Among the many other reasons I am grateful not to live in Philadelphia anymore is their new cash-grab attempt; a $300 tax on all potentially profitable speech made over the internet.

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions toehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license. [0]

So a person who makes $11 in, say, Google Adsense revenue is now a “business” according to Philadelphia, and is required to pay $300 for the privilege of engaging in that commerce.

A Business Privilege License is required for all businesses operating in Philadelphia. This includes businesses that are located outside the city limits but do some or all of their business activities in the City. [1]

If I write a blog, and some of my readers are in Philadelphia, and maybe some of those readers click on an ad for which I receive a $0.10 bounty, am I now a business that is operating in Philadelphia? Where did the click take place?

Obviously, this is an absurd infringement on basic economic freedom. Taxes for the mere privilege of operating a business are wrong. The right to engage in commerce and trade at your own whim is absolute. Stop letting governments tell you with whom and under what conditions you may do so.

0. http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/08/19/blogging-business-privilege-tax-philadelphia

1. http://business.phila.gov/Pages/BusinessPrivilegeLicense.aspx?stage=Plan&type=All%20Business%20Types&section=City%20Registration&BSPContentListItem=Business%20Privilege%20License

I’m quite happy with my Fuze.

The only thing that has really frustrated me so far is the WiFi performance. It really just doesn’t seem to work right under some circumstances, so I’m going to have to do some reading over at xda-developers and see what’s up. I’ve heard a variety of rumors, like one that you have to turn off AT&T’s hidden proxy feature for WiFi to work at all.

Battery life is no problem. In fact, I’m pretty sure the battery is better than the one in the Tilt. Either that, or I’m better about putting this phone on the charger than I was with my Tilt.

The hard rubber case from AT&T is great. It sort of clips onto both halves of the phone, and feels very solid. It’s difficult to remove, and fits very snugly. It doesn’t even look too bad. Another big bonus of the case is that it gives the phone a nice amount of friction. I can set it on flat surfaces in my car and it won’t go sliding all over the place.

One more annoyance is AT&T’s customization of the keyboard. I would MUCH rather have the top row be dedicated numbers, like it was on the HTC Wizard. I have no idea why AT&T decided to make this change, but it was a stupid one. I need numbers way more frequently than I need symbols, and having to hit Fn to get numbers is a pain.

Finally, the accelerometer is cool. I’m actually planning to make a piece of software for it soon. Basically it will be a tamper sensor/alarm, so you can set your phone down on top of your laptop at Starbucks while you order your drink, and if some jackhole tries to move either, it sets off a loud noise.

The built-in game “teeter” is great fun while you’re sitting around in a doctor’s office or generally need to waste some time. However, I don’t recommend trying it while on the train – it’s nearly impossible to play, for reasons which should be obvious.

This is all based on initial impressions. Some of this may change as I get to know the device a little better.

The Good

The graphics are awesome. Once you go VGA, you’ll never go back. The sharpness and smoothness makes reading so much easier. Graphic performance on the Fuze also seems quite excellent compared to the Tilt. As some may know, the Tilt is well known as having crap video drivers, so apparently HTC finally got their act together for this newer series of devices.

TouchFlo is very nice. This TouchFlo is not like the old version, which had a 3D Cube that rotated in space, but is a series of “tabs” on the home screen.

The on-screen keyboard by HTC is very similar to the iPhone one. It’s way better than the standard WinMo on-screen keyboard. And by way better, I mean “usable”.

The camera seems to make nice images. It has true mechanical autofocus, which allows it to take very good close-up images of things, as well as distance/landscape shots.

The UI of all the HTC software is gesture-based. You can sweep across the screen to navigate and scroll.

The main round physical button on the device is “touch” sensitive like the click-wheel of the iPod, and the area surrounding the button also acts like a click-wheel, in that you can move your finger in a circle to zoom or scroll. In camera mode, merely touching the button will focus, and then you press the button fully to take a picture.

So far the radio performance seems on-par with the Tilt, but again this will take some time to learn more.

The Bad

The Fuze is a super ultra fingerprint magnet. OMG, WTF. There is just no way to keep the surface of this device clean, other than to put it in a protective case. I actually prefer the rubberized surface of the Tilt.

Compared to the Tilt, this thing has almost no buttons on it anywhere. I’m used to having about 5 different ways to click “OK” on the Tilt, where on the Fuze I basically always have to click the OK on the screen, or if I have the keyboard open, there is a dedicated OK key.

It’s damn expensive. I paid the non-contract price of $500. For me this is not a concern, because the cost will be reimbursed by my employer, but even if you want a contract, it’s not a cheap phone.

Unknowns

Battery life, I expect to be poor. But I won’t know for a while yet.

WiFi works, but I got some strange results where I had 54Mbps Tx and 1Mb Rx speed, which made no sense. I will have to experiment more with that and see if it has to do with my home network or if it’s something else.

I see you, “Busby SEO Test” and I don’t like what you are doing.

So, I have removed the ability to make your name a link of any kind.

Please stop posting your stupid comment spam on my blog.

Thanks.

The newest version of SMS Auto Reply now has logging to Outlook.

New calls or SMS messages that come in will be added to Pocket Outlook as a 5 minute appointment with the name and phone number of the contact.

Here’s a link to download SMS Auto reply v1.1.

The free version will still run for 30 minutes, at which time it will stop responding to incoming calls or messages.

As always, my products are released as DonationWare. If you like the product and it represents a good value to you, send a $20 donation. I think you’ll see that compared to other products which do similar tasks, this is competitively priced.

As a side note, I’ll admit that I haven’t given enough thought to how to handle upgrade scenarios for those people who have already paid for a v1.0 version. What I am leaning towards right now is giving one year of free upgrades within the same major version.

So for $20, you get v1.0-v1.9. A v2.0 release would not be included in free updates.

Another issue right now is that my installer does not handle upgrades. To install v1.1 on a device that already has v1.0, you have to uninstall your previous version.

Unfortunately this means losing all of the custom response configuration data for your contacts, which could be a real pain if you have a lot of contacts. I have to investigate a better way of handling this.

Tonight I received some inspiration and decided to brush off the old SMS Auto Reply code.

I’ve now made it capable of responding to either incoming calls or SMS messages.

You can also add custom reply messages for anyone in your Pocket Outlook address book.

Because this tool seems useful to a reasonable number of people, I’ve decided to release it as DonationWare just like I did with BT Audio.

The free version works fine, but only 30 minutes at a time. This is enough time, most likely, to get a feel for how the program operates, and maybe enough to get you through a meeting or two.

If you like it enough, use the PayPal button below to send a $20 donation and I’ll send you a registered copy of the program with no limitations.

Note that this application is only built for Windows Mobile Pocket PC edition, due to the requirement for a touchscreen.

It also requires the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, which I do not redistribute with the product, in order to keep the download size small.

Here’s a link to download SMS Auto reply.

I’ve noticed there are a lot of people coming to download my shareware utility BT Audio. I find that very gratifying, and appreciate all of the donations I have received.

One note I would like to mention is that when you send in your donation, please let me know what device you are using, and what OS it is running, so that I can send you the correct version of the software.

Thanks!

Click here to buy a registered copy of BTAudio:

Buried within the registry on the Tilt is a camera mode that some people here will no doubt be interested in.
“GPS Photo” is its name.

As the name implies, in this mode, the built-in GPS is activated, and EXIF tags with GPS data are embedded into the JPG files.

At the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\Camera\P9

Change the value of “Enable” from 0 to 1

When you scroll through the different modes in the camera, the last one will be “GPS Photo” and it will begin initializing the GPS. You should be outside when you try this, or else the GPS will most likely fail to init.

Here’s what the EXIF data looks like.

GPS Informtion
GPSVersionID : 2,2,0,0
GPSLatitudeRef : N
GPSLatitude : 40 022 [DMS]
GPSLongitudeRef : W
GPSLongitude : 75 102 [DMS]
GPSAltitudeRef : Sea level
GPSAltitude : 0/1 meters
GPSTimeStamp : 02:14:20
GPSMapDatum : WGS-84
GPSProcessingMethod : HYBRID-FIX
GPSDateStamp : 2008:01:25

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wrote a tool I call [b]SMS Auto Reply[/b] for Windows Mobile 5 devices. It’s a small utility that allows you to do the mobile phone equivalent of setting an “away” message.

Basically, after you enter some text and enable the tool, it will respond to every incoming phone call with an SMS message containing the text you have specified.

Well, I have expanded its feature set. It now supports caller-specific messages as well as a simple default message. It links into the built-in contact database in Windows Mobile devices to get the list of potential contacts for which you may configure responses.

Here’s a link to download the early beta version of
[url=http://www.davidmays.com/SMSAutoReply/SMSAutoReply.CAB]SMS Auto reply[/url].

Note that this tool will require that the device has the [url=http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497280.aspx].NET Compact Framework[/url] installed.

Also, this only works on the PocketPC edition of WM5, because it makes use of context menus for certain aspects of configuration. I do not at this time have the intention of updating it to support SmartPhone devices, unless there is overwhelming interest.

I found a nice 3000W inverter locally for an exceptionally good price. They list for around $350 at most stores.

[img]http://www.davidmays.com/PhotoGallery/index.php?v=image&i=640×480&p=eBay/Vector-051D-box.jpg[/img]

[url=http://www.davidmays.com/ebay/Vector-051D-manual.pdf]Download the manual[/url]

Let’s just say for now that I didn’t spend anywhere close to the list price. So I bought two, and have one for auction on eBay. I’m selling it way below list also.

[url=http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=110195322542]Vector VEC051D 3000W Inverter[/url]

This thing, when combined with a 125AH marine battery, should allow me to run various useful household appliances as well as large lights. It will be nice using a microwave in the camper.

[img]http://www.pepboys.com/images/uploads/energizer_2.jpg[/img]

Of course, I’ll probably end up getting a generator also, even if it’s just a small one, maybe a 1-2Kw unit just to be able to charge up the battery when we’re not near “shore power” at a campground.