Palm-Mac

BerryBuddy review at Blackberry Cool

What a strange looking thing this is...looks more like some sort of ipod speaker system

Installation
The BerryBUDDY operates using two mini-USB connectors discreetly placed in the rear: one for your wall plug, one for your PC. We had to go fishing around to find our power plug, since we do most of our charging right from the desktop. Including one or both of the cables would have been a nice touch, in case users find themselves in the same situation. As for placement, the unique open-bottom design lets you put the dock over wires or other unsightly desk bits you might want to cover. The design intuitively made us want to dangle it off the side of a desk or shelf, but the lack of underside grip or mounts squashed our dreams.

Gtalk and Yahoo! BlackBerry clients updated

Link: Gtalk and Yahoo! BlackBerry clients updated | BlackBerry Cool.

A couple of items here from Blackberry Cool which are of interest. The first speaks for itself whilst the second, relates to Facebook improvements.

You can get home screen notifications now, get a full text view of messages, wall posts and everything else, friends status and information, and photo uploading and tagging. Great little feature here: you can send messages even when offline, it’ll just go out when a connection is established like your regular e-mail. I’m one of those suckers who’s got a Facebook tab opened all day long, just waiting for the BlackBerry to buzz with an SMS notification, but now it’ll be right there on my home screen.

One of the odd things that strikes me about Facebook is the way it sends you an email to say you have a message so then you have to walk all the way across to the browser to launch the site to find out what it is...I wonder if this new thingy will stop this happening.

Podcasts

Having my new ipod with it's excellent support for podcasts through iTunes has been good for me. Before, using the podcast player on the Curve was very limiting as the only way to get podcasts on it was to download them directly via the internet connection. Now, some of these files are quite big and as the Curve is non 3g then downloading them was a slow and oft painful experience.

Not any more. I just download them via the itunes store and with the home imac and broadband it is a doddle. So, I've been listening to quite a few over the past few days and the ones that I have enjoyed most are the Treocentral casts as they cover all things treo, both windows and palm, and Mobile TechRoundup which is done by the chaps at jkontherun. The latter has a wider angle on all things mobile but is equally interesting. I can't find the actual links on the sites so would advise you just to do a search on itunes store itself. From there, you can subscribe.

The TreoCentral podcast is hosted by Dieter Bohn, the man behind WMExperts, which is a jolly good site for all things win mob..Deter uses a treo 750v so is very sympathetic to treo's...and Mike.

Apple - Downloads - Imaging & 3D - MemoryMiner

Link: Apple - Downloads - Imaging & 3D - MemoryMiner.

About MemoryMiner
The award-winning Digital Storytelling application used to discover the threads connecting peoples’ lives across time and place. Use it to annotate photos in order to specify who is in the picture, where the picture was taken, and when it was taken. Drag and drop audio, video, documents and URLs onto photos to add greater depth and context. Each photo thus becomes a frame in an endless storyboard which can be browsed by periods in a person’s life, where people overlap, by place, by time, or any combination. Share your libraries as self-contained MemoryMiner documents, or export gorgeous web sites via automatic upload to your .Mac account or other web server. Either way, MemoryMiner replicates the experience of telling stories around a photo album, even when all the people involved can’t be in the same place at the same time.

What’s New in this Version
- Leopard Compatibility
- Support for Quick Look.
- New, improved version of Media Browser

HTC close application for WM

As WM users will know, it can pay to keep an eye on running apps to make sure that having too many open doesn't impair system performance. On my treo 750v this entails a rather long trip through the menu to get the Task Manager or Memory apps from where some or all can be shut down. It's a bit cumbersome so having a 3rd party app on board which gives quicker access via the Today screen can be most beneficial.

For a while, I had been using DinoSoft's HandySwitcher which puts a small icon on the Today screen to enable quick closing of running apps. It's a great wee application. I reinstalled it on my 750v but it seems tied to a previous win mob device I was using so I can't use the existing registartion code. This would entail me having to email the developers (again) to request a new code. I know they would but I'm slighlty embarrassed about having to do so again so I had a look around the web to see what else is on offer.

I came across this...HTC Task Manager...this is actually bundled with most recent HTC smartphones but can be downloaded from here for free. It sits in the top menu bar on your home screen and works a treat. From reading various forums, it doesn't work on every device but it does work on my 750v. It won't actually appear though until you soft reset your device. It makes closing down running apps very easy and gives much quicker access too.

Leopard and Missing Sync don't mix

This is a pity and at the same time surprising, you would have thought that Markspace would have been given an advance copy of Leopard to check that their products still work with it...after all they are a big mac supporter...and that would have given them time to get their products updated to work with Leopard.

Looks like updates could be a few weeks away which leaves Missing Sync customers sync-less if they have upgraded to Leopard.

iPod Classic 80gb...'tis goodly indeedy

Bought myself over the weekend a black ipod classic, 80gb model, as that will be plenty sufficient capacity wise. This thing is about the same size, width and height wise as my Curve but is even thinner. I was surprised at how heavy it is, it feels really solid too. Already, I have loaded on 500 pics, 400 songs and 5 movies, synced my contacts and I have only used about 5% of the capacity so that should mean I will never fill it unless I try really really hard and go out of my way to do so, which is unlikely. I've even been able to use the "hi-res" settings in Handbrake to convert dvd's to ensure better quality as there is so much space. On another note, I downloaded and installed the latest Handbrake update and it now seems to be incredibly slow at ripping dvd's...has anybody else noticed this?

I gotta say that syncing with my home imac is a dream. I just plugged it in via the usb connector and it appeared as a drive in iTunes. Click on the ipod listing in the left hand pane and it brings up the menu in full screen with the tabbed options at the top. From then on in it's just a question of ticking which playlists, pictures and films you want to sync across. It's so easy and I was surprised at how quick it managed to sync everything across....it's way faster than dropping files directly onto a sd card or via Missing Sync. I'm sure I've made the right decision here to go for a standalone music and movie player....things have been so simple to set up so far and the music quality on the ipod is better than on any previous smartphone.

I've enclosed a pic to show you the relative size of the ipod with my Curve and treo 750v, it's most noticeable obviously thickness wise and the 750v looks a trifle lardy in comparison.

Having the ipod has made the whole process of listening to podcasts much much easier too. These can be downloaded directly within iTunes itself and then the "podcast" tab option takes care of the rest. Having so much free space on the ipod means I can download loads more too. You can also sync it directly with iCal if you use that to manage day to day events, I don't but I'm sure plenty do.

In the "extras" section on the ipod there are other useful features such as "alarms" and a Notes facility whereby you can copy txt files over by placing them in the Notes folder in disk mode. It also comes with some games and stopwatch. The interface itself is very nice, simple but clean and it has that palm simplicity about it. If this is the same sort of interface that is on the iphone then it makes me want one a little bit more, especially if they can add on the extra functionality features and apps in the same vein. It's a feelgood factor device, it looks and feel quite special in the hand and the menu system is nicely designed.

Halo 3 review-ish

Halo 3 is amazing in three respects:

• it's amazingly short
• it's amazing nay astonishing that it took Bungie nearly 3 years to bring the game out in view of the above, certainly in respect of the single player campaign anyway.
• it's amazingly easy on normal setting

Is it good? Yes, of course it is as the game is basically a blast and is huge fun but in this day and age gaming wise, I'm not sure that just being "huge fun" is enough. Wisely, Bungie have reverted more to the familiar scenery and gameplay of the original and the levels are generally less murky graphically which for me spoiled Halo2..there were times it was difficult to see where you were going. Compared to the likes of innovative 360 titles like BioShock it is all rather basic, you just blast your way through levels, shooting familiar enemies in familiar surroundings but there is something strangely comforting about it all.

Bungie have introduced new weapons and new vehicles into the Halo3 arena and this spices things up nicely but overall I was left wanting more. As usual, some of the levels are wonderful, I especially liked the ones which were similar to those in Halo 1 as it was like being reacquainted with old friends and renewing old rivalries but unfortunately, for a much shorter time. I have read reviews and comments about the graphics being not up to scratch but I found it to be excellent in this department.

It's just far too short but this is to be expected these days. Single player campaign mode seems to get pushed to the side as some developers focus on instead beefing up the multiplayer and online modes. Fair enough if you are an xbox Live gamer as you can spend weeks and months playing the game online and get your money's worth that way but for the rest of us, I can't help feeling that Halo3 has short changed us single player campaigners here big time. Part of the problem is they just haven't taken any chances with it in terms of format...you just sort of know what to expect and what is coming next. Whereas the original Halo had huge sprawling levels with epic battles, this one feels like it has been squeezed and constricted in comparison.

I was amazed (again) at the game's ending. The original Halo took a lot of justified stick for the flaky last level, a driving one against the clock, which was at odds with the rest of the game and which, for many, ended a fantastic game in a rather unsatisfactory manner. For reasons known only to themselves Bungie have decided to finish off the whole epic in a similar fashion except this time there is no time factor involved....a truly disappointing and unsatisfactory way to go out. Those expecting some sort of earth shattering finale to the Halo riddle will be sorely let down. I'm kind of glad now that the series is over as Bungie seem to have run out of ideas to make gameplay fresh aside form bunging in a few aforementioned weapons etc etc.

It's still not nearly as good as Halo 1 but is better than Halo 2. It's certainly nowhere near being the best 360 game I've played as I would rank BioShock, The Darkness and Prey above it. Tellingly, after finishing it, rather than starting to play it again instead I slotted the original Halo into the 360 and have had more fun and a bigger challenge running through that again.

Overall then, it is good but leaves you feeling short changed and wanting more.

Treo 750v WM6 updater...with HSDPA

As expected, curiousity got the better of me today and I ended up installing the WM6 updater despite it probably not being completely 100% official.

Now I have a WM6 Treo and things seem to be working just fine. Of most interest to me is that I seem to now have an HSDPA equipped treo as the "H" signal has appeared. Updating my RSS feeds was extremely quick, much quicker than 3g.

One strange thing though and I don't know whether this has anything to do with WM6 but it seems a conincidence that it has appeared here for the first time....when setting up my email accounts and more specifically my .mac email, I was unable to send email using the settings I have always used on any previous or indeed this mobile device. I had to change the smtp out address to that of t-mobile (the carrier) before it would send email. In the past I have always always used the smtp.mac.com address and that has worked fine up until now. Gmail seems to still work with the smtp gmail setting oddly enough.

The update also adds HTML facility to email which is not that useful really as it still downloads non-image emails and you have to manually add in the pics if you wish to see them. It also replaces the "new" soft key with a "delete" button. The screen bars and menus seem a bit glossier and of course there is the updated Office apps. Some extra bits and bobs have been added behind the scenes and it seems a bit quicker.

I was pleased to note that this updater did not destroy the amount of inbuilt memory and memory for running apps as the WM6 updater did for my HTC P4350...that was a big relief. All in all then I reckon it is a valuable update but it hardly makes earth shattering changes to the look or feel of the underlying o/s. It's still very much Windows Mobile with its inherent flaws and good points.

Morning Paper: REVIEW: The Missing Sync for Palm OS, v6.0.1:

Link: Morning Paper: REVIEW: The Missing Sync for Palm OS, v6.0.1:.

I was thinking of doing a mini-review of the MS for Palm as it is unquestionably their best product...then I noticed this over at Morning Paper and I thought...that's a darn fine review, there ain't any point in me doing it too.

The product is just soooooooo much better for mac users than the hand me down feel of Palm Deskflop.