The Blogathon is going on right now. Pop over Web McDeb and see how Deb is doing. Your reward is a bunch of new themes created today.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:09 PM |
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infoSync : HanDBase, now with peer-to-peer support The new version of HanDBase may be the first Pocket PC that I know of that provides device to device synchronization. It sounds like something I need to become a bit more familiar with.
posted by Frank McPherson 8:58 PM |
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Friday at OSCON "Todd Ogasawara is talking on Open Source Tools in Government Projects." Paths cross in unexpected locations. Todd is a fellow Mobile Devices MVP and the technical editor for both editions of my book.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:30 PM |
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The Furrygoat Experience - PocketFeed Yes! An RSS/RDF news aggregator for Pocket PC 2002. I dig it.. I want it, now!
posted by Frank McPherson 10:17 PM |
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allNetDevices: - HP Intros Jornada 928 Pocket PC Phone This is interesting as the article says the Jornada 928, known as the WDA, will be available from Voicestream in the U.S. in August.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:13 PM |
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The Register seems to love going after the big companies, and particularly Microsoft. So, no matter how much I agree with an article, I have force myself to take it with a grain of salt. However, this article about how Hewlett-Packard is becoming aware of the quality problems of the iPAQ is good news. I don't know if I agree that they to eliminate the iPAQ brand. The brand can stay so long as it start's meeting HP's quality standards.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:24 AM |
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Pocket PC Passion - An interview with Palm Digital Media... aka Peanut Press This is an excellent interview with good information about creating and selling e-books.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:14 AM |
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I agree with Bryce's take on iCal and iSync, though I am not as enthusiastic about iSync. I agree that Apple should work towards opening up their platform for easy synchronization with any device. And iSync does point towards an interesting trend of integrating data synchronization with the operating system. But, AFAIK iSync only synchronizes calendar and contacts and there is much, much more data that needs to be synced than those two items.
As a former Newton user I find it ironic that Apple has finally sipped the synchronization kool aid. If they had just figured out how to do synchronization right when they first shipped Newton, I think Newton would still be around today. Instead they simply turned the synchronization effort over to Traveling Software, who did a terrible job, and in the end Newtons were islands of information. (Big, bulky and expensive islands too.)
Isn't it interesting to see Apple graft all sorts of little applications onto their platform, taking life away from third party developers. Where did we see that before? Why isn't anyone screaming?
posted by Frank McPherson 10:53 PM |
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Did I just read this right? "ActiveSync is a great piece of technology..." I almost got whiplash from the double-take Bryce. I don't think I have ever seen the words "ActiveSync" and "great" together in the same sentence.
Nice to see back on the blog horse Bryce.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:45 PM |
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News: Palm to cut handheld prices Wouldn't it be nice if Pocket PC manufacturers did the same thing? We have rarely seen any price drops unless it's for a product that is being discontinued.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:25 AM |
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Bluetooth: what's the point?
posted by Frank McPherson 10:20 AM |
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Louis Berk shoots down Bluetooth. I've been using Bluetooth every day for about two weeks now, with generally positive results. My Bluetooth usage increased once I got the Ericsson T39 mobile phone. Now I can wirelessly connect my Pocket PCs to the Internet and the T39 is my mobile hub. I can also synchronize my iPAQ 3870, which has a built-in Bluetooth radio, with my notebook PC and its 3COM Bluetooth USB adapter.
This past weekend I bought an Ambicom CompactFlash Bluetooth adapter, and I have been using it with my Toshiba E740. Unfortunately, Ambicom does not include the ActiveSync synchronization service, but it works well with my T39. The only downside is that the Ambicom Bluetooth driver is tied to a Today screen plugin that puts a very ugly banner across my Today screen. This is very stupid because what they should be providing is a Today screen icon down at the bottom of the screen, which is what HP/Compaq and Socket provides. The other negative with the Ambicom card is that the antenna sticks out from the top of the E740, where Socket's card will be hidden away nicely within the CF slot.
The point to all this is that Bluetooth can work. As is the case with most things mobile, it does require patience, which is the price of being an early adopter.
posted by Frank McPherson 3:39 PM |
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HEATHER NEWMAN: Wireless Web works OK, but it's costly and limited Heather Newsman's article highlights some of the problems with current wireless Internet access offerrings. For now I think wireless works well for handhelds and phones, but can be prohibitivly expensive for notebooks. The problem with that is the predominant mobile data device today are notebook PCs.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:45 AM |
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Pocket PC Thoughts :: View topic - Pocket PC backup solutions There is a link here to a good article about backup solutions for Pocket PCs, and there are also good comments in the thread.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:35 AM |
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It appears that I am not the only one experiencing battery meter problems with the E740. The good news is that it appears the battery is ok, and has more life than what the software is telling us.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:03 PM |
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Here is a web site that provides a way to read vBulletin based discussion forums formatted for Pocket PCs. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to post via this site.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:19 PM |
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Brighthand Forums - Microsoft Reader Problem If you have problems activating MS Reader, try clearing cookies and cache in Internet Explorer and then try activation.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:03 PM |
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Just a reminder to myself about this Toshiba e740 FAQ. I've been noticing some wierdness with the E740's battery meter. The power notification firing at 50% is a real pain.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:01 PM |
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Brighthand Forums - Attention Toshiba e740 owners! There is a registry hack available for the E740 that adds a contrast applet to the Control Panel. You now download a patch for Tweaks2k2 that enables this hack without requiring one to mess around with the registry.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:49 PM |
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pocketnow.com Discussion - pocketnow News: Contradictory You've probably heard by now about the iPAQ Petition web site. Pocket Now points out the obvious contradiction between the problems many people are having with iPAQs and the fact that iPAQs will be the only Pocket PCs used for Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 Logo Testing.
Ironically, the backlight of my iPAQ 3870 stopped working just yesterday, so I think I will end up having to send it to HP for repair. Of the years I have owned three iPAQs and this will mean that I will have sent every one of them in to Compaq for repair at least once. One of my iPAQs was sent to Compaq twice. Every one of the problems had to do with the screens. One repair was for digitizer sensitivity problems, another was for the inverse image problem, and now the backlight has stopped on the 3870. Clearly something is very wrong in how the iPAQ screens are manufactured.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:39 PM |
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Here is a good article on battery life when useing wireless network cards in Pocket PCs.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:21 PM |
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