It’s Christmas, which means not only did I get a new gadget, but I actually have time to blog about it. A couple months ago I updated by Rhapsody software and ever since I haven’t been able to get my Sansa View to sync up with Rhapsody. It’s been a great device, but this failure made it close to useless to me. In the process of looking up a fix I came across the Rhapsody ibiza. Suddenly, with Christmas around the corner, I decided it was time for an upgrade!

This 30GB player has built in wifi and Rhapsody integration. I can now connect to my Rhapsody account without any wires or syncing with a computer–nice! I’ve only been playing around with it for a half hour or so at my sister-in-law’s, but so far it’s working exactly like I hoped it would. I was able to easily connect to her home network and start listening to tracks streaming right from my Rhapsody account. All my library and playlists are accessible–and they sound great on the new Sennheiser HD 280 pro headphones my wonderful wife also got me for Christmas (my old pair had a hard plastic top which left a mark on my bald head).

The interface is extremely intuitive and the touchpad is smooth and substantial. I always felt the Sansa view scroll wheel was kind of flimsy. Connecting to the wifi network was very simple thanks to the wifi button that automatically detects any local networks. While listening to any track you can easily select the “Keep this song” option and save it to the device to listen to when there is no wifi access (which requires the Rhapsody To-Go subscription). I can also download entire albums and subscribe to podcasts. I’m psyched about the podcast feature, since now I can automatically get the latest sermons from my church without downloading and transferring to the device.

The only downside so far is that is a bit bigger and heavier than the View, and it’s so new that I didn’t find a velcro sports accessory available for it yet, but I bet it will fit in an iPod strap. So far I’m loving this new device!

Evernote is a service that allows you to create notes, upload files, and save documents all in one place. These resources can be accessed online, on a smartphone, or through their desktop application (which all remain synchronized with each other). They provide an interface where you can set up different notebooks, write descriptions, and assign tags to each item. But what I really like about Evernote is that it has optical character recognition built in. That means that if you upload a photo to Evernote that contains words, you can later search for that photo using any of the words found in that photo. For example, suppose you shot a pic at a birthday party and you later wanted to find it. Remembering that there was a sign in the background of the photo that read “Happy Birthday…” you type that into Evernote and your birthday photo comes up.

The beauty of this capability is that I can use it to remember and access sections from books I am reading or studying. That’s where the Omnia comes in. Using the Omnia’s camera I can simply snap a picture of any page I want to save and upload it to Evernote. And since I have Evernote installed on my phone the process is quite simple. I just open Evernote on my phone, choose “snapshot” and it brings up my phone’s camera. I take the picture and it gives me an opportunity to title it, assign it to a notebook, add tags, or enter a description. I don’t do any of those things on the phone though, I just add a brief description indicating what page of the book the snapshot is from. Later, when I’m at my computer, I’ll go to the web-based version of Evernote and add titles, tags and the rest.

The reason I choose the Omnia as apposed to other phones is its camera’s auto focus feature. This is essential for snapping pictures of small text. I tested several other phones and while their camera resolutions were perfectly adequate, their focus was not. Evernote won’t be able to use its optical character recognition on a picture of blurry text. I even tested the iPhone’s camera and it could not focus in on a close up shot of text (although I hear that the most recent iPhone does have an auto-focus camera).

I’ve been using this technique for several month’s now and it’s been working great. I can easily find and access quotes from any of the parts of books I’ve read and saved. Evernote is a free service (though it does offer a pro version for a fee) so go ahead and check it out. A phone with an auto focus camera is a bit pricey, but it seems like this is a feature that is getting integrated into most of the newer phones, so there will probably be some more affordable options soon. Of course you could use any digital camera, it would just take an extra step of uploading the photo later.