Proud Geek

Remember my recent blog post suggesting that a new Palm Treo would be coming soon? Palm apparently got tired of all the leaks and rumors, and “leaked” a more official photo of the upcoming Palm Centro (probably also named the Palm 800p). Here it is.

Makes me drool! According to unofficial reports, the Centro is the smallest Treo ever, and may sell for just $99 with voice / data plans. May be only under Sprint for several months before being opened up to other carriers.  But some limitations. Keyboard seems a bit small, and so is the screen. No wi-fi.

Nonetheless, a new look for the Treo is always welcome!

(Thanks, Treonauts!)

As if ringing cellphones aren’t annoying enough, now there’s an utility that actually speaks the words of SMS / text messages that people send to your Palm Treo. Can you imagine the cacophony (had to look up the spelling, hence the link) of cellphones literally talking to their masters all over restaurants, subways, and office meetings?!

Thank goodness I’m deaf. :-P

SpeakSMS by ToySoft Development is an application for Palm Treo 650 / 680 / 700p / 755p (running on Palm OS only) that adds a nice set of features to the otherwise staid SMS program that comes with these Treos. These features include:

• Speaking all the text in a SMS message
• Repeating the message as necessary, as many times as needed (aigh, this would drive me crazy!)
• Speak the name of the sender
• Adding a custom picture ID and custom filters for each sender
• A powerful and customizable shortcut database where commonly-used abbreviations like “ASAP” would be spoken as “as soon as possible”
• Intuitive user interface
• Useful for while driving or walking (well, I can read / type while walking — and I - ahem - shouldn’t be doing that while driving)

It sells for $9.95, although a trial version is available. I can imagine that this would be useful for (hearing!) road warriors as well as people who have low vision.

I think I know what may be my next smartphone purchase. No, not the iPhone for the reasons I already stated before (although I could still be persuaded). Nor the Blackberry Curve, even though it is on the market now. Nor the Treo 680, even though I’d recommended it to my friends and colleagues.

I want the Palm Treo 755p with Verizon service. While this has not been officially announced by Verizon or Palm, rumors have been buzzing that its release is imminent. (Photo via EngadgetMobile and Treonauts)

I love my Palm Treo 650, but it’s definitely showing my age. The Treo 755p comes with faster Internet browsing, a better camera, a somewhat better-looking screen, a bit faster processing speed, and much more memory. It also has a smaller form factor (the shape of the unit itself), and the antenna is finally inside the unit itself instead of sticking out one side of the unit like some scary Matt Groening’s “Life is Hell” rabbit.

Why not the Treo 680? Because the 755p has a bit better battery life (altho not as good as the 650, ironically enough), and the 755p is somewhat more advanced.

Why must I have Verizon service? Ah, because it works (although with holes in coverage) in the subway tunnels throughout the DC area, and has the best reach throughout the USA of any carrier I’ve tried in the past. And Verizon is indeed very reliable.

Why must it have the Palm operating system, and not Windows Mobile? Because of several programs I just can’t live without, which only runs on the Palm operating system — Chatter Email, Bonsai, and Genius.

There are a few things I’m still wishing for, and which the 755p won’t have. Built-in wifi is high up on the list. A much more modern version of the Palm operating system would be divine - the current version has been round for years. Multi-tasking would be fabulous. And a better Internet browser would just be icing on the cake.

Treonauts has a super-duper-handy Treo comparison chart if you want to see the differences between Palm Treos out there.

iPhone freaks have had their day. Soon, it’s gonna be my day. Unless Palm announces something even more wonderful soon …

Hello all! I’m back in town after nearly two weeks in the far Northwest — Seattle and the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C. It was strange not blogging the entire time. There were times when I was just itchin’ to get down and start blogging.

And it was strange too not being near the Internet for long stretches of time. But I had some geek things (mostly on my Palm Treo) to make up for it and alleviate some of my itchin’:

• eReader and several ebooks (thank you, Nora Roberts!) on my Treo
• The seventh Harry Potter book! (ok, nothing electronic here, but it does rate high on the geek-o-meter)
• Genius! from Hobbyist Software. See my previous review of it. It’s a nifty Treo program that finds information fast for you. I used it for checking my flight information and finding other information quickly — see the next several bullet points.
• The Wikipedia (used via Genius!) to look up nifty tidbits on Seattle and any other trivia stuff I could think of.
• IMDB (again, used via Genius!) to delve into obscure information like what was the name of the guy who played Superman on TV back in the mid-1900’s (George Reeves).
• Google (yet again, used via Genius!) to find yet even more obscure information like what the highest points in Seattle are (as well as the steepest streets).
• Google Reader (used via both my Treo and on the laptop) to keep up with news headlines, blogs, weather forecasts, my favorite comic strips, etc etc.

No matter how much I loved Seattle, it’s good to be home in suburban Maryland.

Good news for intrepid folks who (like me) like to navigate down city streets with their Treo’s in front of them telling them where to go: Google Maps Mobile has been significantly updated, with new features that just begs you to use them.

A while ago, I hailed Google Maps Mobile as one of the best apps ever for the Treo. It still is, and this update is pretty much icing on the cake. A quick overview of the new features added in this update — see this Treonaut blog for screenshots:

• In map view, there are now several icons across the top of the screen - find location, find nearby business, directions, show traffic, and view satellite. The last two icons change to show whether traffic / satellite is turned on or not - a nice touch.
• You can now look up and pull an address from your Treo’s contacts - another very nice feature. You can also save addresses into a new contact on your Treo. Of course, I don’t make it a habit of saving the address of just about every Starbucks I need to find and navigate to. But I’ve often found the need to copy and paste addresses of my friends. This new feature saves time and a lot of stylus-presses.
• Traffic information (when turned on) is now auto-refreshed every 60 seconds. I just wish there weren’t so much grey (signifying no information for that stretch of the freeway) sometimes.
• Some menu options have been simplified. For example, “Erase All” has been changed to “Reset Google Maps…,” “Show / Hide Traffic” is now just “Show Traffic,” “View / Hide Satellite” is now “View Satellite,” and more.
• “Directions to” and “Directions from” options have been updated to make it somewhat easier to use.

There’re still (at least!) three things I’m hoping Google will soon incorporate:

• Auto-checking for version updates (but giving the user the choice of auto-installing new updates, informing the user of new updates, or just don’t check for new updates).
• Auto-reseting Google Maps when the Google tile cache gets too large (i.e., user should be able to set it to auto-reset and erase the tile cache when it grows past 1 megabytes).
• The ability to quickly switch addresses in the “To” and “From” fields when doing directions (I often end up with the destination address in the top field instead of the bottom field; a quick “Switcheroo” button like what Google Maps has on its website would save a few stylus presses).

(Thanks, Treonauts!)

As part of my ongoing review of the various IM programs available for the Palm Treo 650, I tried out Toccer.

I like it. A lot. While it doesn’t have nearly as many features as other top-ranked IM programs, it does the basic function of IM’ing very well. And reliably. And, oh, it’s FREE — at least, for now. (There’s a paid version for a mere $6.95 - see below.)

Some thoughts — ranked by pro’s and then con’s:

Pros:

• Very small program, at 82k — a relief after seeing several other programs that takes up a good chunk of the rather miniscule memory on my Treo 650.
• It’s free.
• Registration onto AIM was quick and easy — and when I changed from “offline” to “online,” my buddy list loaded without any problems.
• It doesn’t have any “frills” like most of the other IM programs available for the Treo, but it does do the basic function well: it IMs.
• It’s free.
• The interface is simple and very easy to use — probably the easiest I’ve seen. And it matches the Treo 650’s decor very well — no gaudy fonts or colors (unless you’ve set yours that way via Prefs!).
• It’s free. Actually, there’s a paid version (for $6.95), with a few more features which I don’t particularly want: hyperlinked chat logs, PalmOS integrated find support, and exportable logs.
• Toccer connects directly to AIM’s servers, and not through Toccer’s website servers. Less failures, which I see with other IM programs.  And if Atomic Cog (which developed Toccer) ever goes out of business, Toccer would still work — unlike Verichat!
• It’s free.
• Starts very quickly when you go back to the program from another app — very nice.
• Stayed connected overnight - a great achievement! Most IM programs inadverently disconnect after a while for one reason or another.
• It’s free. ;-)

Cons:

• Only for AIM — no Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ, etc. Big minus.  But I think Atomic Cog has this feature on its to-do list.
• When I get an IM while using another app on my Treo, I only get an alert screen telling me that I’ve got an unread IM and listing what the IM says. I can’t respond using that screen — instead, I have to click on “Go to” which takes me to the Toccer app. Some other IM programs allow me to reply without leaving the app that I was using.
• Some of my buddies customize their away messages to say something about what they’re REALLY doing or thinking. But Toccer doesn’t show these customized messages — it only shows “(away)” next to the person’s handle.
• Alerts are somewhat customizable — tones and volumes have good options, but vibrate seems to be limited. However, when alert is set to “insistent,” it will bug me every minute or so till I read or dismiss it — nice feature (I think!). Waitamin, when I set alerts to “subtle,” it still bugged me every minute. That bugs me — what if I want to ignore it, say, during a meeting — and it keeps buzzing and buzzing and buzzing every minute even though I’ve set alerts to “subtle.” Not good.
• Because Toccer connects directly to AIM’s servers, it doesn’t support simultaneous multiple AIM sign-ins.
• Doesn’t show colors and fonts used by the person you’re IM’ing with.
• Can’t customize your colors and fonts.
• Can’t show date-time stamps.
• Only available for the Treo 600 and Treo 650 - both of which aren’t made anymore. Wonder if this works on the newer Treos running on Palm OS.
• Eventually caused a reset (after 24 hours - actually not too bad) — and then did not re-connect automatically.
• Toccer is by Atomic Cog.  Atomic Cog used to update Toccer every couple months, but the most recent update was last March, and the previous update before that was June 2006.  Worrisome.

So, let’s see about the rankings thus far. Causerie still comes on top, with Mundu Messenger a relatively close second. Toccer is third due to its reliability and price tag, WebMessenger is fourth, IM+ a distant fifth, and EQO Mobile still in last place (although EQO has recently been significantly updated — I will check out the new version soon).

Via Treonauts (via, in turn, Gizmodo) comes a leak, replete with a blurry photo, of a new type of Palm Treo. This Treo may have a different look (form factor), with straight rows of keys instead of the curved ones we see on the more recent Treos, larger phone keys (call / hang-up), a different-looking 5-way keypad, and more.

This doesn’t seem to be the same as the new Treo 800w, which Gizmodo breathlessly reports may have WiFi. We all have to wait and see if that long-awaited feature does become reality.

In related news (again via Treonauts), it looks like Verizon will be releasing its version of the Treo 755p soon.

<>

For a long while, I thought I couldn’t watch YouTube and other streaming videos on my Palm Treo 650. I told all my friends this, and co-workers as well. And one co-worker, who also had a Palm Treo (although she had a 680) but was rather a neophyle, actually told me about a program that makes it possible to view streaming videos on my Treo: Kimono.

Kinomo can play all sorts of media, and whether it is stored on your Treo or streaming in from the Internet over the air. It can play several different music types, and you can view several different video and picture formats as well. More specifically, Kimono can display these media formats:

• MP3
• Windows Media 9
• Flash Video (e.g., YouTube)
• MPEG-4
• RTSP
• AAC / iTunes
• JPEG photos

According to Kinomo, that means you can watch “entertaining internet video and live web cams, and [listen] to informative radio stations and podcasts.”

It costs a cool $24.95. But I only had to use it once (to watch my daughter’s campaign video straight from the web) to get all excited about it and to buy it. It comes with a list of “channels” of live news and weather television shows and various other television stations as well.

While streaming video works on my Treo 650, it’s really slow, and “live TV” skips quite a bit. I think that on other Treo models with higher speeds (i.e., using the EDGE network with near-broadband speed), it would work a lot better. And a downside: I found it very difficult to find and copy links to Flash videos (e.g., YouTube videos) into Kinomo. Maybe I’m missing something, but it should be easier than having to find the link using my laptop computer and emailing it to my Treo …

I should’ve blogged about this last week, just when Palm announced the new Foleo. But better a wee bit late than never.

Last week, Palm made a big announcement: it will soon be releasing the Palm Foleo as a third new type of device from Palm. (The first being the original personal digital assistants (PDAs), and the second being smartphones that combine PDA functions with phone / data services.)

Just what will the Palm Foleo be?

The Foleo will be a companion to the Palm Treo smartphones (and probably several other smartphone types as well). So many people (including me) use their Palm Treo almost like a laptop computer — browsing the Web, writing documents and spreadsheets, keeping track of just about all their personal information, proudly displaying their photos and videos, handling emails, doing mapping and research, even doing some reading.

The Foleo would complement nearly all these activities by providing more of a small laptop feel with a larger screen than the Palm Treo, and at the same time stay in close sync with the Palm Treo. Changes to emails and documents appear also on the Treo, and vice versa. You can browse the web using the Palm Treo’s data service, or hook up with a wifi (say, in a Starbucks for a small fee or at many bookstores, airports, and other areas for free) with the Foleo’s built-in wifi receiver. It’d sell for more than $400 — a pretty hefty cost.

AND, you’d pretty much have to have the Palm Treo close to it at all times to make it that effective.

Many bloggers are labelling it neat (especially its wifi and bigger screen) but ultimately unnecessary, and they predict that this would put Palm firmly behind the other smartphone companies.

But, what do I think of it?

I have to agree with many of the other bloggers. I haven’t tried it out, so I’m only speculating. But I use Chatter Email instead of Versamail on the Palm Treo — would that work with the Palm Foleo? I also use Natara Bonsai heavily to keep track of all the little bits of information, tasks, projects, cases, shopping lists, trivia, and much more in my life; I seriously doubt that would work on the Foleo as well.

The only thing I might use the Foleo for would be word processing and browsing the Internet. And I can do that very well from a regular small laptop for just $200-300 more than a Palm Foleo. And the Palm Foleo works best with a Palm Treo, which costs another $250-400, depending on the carrier’s plan you buy the Treo under. If the Foleo is expanded in the near future to be much like a mini-laptop, maybe, but just not right now.
So, probably not worth it.

Sorry, Palm. You gotta work harder. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong — I’ve been a faithful Palm user for nearly ten years.

(Update 10/23/2007: Gmail now allows direct IMAP connection via Chatter! See link for instructions on how to configure Chatter to work directly with Gmail.)

(Update 10/30/2007: Problems with how emails look after going through Gmail’s IMAP has forced me to go back to Fastmail.)

CAUTION: TOTAL GEEK-TALK / INFO OVERLOAD here!

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Want push email on your Treo 650 / 680 / 700p / 755p? Don’t have Microsoft Enterprise server installed at home? Your workplace doesn’t have an IT department? Don’t want to give up your main email address?

No problem. Well, sorta. “Push” email (that is, having email be automatically pushed to your Treo, instead of your Treo or you having to check for new emails every several minutes) doesn’t come with your Treo out of the box, like it is with a Blackberry or Sidekick. It’s a three-part (or so!) process with lots of steps:

1. Setting up an account with Fastmail.fm, an email service provider;
2. Installing Chatter Email program onto your Treo; and
3. Setting up your current email service so that it forwards all emails to your new Fastmail.fm service.

NOTE: Chatter Email costs an one-time fee of $39.95 — but you can try it out for up to one month. Fastmail.fm can be free, but higher service levels (including no advertisements in your emails) cost a relatively low fee every month, every 6 months, or every year.

ALSO NOTE: This method would entail stopping using your main email service (i.e., gmail), since all emails will now be forwarded to fastmail.fm so that they can be pushed onto your Treo. That is, you will still keep your main email address, but since all emails will be forwarded to fastmail.fm, the main email service’s inbox will now always be blank. If you’re really, really attached to your email service (like how so many people swear by Gmail), well, you can set up fastmail.fm as a separate email account just for your pager (ignoring Part Three below).

ALSO NOTE: I recommended fastmail.fm because it uses IMAP — a type of email service which makes it easy to sync emails. Yahoo, Hotmail / Microsoft Live, and Gmail all don’t use IMAP. AOL does use IMAP, though. If you’re lucky enough to already use an email service that uses IMAP, then you can continue to use your IMAP email service instead of Fastmail.fm — and set Chatter up to use that IMAP service instead of fastmail.fm.

PART ONE: SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT WITH FASTMAIL.FM:

1. Go to fastmail.fm and set up a new email account. Pick the free (lowest) service for now, until (if) you feel comfy enough with it to pay for a higher level of service. It will ask you if you want to use a different domain name instead of fastmail.fm — pick any that you like, but it won’t make a difference except when trying to remember what to
   type when logging in.
2. Take this step only if you want your current main email address to be used for push email: once you’ve got your fastmail.fm email account set up, click on the “Options” tab at the top of the Fastmail.fm screen. Then select “Personalities.” Create a new personality, and set it for your current main email account (i.e., johndoepager@yahoo.com or janesmith@gmail.com. Be sure to include a descriptive name (i.e., “Yahoo”) under “Display Name”, your full name under, well, “Full Name” and the Yahoo/Gmail/whatever email address under “Email Address.” Anything else can be blank, and then click “Make default.” Then click “Save Personality.” Done!
3. Write a few test emails via Fastmail.fm to make sure they look like they’re indeed coming from your current main email address (i.e., looking like it comes from “johndoepager@yahoo.com” instead of “johndoe@fastmail.fm”). KEEP IN MIND that you haven’t set up forwarding from Yahoo or your main email account yet — do that in Part Three below.

PART TWO: INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING THE CHATTER EMAIL PROGRAM ONTO YOUR TREO:

1. Using your Treo’s Blazer or web browser, you can download and install Chatter Email directly onto your Treo. Go to get.chatteremail.com and follow the instructions (you may be asked to install a program installer first — do that first).
   1. If you’re unable to install directly onto your Treo, then download the latest version of Chatter onto your computer and sync the following files onto your Treo:
      Chatter.prc
      ChatterExch.prc
      ChatterExg.prc
      ChatterMatrix.prc
      ChatterPOP3.prc
      ChatterUtils.prc
2. Once you’ve installed Chatter, go to your Treo’s launcher (where you see a list of programs like Camera, Contacts,
   Calendar, etc) and look for “Chatter”
3. Open it, and follow the instructions for setting it up for first use. When it asks for an email service, select “Fastmail.fm (IMAP)” and fill in your info there. Fill in your name, then Fastmail login name (the full Fastmail email address) — i.e., johndoe@fastmail.fm, then the Fastmail account password. Make sure “always online” is checked, and all others are unchecked. click OK.
4. When viewing the inbox / mailbox view for your new fastmail.fm account on Chatter, press the pull-down menu keyboard icon and select E (for “Edit Mailbox”). Most of the info has already been pre-filled in. But if you’re planning on keeping another (non-Fastmail.fm) email address as your main email address, then click on the “SMTP” tab and then type the main email address in the “Ret’n Addr” field. That makes your out-going emails look like they’re being sent from your main email account, even though it’s actually being received and sent through fastmail.fm. Tricky, eh?
5. Chatter is extremely customizable, via two separate sets of preferences. One set of preferences is for the overall “feel” of the program, and is via the top-menu-bar / “Prefs” / “Preferences.” Another set of preferences is for each email account — go to that email account’s inbox view, then top-menu-bar / Box / Edit Mailboxes.
   Suggest you read the Chatter Email help document to really understand these options.
   But, for now, several important ones via Top-menu-bar / Prefs / Preferences:
   – System: Check everything except “Alert Killer”, “Default to SD Card Mailboxes”. Under “If LED is not notifying,” suggest checking “Keep LED off”
   – Connections: uncheck everything except “Trust SSL certificates”
   – Message View: up to you
   – Composing view: up to you
   – Mailbox view: up to you
   – Notifications: I only have “Vib” and “LED” selected for all three lines in the chart, and “Pop” checked only for “Using other App.” “Tone” is unchecked. Everything else below the chart is unchecked. Up to you if you want reminders or sound or whatever.
   – Button keys: I have “Hard Button 3″ set to “QuickSync All” and all other buttons set to “Default.” Also, have “Use One Key Commands” checked.
   – Performance: The Treo 680’s battery isn’t as good as my (Treo 650) battery, so settings here are important. Uncheck the first two, check “Deeper Sleep”, set Latency to “More”, set “Updates to Server” to “Delayed”, set “Signal Req’d for data” to “Good signal.”
   – Security: up to you
   – Updates: uncheck everything — doesn’t work very well as of yet.
6. Check to make sure your Treo is indeed working well with your fastmail.fm account. Write a few emails to your fastmail.fm account and see if they’re being pushed to your Treo within moments.

PART THREE: SETTING UP YOUR CURRENT MAIN EMAIL SERVICE TO FORWARD TO FASTMAIL.FM:

1. If all is well, it’s time to configure your main email service (i.e., Yahoo or Gmail) to forward your emails to your
   fastmail.fm account.
2. For Yahoo: go to Yahoo’s options menu, and set POP / Forwarding option so that all emails are being forwarded to your fastmail.fm address. Don’t use Yahoo anymore. (Note that using the Forwarding option requires that you pay for a higher level of Yahoo Mail service.)
3. For Gmail: go to “Settings,” then “Forwarding and POP,” and turn Forwarding on to the new fastmail.fm address. Up to you if you want to set this to delete the copy from your Gmail in-box or not — I recommend deleting.
4. For other email accounts: go to the preferences or settings menu, and set forwarding so that all new emails are forwarded to your fastmail.fm account and deleted from your account.
5. I should note that with Fastmail, you can also create folders, and save emails into these folders. And on the Treo, you can even transfer emails to folders, and have them be transferred to folders on Fastmail too. You reply to emails on Chatter, and you’ll see a “reply icon” show up on Fastmail. Etc etc. Totally awesome. I just wish my contact info would sync back n fro too.

And now you have push email on your Treo! At least, I hope so … If the steps doesn’t work, if I phrased a step incorrectly, or if something needs more sub-steps, let me know in the comments.