Business Week Just arrived and they have a fun list of cool stuff…
Portability Update…
According to T-Mobile, I’ll be up and running with my old number again by tomorrow afternoon. Everything is all set, though it did take some manual intervention to get the required corporate information (Tax ID etc…) from my Nextel account.
Sun sets up European RFID test center
Amid some privacy concerns, the Java advocate enters the retail-tracking game in Europe by opening a test center where companies can test their radio frequency identification systems. [CNET News.com ]
Time Warner Launches HD DVR
In a press release today, Scientific Atlanta and Time Warner Cable-Green Bay (Wisconsin) announced availability of the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD to TWC-GB cable customers. “Scientific-Atlanta announced today the availability of its integrated dual tuner high-definition digital video recorder set-top solution…. [GearBits]
Looks like early next year will be when this is ready for prime-time in other larger markets.
Rich Palm blog posting?
I can’t seem to find any way other than the Palm Browser to fully post from my Palm to moveable type. I’ve tested Kablog and Blogplanet which are essentially the same java apps. I know about Pop2Blog, but I can’t set up the necessary details on my host. So far the only (and most complex) way is to login to the MT site from the Palm browser and post the way you would from any browser. This totally works as you would expect, but is not terribly efficient.
I’d love to be able to either attach an image to an email and send or find an app, like netnewswire or kung log for palm. Hand/RSS is read only rss for now…
Falling on my sword a bit…but not really
I know I’ve mentioned the Treo 600 rather obsessively in the past, but I am now officially glad it has yet to arrive through T-Mobile. After long consideration, I’ve decided to instead be a 2 piece guy (for now) and manage my life with Palm plus Phone. I really like the Sony Ericsson T-610 as I’ve also mentioned previously and the more I used it, the more I don’t want to give it up. As a result, I’ve been trying to find as many Bluetooth options in my devices to enable as much connectivity as well as simplicity. The Tungsten C unfortunately did not make the cut. As much I was enjoying it, I’ve decided to give it a rest for now (possibly for good… any buyers?) and picked up the Tungsten T3 which is an amazing unit.
It does not have wifi, just bluetooth which is just fine since it easily connects to my phone for data usage. I could write a great deal on this but it so happens a nice page was done today at GearBits, which you can read here.
While the T3 is not new, I thought I would share some quick thoughts on what I like since it is pretty different from my previous Palm.
First – the return of Grafitti. No keyboard, but if you’ve been using Palms as long as I have this is quit easy to deal with.
Next – Stereo Sound. I did not realize I was missing this until I heard my first sounds on the T3. Games in the speaker or with stereo headphones are great!
Voicememo with built in mic! Not sure what Palm was thinking when they decided that the TC had to use an external mic, but this feature is infinitely more useful when you can just hit the button and record.
The screen is amazing. 320×480 half VGA and extremely bright. Pictures from Splashphoto are amazing and in my newly minted parental role, I have MANY pictures. Guess I’ll be getting a larger SD card soon to handle them all.
The only negative so far is that the battery is not the best. In fact it is actually weaker than on my TC which is odd since I always thought that bluetooth was supposed to be more power efficient than wifi. My guess is that it is probably the screen more than the radio… but I could be wrong. I’ve just installed BTToggle to see if I get get some more time from it. Don’t get me wrong… you can download a great deal of email with the battery, I would not do to much web browsing which I see more as a nice to have rather than a need to have since this is a small device anyway. The screen really does make this far more pleasant than on the TC which I was most familiar with.
So far so good with this combo punch. It’s interesting that I ended up this way (for now) given the hype on the Treo and it’s all in one capabilities. For me it all came down to the lack or bluetooth and the micro keyboard. I may have gotten used to the keyboard over time, but it did not seem easy given my testing usage.
Your Geek Gift Guide for 2003
Wired magazine presents 77 of the coolest stereos, 3-D screens, toys, cameras, DVRs, games and gadgets of the year. [Wired News]
The MusiKube Personal Music Guide
Virgin Megastore is testing out the MusiKube Personal Music Guide at their store in San Francisco. The MusiKube is a customized wireless Pocket PC which connects back to a server that shoppers can carry around with them in the store and use to scan the bar codes on CDs and listen to samples of songs and read album reviews and other information. [Gizmodo]
Interesting though I don’t really see the difference or need for this compared to the system in use at Barnes and Noble which lets you listen to any CD by swiping it’s barcode at any end-cap display unit. I guess it’s nice to have the unit in your hand, but I can’t see this being that cost efficient for them. In fact, it might continue to justify the $18.99 I see all to often on CDs.
Personal Portability Initiated
I received everything I needed from my office in order to officially port my number from Nextel to T-Mobile and completed the process today. It apparently will take up to 7 days which is officially 5 days longer than the FCC said it would. Oh well… we’ll see what actually happens.
I’ve been told that I will receive an SMS when the port is complete and that all my existing services will be in order, just with a my new/old number. Fingers crossed.
Slate: Will the Broadcast Flag Break Your TiVo?
Slate: Will the Broadcast Flag Break Your TiVo? Paul Boutin. But never mind the industry gossip. How will the broadcast flag affect your viewing? It’ll be an annoyance for some, but it’s not the end of the world some tech reporters predicted. Instead, it’s more like the Big Four networks’ last stand against their competitors. [Tomalak’s Realm]
Manhattan’s Dead Cell Zones
Last month, a hotline recorded calls from New York cell phone users to log places they can’t get a clear signal. Nearly 5,000 calls showed the busy city center may be one of the worst places to place a mobile phone call. [Wired News]
Device Options…
I keep rethinking my Treo thoughts…
Bluetooth is far too compelling to pass on and I could easily manage with either the Tungsten 3 or the Sony UX-50. I’ve checked out the Sony, but prefer the way the Tungsten works more, even without Wifi and the keyboard. In messing with my Dad’s Tungsten T last night I remembered how well I know graffiti. With access to my phone, I would be able to have online data access as needed… wifi has mainly been used in my home or office where I have my laptop anyway. Sync and file transfer over bluetooth are very cool as well.
The other main issue is that the Sony costs about 600 bucks, the Tungsten is 400.
Only 80,000 Switched Telephone Numbers
Only 80,000 people applied to switch their telephone numbers to new carriers on the first day… [textually.org]
iPod Jack
Person wearing iPod spies passerby wearing iPod. Walks up to stranger, unplugs own headphone jack, motions for stranger to do same. Both plug into each other’s iPod’s and dig 30 seconds of what a total stranger is listening to. Smile, unplug, continue on with their respective days. Apparently iPod jacking is a rising meme on college campuses, small communities, etc. [birdhouse.org]
AT&T announces it’s EDGE
The carrier said the network would provide customers with average data speeds of between 100 and 130 kilobits per second.
The carrier noted the network technology is now available in areas served by its existing GSM/GPRS network, which AT&T Wireless said covers approximately 215 million potential customers across the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico and Bermuda. The carrier plans to deploy EDGE technology throughout its Caribbean properties in the near future.
Pricing for the high-speed data service will be similar to AT&T Wireless’ current GPRS pricing, including an unlimited access plan for $80 per month [RCR Wireless News]
Verizon cuts back on WiFi
Verizon is scaling back their plans to convert a thousand New York City pay phones into WiFi hotspots by the end of the year, cutting their target back to just 500. The reason, they say, is that coverage will be good enough with only 500 hotspots, something which is hard to believe. They’ve probably found that it’s costing more than they thought it would, and besides, they probably want to focus on building a customer base for their high-speed EV-DO cellular network which would more or less be in competition with WiFi hotspots. [Gizmodo]
Squeezebox
The team at Slimdevices does it again…
The new Squeezebox sports a complete hardware redesign, built-in wireless networking capabilities and your choice of digital outputs. It’s available now for $299.
Knowing you’ve made the right carrier choice…
As I’ve now mentioned many times I am switching to T-Mobile and actually have a phone and data plan active with my previous number forwarding from Nextel until 11/24. They seems to be the most sophisticated in understanding a few things…
- Users want to be in control of a rich feature set and wide choice of devices.
- Plans should be flexible, competitively priced and offer add on options so you can enhance your service without having to jump to a significantly higher tier.
- Coverage should obviously be good.
I’ve been feeling good about this so far but today I am very pumped with a new discovery. Within your account settings on the site, you can create a web interface login for multiple email accounts. These same accounts can then be accessed through the WAP function T-Mobile calls T-Zones. You can create accounts for corporate mail – Exchange and Notes and actually connect to mail and calendar services without having to run a desktop client which is an amazing advantage. In most cases server software is required for this level of functionality and ends up involving your IT department with which most end users don’t have much leverage unless they are more senior in their organizations.
In my case I can now access my work Lotus Notes account through a more sophisticated web interface than was made available by IBM directly. The iNotes interface on Windows is comparable but on Mac, it is a wretched experience. Not anymore…
T-Mobile takes it another step. Accounts set up through the web client can be queried and utilized as though they were regular POP accounts, something you can’t do usually with Lotus Notes. Now I can – which means I can use any device connected to the T-Mobile network to check my work email. On my phone (Sony Ericsson T-610) I can also set up POP or IMAP accounts – 2+ the one built in for the phone by default. This is faster and richer than the WAP experience and actually takes advantage of the network connectivity by allowing scheduled checking of messages for each account.
Even better – I now know that I can use a Treo 600 connected through T-Mobile and SnapperMail to stay connected to my email in the very near future. I can’t wait!
How to connect your Palm to Phone for a GPRS data connection
I’ve spent some time searching and fussing with my phone over the weekend and thought I would share in detail how to can connect my Palm to my phone in order to take advantage of the GPRS data services.
Equipment:
Palm Tungsten C
Sony Ericsson T-610
T-Mobile Unlimited Data Plan ($20/mo)
Sony Ericsson T-610
T-Mobile Unlimited Data Plan ($20/mo)
The details…It’s simple to do, just follow along.
There are several data plans I’ve discovered as a new t-mobile
customer…
You get T-Zones when you sign up which is a walled garden free limited wap service on your phone. You can upgrade to T-Zones pro which gets you more – picture messaging etc…
Then you have the unlimited data plan which I am using which is 20/mo. Finally there is the hot spot (wifi) plan which I don’t have with them though I have used it in Starbucks on a pay as you go basis.
For my set-up, I tested the infrared to phone without the data plan active and was able to use the phone in GSM mode to make an outgoing call to a local ISP. You set everything on the Palm side and the phone receives a signal through the infrared port and makes a phone call to the number…logging you in as though you were connected to your ISP with a phone line… you are just a cellular one.
When my unlimited data plan became active I tried a new way…
Here are the details:
- On the Palm use the Connection (in prefs) setting for IR to
PC/Handheld - On the Palm again in Network create a connection for T-Mobile…
Select the Connection IR to PC/Handheld in the drop down.
in Details…
Connection Type – PPP
Idle Timeout – Never
Uncheck query DNS and manually
add 216.155.175.170 and 216.155.175.171
IP address – automatic
Connection Type – PPP
Idle Timeout – Never
Uncheck query DNS and manually
add 216.155.175.170 and 216.155.175.171
IP address – automatic
You’ll need to modify the script
next…
Send: AT&F
Send:CR
Send:AT+CGDCONT=1.”IP”,”APN”
Send:
Send:
Send CR:
Send:ATD*99#
Send CR:
Wait For: CONNECT
End:
Tap OK twice.. and if infrared is active on your phone it should
connect.
I assume that a bluetooth connection would also work with the same script. I think you would just choose the connection as Bluetooth once the devices are paired and hit connect for the same functionality without the line of sight limits.
I’ve see the Blue light…
and no not the Kmart blue light special.
Bluetooth. I am not sure what the issues with the adoption are, whether it’s marketing or what, but now that I’ve taken a taste from the wireless well there is no going back. I’ve been messing with my phone – sending files, contacts and even calendar items back and forth. Through iSync, I can keep my phone connected wirelessly and in sync with my computer and my Palm (though this still needs to connect via USB… more on that in a sec.) Apple has implemented this extremely well – even with the D-Link adapter I purchased today. I presume it will be at least as good with it built in on my other machine (the adapter will go to our iMac) after the spots are removed…
For some reason, I am beginning to think it is for greedy business reasons, Palm has chosen not to develop drivers for any OS 5 device and their SDIO Bluetooth Card – the ONLY Bluetooth SDIO card even available for Palm. The drivers only support OS 4 and the most recent device supported is the Tungsten W which runs 4.1. I actually tried to get the card today and force the drivers from the Tungsten T to load, but can’t find the card anywhere… I checked 2 Staples, Best Buy and TekServe. No one has it. It’s online, but I was hoping to try this and return it quickly without incurring shipping charges if in fact I would have found it. All the newer devices with it built in are OS 5 and the Sony UX-50 even has wifi and bluetooth together.
Bluetooth allows you to replace cables like USB for basic connectivity but it also allows for device to device connections without having to be within line of sight like infrared and regardless of type (pda, computer or phone…). With some creative software you can use the locality of the technology (10 meters or so in range) to control devices based on your behavior. I’ve just started playing with Salling Clicker which truly enables the digital hub function of your computer. Through bluetooth, you can control all kinds of functions… like locking the system as you walk away, pausing music or movies when your phone rings etc. You can also manually control software like itunes or powerpoint as you might expect a remote to work, though again without line of sight limits.
Through the basic coolness and convenience factor of bluetooth I’ve been thinking about it as a necessary wireless component to any gadget. It’s just too good not to have.