While I was chatting with my electronic friend, I asked something about fees. She directed me to the fees page, cleverly circumventing my question. I know, I know, she’s not real. She had the same effect on me as the monotone GPS voice which, though it doesn’t really change inflection, sounds like it does. Turn left. Turn left. Turn left!

In a moment of frustration, I typed, “this is useless”. You see how the conversation went downhill from there.

The conversation quickly went downhill.

My big question is, will PayPal cover my virtual hospital bills for my virtual gunshot wound? That little snip got me right between the eyes! Thank God she’s really tiny. Just sayin’.

In the meantime, did you know you can search the Android Market using some of the same Boolean search techniques as you do when searching the web? You still can’t sort the search results (c’mon, Google!), but you can at least narrow your search results and cut out some of the junk.

For instance, I wanted to find some gardening apps. A search for just gardening brought up all kinds of fluff apps I didn’t want, things like photoclips, ringclips, and virtual garden games. So, I tried narrowing my search results by using the minus sign to exclude some of the apps I don’t want included in the search results.

gardening -ringclip -ringphoto -game -virtual

That brought up far more targeted results. You can also use a plus sign to indicate you only want to see results that include a given word:

+gardening +reference

That resulted in an app I might not otherwise have seen, at least not on the first page or two of results: Landscaper’s Companion.

You may have to tweak your search results a bit, just like you do when you’re searching for something within your web browser. I got different results by using garden vs. gardening, and resource vs. reference. You’ll get the hang of it if you keep trying.

It can be time consuming to type in search terms with your mobile phone, though, even if your phone has a QWERTY keyboard. So, consider the site I’ve linked to above, AppBrain. It’s not only a mirror of the market (like the defunct Cyrket, the domain now serving another purpose).

Oh, no. It’s much more. AppBrain lets you easily search the market, share app info with friends, and even make the chore of installing apps go more smoothly. There’s an AppBrain app for Android which allows you to sync your installed apps with AppBrain’s site. If you do a factory reset or go to a different phone, all you have to do is install AppBrain to quickly go through your previously-installed apps and reinstall them on your phone. You still have to okay the apps’ permissions, but you don’t have to look each one up.

There are backup utilities which do that, of course, but AppBrain has some other features I really like. The sync capability and recommendations feature.You can (but don’t have to) share your list of installed apps with people and view their installed apps. That’s a great way to see what apps are popular among your peers.

It’s also a lot easier to search for apps using AppBrain than it is to search the Android Market from your phone. Once you bring up an app on AppBrain’s site, you’ll see a QR code you can scan with a scanner app such as Barcode Scanner or Shop Savvy. That makes fast work of bringing the app up in the market. You can also indicate on the AppBrain site that you want to install apps, then open AppBrain on your phone. You can read more about that whole process on their site.

The DoubleTwist desktop client offers music syncing and a means to search the app market and view QR codes; however, it doesn’t have a means of syncing or installing apps.

It depicts a woman wearing a flowing blue dress, strolling through her garden. She kneels down and admires the ripe, red tomatoes. Last, she reaches down and pulls out….a smartphone. Yep. She snaps a photo of the tomato and seems to upload it somewhere. She’s grinning like a fool the whole time, by the way.

Howie and I laughed when we saw that, because that’s pretty much me. I carry my G1 phone with me everywhere. I’m also an avid photographer and love to share with others. So, I often take photos of flowers, veggies, toads, and anything else I find pretty or interesting and upload it from my phone.

Need to ID a plant? Snap! Upload it.

See a cute little toad? Snap! Upload it.

I need to take more breaks when I garden than I used to, so I upload pictures when I sit down and take a break.

I wrote to Burpee today:

My husband and I saw the spring commercial on HGTV this morning. What a clever and funny ad!

We got a good laugh out of that, because that’s exactly how I am. I’m frequently out in my garden, admiring the flowers, veggies, even the little toads, then pulling out my cellphone to take photos and upload them to Facebook, my blog, and e-mail.

The only difference is, when I go out in my garden, I can assure you I am *never* bright and shiny, put together in a lovely outfit complete with hat and basket! My neighbors and any passers-by can attest to this. Please don’t ask them about it, though.

Thing is, by the time tomatoes ripen in my area of Ohio, it is HOT. If I’m dressed up like that, I’m sure not going to ruin my hair and makeup by going out in my garden and kneeling down to get pictures of my tomatoes…Even for a quick snap.

Okay, I lied. Maybe I would, but just one! My husband will be in the background telling me we’re running late and to get in the car.

Anyway, good show on the commercial. You and your ad agency came up with something delightful for us tech-loving gardeners.

We need an Android app, guys. Hint, hint.

When I wrote it, I’d only watched the ad once and would have sworn the woman in the commercial was wearing a straw hat. Nope! It’s funny how your mind’s eye can trick you!

I now return you to your scheduled programming.

I think the snow’s pretty, but I don’t want that much. Here’s what it looked like in my neck of the woods after the snowstorm we got last week. These were taken Saturday. Drifts came to above my knees when I walked over the hill in our back yard and took Stella for a walk in the snow. She loves the snow!

I love the pretty white snow, but I sure dread the mud that comes with its melt. That translates to twelve muddy dog feet, four times a day. There’s no way to avoid it, and it’s a mess. We keep a beach towel inside the back door, but that doesn’t get all of it. Sigh.

At any rate, I’m ready for spring. How about you? Howie pointed me toward a nifty little widget for my sidebar, a Countdown to Spring. I just added it. If you have a website, spread the cheer and add it. If you don’t, stop by here every so often and be encouraged that this winter won’t last forever.

2/14/2010: I just removed the countdown widget because it took so long to load and slowed down other widgets. No thanks!

During a recent password audit at a company, it was found that a blond receptionist was using the following password:

MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

Funny, huh? But seriously, that’s not a bad password! Throw in some random numbers and that would be a very secure one. Don’t make your passwords things like your dog’s name and your birthday or other things people can easily guess. And don’t make them standard dictionary words that brute force hackers can figure out by bombarding with lists of words.

Here’s some good tips from Lifehacker for safeguarding passwords:

Passwords should be longer than six characters and include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, and special characters.

Your password should never be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should never include part of your name or your email address.

Use passphrases instead of passwords. Even if you’re limited on the number of characters you can use, turn a long phrase into a jumbled short one. “I like bread and butter, especially at breakfast time.” can become “Ilbab$eabt!”.

Use a different password for every single site you access.

…If your password is compromised because of the stupidity of the people running the service you use, it doesn’t matter if you had an awesome password of enormous length and variety. If you use that awesome password on other services those services have now been compromised.

In all seriousness, I urge you to read the rest of the article, paying special attention to the additional links they include within it.

That said, I have a observations and suggestions:

1. Let us add list members via a form with auto-complete. Don’t make us slog through pages of people we’re following just to find a few individuals.
2. Let us access editing functions for each list right from the main page’s drop-down menu; don’t make us go through three screens to do it, please.
3. Let us choose notification preferences at list level rather than individual level. For example, I would like to receive SMS notification for any tweets coming from people on my Family list.
4. BUG: When I go to the page listing my various lists, both the following and followers columns show zero for each list. However, if I go to an individual list, the people I chose are all represented in that list’s timeline.

*I still like EchoFon for Firefox (formerly TwitterFox) for how it makes it so easy to post a tweet with a link to the page I’m currently browsing. I also like its unobtrusive pop-ups displaying new tweets. More robust, Seesmic is a feature-rich app for managing social media accounts. I’m not so much of a power user as to really need that, but I noodle around with it sometimes.