76 posts tagged “palm”

Palm applications... on the iPhone!

Feb 23, 2008
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TUAW has posted this video and article detailing how StyleTap plans on accomplishing this...

This a very exciting prospect since I have owned many Palm OS devices over the years. Looks like GHost has been ported and stable!

Centro to the rescue! Who needs the iPhone?

Feb 18, 2008
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Bodies

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Jen and I had a "date night" yesterday and decided to go see the Bodies exhibit that is getting all of the news attention. We looked online to buy the tickets prior to going, but charged a $2 fee per ticket. Jen and I looked at each other and decided that we would save $4 and get them in line when we got there.

Well... the line was about a mile long, and it was about 4:15PM in the afternoon and only a couple of shows left that were not sold out. The next show that was available was at 4:45 and there was no way we were going to make it. So we whipped out my Centro and went to the museums homepage to buy tickets online while standing in line. I admit, the website did not render well, but we were looking for results, not beauty! We completed the transaction while standing in line. Jen held my place in line and I went to will-call. Ta-Da! Our tickets were there, I picked them up and waved to Jen to come out of line. The Centro saved us a lot of time!

Palm "Uptime"

Feb 16, 2008
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Full Page Palm Ad

The Internet's have been a-buzz about Palm's latest advertisement in the New York Times, their blog post and their homepage. They are basically poking fun at RIM over their latest outage. I must admit, if you are going to take a swipe at your competitors, this is a good time to do it. RIM has made news with a couple outages this in recent months and frankly, Palm's argument makes sense.

Palm's basic rationality is why go through a 3rd party vendor (RIM's NOCs) for your email when it can be centrally controlled by your office with a Microsoft Exchange Server. Now, I am no fan of Microsoft, but at least Palm makes sense here. Why "outsource" your business to a 3rd party you have no control over... if you can do it yourself? I have owned a BlackBerry 8800 and a Pearl. From a design perspective, both devices were great. The Pearl really surprised me and won me over with its sure type technology.

I give credit to Palm for trying this campaign, I feel it is valid and maybe it might switch some people on the edge between the devices in their organization.

Enhancements I've noticed on the Centro

Feb 13, 2008
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To be honest I don't know for sure if these are Sprint specific and they have always had them, but these are neat features regardless:

SMS App

The SMS application is great on Palms. After all, they pretty much invented the concept of threaded text messaging. With the Centro SMS application, they added fifty little arrows next to a thread. The green arrow indicates that the last text message was sent to while the yellow means that you sent the last text. This is really helpful because often, I find myself looking at a message like the ones to the left and I ask myself, "Did I send that, or did Jen". It may seem silly, but I do find this feature very helpful. I believe the arrow innovation first appeared on the Windows Mobile Treo; hey, Windows Mobile was good for something!

This next feature is not new, but I really like it anyway :-) The alert window

Alerts

tells you everything you need in one screen. Missed call, text, email, etc. You can touch or use the 5-way nav to select what you want to see; email from a specific account, text message or phone call. You can easily access this menu at any time (say, after you have hit Done or Snooze).

Online Pictures

This next feature I was totally surprised by; it is not even listed in the manual! When you are in the Pics and Video application, I noticed there was an icon in the top right corner that read "On Device". I thought to myself, that looks interesting. Sure enough, the drop-down menu reveals that there is an ONLINE catalog as well! That is right! You can send pictures, videos and albums to this online catalog... how cool is that! This hit me right our of left field because I was not expecting this because to my knowledge, this functionality is not on another Palm device.

Apple iPhone, Palm Centro and Sprint Speed

Feb 10, 2008
14 comments

I have an iPhone.
I have a Palm Centro.
I have experienced "Sprint Speed".

Sprint Ahead

For the growth of the mobile Internet on cellular networks, I have been on GSM carriers; T-Mobile and AT&T. I did not know any better, EDGE was it for me. Of course, I know the other networks had faster data, but I ignored that since I was happy with my Treo flavor of the month and focused on that. I continued this trend with the iPhone. EDGE, piss slow, with Wi-Fi as my only saving grace (well, where I could use it anyway, which was pretty much at home since it seems like most places these days are all encrypted or you need to subscribe to some other service).

So I have been looking at options for a phone. I test drive a BlackBerry Pearl and though I enjoyed the form-factor, and SureType technology, the BlackBerry OS leaves... a little... no change that, a lot to be desired. So next on my hit list was the Palm Centro. Currently, the Centro is only available on Sprint, so I signed up to try out the phone. Their policy is 30 days, so I figured why not.

I know people have been leaving Sprint in droves recently (my bet is that they are ALL Nextel customers). But I have some friends that swear by Sprint, and they have Treo's, so I knew I could trust their opinions. I have had the Centro for about 4 days now and leaving the device factor out of it, I can see why Europe snubbed the iPhone with EDGE. My God, I mean, EVDO 3G is absolutely freaking amazing and Sprint does a great job of showcasing this by giving Power Vision customers (its their all-encompassing data package) full access to Sprint TV. With this service I have TV on demand and a smattering of other random TV. ABC to Comedy Central, LOST to the Colbert Report, I've got it all and for free...well... really it is just included in my data plan. Wow. Hot stuff.

Then there is the Internet and email speeds. I get my email.... like that. Yup, about as long as it took you to gaze over the ellipse, I got my mail.

OK, now to my dilemma. I am a huge Palm , Inc. fan. I am also a huge Apple, Inc. fan as well. I can't have two mobile

Centro Sprint

phone contracts. When Palm ditched the Foleo, in a fit of rage, I jumped ship faster that you can say Foleo and bought the iPhone. Our relationship was rocking at first. Issues such as no 3rd party applications really hurt. What? no tasks? No syncing of memos? Huh? How much is this device? $500 (at the time)? Well, I still stuck with it. I have been patiently waiting for all of these amazing updates to happen on the iPhone, but I constantly feel let down. Oh, I can save a web favorite to my Home Screen! Whoopee F&^%$$^ do! Where is my copy-paste dammit!!!

Now, the iPhone have a looming 3rd part SDK release at the end of February, the 26th to be exact. This has the potential to change the game, fo-sho. Fortunately, I don't have to return the Centro till March 5th; plenty of time to decide what I am going to keep.

What? Keep? Is he serious? I mean, how can these even be a debate? I love Palm OS, Garnet OS, Access OS, what ever you want to call it. I love the applications, the PIM's, are all best in class in my opinion. Teh first thing you might be asking yourself is what about giving up Safari for Blazer? Yeah, compared to Safari, Blazer sucks, but then again so does just about every other mobile browser, so at least the Centro is not alone in this. 99% of the websites I vist have a mobile site, so I don't really find it that much of an issue to browse the web. In the last 4 days using the Centro I have not come across an issue with the Blazer not allowing me to do what I want to do.

IPhone

What about that bad-ass iPod in the iPhone? Yeah, it sure is sweet isn't it? It is real purdy. But here is a reality check- 1) I already have an iPod if I need it, 2 of them actually, and 2) pTunes is a great music player on Palm devices. Video? Man the video on the iPhone is gorgeous, but again I have that on my 5G iPod, but the screen is not as big. Oh, and remember, I get all of that streaming content for free on Sprint, no iTunes purchase necessary, thank you.

So there you have it. Will I keep the Centro? Will I keep the iPhone? It is a tough call. I really, really love the Centro, it is the best Treo, err... I mean Centro, errr... I mean Smartphone Palm has made and with Jon Rubenstein at Palm, their future is looking bright.

I have come to terms with the iPhone's inadequacies...

Jan 26, 2008
5 comments

For months I have secretly had issues with the iPhone. Many moons ago, I had a post discussing how a Palm Treo and do so much more than an iPhone. Every since then, in the back of my mind, I somehow still thought I was using a Treo.

I recently purchased an Asus Eee PC. This device has made me realize what I currently use my devices for and how to use them in the future. Let's start off with the iPhone.

IPhone Side

The iPhone. It is a consumer device. Let me say this again, the iPhone is a consumer device. There, I said it. For months I have been trying to get it to do things it just wasn't meant to do. I have been using it in a business capacity. I have given up this effort and now I am going to focus what it was meant for; a killer phone, iPod, web browser and basic calender, etc. I currently use GroupWise at work and whenever I have a meeting at work, I add the appointment to my iPhone. This is quite tedious and I have forgotten to add appointments many times, so I have given up. I mean, I work with hundreds of other people and most of them don't use a PDA or smartphone, yet somehow they are able to get their job done. My previous job I had to know my schedule immediately for scheduling meetings and such. Now, this is not the case anymore. I have deleted all work-related appointments (I will still place important work events in there) and I am looking at the iPhone in a whole new light. It is now my pure phone and entertainment device that syncs perfectly with my iMac. I am complete again (OK, a little TOO much drama there).

IMac G5

The iMac G5. It is my stead home companion. It manages all of my music, photos and movies. It works great with

my 30GB iPod and 8GB iPhone. It allows me to communicate with iChat and have video conferences with friends and use the web for everything I need for work, school and personal things. I am able to do my schoolwork on it and I have applications on the iMac I don't have elsewhere such as Adobe CS. This is very helpful for my degree. My iMac fits my personal needs just fine.

HP Laptop

The HP Laptop. This is provided to me from work and that is all I use it for. On occasion I use it for school, but I don't have to. It has come in handy on trip and such to have Internet and what-not, but other than that I lug it home every day and back to work the next. I also recently found out that I am stuck with this laptop. I was hoping to get a Macbook Pro, but that is not going to happen now and really places in kink in using .Mac to synchronize across all of my computers. So, now I have to restructure how I do things which is part of the reason for this post.

EeePC Black

The EEE PC. I just got this on Tuesday of this week. Wow, what a cool device! I have tweaked the EEE PC a little

bit since I have purchased it, installed the "advanced desktop mode" and have video chats via Skype. All of it works perfectly. So my only issues left are how to incorporate the EEE PC into my daily workflows efficiently. I can copy documents off of my EEE PC with a USB memory stick, or with my 4GB SD card (my HP Laptop has a built-in SD card reader). Not having wireless is a pain. I could install Windows XP, but that is a HUGE hassle without an external drive, and with the constant rewriting ti does to a hard drive, I don't want it decaying my 4GB solid state drive on the EEE PC any faster than usual. So for now, I just copy documents back and forth with my USB memory stick, but I am still investigating at work ways in which t

Ba-bye Palm

Jan 24, 2008
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This saddens me. I love Palm, but closing their stores? I guess Rubenstein is affecting the company on multiple levels. I found out today that I am not getting a Mac at work (I know, I am coping) I was thinking about getting a Treo 750 on AT&T, but, when you have an iPhone, everything kinda pales in comparison. I really hope my dream combo of a Palm device paired with a Foleo II using the same OS becomes a reality. Once can dream...

Bye Palm

AT&T Centro on the horizon?

Jan 13, 2008
2 comments

ATT Centro

Here is a snapshot of from Engadget. Looks good and I do like the white color. I do think this is a great device and actually kinda want one... but it is hard to give up the iPhone lust.

Palm ending support for IBM Java

Jan 9, 2008
1 comment

IBM JAVA

Not that the application was great anyway (buggy as hell and applications crashed constantly), but why end it? I mean, it is not like it was ever updated frequently anyway and resource after resource was poured into it to ensure that it ran smoothly on Palm OS?

Was the iPhone originally going to have a traditional keyboard?

Jan 5, 2008
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IPhone Keyboard

From the looks of it, yes, based on an article from Phone Different (sramanamitra.com). Here is a quote from the article:

Rubinstein and Jobs could not agree on the iPhone’s strategy with the Keyboard. This tells me that Rubinstein has a separate but perhaps also compelling vision on how the keyboard needs to be incorporated into smartphones. I can’t wait to see what that vision entails!

Since I am also a Palm fan, now that Rubenstein is at Palm, Inc., perhaps those visions will come to fruition on their devices.