurora, IL. My high school is the first school in the nation to perform Rent. It’s good to see that even after over fifteen years have past, the creative arts departments at West High are still putting on high quality performances. Check out the article when you have a chance.