I live on my palm Treo. I realized that the one non Palm application that I use the most is -- Handy Shopper. A freeware shopping list manager. It is a little quirky. But it does the job. It is the perfect app for a PDA. Go try it out.
Firefox 2 tabbed browsing
I finally upgraded to Firefox 2. It has more built-in features so I need to use less of add-ons. One of the most use feature for me is tabbed browsing. I used to use "tab mix plus" on 1.x firefox to fine tune tabbed browsing. Now most of the features are included in the base 2.0 release. I was disappointed at first, when I open a new tab, it does not load the homepage by default. Since my homepage is where my frequently use links are, it is a major pain. Tab mix plus did that for me.
But wait, hold on, third-mouse-button click defaults to openning link in new tab. So, if I do a third-mouse-button click on the "home" icon, what will happen? A new tab open with the home page loaded.
By the way, the same goes for openning bookmarks in a new tab. Just use thrid-mouse-button click on the bookmarks.
iTune + FrontRow + Airport Express + Harmony = Digital Music Heaven
I finally got my home digital music solution implemented. You’ll need:
- one 20inch Apple iMac
- iTunes
- FrontRow
- Logitech Harmony 880 Remote Control
- A sound system with a receiver that supports digital music input (e.g. an Onkyo TX-SR674 7.1 Channel Up-Converting A/V Receiver
Three key things make this work:
- the iMac screen is big enough to be used across the room when running FrontRow
- you can have FrontRow stream music to an airport express, just start iTunes first and point it to use the remote speaker at your airport express location
- the Harmony remote knows about the Apple remote IR signals
This is what you need to do:
- Rip all music to apple lossless encoding for high quality sound
- program a “digital music” activity on the Logitech Harmony remote to control both the iMac and also the receiver (more later)
- connect the airport express (I am running it wirelessly) to the receiver using digital output
- start iTunes first, and point the speaker to the airport express remote speaker
- Now you can use the harmony remote to control the FrontRow software from a distance, and control the sound volume on the receiver at the same time
Programming the Harmony Remote
The Logitech software knows about the iMac remote. You need to create a “digital music” activity and select the receiver for controlling the volume, and select “multimedia PC (iMac)” as the source of music.
I change the button assignments so that the “cursor pad” on the remote matches the apple remote. I remap the following buttons:
- “up/down” buttons (not up/down arrow) to “imac:volume up” and “imac:volume down”
- “left/right” to “imac:rewind” and “imac:fast-forward”
- “ok” to “imac:play”
BlogJet
Blogging online directly sometimes deter writing longer posts. After some research I am going to give BlogJet a try. First thing first, configuration is not as easy as it seems. I have my own server installation of wordpress. BlogJet will not auto detect my server. I need to manually configure the account by specifying:
- select “WordPress” as the provider
- enter my own server name (host), e.g. www.pkshiu.com , without the http part
- enter the page as /loft/xmlrpc.php
- Wait, it still does not work…
Turned out, I also have to edit my .htaccess file to add the following:
<Files xmlrpc.php>SecFilterInheritance Off</Files>
First Impression
As I am typing this post — I like the very simple interface. Just type! One minor gripe — When you need to insert a link, you have to:
- go to the web page you want in your browser
- copy the URL from the address bar
- go back to blogjet, select the phrase to link
- click on the insert link icon
- paste the copied URL.
Why can’t BlogJet default the URL to what’s on the clipboard?
iPhone is NOT the big deal...
What? No? Sure, the iPhone is "cool", "unbelievable". I agree. But all the buzz is shadowing the really important Apple product -- Apple TV. This is such a well conceived device. It solves ALL of my home media management problem, and I am not even a Mac user. What will the Apple TV do?
- I can now access all my photos on all my PC's at home on my big screen TV without any work.
- I can listen to all my music stored on all my PC's running iTunes without any work.
- I may even start to buy TV shows and movies from iTunes store
Get it yet? This is going to
- put iTunes on every (windows) PC's
- Get people to start buying movies and music videos and music from itunes store
Get it? No need for any windows media editions, any roku/slim device/sonos etc. It will just work. My only worry is loosing that little remote control from Apple. I hope my Logitech Harmony remote can send those Apple codes. I am (pre)ordering one.
the gadgeteer breakup?
The Gadgeteer is one of the gadget review sites that I read often. They offer many no nosense review of stuff that I actually use. For years the two writers, Julie Strietelmeier and Judie Hughes seems like a great pair of blogging partners. I also find the fact that their names are similar give the blog a personal touch. However, I caught a link to Judie Hughes' new blog site, Gear Diary somewhere. I thought it was strange then, that she is starting a different blog. Today I visited The Gadgeteer blog and seems that most references to Judie Hughes have been removed except for her older reviews. Seems like the blogging partners have parted ways !
Google Map on Treo !!
Finally, we don't have to suffer the not very useful mapquest smartphone interface. Go to Google here right on the treo to download and install the software. You can see satellite view (glad we have EVDO speed) and traffic condition. Very cool app for the Treo.
Eclipse 3.2 upgrade
Any developer knows, the process of upgrading software tools always starts a chain reaction. I have been using Hibernate 2.x for a long time, and finally decided to update to 3.x, largely to make use of the supposingly better tool set available for Eclipse. After installing Hibernate 3, I started to install the Hibernate Tool into my Eclipse IDE. Then I realized I needed Eclipse 3.2 instead of 3.1. Of course, Eclipse makes upgrading all sort of things easy by the update manager, except upgrading from 3.1 to 3.2 ! You have to do a manual install. Note that you should not install 3.2 over an existing 3.1 installation. Which mean installing to a new directory, and then re-install all the plug-ins. I did not run into any problems, but still it is a lot more manual then I thought it would be.
Why I hate Framework, Article from Benji Smith
This is a funny and true post about software Framework. I have built them, I have used them, and it is hard to find a set of tools/framework that does the job and not get in the way. A good framework has to balance between the learning curve, flexibility, depth of services, and productivity.
Treo as a PDA
I owned a long list of PDA's and ultra portable devices before they were mainstream. It never worked for me. No matter how small these devices are, I just couldn't carry one around with me all the time. The only thing that carry with me at all times is -- yes, my cellphone. I don't even carry my wallet with me at all times. But cell phone? Yes. It tell times (see the much quoted NYT article), it keeps me connected (by voice), I have to carry it. Now that I have my Treo 700p for a month, I can honestly say that, because it is a cellphone, I carry it with me everywhere. As a result, I have my PDA with me at all times! Contact list, emails, calendar, isn't it great? I put my driver license, a credit card and an ATM card into my Treo carrying case, and I have everything that I need with me at all times.
Hotsync is going to kill PalmOS
I love my Treo 700p. It's the first time I have my PDA with me all the time, because it's also my phone, and my link to the internet. I also like PalmOS. I often think of it as the Mac of Smartphone. However, I hate the HotSync process. It is a way to backup your data, yes. But if I want to drag a little article onto my TREO for reading later, must I go thru four steps and 3 minutes to sync my phone? No!! Where is the "quick sync" mode? Why do I have to buy third party apps to access my SD card on the treo so that I can drag and drop? Arrgghh. On a related note, Palm OS UI is great. It's good, but it's dated. Their new Access Linux Platform does not sound so good. What company in the world design great, usable, simple UI for small devices? Apple, did I hear? Where is the TREO killer? Surely Steve is thinking about this, a lot more seriously if you believe this news...
Palm OS Program Installation
Many Palm OS programs "ships" in a zip file. You unzip the zip archive, and click on the PRC file to send it to the Palm via HotSync. Simple, right? I wish more authors / publishers will make sure that their zip archive are setup so that it unzips into its own directory. The Mundu Instant Messenger application does that. It unzips by default to a "MunduInteroperableMessengerV3.0.6" directory. Makes organizing all the application install files easier on the PC.
The Web of Treos
Since I got my Treo 700p, I started lots of research on the web for reviews, tips and tricks, and products. After a while I notice some thing strange. A lot of the online retailers are related or backed by the same company. I dug deeper. What I found is pretty "interesting".
Starting with TreoCentral. It is owned by Palm. From their website's disclaimer at the page bottom:
TREO and TreoCentral are trademarks or registered trademarks of palm, Inc. in the United States and other countries; the TreoCentral mark and domain name are used under license from palm, Inc. The views expressed on this website are solely those of the proprietor, or contributors to the site, and do not necessarily reflect the views of palm, Inc.
Look under their "about" page, it confirmed what I thought -- the Smartphone Experts brand of products are behind the store front as well:
Today, the infrastructure created for the TreoCentral stores powers a wide variety of Smartphone stores under the umbrella organization Smartphone Experts.
Checking on the Smartphone Experts website confirms that they powered the store part of most of the treo sites out there:
- TreoCentral Store
- Treonauts Store
- Everything Treo Store
- Treo Addicts Store
- and BlueShop for bluetooth stuff.
So when these Treo sites review products, are they truly independent of the Smartphone Expert brand? You thought it matters which site to buy stuff from, but it really doesn't since they are all the same store? What do you think?
Treo 700p User Review
I made the switch. I am ebaying my Nokia 9300 smartphone and switched over to a Treo 700p on Verizon Wireless.You can read my full review here.
Why switch? Two reasons:
- I can never get good reception in my loft with T-Mobile
- While Edge is pretty good for data, EVDO rocks.
Headphones
How many pair of headphones do you have? I have the following: _
- Several pairs of wired earpiece for my cellphone, one in the car, one in the bag, one on the desk, etc.
- One pair of B&O cool looking and reasonably sounding A8 headphones for my iPod Shuffle
- One bluetooth headset, for my phone
- One noise cancelling Bose QuietComfort 2 for listening to music while travelling on the plane, or sleeping on the plane
- One wireless RS120 headphone for watching TV without disturbing others in the house.
One pair of wired headphone + mic for Skyping on my PC
Too many pairs? Exactly. There are some products out there now that combine a cellphone headset with a stereo headset for listening to music on the go. But how about adding a audio passthru mode so that I can hear the traffic when I want to? and improve the sound quality.
User Interface Architect vs Graphics Artists
Hiring a web designer is difficult. Hiring a good one is down right near impossible. What exactly is a good "web designer"? A lot of companies incorrectly lump several very different roles together and pin it on the "web guy/gal". What kind of work do you expect this "web person" to do?
- redesign the web site/web application's look and feel
- make the web application accessible on PDAs and cellphones
- make a new set of icons
- design the printed brochure for the trade shows
- ...etc...
The main problem is, some of these are tasks for an artist -- a visual artist while some are for a programmer, and some are for an information architect. Designing a logo, or a set of icons, are (mostly) a art, creative task. Analysing a web application's content and fit it into a CSS driven site is a task for an informatio architect. Implementing a good set of CSS I say is a task for a programmer-type analytical person. Can a person be good at all three? Unlikely.
The industrial trend is then to lean towards the self-taught artist who learned CSS on her own. Artistics people sometimes make good programmer because they should be creative, and appreciate of beauty, hence elegance. This is still a compromise. I believe a company should hire two different person. First is what I called a "User Interface Architect" that is fully aware of current web presentation technology (CSS, DOM) and whose job is analysis/design/implement of web interface. She should NOT be insulted when the graphics jobs is given to a separate "Graphics Artist" whose job is to "draw" and give the company's output (application, print, office, etc) style. If you cannot afford a good artist (I thought artists don't make too much money !!? ) outsource that function.
IBM Thinkpad X31 Hard Drive Upgrade
When I bought my Thinkpad X31 (X31 model 2672REU), I ordered it with a 40G drive. I thought I would never ran out of space. Then came iTunes with Apple Lossless encoded music, and my Nikon D70 which generates thousands of pictures at 3 meg each, my 40G drive went down to 1G free for months. After some research, I ordered my hard drive upgrade components from Drive Solutions. They are reasonably priced and shipping was fast. I ordered a Hitachi 100G 7200 RPM Travelstar drive at $205. The 80G drive at $165 is actually better bang for the buck, but I figure I will only upgrade my harddrive once on this laptop, so might as well go for the largest drive. The travelstar is highly rated for speed and quality. I also ordered the EZ Upgrade Universal Hard Drive Upgrade Kit USB 2.0 by Apricorn. This software and case combination lets one clone the existing drive over to the new drive via USB.
I have outline my successful upgrade steps below. I did run into a problem at the beginning, when the EZ-GIG software failed with a read error from my original drive. After some research, I determined that the error is due to some disk corruption/bad sector on the drive. I ran the XP version of "scandisk" and fixed the source drive.
Upgrade Steps
- BACKUP your data!!
- Run "scandisk" on the source drive. On Windows XP, right click on the drive, select property, tools, Error-checking, check disk options select scan for and attempt recovery, and click Check Now. See this write up from Microsoft.
- Run defragmenter. It will speed things up a little.
- Put the new drive in the Apricorn upgrade kit's case. Make sure you get the pins lined up and don't bent them.
- Power off the laptop.
- Attach the USB cable to the upgrade kit containing the new drive. Make sure it is switched on at the kit.
- Insert the Apricorn software CD into the CD Drive.
- Power on the thinkpad, hold down the F12 key to get to the boot option menu.
- Boot from the CD
- Following the instructions on the EZ-GIG documentation, but basically:
- Select clone
- Select expert mode, because I only want to create a same size hidden drive D for the IBM rapid restore instead of a proportionally sized partition. I don't know if I really need this hidden partition anymore, but just in case.
- Do the copy, go to lunch or something
- Once the copy is successful, shut down everything.
- Unplug the USB drive.
- Swap the new and the old drive.
- The harddrive on the thinkpad X31 is very well placed. You only need to unscrew one screw to slide the drive out. See the IBM/Lenova hardware maintenance guide for more info.
- Detach the black flip piece, and unscrew the four screw to release the "cage" for the bare drive.
- Attach the "cage" to the new drive, reattach the black flip piece, insert the new harddrive.
- Boot up the new machine
- XP will notice the new drive, did its own "install", and asked you to reboot.
- Reboot
- and you are done !
Nokia 9300 Communicator Review
Summary
This is the only smart phone that has a 640 x 200 (yes, 640 pixel wide) screen and a very usable keyboard. It is heavier and bulkier than most newer smartphones. Is it worth it for about $350 from Ebay? It is for me, your mileage may varies. Read on for more details. I have owned this phone for five days. I will update this review as I discover more things.
background
My second Sony Ericsson phone broke. Same thing—the charging connector got dirty enough that it is not longer charging. It’s not so bad if SE has a separate battery charger that I can use to charge a battery outside of the phone, but they do not. In my old Nokia 8900 days, I have an desktop charger that charges a second standalone battery.
I also am increasingly mobile but without my laptop, i.e. in my car, in between meetings, etc. The new biz requires lots of immediate email interaction, so it’s time for a good email phone. I would have gone for , and in fact waited for, the new blackberry 8700 but it kept getting delayed (for the T-Mobile, my carrier) launch. I would have switched to Cingular, but their data plan is a lot more expensive. For T-Mobile
Why the 9300, and not the 9300i
Nokia just came out witht the 9300i. The "i" version is identical to the old version except it has wifi. Normally wifi would be a good thing, but from all the reviews that I read, the 9300 CPU is slow enough that the browsing via wifi is not faster than using Edge. With my T-Mobile $19.95 unlimited data plan, I can stay on Edge all day. Also, since the 9300i is new, it is much more expensive. Where-as the 9300 can be had on E-Bay for $350 or less.
E Bay and US vs World version
If you look around, the 9300 still sells for about $450 on the web. I got mine from E-Bay for $320. However, when it arrived, it turned out to have a Italian or Spanish keyboard. I contacted the seller and they were willing to give me a full refund, but I ended up keeping it because of the price. The keyboard is ok except for a few of the critical puntuation keys, the "@", the ":" etc are in the wrong place. So buyer beware.
Besides the keyboard differences, there are actually two versions of the 9300 available. One is for the world GSM frequencies 900/900/19000, the other one is for US GSM frequencies 850/1800/1900. You can tell by the FCC ID label on the back of the phone:
PDN RA-2 : 9500 (900/1800/1900) PDN RA-3 : 9500 (850/1800/1900) PYA RAE-6 : 9300 (900/1800/1900) PYA RA-4 : 9300 (850/1800/1900)
The phone that I got from EBay turned out to be the US GSM version.
First Impression
- - Phone is heavy -- the specs says 5.89 oz. It's, heavy!
- + The phone is smaller than it looks in picture, but still bigger than all phones that I have.
- - The back cover does not fit well, it’s soft plastic with tiny little tabs and require careful insertion to close it. I hope it does not break in the future.
- - The cover phone joystick round pad is difficult to push because it is very narrow.
- + keyboard is nice, easy to do surface typing with two fingers. Each key hs sculbtured with the center raised a little. I can slide my fingers over the keys, and as long as I center my finger on the right key, I can press it accurately.
- + The screen is nice, full page (wide) browsing !
- + The user interface is very easy to use (more later).
- + The speaker is loud, which is a good thing. This is my first phone with speaker phone built in, it works very well.
Phonebook and the Telephone Application
Up to this point I have always rely on storing my phone book on my SIM card. I do not sync my phones with Outlook. For the 9300, the SIM Card based phone book does not really work, since there is no “load from SIM card to memory” option, and all the multiple phone numbers on the SIM card are split into individual entries. The SIM card phone numbers are available as a separate "database", but to make it works well, you really have to use the smartphone’s contact database as the source after syncing it with Outlook.
Also, the contact database is also the only allowable source for 1-touch dial on the phone. So after syncing my full Outlook contact list with the phone, I can assign 1-touch dialing to contacts in the database.
One Touch Dialing Not available in Telephone Application
One annoying thing -- 1 touch dialing is only available on the cover phone. Since there are a few numbers I call often, if I want to use the speaker phone, I have to
- close the phone
- 1 touch dial the number
- open the phone to use the speaker phone.
Another way is to:
- Open the phone
- Use the access keys to switch to the telephone application
- Use the right softkeys to click recent calls
- select the contact,
- use the softkeys to call the contact.
It is not too difficult, but I'd prefer a 1-touch/1-key calling on the keyboard telephone app. Maybe I'll go write an OPL app later to do this.
Telephone Application does not easily allow direct numeric dialing
Yet another lack of feature. You cannot easily just dial a phone number in the telephone application that is not part of your contact database. You have to enter the number, search will fail, and you click dial, then it will dial what you entered. The alternative is to close the communicator and use the cover phone. There really is no excuse for having such a poor telephone application on the PDA side !!
Setup and Personalization
These are the things that I did to setup my phone:
- Slow down the "mousepad/cursor" - control panel/general/display/cursor speed
- The standard cover phone wallpaper makes the LCD looks like it's broken. I changed it via: control panel/general/display/wallpapers/cover
- Internet Connection - Use the nokia website to send an advanced internet setting to the phone directly. You only have to open the message, with the given password, and save it to have the setting activated. I then go to the control panel to give the internet setting top priority: control panel/connections/internet setup
- Bluetooth, I want to get this working so that I can sync via bluetooth because I am out of USB port on my laptop: control panel/connnetions/bluetooth/pair, search for my laptop, create a passcode, and get paired.
- You can tell that I am treating this more like a PDA then a phone. First I paired the phone with my laptop, then my headset (AX).
- auto locking the cover phone -- I normally do this because I don't want to accidentally start a 1-touch-dial call. But I found out that if I enable auto lock, the entire phone is locked and I have to enter the unlock PIN just to unlock the the cover phone. Too much work. So I just manually lock the cover phone (joystick, *).
- ringtones, alerts etc -- Initially, I looked all over in the control panel to see where I can change the sounds. All the sound settings belong in the profile menu, which make sense once I think about it.
Shortcut
- Switching profile—just hold tab the power button on the cover phone. I love this Nokia feature.
- Speed dial on the cover phone —just hold down a numeric key on the cover phone. There is no need to press the numeric key, then the call key like the Sony Ericsson.
- On the keyboard/application -- "standard" cut and paste keys work, ctrl-C, ctrl-V, ctrl-X are your friends.
- Reload browser page - ctrl-r
- Email -- to delete a email, press the backspace key. There is no menu item for deleting an email.
- Go offline -- The browser and email client by default stays online. It is not a problem if you have a unlimited data plan. If you want to go offline, the quickest way is to press ctrl-u (for "unconnect"?)
- How to do hard reset: Remove and replace battery, during startup, press Ctrl-Shift-F.
- ...I'll add more as I discover them...
Edge/Data speed
I tested out the connection speed using DSL Reports mobile speed test. The faster I got was about 120k. So it's probably an Edge connection, but not really very fast.
The email client and the web browser will default to stay connected to the internet once used. I discovered this when I noticed that the GPRS indicator shows connected all the time on the cover phone. I can expect the email client to default to stay online to check emails, but the web browser? Press ctrl-u to go offline for either one.
Great cellphone service vendor in Boston
I never thought of Boston as a hot area for mobile phone and service vendors. That would be NYC. Many of the the mail order, unlocking, global GSM phones are based NYC. Almost by luck I ran into this little kiosk shop at Boston's Prudential Mall -- Warlox Wireless. Evan, probably the owner, handles unlocking and repairing and flashing phones. It's great to find a knowledgable and friendly and local vendor like this, especially if you want to hand over your, probably expensive, cellphone for "modding". For me I was trying to get a pretty much damaged SE phone repaired. He tried very hard to fix it for me, but it was beyond repair at the end. He did not charged me for the attempt, and we also had a great conversation on phones and phone techs. The only "bad news" is that he might have talked me into upgrading (not from him because he does not carry that particular model) to a more expensive phone. If you need some phone repair, flashing, or unlocking, pay them a visit.
Basecamp
I use basecamp. I like basecamp. I like the 37Signal designs. I read their blog. They are certainly pioneer in the newly revitalized ASP + Web2.0 biz. But I also find basecamp inadequate, as a paid user. Specifically:
- While it is nice that the include their writeboard function in basecamp, it is not integrated. If you want to email a writeboard, the basecamp user list is not available for email selection.
- Their todo list is too simple. To manage a big project, the lack of any type of hierarchy, tagging, or even just TOC makes it hard to use. This is ironic since one of the great thing about 37 signals is their simplicity in design.
- Example: I need to be able to move entries between to-do lists, as we use them to classifying tasks, and sometimes tasks get mis-classified.
- The login URL is NOT yourname.basecamp.com. and
- there is no login button on their website.