PalmAddicts

Dark Thoughts

Last night the power went out. Not just in my house...but, across the whole town.
This was the grande finale...the coup-de-grace of an intense storm that had drowned the northeast USA for the previous 24 hours. This wasn't rain...it was the type of deluge that inspires thoughts of Ark-building and Atlantis. 2 hours after the storm-proper had moved on to New England (and the deserving Red Sox fans), a squall line came roaring through with gusts of over 60 miles per hour. Down came some trees...and they took power lines with them. Who says God isn't a practical joker at heart?

During the blackout (7pm - 1:30am), my family and I discovered that there are rare joys to be mined in such Moria-like environs: the charm of candlelight (and the terror that your children will set themselves on fire), non-electronic games that families used to play together (like '20 Questions') and the miracle of two children willing to go to bed early, without staging a Civil War. Still, there was one major vexation: my wife's and my favorite show, 'Torchwood' is on BBC America on Saturday nights. Without power, no show...and, no way for the DVR to capture it.

While my family slept, I was given no repose. As Frequent Readers are aware, I live on the banks of a river; and, that means I have a sump-pump in my basement.

No power + no pump = soggy basement

So, I had to haul out my portable generator, and run it once an hour, so the pump could keep the basement dry. Normally, this would be a long, dark tedious vigil; but, I had a smartphone. The point is that although my current smartphone is the Samsung Blackjack II, having a smartphone of any type should be part of every home's standard kit. Think about it: you can access voicemail/ make and receive calls/ via the internet, you can keep tabs on the weather, warning and alerts/ you can send and receive email. This should be a no-brainer proposition at this point in history, with super-cheap smartphones (the BJII and Centro can both be had for sub-$100) and reasonable data plans.

(click on the pic for the larger version)

So, I retreated to my den, lit a few candles and pressed the Blackjack II into service: I programmed the BJII's alarm to go off every hour, reminding me to man the pumps. I played 'Bubble Breaker', listened to music and read eBooks. The wind was screaming like a crazed banshee; but, I had my LED flashlight and extra BJII battery close at hand; so, all was well...almost.

Actually, it took one fast trip to the refrigerator for all to be truly well: a mug of Dublin suds (also known as Guinness stout) completed my port-in-a-storm. The two pix in this editorial were both taken with the BJ II during the outage, and all things considered, they came out pretty well.

Did I mention this story has a happy ending? After the power came back on at 1:30am, I checked my DirecTV program guide. That evening's episode of 'Torchwood' would be re-broadcast in the wee, small hours. A quick bit of DVR programming, and to all, a good night.

The Copy-Cat devices

The news about Meizu booth at CeBIT closed down by German authority has brought a little bit of sparks on law debate of copy-cat devices that are happening in the mobile market ever since long ago. Even though the Meizu closed booth was temporary and actually caused by its MP3 player patent infringement. These counterfeits products that are clearly copying the original devices can’t be denied as a mere small product anymore. It starts when Chinese manufacturers were trying to make a quick and sure money by copying the design from the well known brands of mobile vendors, even the colors and shape are strikingly very similar. It all seems like the manufacturers in China who got orders from mobile vendors, are making their own brand with the designs given to them (many of the well known world mobile vendors have already made all of their devices in China’s factories, because of the low labor wage and cheap export policies there).

Yes, it’s cheesy and breaks many international patent laws; but the Chinese governments are closing their eyes on such case and looks like they’re giving them enough support to do so. But you’ll be surprise on how well these copy-cat devices are made, not only the exterior shell but also the OS is almost reach the same level with the original ones. Like the Meizu’s miniOne (M8) that has little different designs from famous Apple’s iPhone, this is a fine example on how knock-off devices are finding their way to legal acknowledgement. There hasn’t been any official complain neither from Apple, nor from US FCC yet.

Here are some fine examples that you can see from PhoneArena article, there are good pictures there to show how the Chinese manufacturers even didn’t bothered to change the designs and the name! Like the picture on the left where you can see the Nokia N73 is copied and they only changed the Nokir letter… Even the concept model: Nokia Aeon is copied and sold in the black market, it’s merged on eBay auction and caused a lot of confusion whether the device is really from Nokia or not.

If just those Chinese manufacturers try to create their own brand, I’m sure it’ll be no problem for them to compete with other world mobile vendors. Because they already have the technology and all they need is a new design and marketing campaign. And perhaps a better packaging as well, I once had a gift from China and the package was awfully modest; made me felt less want to use the device. How long all of these counterfeits going to last, or maybe the exact line is how long until we finally use them instead of the original ones?

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Playing poker with the treo

I love to play poker especially online. The problem is a lot of times i find myself out and about with no internet access so that means no poker. That was until i had my treo. Now I simply connect my treo to my laptop, tether it, and in a matter of minutes im online. I fire up the table and before I know it Im playing for small stakes. I play small stakes because sometimes the connection is lost and I dont want to get in a big pot of money then the connection drops

To our US readers welcome to daylight saving time

Good morning to our American readers which make up approx 80% of my readers, please remember to change your clocks, welcome to daylight saving time. Daylight saving time resumed at 2 a.m. Clocks were set ahead one hour.

Sammy's Centro Diary

Came in from a late night last night and the Centro came in a treat. I always love taking photographs of my friends when we are out and I am actually very impressed with the camera on the Centro it works out great. It takes good pictures, pity there is no camera flash but I can live with the camera. The SMS program always comes in handy, especially to find friends, see what bars they are in etc. I have also been using the Centro when I have been going the gym to listen to the excellent Pocket Tunes which is at the moment my favourite program at the moment. Game wise I am playing What Word and Wordpop and to answer seemar's instant message yesterday I am still using the Enfora Wifi Sled with the Centro, it's working fine with no problems and still enjoying Kinoma Player with You Tube video's. In the meantime I hope that you are having a great weekend.

Agendus for Palm OS version 12.06 has been released

[From Adriano Chiaretta] Hi Sammy, Saturday, March 8, 2008: we are happy to announce the release of Agendus for Palm OS version 12.06.

- Short Summary

Agendus for Palm OS version 12 includes powerful journaling capabilities, a personal project manager, all new “at-a-glance” or Card views now more colorfully organized and streamlined, a new Contact View "Photo Dialer" mode, support for attaching items (documents, images, etc.) to meetings, tasks, memos and contacts and standalone alarms, just to name a few.

Version 12.06 is a maintenance release introducing full support for the GSM (AT&T) Palm Centro smartphone. In particular, by upgrading to version 12.06, owners of the GSM based Centro will be able to take advantage of Agendus' contact dialing, emailing and text messaging integration capabilities.

- Release Details & Download

Main Entry Page: http://www.iambic.com/agenduspro/palmos/
What's new: http://www.iambic.com/agenduspro/palmos/whatsnew.asp
Download: http://www.iambic.com/agenduspro/palmos/trial.asp
Upgrade: http://www.iambic.com/upgrade/

Control iPod music at blink of an eye

[From maurice herman] Did you know that the Japanese have designed a small micro-chip for the iPod placed on the temple to control the music played by the blink of an eye. "The Japanese have designed a small micro-chip for the iPod placed on the temple to control the music played by the blink of an eye. Japanese inventors have come up with a small micro-chip designed to sense blinking actions to indicate commands sent to the iPod. Dubbed the 'Temple Switch', the small device is placed next to a user's temple and allows the device to measure movement in eye muscles. " Read in full.

Using my treo to communicate

So about this time its daylight savings time. Usually I would be scrambling to my clocks to change all my clocks to the right time. Not any more. Now my treo automatically updates and I can sleep as usual. Today I used my treo to text my coworker about ware we are meeting tomorrow. We have to do a sale day and I couldn’t reach her by phone. She’s usually in the club on Saturdays so I know to text her and I can always get a hold of her. So today I used my treo to communicate with my coworker for tomorrows meeting.

Conversions in your palm

There's always a time when we needed an easy conversions as we're faced with unusual units, and nobody around us know. It's such a small thing, yet a quite irritating experience I'll say. Like when I was in the field to install a heavy glass door into a door frame, the manual is written in English and uses pounds unit instead of kilogram (kg); we had to delayed the installment until we know it. Or like when you faced with the conversions that are common in computer world: how many are there from bytes to kilobytes, to megabytes & to gigabytes? I found a perfect solution for all of those kind of troubles, it's an app called Conversions in Hand (CiH) by Burr Oak Software.

With complete units conversions tab & those tabs view layout can be customized according to your need, you won't have any trouble to search the conversions tab you want. If you're worried about new units, Burr Oak Software also provide a quick update in the app. There's also a built-in calculator in the app, so you don't need to swap between the app to the embedded calculator; although the square screen of Treo 750 is a little bit crowded when you use it. The CiH is currently in v3.6.1, and available for Windows Mobile only. I really recommend this app, it's small and fast plus you'll never know when you need a converter; with it ready inside your Treo you'll never have to make a guess anymore.

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

iPhone news recap of the weekend

For all of you who have missed important news on the new iPhone SDK kit, don't forget to catch up with Sammy’s & Paul Biba's summaries here. But I want to underlined again the grieve news about that new SDK kit for iPhone, please find it out here. It's about the limitation for iPhone 3rd party apps that can't be run on the background, based on the current released SDK kit. So no more up to date RSS news feeds while you're doing something else, and you can't accept calls when you're chatting on-line with instant messaging app. It's quite sad news for those who love to do multi-tasking apps with their device, including me. Another great editorial came from PC World, it's iPhone Software FAQ, very complete with answers for almost possible questions that are surrounding the new SDK kit.

There’s also a debate whether Microsoft’s Silverlight is going to be available for iPhone or not, Steve Balmer-MS CEO has hinted that way during his interviews. Silverlight is the new web platform made by Microsoft, aimed to compete with Adobe Flash. So far Apple refused to put Adobe Flash into iPhone, Microsoft has the chance to push their Silverlight into mobile market through iPhone popularity. Things are looking pretty bright for iPhone future...

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

IM+ updated to v4.55

For those who love to chat on-line with your smartphone, you must've known IM+ from Shape Services. It's a great on-line instant messaging application that supports every major smartphones' OS, Palm OS 5 (above) & Windows Mobile 6 are included. Right now the latest version for Windows Mobile has been upgraded into v4.55, and works very well with Treo 750v of mine. The squarish screen (240x240) is not too shabby to display all the chats with IM+, and with 3G network can really fasten up the messages I sent & received.

What I really like is with IM+ I can accustomized it's alert sounds, the options are placed at the Notifications settings of Windows Mobile. The update is a minor one, but for more infos & trial download, check it out here.

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Seidio G2350S Tom Tom Navigational Car Kit

Seidio G2350S Tom Tom Navigational Car Kit on offer $99.95 (Retail Price: $264.95). "Are you interested in turning your Treo 650 into the Ultimate In-Car Navigation, Entertainment, and Communication System? If so, the new Seidio G2350 Navigational kit is just what you are looking for. The G2350 provides the ability to turn your Treo 650 into a system that includes a state of the art real-time navigation system. The G2350 includes the following features: Built in GPS Receiver - The G2350 includes an integrated GPS receiver that uses the latest SIRF Star III chipset. Your Treo 650 will have continuous access to real-time GPS data and, when coupled with the included TomTom Navigation software, it will provide 3D routing information to guide you on your journey with audible turn by turn directions. No more worrying about carrying and powering an external wired or Bluetooth GPS receiver."

Music Bundle 6

Music Bundle 6 from Pocketgear. "This bundle includes our popular music applications Almond, DaCapo, and Mozart at a great price. It gives any music student a headstart with the most common needs - learning to read music, music terminology and a metronome. A great gift to anybody who studies an instrument at any level. These programs are used in many schools and a great tool for music education.All applications are also available just by themselves. Almond is a musical terms database and reader. In addition to most common phrases in music today also standard Italian and German terminology is included. Definitions are easily copied to the clipboard for use in MemoPad and other applications. Almond's database can be included in the global Find application for easy access. DaCapo keeps the beat for you. In addition to regular metronome functions, like Italian speed names + bpm display, adjustable tuning pitch and visual indicator there are many other features. Accents can be set at different intervals to emulate meters like 3/4 or 7/8. Also measure groupings can be created like a 12 measure blues form. In addition DaCapo features easy access with big buttons, hardkey mapping and great graphic layout. A must-have for practicing on the road. Supports Palm OS 5 and the Tungsten 5-way button."