New phone reactions, week 2

[rhu]

• The Thrive runs version 2.2 of Android ("Froyo"), but its CPU is apparently not sufficiently advanced to run the Flash Player. As an Adobe employee, I'm disappointed, and I wish that had been made clear before I bought the phone, but oh well. The real Fail here is that when I click on the link to the Android Market, it would be nice if it told me why I can't download it, instead of simply saying "The document cannot be found."
• It was remarkably easy and intuitive to set up my own ringtone. I just had to plug the phone into the computer's USB port, set the phone into "Mount SD card" mode, copy the mp3s that I had generated into the obviously correct folder (SD Card/media/audio, I think it was), and then those files showed up, using the mp3 header tag info, in the list of available ringtones. And I'm not being ironic when I say "remarkably easy and intuitive;" although I realize that for the typical customer it would not have been easy or intuitive, for me, having to find mysterious UI widgets would have been much more confusing.
• I still miss a true scrollbar. The Contacts view has one, and it's nice.
• Speaking of the Contacts view, I've now got a reason to go into my Google Contacts and clean it up. Very sad to delete entries for people who have passed out of my life (Ah, the days of doing copyright clearance negotiations for Zamir) or who have passed away. Also very frustrating that I can't organize contacts respecting family relationships, so I end up with three entries for most of my familied friends: Adam's cell and email, Eve's cell and email, and the Eden family landline and address. There oughta be a better way.
• I'm more and more regaining my proficiency with MessagEase. Yay!
• I wish there were a good way to integrate my work Outlook calendar with my Google Calendar so it'd be on my phone. The official Google software syncs everything only with my main calendar (boo; I want a segregated subcalendar) and with all the same properties (boo; I like getting desktop popup reminders but I don't want my phone chirping at me, too). So I've turned that back off.
• Thanks to my friend Pam for the recommendation, I've downloaded Shortyz for solving puzzles. Nice feature: It takes my NYT credentials and automatically downloads those puzzles daily, as well as the wide range of freely-available ones. Solving on an electronic device continues to me nowhere near as enjoyable as solving on paper, but it's a good way to kill time when other people are late for meetings.
• I miss ShadowPlan from the Palm days. It was an awesome to-do-list-cum-outliner. There must be a good equivalent for Android.
• Haven't used the data plan much yet, which is good. When I have wanted it, I've been able to turn it on without feeling guilty.