Ari's Planet

Motorola put a standard usb socket on their phones. this would, to a naive observer, make you think that you can just plug the phone into any old usb socket to charge it. wrong. the usb spec expects devices to negotiate with the host. at first they can draw 100 ma, but after negotiation they can draw more power. i own a motorola v190 handset, but the following information pertains to many other motorola phones that have a mini-usb connector for charging, though i don't know exactly which models.

to charge from a pc using a standard usb data cable you need to install motorola's drivers. i installed the main driver, but that didn't enable charging through a standard usb cable. there are two "charging" drivers with cryptic model numbers, all starting with "w". it is unclear which driver is needed for my v190. i downloaded both drivers. after a while i discovered that the main driver install just installs a program that in turn does the install, so i ran (or reran, not sure) this program and now the phone is recognized and charges.

This post describes my workflow to handle digital images and how I publish them on my web site while on the road. My camera has shot about 35,000 images, nearly all of which have been taken on my trip which started in August of 2007 (it is now May 2008).

Equipment and software needed

Digital camera, flash memory, spare batteries
External USB disk, 2.5", and USB cable
Portable 2.5" disk drive that can copy cards directly
Good card reader with USB cable
USB flash stick with portable software (see below) and notes

Thought I'd write up a few opinions about some of my equipment. This will be an ongoing endeavor, there is so much stuff it would take some time.

Clothing