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Twitter learning curve

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I think I’m beginning to understand Twitter, and I managed to deplete my 250 Twits SMS’s. You really need the desktop client when on the internet. And only use the Mobile SMS when, Mobile. Doh!

What I have found are interesting conversations with people I know, what I don’t understand is people who are following me, who do not know me, and I have never meet. What value following me? The first thing that comes to mind are squirrels gathering nuts, (me being the nut in this scenario) but I’m sure I will find out my role here.

One other thing, picking a desktop Twitter client has been interesting as I use a PC in the office and a Mac at home, and a Palm T/X and Nokia 6300 as mobile. Choices…

Google Maps API?

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I love this, in this day and age that a API for the Internet is not written to comply with standards. This message below is unacceptable!


But I’ll place the blame on aaireland.ie As you can see this is a Safari Browser error message, but I am betting that the AA Roadwatch folks have coded this web page for IE only usage. BAD! BAD! BAD! But further accusing Google for causing this incompatibility should net them a rebuke from Google.

Small favors

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Well, that day came on monday night, the call telling me my Dad passed away, the only small favor I managed was that my preparations of my mobile communications has worked out as planned. The Nokia 6300 on Vodafone.ie linked up with the AT&T network in Chicago and using the Palm T/X, I managed to connect to the Edge network on the Nokia to check flight changes, I also checked my email from my MacBook through the 6300 as well without having to pay for WiFi in the Airport. And when I had to make some phone number changes on the phone, the three (Palm/Mac/Nokia) synced up and shared the changes. Almost like they were made by the came company, standards, who knew, I suppose that’s why I don’t use Microsoft products. The only down side, the boss in Dublin knows my phone number, so if the shit hits the fan, I’m still on call.

Opera Mini V4.1 Beta

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I have been playing with the new Opera Mini 4.1 Beta on my Palm T/X. It’s a vast improvement over the Version 3 release and produces less crashing than did the version 4.0 release. It is an interesting ‘display’ of web formating attempting to emulate the iPhone/iPod Safari display. Where unreadable lines might be displayed, there are simple lines drawn. This forming a framework where a sliding window floats around a mock mouse cursor. Using the five way control you can ‘mouse’ over areas of the web layout and ‘click’ and zoom into the selected area of the screen. This is very effective for small scale screens, and could, when they get all the bugs out (it is a Beta) mitigate the advantage Safari currently enjoys. It’s worth a try if you like or need a mobile browser. It’s written in Java, and requires a JVM, in the case of the Palm, if it’s not already installed, you have to lie, cheat and steal to find a copy of WebSphere to operate it. Look Here if you need one.

Apple control of iPhone applications

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I think there is a good reason for Apple wanting to control the applications being created and distributed on iPhone and iPod touch systems. Rubbish! In the last week or so, since I have been using my Palm T/X I have been singularly impressed with good applications, and shocked at the pure Rubbish applications that are available to load into my Palm. Mind you, and remember, that many of these applications are legacy from the Palm’s transition from the Motorola Dragonball processors to ARM/XScale CPU’s. And hence face a hardware hurtle that Apple MAY not have to face. Should Apple transition the current ARM iPhone/iPod’s to Intel, they too will face similar troubles. But returning to the control issue, there would be a bit of control over the quality of application development and a maintenance to well defined API that could mitigate future issues. So Apple can maintain a high level ‘feel good’ factor of the iPhone/iPod experience by requiring quality software development. and I believe that the current ‘jailbreaking’ of the platforms will diminish as more and more applications get deployed.

On a separate note, as I mentioned prior, I am impressed with the broad swath, and functionality of the Palm, and also saddened that Palm has, for all intents and purposes abandoned a platform that was so ahead of it’s time.

Web Apps and customer vs carrier benifits

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I have been in the market for a PDA replacement, and all the conversations I’ve seen, point to the Web Applications being the solution and replacement to client side development on such things as the iPhone/iPod Touch. This harkens back to the the early days of Web when Netscape was being put forth as the new web operating system. The issue then, and in many ways still is, bandwidth. The thin client on the browser required all code from the application to be loaded before the application could activate and the user become productive. This issue still continues in the mobile internet, currently most users using webapps experience delays in application behavior. And this brings up a new concern.

Mobile Web applications are benefiting wireless carriers (who profit from the addition bandwidth use of their users) more than the consumer. In some cases there are ‘unlimited’ data plans with carriers, but mostly there is a cap on bandwidth usage, with hefty overcharge fees applied.

It only makes sense to promote web applications if you are a carrier, or a lazy programmer. This is part of my reasoning for having a PDA, local offline applications. Particularly in Ireland where WiFi or other networks have been slow to deploy and 3G networks are very expensive. Low bandwidth Client-Server applications are the only really customer centric, consumer friendly application development path.

Web Apps are not the best path to my pocketbook.

PDA’s VS Smartphones

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Someone ask me why I’m looking for a PDA instead of the Smart Phone, and while I’ve considered a iPhone, or Palm Centro, the issue is still this.

* Both are using obsolete wireless technology.
* neither can perform PDA duties while the phone is active.

With a PDA, and bluetooth, when the mobile phone technology advances, substituting the phone, upgrades the PDA. And the PDA can operate independent while the phone is in use. Anyone familiar with the evolution of modem technology will understand this, updating the modem to improve communication speed was a common infrastructure issue. As now the speed at which a device can display a block of data, most PDA’s are readily able to perform faster, as they are generally waiting on data.

BTW: Here in Ireland we still depend on dialup Modems.

Screen real-estate, PDA’s vs iPod Touch/iPhone

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I’m amused, I’ve been evaluating a PDA/iPod replacement and have been impressed with the ‘full screen’ presentation ability of the Safari web browser on the iPhone/ iPod Touch devices. For many years many popular websites have produced reduced displays that are more or less tailored to PDA’s and cellphones which have small screens. This is great for PDA’s and mobile phone users, but requires an extra effort on the part of the website builder, an effort that many sites choose to forgo.

So it is with much amusement that during this research I find that there are great efforts being rendered to redirect mobile Safari browsers to a reduced screen real-estate copy of any given website an iPhone friendly page if you will. This is, in a some measure, a vindication of the previous efforts of website creators to provide Palm PDA’s, WinCE, Symbian browsers with a Practical web interface to their sites.

This, more or less, mitigates the one great Mobile Safari advantage on the iPod Touch/ iPhone. You don’t need Zoom and shrink on a smaller screen. You don’t need to download, and render full sized graphics. You don’t need 3G bandwidth. And in one step, renders the browsers, on all the other mobile Phones and PDA’s, equal.

iPhone/iPod Touch Monopoly

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I have been in the market for an upgrade to my iPod and the question of a replacement has been this, should I upgrade my old Palm Vx to a Palm T/X or my first generation iPod (5GB). The candidates have been the Nokia N770 / N800 / N810 series, the iPod Touch and the Palm T/X. I have by this time determined that the Nokia systems, while the most versatile are not completely integrated systems, more hacker devices than finished products. So the choices are down to the Palm T/X, which is getting very long in the tooth, running an aging operating system, or the iPod touch with a revolutionary OS/GUI but no third party applications.

The requirements are relatively simple, WiFi, bluetooth, applications like email, browsing communicating. MultiMedia. And any other things would be optional like eBooks. I have a medium sized iTunes collection, and plenty of Palm apps.

Currently if the rumor that Apple will approve and distribute apps and limit access to iPod/iPhone internals is true, this will be a deal breaker. No iPod Touch!

I have no intention of buying a totally locked in device. If for no other reason than it’s bad monopolistic practice. It will limit what the developers will be able to develop, and turn away some of the most innovative designs. This would be the most stupid thing Apple could do. A proverbial shooting one’s own foot off. It would cripple any development that might be applied, it would make the Palm the only choice.

I’ll wait until Apple announces on Thursday, but this rumor smells too true, so I’ll start pricing Palm T/X’s.

UPDATE: I looks like Apple has screwed it’s self Here! So my Decision to but an unlocked Obsolete Palm T/X is vindicated yet again!

The opposite of iPhone, The MotoFone F3

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While the rest of the world is talking about the iPhone like Tom O2 to sell the iPhone?. I went to Lidl this morning a pickup a mobile, that can only be described as the antitheses of the iPhone the Motofone F3 and I can tell you after only a few hours of use, it’s as beautiful a mobile phone as the iPhone, in exactly the target audience it was proposed for, as that proposed by the iPhone’s target audience.

I’ll report more as I go along, but for now, I’m just as happy to have this phone as I might have been to be one of the proud iPhone owners.

I am still trying to find out if it runs Linux.

UPDATE: The F3 is a SCPL (scalpel) class device which runs a Java/Linux derived OS called JUIX now all I have to do is hack a command line interface to really get this thing to sing 😉

Links:
Motorola Motofone F3 Dissassembly
Motorola Motofone F3
Motorola Motofone F3

Apple Leopard platform phase-out

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This last 10.4.9 release of Mac OS-X has me again wondering about what platform’s will be set for end-of-life when Leopard is released. I’ve made the assumption that my old 500MHz G3 iBook would be on that list, with Tiger being the end of the road. But with my old iMac G4 the glaring problem is not the CPU but the lack of support for USB 2.1. If I were making that determination I think that any G4 with out USB 2.1 hardware would be the cut off point. This would put a hardship on me as then both my computers would need upgrading, or that it would save me the expense of buying yet another release of Mac OS-X. In any case both my machines are getting a bit long in the tooth. But I’m not too worried, my investment was a good one as both of these were ordered in January 2001 making them both 6 years old. I wonder how many PC owners have held out as long?

Long live the Tiger!

Apple update 10.4.9 for Mac OSX

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One of the glaring gaps in Apple Mac-OSX is the near total lack of support for USB webcams. I often browse the PC shops hoping to see a OSX label on one of the fancy webcams, but it never happens. So when Update 10.4.9 came I was hopeful that the bullet point “Includes iChat support for USB Video Class webcams” that there would finally be support for webcams other than the Apple iSight. But not a single word of which ones were supported. So still no hope for video for my old Mac’s and with the removal of all iSight webcams from Europe I will never do video Skype, or iChat.

Vista’s new lemmings

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Having seen the underoverwhelming advertising for Windows Vista, and hearing that as a result, PC sales have skyrocketed (a whole 5% represents a very low sky or a very short rocket). I felt compelled to repost an old favorite, Lemmings, one of the better Apple Ads. And it left me wondering if the surge in PC sales was to buy PC’s before they were loaded with Vista so that people could retain compatibility, and not become yet another victim of Microsoft Beta-2 testing. We did, as we just replaced the wife’s Sony laptop with new HP loaded with XP-Pro. We have tried Vista and determined that it is, really, just an XP service pack, and also required retraining as there was little that remained familiar in the interfaces. So the question arises, if you have to retrain, why not switch. So without further ado, Lemmings;