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Mobile Download Managers

Anil linked to PalmOne’s new Addit app which I think is awesome. It allows you to view and choose from a list of PalmApps, which you can then download and run immediately or “Over The Air”/OTA. This is an awesome step for the Palm platform, which up until now has always assumed that you would have a PC available to install applications. [Russell Beattie Notebook]

This looks great and if you install and register now, you can SplashClock free which is a 9.95 value. I’d really like to take advantage of this deal and the app, but unfortunately PalmOne and Bluefishwireless (the provider of the app) have decided to only release an .exe installer which comes with the PC conduit. It would be nice for wirelessly enabled apps to come just as PRC files or just .zip files which would give you the option of actually using the conduit if you wanted, or if your system supported it.

I’ve got an email into support… we’ll see how it goes.

Update – Apparently, March will be when we can expect to see a Mac version with a wireless only download about a month earlier. Stay Tuned…

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Prince of Persia

I picked up Prince of Persia tonight and dusted off my PS2. Been a while since I felt I could really spend some time gaming and I guess I feel pretty cool about it now that I am officially not working. All work makes… yeah yeah.

Anyway – Prince of Persia is an amazing game. It’s beautifully designed, not too hard to play and has a cool combination of fighting and adventure. It’s kind of like Tomb Raider, but with some serious tweaks.

I also recently downloaded a demo of Indiana Jones, which looks much closer to Tomb Raider. Have not played it yet, just watched the movie online and immediately downloaded.

Game on!

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Yes Please…

So imagine that you’re coming home from work with your iPod and you’re listening to a song. Let’s say that you’re listening to Don’t be Light by Air, because it’s an extremely good song. Now let’s imagine that your iPod has bluetooth capabilities (or something similar) and that you’ve already paired it with your home computer (that – of course – you have hooked up to your stereo).

[plasticbag.org]

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Burn no Bridges…

The best advice I can give anyone is to burn no bridges in life unless absolutely necessary. You never know what’s going to happen and the world is a surprisingly small place. As I exit my current company, I am amazed at how many people I have previously been in contact with are looking to help and offer advice. These are people I used to work with, currently work with and some I even just met.

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Google delivers parcel search

A new feature on the search site lets people type in their package tracking numbers to turn up shipping information directly from FedEx or UPS Web pages. [CNET News.com]

This is very cool – fedex/ups/airborne + tracking number = your search. It’s definitely quicker than going to each site you might have to normally visit.

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Bluetooth Sharing Windows XP’s Internet with a Tungsten

With Bluetooth in the Palm of your hand and on that desktop or laptop PC,
Internet sharing is only a few steps away. Whizoo has some step-by-step
instructions on sharing Windows XP’s Internet connectivity with a Tungsten over Bluetooth.

discuss [MobileWhack]

Anyone get this working on Mac? Seems like it would be simple using the Sharing control panel and creating a connection from Palm to Computer. For some reason my connection to world from Palm through Computer is not working… not sure if it is DNS or what. I’ve tried on my Powerbook as well as iMac.

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Job hunt is on…

Feeling good about my resume now so I’ve started to send it out… working through some personal network contacts as well as the job boards and a few “love to work there” companies. I’ve got nothing to lose so I am casting a pretty wide net.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you could easily surf the posted jobs for along time. Monster came up with about 100 pages of marketing jobs… of course many of them are lame, repeated and blindly posted by some seeming shady organizations, but there are many good job descriptions out there.

It’s amazing how differently people use the same words… You can find Director or VP level jobs that range in income by over 100K. Not the salary at $100k, the difference between them. One “high level” job listed cell phone benefits and a car allowance. The salary maxed out a $45K. Not exactly high level.

I can relax a bit now that my resume is up to date – at least from that perspective.

Now my leisurely walks with wife and child don’t have anything waiting for me to complete. Today looks to be a beautiful day – not too cold – so we are definitely going for a long one.

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Zukero V3 – crazy name, cool idea

Little black box lets any audio device get streaming content over GPRS.

The product itself is a small dongle terminating in a 3.5 mm jack suitable for connection to a wide range of home audio products. This dongle connects via Bluetooth to a compatible mobile phone (currently Nokia’s Series 60 devices, Sony Ericsson’s UIQ handhelds and their T68, T39 and T610) and uses its GPRS connection to stream audio content directly to the home appliance. [infoSync]

Pretty wild gadget, though I am not sure that GPRS is quite fast enough to be a practical delivery method for music. It’s more like a 33.6 modem connection in best cases which would be pretty lo-fi on your stereo. The concept is awesome though… hopefully they will figure out how to support faster networks as they become available.

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Hand / RSS

I’ve noted StandAlone’s Hand/RSS Palm news reader previously, but I’ve been using it much more lately and think it is definitely a winner. In my brief email exchanges with them, it’s clear that they are not only listening to the users, but also working to make some serious improvements to the app. I was emailed a version last night which fixes the main gripe I had – no cut and paste for for adding subscriptions. This allows you to import, though one-by-one, subscriptions from a memo file. Eventually, there may be a more true import function and possibly a desktop sync. I’d be happy with that!

If this app could post to blogs, it would be a killer communications tool. As it stands now, my practice has been to simply mail articles I want to read more on. This is a pretty simple process though it took a bit of trial to make it even easier. By setting your email address within the defaults (not to be confused with resetting the app to it’s defaults), you can drop an item in an email to your self in seconds. You simply tap and hold on any article, hit mail article and an email addressed to you is initiated in your email app of choice (SnapperMail in my case). I’ve been sending these to my outbox rather than sending immediately since I am usually reading while on the subway or I just know there will be others to mail soon enough. This lets me batch them in one shot and receive them back at my computer to then either read more fully or blog through NetNewsWire. You can also choose to open any item within the Palm browser if you choose… what you do all depends on your method of connection.

It costs 14.95 and is definitely on my list of apps to buy.

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Congress Votes to Can Spam

The House approves the first national anti-spam measure. The legislation encourages the Federal Trade Commission to create a do-not-spam list of e-mail addresses and includes penalties for spammers of up to five years in prison. [Wired News]

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Time to Reboot…

I was officially restructured out of a job today…

I will actually be fully employed through the end of the year, with severance to follow for a few months beyond.

This is sure to be an interesting opportunity for me. I’ve basically worked for the same place (even through quite a few structural and ownership changes) over just about 8 years…

I’m completely open to what comes next and will need to think seriously about what that might be… My experiences will hopefully be a benefit, though I have no idea what the current job market is like.

So if you know of any opportunities, in wireless, entertainment, technology, marketing or advertising, this is one always-on marketing savvy technophile looking for work. You can email me directly (link on my sidebar or leave something in comments).

Time to work on my resume and spend some quality family time.

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Wi-Fi Blackberry in Works

Research in Motion Ltd. is building BlackBerry messaging devices that run over wireless LANs, company officials confirmed last week.

RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has started testing BlackBerrys that can roam between 802.11, or Wi-Fi, WLANs and wide-area cellular networks.

“We’ve been working on Wi-Fi for a long time,” said Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-CEO of RIM. “We weren’t really planning to talk about it for a while, but it’s a bit predictable that we would do this—it’s just another transport.” [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]