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And the Winner Is… SkyDroid

Mike E. — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:58:19 +0000

Free – No.

Cost – $0.99. That’s right. 99 cents.

Trial – None. It’s $0.99. Just part with that hard-earned dollar.

Downloadable Courses – Yes. Very good selection. Thousands of courses. I have used it on four courses so far, all of them mapped.

Course Selection – GPS Proximity or Manual Lookup. GPS Proximity has found all courses so far with no issue.

Yardage Accuracy – Excellent on all four courses I have used it on. The app relies on user mapping of coordinates (no army of people walking courses like SkyCaddie).

Yardages Provided – Front, middle and back of green. A few yardages to major hazards on some holes.

Time to Fix – Excellent. Just stop the cart and grab your phone. By the time you swipe to unlock, you will have already gotten a fix.

Hole Diagram – Yes. Google Maps. Nice idea.

Other – I cannot believe that this is only $0.99. Worth so much more.

As you may know, I’ve been on the search for a good GPS app for my Verizon Droid. After four posts on Greenfinder, it should be painfully obvious. Sitting around waiting for my daughter’s group lesson to finish (I’d already beaten balls for an hour), I figured I’d just search around a little more to see if there were any new apps out there. In addition to Greenfinder, I’ve downloaded several free apps. Unfortunately, none of them performed well enough to use (and several did not work at all).

Googling around, I saw several favorable posts on SkyDroid. For $0.99, I figured it was worth taking a flyer on this. And this is odd for me, because I normally won’t pay anything for an application without some sort of free trial or light version. But the posts I was reading were just so darn good, I figured I could risk less than a buck.

The posts were correct. This app is fantastic. Yardages are received quickly and accurately. You are dependent upon good mapping from end users, but so far, no issues there. I’ve stood on several sprinklerheads (ones I know to be accurate) and I’m generally within two yards. I have to admit that I don’t get to play new courses all that often, so I’m not too worried about hole diagrams or intermediate yardages, but you can just long-touch any part of the Google Map image to get a yardage to that point. Some courses have intermediate yardages already marked; that’s up to whomever mapped the course.

Another great feature of the app is that it automatically advances you from hole to hole. I have to admit, I’ve gotten more than a few incorrect yardages from Greenfinder because I forgot to advance the app to the next hole. Oops. SkyDroid senses when you’ve moved from one hole to the next and does a very nice job with it.

So for the time being, my search for the ultimate Android Golf GPS application is over. I can wholeheartedly recommend this application, and I hope you’ll support the author by buying it. If you know of another application that trumps the features of SkyDroid for a competitive price, please let me know.

Greenfinder – Android Golf GPS Review – Part 4

Mike E. — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:22:28 +0000

Armed with a few more demo rounds on my Greenfinder installation (thanks Itinerant!), I tried Greenfinder – Android on a course where I’d successfully used Greenfinder – BlackBerry (Dunes West in Mt. Pleasant, SC if you’re curious). Not surprisingly, the yardages that Greenfinder gave were just fine. No significant issues there.

The only major problem I encountered was when the application started quickly cycling through all the holes on the golf course. I managed to stop this from happening by hitting the Range button at the bottom of the app. That stopped the cycling, and I was able to navigate back to the hole I was playing. Another smaller problem is that during the demo, you need to be very careful about navigating among applications. You can use the windowshade notifications to check email or sms, but that’s about it. If you back out of Greenfinder using the back button, you’ll need to use another course download in order to continue using the app. So you can burn through your trial downloads pretty quickly.

So with that resolved, I can pretty confidently recommend Greenfinder – Android as a pretty darn good app for Android. Just be sure to try it out on your home course during the demo to ensure you will get good yardages. I am not buying the subscription just yet; there are some other apps I want to try out first. But this will definitely get my dollars if I can’t find anything better.

A Masters Saturday for the Ages (A.K.A. Wilco, the Show Review)

Mike E. — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:29:57 +0000

Yeah, Mickelson holed out from the Applebees parking lot on Washington Road en route to a 67, Couples kept himself in contention at the tender age of 470 and Westwood showed grit and reserve in a 68 that kept him in the lead. I’m sure that all of you couch potatoes had a great time watching it. And I’m sure I would have had just as fun as you did if I’d planted my self in front of the plasma.

Instead, I spent my Masters Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love with two of my lovely brothers from college. After a fun-filled drive up Everybody’s Favorite Interstate, complete with an unintended 40 minute backtrack (well, we WERE heading toward Baltimore when we were south of it) we had:

1. An all too quick walking tour of the city. But my pal Bob (the Philly local) managed to hit a couple of key highpoints, like the oldest residential street in America. There are places for rent there right now – imagine living in a 300 year old building. Then Drew had his first real Philly cheesesteak from Sonny’s. Being a Jersey boy and being disgusted by Cheese Whiz (slay me in the comments if you like – I can’t do Whiz), I got a Provie with (fried onions). While my heart still belongs to AC Subs (my South Jersey family’s favorite), this was one of the best steaks I’d ever had. Blew Pat’s away.

2. Strong Belgian beer and spirited political debate at Eulogy. I stayed away from the Delerium Tremens (we had other business to attend to later) and stuck with the Leffe Blond. Delicious. And it’s fun to listen to traditional (not neo-) conservatives agree with liberal political philosophy.

3. The reason Drew and I drove up. Wilco at the Electric Factory. I have to be honest, I like Wilco, but I did not love them before this show. I do really enjoy the new album. “Wilco (the song)” rocks enough to keep my attention, and the clever self-deprecation of the lyrics keep me smug and self-satisfied. Besides, they played it on the Colbert Report. Instant classic! And “Bull Black Nova” is one of my favorite songs in recent memory. But most of their recorded material is just a bit too soft for my general tastes, which relegates them to sleepytime music for me. To be honest, I’m more of a Son Volt kind of a guy (again, slay me in the comments, I can take it).

Having been on vacation the week before the show, I was fairly unplugged from the blogosphere and had not been reading reviews. I had no idea I was in for a three-hour rockathon that made Guided by Voices feel like Lawrence Welk. Below is the setlist that Bob compiled (with a couple of assists from your humble author).

1. Wilco (the song)
2. I’m Trying to Break Your Heart
3. Ashes of American Flags
4. Bull Black Nova
5. You Are My Face
6. One Wing
7. A Shot in the Arm
8. I’ll Fight
9. Company in My Back
10. Pot Kettle Black
11. Handshake Drugs
12. California Stars
13. Impossible Germany
14. Poor Places
15. Spiders (Kidsmoke)- acoustic version
16. You and I – acoustic
17. Sunken treasure
18. That’s Not the Issue
19. Forget the Flowers
20. Laminated Cat (by side project Loose Fur)
21. Walk on War
22. Passenger Side
23. Outtasite (Outta Mind)
24. Airline to Heaven
25. Via Chicago
26. Hate it Here
27. Walken
28. Jesus, Etc (Audience sing-along; no vocals by Wilco until last verse and chorus)
29. Theologians
30. You Never Know
31. I Must Be High
32. Can’t Stand It
33. Heavy Metal Drummer
34. I’m the Man Who Loves You
35. In the Street (Cheap Trick cover; aka That 70s Show theme song)
Total time: 3 hours

Encore
36. Dreamer In My Dreams
37. Casino Queen
38. Outta Mind (Outta Sight)
39. I’m a Wheel

I’m trying hard to get more into their records, but I cannot wait until I get to see them again. No boys club next time, though. The wife wants a ticket as well.

Greenfinder – Android Golf GPS Review – Part 3

Mike E. — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:50:30 +0000

Greenfinder - Android

So, is the third time a charm? Well, not exactly. Itinerant got back to me very quickly again with answers to my questions and an extension to my trial. It seems that the imagery for the course I’ve been playing is very old (Sea Scape in Kitty Hawk, NC) and cannot be trusted. I still have a few rounds left on my trial; I’ll try this on another golf course. Stay tuned for part 4 of my review!

Greenfinder – Android Golf GPS Review – Part 2

Mike E. — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:16:57 +0000

Greenfinder - Android

After my initial review, I sent a note to the good folks at Itinerant Software, and they were nice enough to get back to me in just a couple of hours with a new copy of Greenfinder. I uninstalled the version and installed the version they sent to me. In addition to a cleaner UI, the newer version gets a fix nearly immediately and provides yardages in an instant. Unfortunately, every yardage I received was ten yards short. After underclubbing on a few shots (which I figured was just me not hitting the ball well), I started standing on yardage markers. Again, each yardage was ten yards short, almost to the inch.

I’ve sent another note to Itinerant; we’ll see what happens and I’ll report it here.

Greenfinder – Android Golf GPS Review

Mike E. — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:48:28 +0000

Greenfinder - Android

Part 2 added on April 8, 2010 at 9:00 am.

Part 3 added on April 8, 2010 at 11:00 pm.

Free – No.

Cost – $35/year.

Trial – Five Rounds.

Downloadable Courses – Yes. Very good selection. Thousands of courses. The course I played (Seascape Golf Links, Kitty Hawk, NC) was mapped.

Course Selection – GPS Proximity or Manual Lookup. GPS Proximity found Seascape with no issue.

Yardage Accuracy – Excellent, when I could get a fix. But that was rare.

Yardages Provided – Front, middle and back of green. A few yardages to major hazards on some holes.

Time to Fix – Horrible. Basically unusable. Approximately half the time I used the app, I could not get a fix. When I could, it was generally 30 seconds – 1 minute before getting a fix. Often, I got a fix and received yardages *after* I found a sprinklerhead and finished pacing off a distance.

Hole Diagram – No.

Other – I have been a big fan of Greenfinder for about a year now, having used it quite a bit on my old, work-issued BlackBerry 8800. So when I saw that they had an Android version out, I snapped it up as soon as I could. While Greenfinder does not provide many of the niceties that more advanced applications provide (like hole diagrams, detailed lay-up yardages and yardages to each and every sand trap and water hazard on the hole), it provides the thing I want most in a golf GPS app, accurate yardages to the front, center and back of the green. And it did it well on an ancient (by tech standards) device. Greenfinder for Android provides the same functionality, but because it took so long to get a GPS fix and give a yardage, it was basically unusable for my purposes. I was willing to chalk this up to either bad GPS in my Droid or just a bad location for GPS satellites, but the GolfLogix application seemed to perform much better. While GolfLogix is getting a fix inside our condo (it’s 108 from the couch I’m sitting on to the middle of the 10th green), Greenfinder just couldn’t get a fix in open sky.

Greenfinder for the BlackBerry is such a good product that I intend to get in touch with their tech support to see if I am screwing something up. I don’t want to unfairly give them a negative review. So please stay tuned and check back for updates.

Pay Less for Balls – Logo Overruns

Mike E. — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:52:50 +0000

One of the unfortunate byproducts of any manufacturing process is overruns. Logo printing on golf balls is no exception. A few years ago, my wife and I ran a charity tournament and I hit upon a deal for logo overrun Maxfli M3’s (I miss the Maxfli M3 – I loved that ball) for $15/dozen on Golfsmith. I spent $300, bought 20 dozen balls and every participant had a sleeve of nice balls in their goody bag.

To be honest, I’m surprised that manufacturers don’t offer the overruns to the person placing the order (I’ve had logo balls done a few times), but instead they sell them up to discounters like golfballs.com. $35.95 for a dozen Bridgestone B330S balls (one of my all-time favorites) is a pretty decent deal, compared to $42.99 at Dick’s. It’s $6.00 for shipping, so you’ll need to buy a few dozen to make it worth your while.

Our Cost Apparel at Rock Bottom Golf

Mike E. — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:17:54 +0000

Our friends at RBG are at it again. I have to say, these prices are enticing. If only I didn’t already have a closet full of golf shirts. Unfortunately, yet another golf shirt would probably not go over well with she-who-must-be-obeyed. See the deals.

$12.93 for a polo from Antigua is golf is pretty sweet. If you’re in need of shirts, I’d check them out. Of course, if what you’re really looking for is a frugalfairways.com shirt, you need to go here.

My New Favorite LPGA Star

Mike E. — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:06:41 +0000

Not that Suzann Pettersen is new to the tour, but her comment about what she would do if she were commissioner of the LPGA has made her my new favorite. Letting caddies eat with the players in the players dining room? This former caddie loves it.

Read the entire interview at The Hacker’s Paradise.

Seven Ways to Pay Less for Golf

Mike E. — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:27:47 +0000

Play less frequently. Obviously, this is a crappy idea. Forget I said this.
How flexible is your job? If you have any sort of flexibility, play during the week. Your job may be more flexible than you think. Is your boss ever looking for people to take night or weekend shifts, even if it’s only once in a while? Do you have the opportunity to work 10 hour days 4 days a week? There you go. There’s a reason that some of the best golfers are firefighters and teachers.
Play later in the day. If you just have to play on weekends, do it later in the day. Yes, the course is crowded (there goes your 3 1/2 hour round); that’s because others have the same idea.
Haggle. Seriously. I’ve done it before. It won’t work if the course is crowded, but it if a course needs the play, they’re willing to talk. Golf courses are like airlines – if a teetime goes unfilled, it is gone forever.
Lower your standards. Are you playing high-dollar courses? Is it straining your budget? I’ve found that there’s a certain charm in playing courses that are a little rough around the edges.
Get a part-time job at a course. I worked at a country club growing up to get to play golf for free. If you have the time to pick up a couple of shifts at a local course, you’ll generally get free golf out of it.
Coupons, coupons, coupons. But be ready to play during the week.

What are your suggestions? Please leave them in the comments.