The BlueLounge SpaceStation is a desk organizer for laptop users that acts as a USB hub for all peripheral devices.

BlueLounge SpaceStation [ Photo courtesy of the manufacturer. ]

The photo I've chosen shows the bottom of the SpaceStation. The rubber feet set the SpaceStation 5mm above the surface of the desk. This allows the USB cables to pass underneath the organizer where they can be coiled and connected to the USB hub.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I used to love Palm Treo personal communicators like the Treo 755p. My wife and I had his and hers Treo 650s until June when I bought my iPhone.

However in 2008, I cannot recommend a Treo in good conscience to anyone who does not work in an industry where Palm or Windows Mobile applications are a work necessity (see Handhelds from Palm Still Make Sense in Medicine as an example).

I want to take a moment to salute Jamie Ledino of PC Magazine for telling readers in no uncertain terms to avoid buying the Treo 755p:

It's been eight months since Palm released the mildly updated Sprint Treo 755p. Now Palm and Verizon are selling the same two-year-old phone and even pricing it like a new handset. The 755p has plenty of virtues, which I'll get to in a moment. But look at all of the contemporary features this allegedly new-for-2008 smartphone is missing: multitasking, GPS, mobile TV, stereo Bluetooth for music, a light-sensing display, voice dialing over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi—and the list goes on....

In the end, Palm and its partners Verizon Wireless and Sprint are pricing this phone similar to state-of-the-art smartphones. You can't just say that the Treo 755p is a stable but feature-poor smartphone. The PalmOS isn't in the same league with any of the current versions of competing smartphone operating systems except in terms of selection of third party applications. Palm should focus on Windows Mobile devices until its next generation PalmOS is ready. (According to what I read, that's first quarter of 2009!)

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a Nokia N800 through the Nokia Blogger Relations Program several months ago. I found this device quite interesting, but I never had the opportunity to dig into it as deeply as I had wanted to. I started to think about it again about a week ago, when I was thinking about creating a webcam for our Christmas Tree at my house.

I started Googling around, and I found a three-part series of articles on IBM developerWorks that provide a detailed explanation of how to write your own webcam client for the N800.

Part one is called Developing for the N800 and talks about the environment you need to use to develop a maemo package. Maemo is a Linux-based development platform for Internet tablets such as the N770 and the N800. The article talks extensively about Scratchbox, a cross-compilation toolkit that most people use to make maemo package development easier.

Part two of the tutorial is Accessing the Nokia N800 camera which discusses the maemo Camera API and a multimedia application framework called GStreamer.

By the time I finished reading part two of the tutorial, I began to wonder how the editor of this site could consider this project to be "introductory level". If that's the case, then some of the stuff on this site must be ridiculously complex and/or technical in nature.

The third part of the tutorial is Auto-uploading Nokia N800 photos. This explains in detail how to best extend the on board software and services of the N800 with your own code in order to develop an automated uploading tool. When you combine this with previous code to access the camera and convert images that it outputs into an uploadable format, you end up with a webcam client.

I was really impressed with these articles, and I got a much better understanding of the N800's potential by reading it.

The thing that stopped me from building the webcam application according to the instructions is the prerequisites. I didn't have a machine that had enough free space to build up a Linux virtual machine that would be an appropriate build environment for a maemo package. It would have taken me time to free that space. I may end up waiting to do this until I get my MacBook Pro sometime in January.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I solved the syncing problem that had limited Kathleen's ability to use her Treo 650 with her new MacBook. I owe a lot of credit to the book Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition, which explained the details of the interaction between Palm Desktop for the Mac OS and iSync.

During the process of getting the Treo and the MacBook talking, I got another chance to play with ePocrates-- the medical software designed for PalmOS and Windows Mobile PDAs. ePocrates is a great set of vertical market software and services. ePocrates Rx makes my wife's job (as a pediatrician) lot easier. The key feature of it is dosing recommendations and drug interactions on over 3,000 commonly prescribed drugs.

These reference materials really need to be at a physician's fingertips when they move between exam rooms. There is a huge value to having this information physically stored on the PDA in hand. No doctor wants to slow the visit down to look up drug information via the wireless web.

This was the big reason why I said "no" when someone at work asked me, "Is your wife going to get an iPhone like yours?"

Just like I don't need a large quantity of reference information permanently stored on my iPhone, she doesn't need a high fidelity web experience in her pocket in order to do her job. At one time we had "his and hers" Treos, and everyone thought this was cute. However, now our needs are best met by two different devices.

I'm sure that there are other vertical markets where an iPhone SDK and locally-installed software will be needed before there is significant iPhone penetration. However, I think medicine is one of the biggest ones.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nokia N93 produces DVD-quality video, has a
terrific MP3 player, and includes wireless
broadband and WiFi capability. It's great for people
who want a phone that can be used in relatively
serious video production. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]
[ Check out my Nokia N93 photo set on Flickr. ]

A friend who works with Nokia chose me to be in the Nokia N-Series blogger program and has been sending me high end phones of all shapes and sizes for several months. The latest phone I've received is the Nokia N93, which I like to think of as the Swiss Army Knife of GSM / UMTS Multimedia Phones.

The N93 folds and unfolds in many different ways. Depending on which way you choose to hold it, it can be a video camera, a still image digital camera, an MP3 player, a wireless Internet access device, and a video phone. And I forgot to mention-- it can also be a plain old voice-oriented mobile phone.

The N93 has every feature I can think of for a state-of-the-art multimedia device:

• DVD-quality video with a 30 frame per second recording rate.
• 3.2-Megapixel primary camera with a 3x optical zoom and a Carl Zeiss glass lens. (0.3-Megapixel secondary camera for video calls.)
• 2.4-inch high definition color display.
• Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

On top of all of that it's a mobile phone with Bluetooth and WiFi. About all its missing is a full alphanumeric keyboard.

There are way too many features and dimensions to the Nokia N93 to cover in one article. I'm planning to do a small series of articles that will appear here on Operation Gadget, including as many samples of photos and videos as I think are necessary to demonstrate the features of this incredible device.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, Adobe Premier Elements, UMTS, Bluetooth, WiFi, multimedia handsets, mobile phones

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past couple of months I've noticed that my Treo 650 has more and more trouble opening the IMAP Inbox for my main email account. The reason for this is obvious: I'm an email pack rat.

At the height of my madness, I had over 25,000 messages in my main email account's Inbox. I was about as anti-Inbox Zero as you could get.

For the last year, I've read article after article touting the benefits of managing your Inbox and not letting it become a repository of last resort. Sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker seem to do an article a week (or more) on the subject. But it wasn't until I hit the practical limit of my Treo's ability to manage my Inbox wirelessly that I gave in and started filing and purging.

Before you email me and ask, "What do you mean when you say your Treo had trouble opening your Inbox?", I'll describe the situation. I use Chatter Email, an alternative email client for the PalmOS that excels at managing IMAP accounts. As an IMAP mailbox grows, the mail server takes more time to respond to the initial connection request after you login. Whether you are using wireless access or not, you can tell that the mail client has to sync itself with the mailbox.

As my Inbox approached and surpassed 20,000 messages, the Treo began taking longer and longer to display the most recent messages after Chatter Email was launched. Sometimes it would take 45 minutes or more, which meant that I would leave the office to run some errands and my Treo would still not be in sync with my primary email account when I got back. That's unacceptable-- particularly when most of your friends and family know that you carry a wireless email device.

Little by little I'm reducing the size of my Inbox when I'm at a PC-based email client. I began by creating folders in my IMAP account for messages of lasting value. Folders seem to have a positive effect on Chatter Mail's responsiveness, since its sync time is impacted by the size of the Inbox folder. After that, I started at the oldest messages and started filing or deleting.

My goal is to whittle my Inbox down by about 1,000 messages a week. This is pretty achieveable, since a lot of email I receive is related to the status of things I manage that are connected to the Internet. This includes Linux servers in colocation which often kick out messages to me with the output of cron jobs, but also extends to things like Google Alerts.

Having said that, I've gotten rid of a lot of my Google Alerts for the moment. In the past I've used Google Alerts to monitor news sites for ideas for Operation Gadget articles. As you know, my posting frequency has fallen a lot since my son Jimmy was born in May. If I'm not posting much, I don't need the alerts cluttering my Inbox.

Some people in the Inbox Zero crowd (a philosophy that stresses empty inboxes the way some personal organization consultants stress a clean desk) apply a much more aggressive standard when they make file-versus-delete decisions on old email. I try to keep enough old emails around so I can remember the context of conversations that are important. In other words, I keep most emails I exchange with my family for continuity purposes, even if it means that some of the filed messages are no more than "Hi, how are you?" messages going back and forth. I've got so many other messages that I can delete because they are no longer relevant, the savings will still be huge.

If you administer Linux servers on the Internet as I do, Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli has some great recommendations in terms of improving personal productivity. There are a lot of tips about how to manage an email account that I thought was interesting when I first read the book. Now I'm going back and implementing a lot of those ideas.

Hopefully I'll be down to less than 1,000 emails in my Inbox before too long. Then the performance of my Treo should be really snappy again. I hope that I can maintain Inbox management discipline when I get to that point.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday BusinessWeek published an article that provides a manufacturing cost comparison between the Motorola Q and BlackBerry 8700 handheld communicators. According to the article, the Motorola Q costs about $158 to make. Some of the key components in the Q are:

• LCD display, $25
• XScale microprocessor, $19
• Digital baseband processor, $14

The BlackBerry 8700c only costs Research in Motion about $123, however it lacks two key Smartphone features that would have increased the manufacturing costs: a media player for audio and video playback, and a camera.

A market research firm named iSupply provides these types of teardown analyses periodically to mainstream media for inclusion in stories. I think their main claim to fame is acting as a marketing consultant to electronics companies, and helping them determine which features should be included in their high style products.

Technorati Tags: mobile phones, Motorola Q, BlackBerry 8700, electronic gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Deepweb has fixed problems in
LeTour 2006 that made it incompatible
with the Treo 650 and 700p Datebook.
[ Image: Deepweb Internet Solutions ]

Our friend Ad de Vries and his coworkers at Deepweb in The Netherlands have released Version 2.0 of LeTour 2006. The major new feature of this release is the inclusion of team and rider lists. This was done by adding two small buttons to the upper left area of the map (not shown in our screen capture) labeled "Teams" and "Riders".

The riders lists are well designed in that they provide the race number, name, and home country of each rider organized by team. Deepweb has also included a tiny thumbnail image of each team's jersey on their riders list screen. All of this information would be very helpful to a first time spectator at the Tour who was in the Depart or Arivee area.

I would have loved to have a riders list on my phone at races I've covered in person in the past. It probably wouldn't be necessary for me to identify the riders on the top teams in this year's Tour because I've seen folks like George Hincapie and Jens Voigt at other races, but it would be great for identifying domestiques for teams like Bouygues Telecom.

The other key feature in this version of LeTour 2006 for me is the Treo Datebook bug fix. It turns out that there was a problem with the feature that let you add Tour de France stage information to your Palm Datebook, at least with respect to the Treo 650 and 700p. I first mentioned this possibility in the article Dutch Developer Releases PalmOS-based Guide to the 2006 Tour de France. I wasn't able to be any help at all during subsequent testing, but the guys at Deepweb found and fixed the problem.

This Palm app is highly recommended for Treo users who want to follow the Tour.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, PalmOS, Treo 650.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Martin O'Donnell has been sending me reviews of the new T-Mobile Sidekick III, the long-awaited successor to the T-Mobile Sidekick II. Operation Gadget has covered the Sidekick II since it debuted in 2004, and we've always been pretty impressed with it. Martin uses a Sidekick II on an everyday basis, in the same way that I use a Treo 650.

The Sidekick III is the third generation of this integrated communicator. When I heard that T-Mobile was about to release the Sidekick III, my first reaction was one of concern: How can the Sidekick III top the Sidekick II? After all, the Sidekick II took America by storm, and lots of celebrities came to rely on it as much as some employees of Fortune 500 companies rely on Blackberry handhelds.

The reviews I've read so far indicate that expectations were quite high for the Sidekick III and, although the Sidekick III is an improvement over the Sidekick II, it's not quite as much of an improvement as some respected reviewers expected. Here are a couple of examples of what reviewers are saying:

• Sidekick 3 is better than ever, but still needs more by Tricia Duryee: "The T-Mobile Sidekick 3 is an improvement on what has been an already good thing. The new version maintains the features that made it popular, and new components make it more comparable to higher-end devices on the market today....

  "Although the device is a major improvement, there are a couple of things I found wanting....

  • "the device's form supposedly is sleeker and 20 percent less bulky than previous versions. But the size difference was hardly noticeable....
  • "when I went to send the slide show to a friend, it refused, saying I could only send 2 megabytes worth of data at one time....
  • "the camera doesn't take video, and it doesn't offer full-track music downloads or any other fancy new multimedia service."

• Trying Out the Latest Sidekick by By Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret: "...while our new gadget earned plenty of approving glances from those in the know, the Sidekick 3 isn't all it could be.

  • "The Sidekick 3's screen is generously sized at 2.62 inches diagonal, due in part to its horizontal layout. But the screen's resolution is the same as it was on the Sidekick 2: a mushy 240x160 pixels. Compared with screens on other devices that offer greater sharpness and brighter colors, the Sidekick 3's screen is a definite downer.
  • "While many of the latest smartphones use high-speed EV-DO data networks for zippy Web browsing, the Sidekick 3 only uses EDGE -- a much slower technology." [This probably has to do with T-Mobile USA's decision not to implement higher speed wireless data services as early as Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint]

I think it's instructive that the inclusion of Bluetooth, SD memory, and a 1.3-megapixel camera with flash in the next generation of a device as hot as the T-Mobile Sidekick was not enough for the reviewers to say they really like the Sidekick III. This shows how competitive the market for integrated communication devices is.

Technorati Tags: T-Mobile Sidekick III, Sidekick 3, handheld+gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Deepweb has released LeTour 2006
to help Palm users follow the
2006 Tour de France. [ Image:
Deepweb Internet Solutions ]

Frank Steele at TDFblog.com recently pointed out that Deepweb has published Le Tour 2006 a PalmOS application that provides stage profiles and distances, as well as intermediate Sprint and King-of-the-Mountains points. An update is planned to provide information about teams including rider lists.

I downloaded Version 1.0 on to my Treo 650 in order to see how well it works. The screens are written mostly in English, with the big exception being that the application uses the term "Etape" to refer to each stage. No big deal there.

The biggest glitch I've seen so far is that the Le Tour 2006 application is supposed to be able to insert information about each Etape (stage) into your Datebook. Whenever I try this, my Treo 650 does a soft reset. This may be because I run DateBk5 from Pimlico Software. I emailed Deepweb to report the problem and I'll let you know if I hear that they can repeat the problem.

I definitely think this software is worth having on my Treo, and I'd recommend it to any Tour fan who is aTreo user.

Update: According to Ad de Vries from Deepweb, "At this moment we have no complains about using LeTour on a Treo 650 (the same for our F1 program) but of course we will check it ASAP with the Treo 650 simulator (we don't have such a nice device overhere) and let you know if we know more about your problem."

This is a great response to receive from a Palm developer-- another reason you should download LeTour and give it a try.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, PalmOS, Treo 650.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, my brother Scott Aiello tipped me off to a device that can be used as a convenient one-stop place to charge all of your handheld devices. It's called the Personal Electronics Power Station and it's available from several vendors on Amazon.com.

The Personal Electronics Power Station is an outlet strip with a special housing that allows you to clamp your handheld devices to its body using adjustible dividers. The body has an internal space where the plug ends of your handhelds' charging cables go. When not in use, the Personal Electronics Powerstation sits on top of a table or a bookshelf with your charging cables neatly organized.

Some of the comments I've read about this unit say that the internal plugs for the charging cables are two-pronged only and that adapters won't fit inside. That's a fair point, so watch out for that. Another common complaint is that the Personal Electronics Power Station doesn't support USB. How many of your handhelds charge only through USB connections? I can't think of any of my devices that have this problem.

Technorati Tags: Personal Electronics Power Station, electronic gadgets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reported that Palm saw marketshare growth for its Treo 650 and 700 series mobile phones as a result of the patent dispute between Research in Motion, the manufacturer of BlackBerry handheld devices, and NTP, Inc., a patent holding company based in Arlington, VA. According to the article:

... While the BlackBerry lawsuit is settled, corporations say the episode made them realize they need a contingency plan in case the BlackBerry is ever shut down. Palm, of Sunnyvale, Calif., has tripled its corporate sales force over the past year to work with carriers and to talk to more corporations about the Treo....

In the quarter ended in late November, Palm sold 602,000 Treos, nearing the 645,000 new subscriber accounts that RIM signed on in the same period. And when Palm reports fiscal third-quarter earnings today, analysts project the company will easily double its Treo sales from 279,000 in the year-earlier quarter. Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.

The really amazing thing about large corporations continued support of BlackBerry is the amount of infrastructure on the back end of enterprise messaging systems that must be maintained in order to keep workers' BlackBerry handhelds running. BlackBerry Enterprise Server software must be co-located with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, and Novell Groupwise in order for users of the BlackBerry handhelds to receive the much touted "push email" features of the platform. Users of email platforms other than Exchange, Domino, and Groupwise are not likely to get the same benefit from having a BlackBerry.

The Palm OS based Treos, such as the 600 and 650, have much more flexibilty in terms of running a variety of email clients that offer enhanced features to a wider-range of mail servers. GoodLink from Good Technologies is very competitive with BlackBerry Enterprise Server for customers whose businesses use Exchange or Domino. Simpler email server environments receive advanced features from the Chatter Email Client which provides push email features for IMAP, and Snapper Mail which provides enhanced features mainly to users of POP mailboxes.

Here at Operation Gadget, my Kathleen and I use twin Treo 650s to access our IMAP mail accounts wirelessly. I'm connected to three separate IMAP accounts simultaneously when I'm out of the office. This is incredible power considering that we run a very simple, Open Source-based email infrastructure. Anyone could do this sort of thing for themselves, if they decided to rent a Linux virtual server and take the time to understand how to setup IMAP and any of a number of Mail Transfer Agents. We use UWimap and exim and they do a fine job for us at minimal cost. [ Subscription required to read most articles from The Wall Street Journal ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While researching my article on the White Screen of Death problem my Treo is having, I ran across a recent piece by Stewart Alsop where he asks "Do the vendors choose the color of the death screen intentionally?" He says that the screens of death for his favorite gadgets are:

• Blue for many flavors of Microsoft Windows
• Green for TiVo and DirecTiVo
• White for Treo 650Treo 650 handsets that work on the Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon mobile networks

Stewart and I both have each of these products. I feel fortunate to be able to say that I've only seen two of the three screens of death that Stewart has seen. (I own two TiVos, but I've never seen the Green Screen of Death.)

I told my friend Chris Nolan about Stewart's story. She laughed out loud when she heard it because she knows Stewart pretty well. Small world. Chris has a TiVo, but hasn't experienced the Green Screen of Death either. She has made other platform choices for her computer and her phone, so those two other colored screens don't apply to her.

Do you know of any screens of death that are notorious because of their telltale color? Let me know by posting a comment and I'll add them to the story.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, TiVo, DirecTiVo, Microsoft Windows, BSOD, WSOD, GSOD

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the reasons you haven't seen many new articles on Operation Gadget in the past week is that I've been trying to identify an annoying problem with my Treo 650 that began after I upgraded it using the Cingular 1.17 Firmware Update. I had trouble upgrading my Treo by following the instructions provided by Cingular, so I only performed the Cingular 1.17 firmware update on my Treo and didn't do it to my wife's.

A couple of days after I ran the update on my Treo I experienced a White Screen of Death (known on many Treo-related discussion forums as a WSOD). This was the first such error that I ever experienced with this handset. My initial thought was that the problem had two potential causes:

• inheirent instability of the 1.17 firmware
• interaction problems between Chatter E-mail (my Treo email client) and the 1.17 firmware

I spent several days going through support and issue forums related to the Treo and to Chatter and concluded that I needed to rebuild my Treo application stack, from the core applications on up, and look for a third-party application or applications that were behaving badly. I did this four different times, and found nothing conclusive. The thing that pointed me back to Chatter was that the phone didn't crash or have a WSOD for hours when Chatter wasn't running.

I worked closely with Marc Blank, the author of Chatter Email, over a period of several days. I sent him a number of logs from the Chatter application after crashes or WSODs occurred and asked for his interpretation. He hasn't found any indication that the instability I'm experiencing is the Chatter application's fault, but he's given me some things to try that may have helped reduce the frequency of the instabilities.

A number of readers will probably ask why I didn't go back to Cingular immediately? After all, the problems I'm experiencing now are much more severe than anything I experienced prior to this firmware update. The reason I waited this long is because I depend on Chatter so much that I wanted to rule out problems with that application first. I don't think I've totally eliminated the possibility of a problem with Chatter, but I've done all I could.

What I'm planning to do tomorrow is contact Cingular and try to get routed to the Wireless Data Group. These folks are generally the only people in the Customer Service / Technical Support system who have a good handle on the issues with Treos, Blackberrys, and other high end handsets.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Cingular, Treo 650 firmware updates, WSOD, Chatter Email

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

After two days of trying, I finally figured out how to run the Treo 650 1.17 Update for Cingular Wireless on my Treo 650. I still have to repeat the process on Kathleen's Treo 650 before my upgrading is done. Here are a couple of things that would have really helped me streamline this process:

1. You need to have your IMEI and Serial Number recorded before you can download SplashShopper from Palm's website. I think it's best to shut your Treo 650 off, remove the battery, and write these numbers down at the beginning of the update process rather than the end.
2. Use the "hard reset" upgrade method from previous Treo updates. I tried to follow the instructions provided by Palm to update my Treo and this failed repeatedly. In retrospect, I probably had too little free memory or too many third party applications installed during the upgrade. The easiest way to do the upgrade is to:
   1. Hotsync your Treo in its normal configuration to your regular user profile.
   2. Perform a hard reset and re-hotsync the Treo in a new, blank user profile as suggested in the Treo 650 Updater 1.13 instructions.
   3. Run the appropriate Treo 650 Updater for your Cingular software version, following the included instructions.
   4. Once the update is successfully completed, perform another hard reset and re-hotsync the Treo to your original user profile.
3. The URL for downloading SplashShopper is only displayed at the end of the installation process. You won't want to repeat the installation even if you can get it to run through to conclusion twice. For the record, the URL is http://web.palm.com/support/cingular_treo650.

The Cingular 1.17 is out! thread on TreoCentral was very helpful in crafting this strategy, although I had to wade through a lot of meaningless posts.

Hopefully some Treo 650 users haven't done this update yet and will benefit from my experience.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Cingular, Treo 650 firmware updates

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I missed this in the run up to Thanksgiving, but Palm released Treo 650 Updater 1.17 for Cingular Wireless customers on November 21. This update supercedes the one that was released in July and adds the following improvements:

• Includes Versamail 3.1c,
• Gmail attachment downloads,
• Optimizes Bluetooth performance for some Motorola headsets and other car kits. I have a Motorola HS850, so I'm hoping that this will help me.
• Voice quality enhancements,
• Optimizes memory handling,
• Correctly saves Auto-off power setting,
• Adds an audible beep when the phone can't initiate a call properly,
• Improves battery life by turning off the screen 30 seconds into a call. This was part of the previous update as well.

I will have more comments on the Treo 650 update after I have time to apply it to my Treo.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Cingular, Bluetooth, Motorola HS850, Versamail, Gmail

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just resolved a bizzare problem that kept me from using my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset with my Palm Treo 650 for a while.

When my Motorola HS850 successfully connected with a Treo 650 to which it has already been paired, the HS850 would play a very quick set of three ascending tones that lasted for about 8/10ths of a second. However, recently when the HS850 tried to connect, the Treo 650 would play a four tone sequence that sounded like notes played on a piano and lasted for more than a second. After that, there would be no connection between the headset and the Treo.

Some aspect of the data pairing the two devices apparently got corrupted. I was able to resolve the problem by following the instructions in the Palm Knowledge Base that called for deleting and re-establing the Trusted Device pair.

I was surprised to see this work because I thought I had tried this before and not been successful. Nevertheless, I got the devices to re-pair with each other and I'll have a lot more productive use of my Treo 650 for voice calls as a result.

Technorati Tags: Treo 650, Motorola HS850, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I've been grinding away on my consulting projects, Palm has apparently put the final touches on a Windows Mobile-based Treo that will support Verizon Wireless's implementation of EV-DO.

The first solid indication of an announcement was Engadget's first look at the Palm Treo 700w, published on Thursday. This was followed an announcement from Palm investor relations that Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless would make a joint announcement on Monday, September 26 at 12:00 noon EDT. This press release came out at 4:05pm on Friday, minutes after the close of the regular trading on the NASDAQ.

Palm's advisory was followed by an article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Palm is set to use Microsoft code on Treo Phones. In my opinion there's a big difference between speculation about a Windows Mobile-based Treo by gadget-related blogs is less significant than a news article in publications like the Wall Street Journal [ Subscription required. ].

I'm very optimistic about the market prospects for a Windows Mobile-based Treo. I think that Palm would not be releasing it if it didn't meet their high user-experience standards. The Windows Mobile platform has been in desperate need of a manufacturer like Palm who are committed to adding value instead of just rolling out a compatible handset.

As for the future of Treo's based on the PalmOS, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think that Palm will ever integrate Treo functionality into the PalmOS Cobalt operating system, but subsequent PalmOS implementations based on Linux resulting from PalmSource's acquisition of China MobileSoft may be more to their liking. My experience with the Treo 650 is that there are times when it's really obvious that the phone could use an operating system capable of multi-tasking, and PalmOS based on a Linux kernel may be a good solution.

Technorati Tags: Treo 700w, Treo 650, Windows Mobile

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a joint announcement in Sunnyvale and Tokyo, PalmSource disclosed that it is becoming part of Access Company, Ltd., the developer of the NetFront browser and other Internet technology for mobile devices. The agreement is said to be a definitive, all cash deal valued at $324.3 million, approximately ¥35.9 billion, or $18.50 per share of PalmSource. Both boards of directors have already approved the transaction.

According to the announcement, "ACCESS' USD $18.50 per share offer represents an 83% premium for PalmSource stockholders based on the market closing price of USD $10.09 on September 8, 2005.... The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of 2005 calendar year, pending regulatory approval and the approval of PalmSource's shareholders."

More information about Access Company, Ltd., may be found at http://www.access-us-inc.com/. [ via The Wall Street Journal, registration required ]

Technorati Tags: PalmOS

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amazon.com has started taking orders for Treo Essentials: Get the Most from Your Treo 650 by Michael Morrison and published by Que.

This is the first book I've seen that has come out with Treo 650-specific advice. Previous books like Now You Know Treo and to a lesser extent the Treo Fan Book were written for the Treo 600 with selected updates for new features of the Treo 650.

I'm hoping to get a copy of Treo Essentials soon to see how many useful tips it has about productive use of the Treo 650. [ via Palm Addict ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloACE: An Open Source Bike
Computer System for PalmOS.
For when you absolutely
want to have your bike
speedometer be a PDA.
[ Image: Mark Hammerling ]

Sammy and the other folks over at PalmAddict don't normally scoop us on fitness gadget news, but you'll see why they did in a moment. One of their readers tipped them off to VeloACE, an open source bike computer software project for the PalmOS.

I think this is an interesting proof of concept, but I honestly have no idea what would motivate a cyclist to use this program unless he or she was also the biggest Palm geek in the world. I can't imagine mounting a Palm IIIx or Palm IIIxe to my bike handle bars as suggested, then installing a wired wheel sensor. The late model Palm's aren't water-resistant by any stretch of the imagination.

I think it's amazing that someone wrote a bike computer PalmOS application. It certainly illustrates the bredth of third-party software offerings for Palm handhelds, but a solution like this belongs in Make.

I realize that a program like this is going to intrigue some people. If you're interested in comparing VeloACE's feature set to the kind of technology available in gadgets designed from the outset to be used as bike computers, check out these devices:

• Polar S625x: more of a running computer than a bike computer. Includes a heart rate monitor wrist receiver and chest transmitter, training log software for a PC, and a weather-resistant foot pod for measuring running distances. Add a Polar Cycling Speed Sensor and a Polar Bike Mount Kit and you've got a computer suitable for running or biking.
• Garmin Forerunner 301: a GPS-based biking or running computer that includes a heart rate monitor. Great for creating maps of training runs and rides. Also includes training log software. Get the Garmin Forerunner 201 if you don't need/want the HRM.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

E-Health Insider reports that a study published in a journal called BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making indicates that handheld communicators helped surgeons at a London hospital respond to calls more quickly than they did with pagers. The study also indicated that communication between clinicians was improved. According to the article:

A team of surgeons at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, had their pagers replaced with Palm Tungsten W PDAs, with GPRS on the Vodafone network, for three alternate weeks out of six. Several reference textbooks were also loaded onto the devices, including the British National Formulary, as well as medical calculators.

If they were more productive with the Tungsten W, imagine what the surgeons would have accomplished with a more modern handheld like the Palm Treo 650.

My wife (Dr. Kathleen Aiello) has been using a Treo 650 since March and loves it. She uses it as a mobile phone, an IMAP email client, and a reference tool by running Palm medical software like Epocrates.

Since we got our his and hers Treos, Kathleen and I have wondered whether devices like her Treo would have as profound an effect on her fellow doctors as hers did on her. This study suggests that they certainly might. [ via PalmAddict ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PalmAddict reported that a version of the Opera browser now works on the Treo 650 and other powerful PalmOS devices. Included in this group are the Palm LifeDrive, Treo 600, and the Tungsten T3.

The article refers to an Opera Mini Treo installation howto that explains system requirements (most significantly Java) and technical issues (the default language is Norwegian, but can be changed to English).

I keep thinking that I should try browsers like Opera Mini and Xiino but I haven't done it yet. Maybe I should try Opera Mini, since I recently installed Java on my Treo to test KMaps, a Treo 650-friendly client for Google Maps.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marc Orchant published a great list of add-on software for his Treo 650 over on The Office Weblog a couple of days ago. He's suggested two or three Palm applications I'm trying out now:

• SplashID, part of Splash Wallet: I mentioned that I'm trying this out a little while ago here on Operation Gadget.
• Note Studio: a PalmOS-based wiki with a conduit and a desktop app for both Mac and PC. Definitely worth trying.
• Card Backup: a Palm app that backs up your PDAs main memory to a memory card. I bought an MMC card for this purpose before my trip to Chicago in April, but never used it to store a backup. I think there is a freeware and a more fully featured version of this.

These applications and the others mentioned in Marc's article are great ideas for Treo 650 users who are looking to improve their personal productivity.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Somewhere in the transition to my Treo 650 back in March, I lost a memo entry that contained a big list of passwords for websites and other applications. It was a bad idea to store that information in that manner in the first place, so I resolved to find a Palm application that did a better job.

I found one and so I've downloaded a trial version of SplashID from SplashData. According to the website:

SplashID safely and securely stores all of your personal identification information including user names, passwords, credit cards, calling cards, bank accounts, PINs, and more. Information is stored in a secure, encrypted format and is quickly accessible on a Palm OS handheld or Desktop computer with the included desktop software.

I'll load some of my passwords into SplashID and see how I like it. When I have some thoughts on its usefulness, I'll post them here on Operation Gadget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Palm Infocenter reported yesterday that palmOne released an update for the Treo 650 on Sprint PCS that enables the Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking profile. This is a long soughtafter enhancement to the Treo that will make it possible for Sprint PCS uses to use their Treos as Bluetooth modems for their laptop or desktop computers.

I've been talking about the Treo 650 DUN profile issue since January (see Are You Sure That Cingular Really Wants to Deactivate the Treo 650 DUN Profile?), so I don't need to tell you that this officially turning this on is a big deal for Treo users. The Dial Up Networking profile obviously gives us much more latitude in terms of how we use wireless data service. I think that all subscribers should have the right to use the DUN profile when they need it, particularly if they subscribe to an unlimited data plan.

I could have used this capability when I was in Georgia covering the Dodge Tour de Georgia in April because I was having problems with my laptop's WiFi card. I hope that a similar firmware update is rolled out for Cingular subscribers soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |