PalmAddicts

New Writer

Hi there, I was just honored by Sammy to become part of the Associated Writers Guild.
Allow me to introduce myself briefly.

My name is Nico, I live in Belgium, close to the German border. I am 38 years old and have been digital since 1980 (started with a VIC-20). My first contact with a PDA was back in 2001 when I got my M105 (still have that around somewhere but it looses memory when replacing batteries due to the capacitor being busted). After that I got a TE and currently I am the happy owner of a T3.5 (I upgraded the battery). I use my device for a lot of things. One of the features I REALLY love (apart from the basic PIMs stuff which are mission critical to me) is the fact I can read my personal mail every morning while having breakfast using snappermail.
I hang out a lot on Brighthand as well (I am known there as 'H') but I promise to spend some more active time here too (I have been lurking up till now). See you around !

Thoughts on Quick News

Quick news is a great rss reader while there are other readers out there, quick news is a great program for organizing articles individually and get the news that is relevant to you quickly, standing out in my mind as one of the finest.
In preferences you'll find the option to store articles on the card, and deleting old already read artlicles to conserve even more space.
I didn't understand how the rss feeds worked at first, and this program didn't exactly spell it out for me.  But after finding that all you had to do for a site with an rss feed, was to type in it's url, all of my feeds stay up to date at sync, and i'm never in the dark when something happens in any of the communities that i'm involved in.
Already entered into the program for you are the bbc news, and if you already have an rss aggregator, such as mobi pocket, sites like engadget, cnn will come over autimatially.
There are different ways to organize the feeds and how you read them, either in a list, or by a list of headlines on the top half of the screen and viewing the article on the bottom.
Mobi pocket had images that were rendered nicely.  Quick news does have the option to get images, however, i have not been able to get them over sync with computer, only the option for wi-fi.

Quicknews isn't just an rss reader, it also has podcast support, and can be an easy way to keep up with those as well.  Quicknews doesn't play the files natively though, so it does require the palm pilot to make the switch (some times legnthy) to pocket tunes to play your downloaded podcasts.
In my experiences with TX wifi, getting around to news sites is kind of a hassle, and you can waste time looking at sites where there is nothing new.  This RSS method of getting news has proved more productive and fast.
Overall the speed, mainly because of the lack of images, is faster than mobipocket, though i haven't tried getting the pictures using wifi because of the area i'm in.
In all Quicknews is a great program with a good amount of customization.  It's perfect for people that want to get news on the go from hotspots, and perhaps will be updated so all features are avaliable from native syncs.
I've been using this program for about two months, and throughout the day, i'll look up different articles through it and keep up with what's around me.  Though it's sometimes a pain that to get the most out of it you do need wifi.  So if you are someone who's surrounded by access points, and likes to keep informed, i'd give this one a shot.

Winter and Night

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning S. J. Rozan comes her finest novel to date -- an explosive novel about the corrosive power of secrets and corruption in a small town.
In the middle of the night, private investigator Bill Smith is awakened by a call from the NYPD. They're holding a 15-year-old kid named Gary -- a kid Bill knows. But before Bill can find out what is going on, Gary escapes Bill's custody into the dark night and unfamiliar streets. Bill, with the help of his partner Lydia Chin, tries to find the missing teen and uncover what it is that led him so far from home. Tracking Gary's family to a small town in New Jersey, Bill finds himself in a town where nothing matters but high school football, where the secrets of the past -- both the town's and Bill's own -- threaten to destroy the present.

If Bill is to have any chance of saving Gary and preventing a tragedy, he has to both unravel a long buried crime and confront the darkness of his own past.

eReader

Straight Into Darkness

AS NIGHT DESCENDS, A KILLER AWAKENS

With ten consecutive New York Times bestsellers, Faye Kellerman is truly a “master of mystery” (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Now she turns her acute eye on 1920s Munich, a war–wounded city rocked by political agitation and stalked by a nameless, barbaric butcher.

Lustmord—the joy of murder. The terrifying concept seems apt for the brutal slaying of a beautiful young society wife dumped in the vast English Garden. Homicide inspector Axel Berg is horrified by the crime…and disturbed by the artful arrangement of the victim’s clothes and hair—a madman’s portrait of death.

Berg’s superiors demand quick answers and a quick arrest: a vagrant, the woman’s husband, anyone who can be demonized will do. When a second body is discovered, the city erupts into panic, the unrest fomented by the wild–eyed, hate–mongering Austrian Adolf Hitler and his Brownshirt party of young thugs.

Berg can trust no one as he relentlessly hunts a ruthless killer, dodging faceless enemies and back–alley intrigue, struggling to bring a fiend to justice before the country—and his life—veer straight into darkness.

eReader

The Two Minute Rule

Two minutes can be a lifetime. Ask anyone on the wrong side of the law about the two-minute rule and they'll tell you that's as long as you can hope for at a robbery before the cops show up. Break the two-minute rule and it's a lifetime in jail. But not everyone plays by the rules...

fictionwise

Roses are Red

A brilliant criminal known only as the Mastermind orchestrates a series of bank robberies that are notable for their very precise demands--and their explosive violence when the demands are not met exactly. Detective Alex Cross takes on the case and recognizes that a particular kind of criminal mind is at work. But before he gets near identifying a suspect, the Mastermind pulls off the most outrageous kidnapping scheme in US history--and walks away with the largest ransom ever paid. But the money is not enough. Alex Cross's investigation has gotten under the Mastermind's skin, and he makes it his personal goal to take revenge on Cross's entire team, one person at a time--before coming after Cross himself. Amidst all this, Cross's relationship with his girlfriend Christine is falling apart because of her fears about his work, and his beloved daughter Jannie is hospitalized with unexplained seizures. The pressure rises on every front until an explosive, shocking climax in which the Mastermind escalates his crimes to an unprecedented level, and Alex Cross risks everything to stop him in time.

fictionwise

Garmin StreetPilot 2730

"Garmin has taken the Editors' Choice StreetPilot 2720 and integrated a suite of new features that is sure to make its successor, the StreetPilot 2730 ($1,292.29 list), an even more compelling purchase. The 2730 retains most of the features that earned the 2720 our Editors' Choice, such as an excellent 3.8-inch, 454-by-240 touch screen; text-to-speech conversion, so that the StreetPilot can pronounce complete street names; an easy-to-use menu system; and a "bean bag" dash mount. And like the 2720, the 2730 has four hardware buttons aligned along the right side of the unit to provide you with one-touch access to its four major functions: Find, Menu, Map, and Speak."

Read the full review at PC Magazine.

Columbus V-700 Bluetooth GPS receiver

According to ubergizmo, the $199 Columbus V-700 Bluetooth GPS receiver is so small, it can fit into a jeans’ coin pocket.

"This black receiver comes with the vaunted SiRFStar III chip and is connected with up to 20 satellites simultaneously to achieve an accuracy of 1.5 meters. It weighs just 33g, so be careful where you place it."

Splash Photo Review

I've been a big fan of Splash Data and their software products for a long time. Each time that they make updates to their software, it seems to get that much easier to use. This is no exception with Splash Photo. Their latest update, version 4.4, Moves images to DCIM directory on memory cards, adding support for contacts images and backgrounds. Whether you're using Splash Photo for a few family pictures, or for a major event, the ease of use of this product is outstanding. The ability to take the pictures and immediately hot sync them to the desktop, then be immediately able to edit it is very nice. Use of the desktop software is easy to use, in fact so easy my ten year old daughter is able to do it with only a few questions.

When you're looking for digital imaging software there are several out that that you can look at. Take the test drive of the Splash Photo 30 day fully functional software, you'll understand just how easy to use it is. I've had their software now for several years, and have never had a problem or glitch with Splash Photo. Their support team is quick to respond to any issue. If you've never tried it you don't know what you're missing. Once you've used it, you will appreciate just how well it will work for you. splash photo link

The safety of your handheld

I was at the store today and I was viewing my shopping list with Handy shopper.  As I turned around, a young female came rushing thru and bumped into me really hard.  Usually I will remove my handheld from its case when I am working with it, but for some reason today I didn't.  Needless to say, my handheld went flying thru the air and landed about 10 feet away on the hard surface of the floor.       

When it landed I heard the loud thud, and heard the noise my treo makes when the SD card is ejected.  After I picked it up, I was pleasantly surprised to find it still in working condition, with not a scratch on it.  My case however, the Innopocket Magnesium case, had taken the brunt of the fall.  I found a slight scratch on the front screen protector, but no other damage! 

I'm so thankful that I made the small investment of purchasing the case for my handheld.  I know that many still use their treo in a soft case, and that's their preference.  As for me, I am only that much more convinced of the need for a protective case, for my treo is an investment for me, and it would be hard to be separated from it for even a day.

                                       Posted March 31st, 2006  - Bryan Weinbrenner, McPherson Kansas