tech ronin

Panther Pocket Guide Out

Hi folks. I found the Mac OS X Panther Pocket Guide by O'Reilly in Flagstaff, Arizona at the local Barnes & Noble. I was checking there, hoping they would have wi-fi at their Starbucks-serving cafe. No luck. But they knew where to go. Bookman's in Flagstaff has a coffee shop with free wi-fi. Works for me.

I like this book. The price is right at $9.95. It's great as a carry along when you are anticipating a close encounter with Panther ;-). Gotta get back on the road for at least a while. Lost an hour due to time zones. I've checked with contacts in Taos and there will be a small, informal ceremony for my friend Kate at 11 am on Friday. The scenery is spectacular. Will insert some pictures soon.

Mini-iPod coming soon

Gizmodo pointed to Think Secret's story about Steve's probable announcements at the SF MacWorld. Looks like a mini-iPod will be announced on January 6th at Steve's Keynote. Just in the nick of time to reach a lower price point so that the iTunes Store doesn't feel too restrictive in terms of mp3-player support. They're going to have colored *cases*. I want the colored *screen* a lot more. Shades of the iMac 6-color options as the iMac was maturing. TFT color, please. I've already bought about 4 iPods. I probably won't get a mini-iPod, but then I haven't been tempted by one yet. After color, I'm going to want wi-fi or at least bluetooth. I suppose that won't happen right now due to all the paranoia about file sharing. I'm just looking for more functionality and convenience in the device. While you are at it Steve, could you whip up a Mini-iBook? You know 3 lbs. max? And could you hurry? The more wi-fi these notebooks and our environments are, the less need for built-in CD-R etc. because we can back up over the Net.

Wanting GPS and iPod car stereo

So much for my optimistic forecast. Made it to Barstow which is about 150 miles short of Needles. Rained almost all day. Arrived around 7:30 pm. Starbucks still works for my Net needs. Thinking of staying close to this Starbucks, just so I can surf a bit in morning before my trip East continues. Snapped about 50 digital pics today.

I don't often travel in unknown territory alone. Noticed that a good GPS with TFT screen in the car would have been great. As it was, I turned wound up on I-5 going North for a while before I realized it. Pulling over on the shoulder in heavy holiday traffic with rain to boot wasn't a safe option. Probably lost 15 minutes on that one. While driving, I wanted to have Net and GPS access on the fly. In big letters so I could glance over and see where I was and where I was headed. I don't want a clutzy interface. I haven't seen a good GPS/mapping/directions interface in a car yet.

Does Apple need to intervene here? Also, I want an iPod car stereo that displays the song title and artist. I'm afraid Apple is not quite ready for that one because Steve probably thinks he has to do it right which would require stereo installation at the Apple stores or letting third parties do it - that would be a headache. Maybe it would be easier to work with an existing mid- to high-end car stereo brand and get them to work with an iPod with a jack in front for it. I still need the stereo to display the song title and artist at least.

On the Road to Taos

On the road again. A dear, dear friend of mine died in her sleep Saturday morning. Age 54. She was an only child and her parents had both already died so, as her best friend, I'm it. I checked out flight options but decided to try the road. So far, I've only gone about 50 miles and am at my first planned Starbucks stop in Livermore. It's raining lightly. In Livermore, CA right now and heading towards I-5 South down to Bakersfield and then over to the border to Needles, CA. I'm thinking a cheap night's stay might be good. Already checked and hotels.com says there are lots of vacancies. Just checked my email and replied to a couple. I'm testing to see just how much I can be in motion and still run my business. Will let you know. Running Panther on my trusty Titanium 800 Powerbook with a MacWireless 802.11g card. I surfed the Starbucks.com site last night and found that it has one weakness. You can only search by city or zip. What I need is to specify I-5 and say, show me the Starbucks stops along the way with the exits and perhaps exit numbers. Would be very cool. Gotta get back to the road...

Pets Delivering Email on Your Phone

Wow! The Japanese cell phone market makes ours look dull. I love what they are doing. This screenshot from DoCoMo Net shows another sender's little *pet* delivering an email to this cell phone. Notice that this is a 3D image. There's a room there. That's the cell phone owner's room and the cat, as I said, is from another sender's cell phone. Let's pretend that I have this cat pet. Now when I send an email to someone, they'll see it delivered by my personal pet. Maybe this kind of thing won't catch on here. But I like it. I guarantee you that teenage girls will flip for this. It's fun. I hope there are lots of different pet options so that mine can be unique. [via Plastic Bag link to Anti-Mega high-lights of the latest cell developments in Japan]

P900 Shaping Up

Looking rugged and road warrior ready, the new P900 looks sexier and excels with subtle improvements inside the box. Here's a couple of them here. One with the removable keypad on and one naked. The biggest obvious improvement is the move to 65000 colors which is another eye-pleaser. There's a really good in depth review of the P900 at the Register. To my envy, the P900 is sleeker, has louder rings, better reception, longer battery life, and *outstanding* T9 text input.

Even though you don't see many P800s in the States, to my surprise, over a million P800s have been sold and the P800 is the biggest selling single PDA model on the planet. If that's true, there will indeed be a software platform there (Symbian 7 UIQ) to work with and thus plenty of good software. I've noticed a big uptick in available software lately. Luckily for us P800 owners, the platform remains the same so we can benefit from the emerging popularity of this polished upgrade.

30% off Panther Missing Manual

David Pogue's new Missing Manual for Panther Mac OS X 10.3 is due *in about a week* at Amazon according to David's website. They've got a good deal on pre-orders right now - 30% off of $29.95 = $20.97. I've been waiting for this book to come out since I heard about it recently at my local Apple Store in Corte Madera. I have both the first and second editions of the Mac OS X Missing Manual and I don't see any reason to discontinue the tradition now. I like the way he writes. He gives you a lot of good information and has it go down easy by making it friendly, enthusiastic and readable.

Wireless PDAs Market Breakdown

What's going on in the PDA marketplace? According to Forbes today, sales of PDAs this year are down 15% from their peak in 2001. Now, I would blame the economy alone first off. But there's a little more to the story. We've got some gadgets competing with each other. Here's why things are tough in spite of some cool innovations like phone cams, bluetooth, wi-fi, mp3 playing and SMS.

1) PDA no wi-fi, non-cellular, non-Bluetooth. This is the Palm platform illustrated well by it's latest flagship product, the Tungsten E. This is the Pocket PC platform exemplified by the HP iPaq h1935 .The market wants cellular and wi-fi and bluetooth but only a few new models have these capabilities so far. Key features: a) bigger sized screen than cellular, b) touch screen and c) good personal organizer functions

2) Small Cell phones. An almost always on wireless device. A phone first and foremost. Small screen to fit your hand better and not look weird. New stuff: phone cams, cool ring tones, text-messaging and some multi-media messaging. Problem for group #1, they are halfway decent little organizers in terms of calendars and phonebooks. Weaker in terms of screen size for drawing, handwriting, notetaking, reading email. Weakness need longer batter life for phone duties so skimp on PDA features, screen size, etc.

3)Wi-fi PDAs Non-cellular PDAs are old hat - like PCs without internet access - they aren't as interesting as the content out there. These machines get broadband when near a hotspot which is home, office, coffee shops and airports. They are faster to process the larger amount of information and graphics they can capture from the Net. A PDA with Net access is a really useful and entertaining device and will get more so as screen sizes increase, color and screen quality increase and keyboards of one sort or another make them excellent texting devices. The sexiest models have Bluetooth which give you a tiny wireless cellular modem that you can keep in your pocket and it still works - no more infrared pointing device to device! My flavor of the week: the Palm Tungsten T3. Only fly in the ointment is that Sandisk is dragging their feet on getting their wi-fi SD card out. It's been postponed 4 times and now has slipped into Q1 04.

4) Cellular PDAs *Smart Phones*. Trend to larger with larger screens and sometimes even keyboards. Some have keyboards for texting, email and use of PDA functions. With bigger screens, they can be useful organizers and work tools. As they offer sideways orientation for better web surfing, they offer the capacity to have almost always Net access, albeit a little slow for the most part. However, G3 is coming along with the new Edge service from Cingular. The Sony Ericsson P900 fits nicely here.

5) Bluetooth PDAs. This is good for synching with a bigger PDA and various-sized notebooks. A start in the right direction. But not enough. People want wi-fi or cellular in the package. This is a big category compared to wi-fi which is still getting there. The original Tungsten T and quite a few Pocket PCs fit here.

6) Cellular/Wi-fi/Bluetooth PDAs. It's coming. Take the Treo 600 for one. It's got cellular built-in and an SDIO card. It's got a great keyboard for both QWERTY and phone numbers. Buy a Bluetooth SDIO card (sorry no built-in Bluetooth) and wait a while for a wi-fi SDIO card and you have the holy grail of 2003 and 2004. You get a cell phone. You get a genuine Palm organizer. You get a slot that can let you do Bluetooth now and wi-fi real soon now. The due date just slipped into Q1 04 from Dec 03. I want v2 where they give me 300x300 res and built-in Bluetooth. Or go all the way with bluetooth and wi-fi built-in. Give me some nice integrating software that makes these 3 wireless capabilties sing.

2004 here we come!