New Treo 850?!?!

So Palm has announced its latest Treo on its way the 850! I’ve also seen a number of posts listing the specs. And for the most part I keep hearing praises. Yes this phone is a good thing, not only has Palm finally added WiFi but they’ve also added GPS. So why do I not sound so exited about this? Very simple…. check out the last spec line in the PalmAddicts post linked here: PalmAddicts: Palm again makes me want one!

Do you see my problem with the 850? You don’t… how can you not… its running WINDOWS MOBILE(WM). Palm keeps telling the market and there followers that they are committed to there own OS and that they are working hard to release a new linux-based version of PalmOS, but if this is the case, why more WM phones?

I know, there are separate development teams at work, one working on the new OS and one on Palm-based hardware and another on WM-based hardware, but other than a miniturized Treo (aka the Centro, which don’t get me wrong if it was available for T-Mobile USA I’d already have one), but what have you done for Palm OS? Wasn’t one of the reasons given for discontinuing the Foleo that you didn’t want to be developing and maintaining 2 OS flavors? so what is the difference, okay so MS is developing WM, but don’t you have to support it on your phones?

So Palm, Congrats on moving in the right direction by adding WiFi and GPS (and a much better with the Centro). Also the move to mini-USB is also a good one. But please do something for the PalmOS world soon, otherwise, I see a nice new shiny BlackBerry in my furture, with the exception of a touchscreen the Curve has everything you’ve just added to the WM-Treo with the bonus that it is not WM.

Mobile Posting

Ever want to post to multiple blogger blogs at once? Well if so take a look at using the mail-to-blog option in your settings. Besides being more flexible than the go@blogger.com as typically used. Besides that, on my treo, I’m limited on the size of an image I can send via MMS, but no Email. As a suggestion, send via BCC that way there is a very slim chance that the address will get viewed. Also the beauty of email-to-blog is that you can actually send the post to people who don’t typically view your blog by including them in the cc or bcc line.

Anyways… just thought I’d share the tip since I just used it. I sent a post to both my blog (the one you are reading) and to the blog that Lauren and I share.
http://nickc321.blogspot.com/2008/02/working-from-hotel-zaza.html
http://laurenandnick.blogspot.com/2008/02/working-from-hotel-zaza.html

Nokia acquires Trolltech, goes cross-platform

I wonder what this will mean for the mobile market and for Symbian. I also wonder what are the real plans for the TrollTech product line. TrollTech is the maker of Qtopia but also QT the cross platform windowing package, which until recently KDE was based on. I can see where this move works with the linux tablets, but Qtopia is also linux-based and meant for phones…. do you think Nokia has plans on merging the two? or shifting away from Sybian, or do you think they may just do what they’ve done with every other mobile app company they bought… maintain for a year or two and then shutdown…. They did it with IntelliSync and a few others?

read more | digg story

The power of Apple

News stories like this one from BusinessWeek are all over the place with Apple and its iPhone. They all make it sound like Apple created the idea of using a touch screen. And far be it from Apple from admitting that they were not the first. Yes way back Apple had the Newton, but Palm (or back the as part of 3Com) had the first PDA the Palm Pilot with a touch screen too. Then in the late 90s HandSpring released the first Treo, which was a phone/pda and yes with a touch screen….. Over the years Palm has release a number of Treos (I think to date we are up to 11 maybe more), even Microsoft has release a number of touch screen based phones (including some by Palm), HTC has been at the forefront of their hardware. But then Apple comes along and they decide that buttons are a thing of the past…. and thus the iPhone is released and now the whole world talks like they created the touch screen, heck they even created an iPodTouch and tried to trade mark the use of the name Touch with handheld devices… Anyways… I like Apple as much as the next, heck I’m even an MacOSX admin, but I’m a bit tired of all this articles about Apple and how its iPhone with a touch screen has revolutionized the market. That is not to say that is hasn’t had an affect on the market, heck its affect has been one of the greatest… but history…. tells all.

read more | digg story

Podcast test!

Well this is a test of Gabcast, just seeing if it works and if it is useful. I was also looking at using hipcast but since that service is not free…. anyways… we might also just try using my box.net account as well. Lauren sat in on a seminar at MDC today that discussed podcasting and then she called me saying that she wanted to podcasts to our wedding blog (link). Well good ol’ me, I’ve just spent the last hour playing with podcasting. The only downside I see from gabcast is that I can’t send video, but I think I can via MMS to the blog I’ll play with that idea later. Enough toying around I need to get back to my thesis work.
Gabcast! My Rants #4

Mobile Posting

Sometimes I just don’t understand mobile posting, that or I’m just impatient. Last Saturday, I attempted to post 2 entries from my phone. Typically I get a response back from the server saying that they were posted with in a few minutes, this time, those replies never came. I tried and tried, sent the same posts several times, and nothing happened. The next day, the only way I managed to get the post to work was by deleting the device from the mobile list and then re-adding the device. While a pain, not a problem, things seemed to be working from that point on. Now for the interesting part…. today I’ve received 4 replies to the blog entries I sent on Saturday. My question is, was it my phone/service provider causing the issue, or was it a blogger issue? Who know… I just hope that it doesn’t happen too often.

The Old Phone

Well my new Treo 650 arrived today. This will actually be the first entry sent via my new 650. Out with old 600 in with new 650, so I hope. I'll be giving this phone a spin and hpefully make the complete move soon.

Working on the road: SiEd for Palm OS

While sitting at the Firestone this morning (link) I had a good chance to try out an app I had just installed on my Palm Treo600. Actually last night I first tried it out with use of my external keyboard, but this morning was the great test…. I’m currently in the process of trying to complete my Master’s Thesis and this requires sitting at a computer and typing. I’m writing my thesis using LaTeX. While I have yet to find a good LaTeX editor for the Palm, I did run across SiEd. I’ve tried others including tjepWriter and SrcEdit, but while both have their merits… SiEd’s ability to work with any text file found on a memory card is the clincher for me. I was ably to keep working on my thesis while sitting at firestone with out losing time. With this ability to work on the road…. hopefully I will finish sooner than later.

PS: in the near future I plan to finally put together a “whats on my Treo 600″ post that and give a more detailed review of the above mentioned text editors.

first treo 600 photo post

well I’m trying out the mobile side of blogger…. in the process I’m also testing the ability to send viewable photos from my treo…. we will see how this all goes

first mobile blog

well mobile blogging…. we will see how this goes