tech ronin

Sprint Treo 650 will support Dial-Up Bluetooth

Excellent! Sprint PR has contacted Marc Hedlund who wrote a sharp complaint about Sprint disabling dial-up Bluetooth on the Treo 650 this week. Sprint says:

Due to some development deadlines, the phone has been launched as described, without the DUN [dial-up networking] capability.  However, as part of a scheduled maintenance release of software (timing pending some testing), the DUN capabilities will be supported.  We also support the functionality in the just released PPC-6601 (Pocket PC device).

Very good news indeed. Bring it on!

iPod Photo Color Finally

It's been a long time coming from my point of view, but finally we have a color iPod. And incidentally it has photo management capabilities and a TV out port as well. I'll play with my photos on there, no doubt. But I'm just glad to be able to look at a nice higher-resolution (220 x 176) color screen for a change. Little tiny album cover art will be a nice plus.

The calendar is now in color. Will I use that? Probably rarely because I'm hoping I'll have my Treo 650 with me (when it's available) for calendar functions. But when I'm out with only room in my pockets for one device and I want music to be featured, my iPod will be my soul information source.

Solitaire anyone? Somehow color makes all the difference with this game. One thing about branching out into color and adding functionality is that it makes me feel like I'm missing things already in my PDA like a touch screen. Solitaire, for one, sure would be easier to play with a touch screen. More later, I guess...

By the way, that new 20 gb Black iPod is definitely the coolest iPod ever. Nice job on the color scheme. U2 Autographs on the chrome back. Apple scored teaming with U2 for a special music-oriented offer. Having U2 in your TV Ads doesn't hurt either. Too bad it doesn't have color... I'm looking forward to seeing people carrying these black iPods around. It's $349.

If you miss Steve Jobs or want to see U2 on stage with Steve, check out this 45 minute QuickTime movie of Steve's Apple update and introduction of iPod Photo.

Treo 650 rocks

Finally. The Treo I was hoping for when I first heard about the 600 in June of 2003. The 650 does indeed have the long-rumored 320x320 pixels and Bluetooth.

Other cool stuff: The GSM version supports EDGE. Runs at 312 mhz. Has a removable battery which is probably needed with all this good stuff. Nonvolatile memory like the new Tungsten T5. A keyboard!!!!!, of course, but none of the other Palm devices that have charmed me have had keyboards. Can you say eBay? I'll be eBaying my P800 and my Zire 72 which are redundant once you have one of these.

I've been the one arguing for a small cell phone plus a large PDA. This phone is close to but not quite the bulk of my P800. It weighs about the same - 6.3 oz. - heavy. It's 1/10th oz heavier than the 600 and the same size as far as I know. If this turns out like I think it will, I'll be a combo-believer.

I just played with a Treo 600 last week and it was sweet. I think I can thumb type with it - the 650 keyboard is better. Once again, not the Sidekick II. But, the Palm platform and 320x320 and Bluetooth sway me. PalmOne did good. Except I'm disappointed to learn that Palm1's wi-fi card doesn't work according to Engadget. Apparently P1 isn't done with the wi-fi drivers yet. Oh well... Think of it as something to look forward to?

Now it's just a matter of waiting for a carrier to release this baby. Hoping that I can snag one by Christmas. That there will be a GSM phone from Cingular soon. That I can get a cheap all you can eat data plan - $30 max.

Update 10/25 5:20 pm: Sprint was first with the 600 and have announced they are planning to be first with the 650 in mid-November - too bad they are crippling the Bluetooth so we can't use the phone as a modem for our notebooks! Bad news because, according to c|net, Sprint will be the only ones selling the 650 until after the first of the year. Hope that's not true because I want the uncrippled Bluetooth.

Links:
Treocentral First-Hand Report
Treonaut Hands On Review

Blogs vs. eZines

OK. It's past bedtime so I'm going to make this brief. I just recently subscribed to Tom Peter's blog - his RSS feed. I got off on his 18th post in a series called 100 Ways to Succeed. This one was called Lunch Management. It's good, read it. But that's not my point.

I've been trying to convince my favorite marketing guru, Robert Middleton, to start blogging. He's had a runaway success with his excellent free eZine, More Clients, which has a subscriber base of something like 30,000. So far, I haven't had much luck in convincing Robert, but it just struck me what he's missing by not blogging.

There's something about blogging - could it be Google-juice that is missing from eZines? They are private. Yes, they can be passed on from friend to friend but they generally aren't posted.

When you blog, you are discoverable. Now, perhaps Robert has good Google-juice. He says that he picked out certain keywords and he's achieved a high google-rating with those words.

And Robert has a Forum that's apparently really good - I haven't checked it out but I'm sure it is. So he has a way to get feedback from his subscribers. I'm sure he gets great feedback and ideas from it.

But, I say that a blog could raise Robert's stature in the world. I was thinking - what if Tom Peters linked to his blog - if he had a blog? What would that do?

Blogging makes you accessible. People can subscribe (unless you set up walls around your blog). People can read you when they feel like it - now and then or regularly. They can comment (if you let them). Tom has his comments turned on.

Perhaps there's some thinking to do to figure out where do eZines fit and where does a blog fit. Do you need to choose between the two? I hope not.

Long Tail, Bright Future

Wired's excellent Long Tail got me going! Ever since I read The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, I've been looking forward to mass customization. He called it thirty years ago, folks! Sometimes it takes a while for these things to develop.

The reach and ubiquity of computers and the Web, shrinking, portable and cheap digital storage (think iPod, CD and SD card) and the rise of digital content are all driving this trend into major commerciality. Chris Anderson makes an open and shut case for the importance and imminence of this big-deal trend.

We've been living in a *hits* driven economy. Our lives have been limited, shaped and dominated by the most popular: TV, movies, books, magazines, cars, news, everything. We've taken it for granted that that's all we're gonna get. But, the tables have turned just recently and the non-hit, the *miss*, the esoteric, the marginal are on the march.

Digital content is so light-weight, easy to distribute and renewable that it's absolutely affordable to *stock* the offbeat and even unpopular. And make money at it! Anderson asserts that while the sales of hits has a high dollar value per title, there's a much larger demand for non-hits just because there are so many of them. The bottom line is that, if you do it right, you can make more money selling non-hits than you do selling hits. Anderson gives examples from Rhapsody, Netflix and Amazon to prove his point.

I am ecstatic about all this. I'm not the only one that's been wanting access to every TV show that was ever on the air. Sure, there was a lot of junk, but occasionally really great stuff popped up and typically didn't garner a big enough audience to stay on the air.

The iTunes store does this for music. They sell the latest hits, but they sell tons of non-hits. Entire catalogs that have been out of print are now available - one song at a time.

I've been saying to myself for years that if only we could find the books, music, TV, movies, weblogs that we like, we would be consuming a lot more of them. It seems with music for instance that many people just give up. They rarely even listen to music. I've gone through periods like that. But, when I discover music or books I love, I'm right back to listening or reading avidly.

By smartening up the finding and tasting process, leveraging the wisdom of crowds, and making all titles accessible and available, not just the hits, sales could go through the roof. And we could all be having a lot more fun. Cheaply. Buying songs for 99 cents can be a very cheap way to build a killer collection. Anderson argues that pricing should go as low as 20 cents for old, already-expensed, low-popularity stuff. Wouldn't that be great!

Read it. Not only is the article a must read, but there are a bunch of well-done information graphics (like the one I used above) to check out.

Mail.Appetizer is Tasty

Mail.Appetizer is a great little freeware plug-in for Apple Mail users. It displays a discrete translucent notification of incoming emails. The 1.0 version omits spam and only shows your inbox items after all filtering rules have been applied. The 1.1 beta allows you to select specific mailboxes.

Try it. It seems to play well with my multifarious Mac OS X Panther set-up. It's unobtrusive - you can adjust the transparency to your liking. And it's fun to see what's coming in as it comes in - just in case it's something good. If I'm expecting an email, I can pay closer attention and if not, I can just nominally track what's coming in.

Mail.Appetizer lets me catch important emails early without having to switch to Mail and look every few minutes. Since I sometimes forget to check, this is a good structure for me.

Without going into Mail, you can manage your mail on the fly as time and inclination permits: Click the subject to open the message in Mail. Control-click to mark the message read or get tough and shift-control-click to delete it.

Other Niceties:

The notification window is resizable to your taste.

You can specify the font and size of the type in the notification.

6 Gmail Invites Available

UPDATE: I've got 10 invites available as of Dec 28. I need to have enough information about you to get a feeling that you are sincere and not a spammer.

I've got some invites to Gmail. First come, first served with a bias towards readers I'm familiar with. I'll need your full name and email address and how you read my site or found this post. I need to know about who you are by virtue of your online presence whose URL you give me or description. You don't have to post a comment, you can just send an email. Good information wins. I'll send out these invitations to your email address. You can reach me at janet at tokerud dot com. I'm down to one invite.

Getting Things Done with the aid of FileMaker Pro 7

Just a quickie. I'm leaving for a trip tomorrow morning and I realized that I needed to review all the Action item emails that I've been filing into my Apple Mail _Action folder. I wanted to be able to convert them into GTD *next actions*. So I dug up my copy of Mail to FileMaker Importer and tried it out on my _Action folder of email with about 150 emails in it. It worked!

I captured all the emails painlessly into the included Email Archive file. But I then needed the action fields and project fields and such to really work with these emails as to do items.

So I added three tables to my business database in FileMaker 7: Actions, Projects and EmailArchive. My EmailArchive is just the end result fields that are in the Email Archive file the Mail to FM Importer uses such as date, sender, subject, body, to, etc.

I created a relationship between my Email Archive and Actions based on Email Number (a number I assigned as an auto-enter serial). Then I imported the _Action folder email records into my Actions table - only importing the email number. I also imported the records in my EmailArchive table. Then I put the date, sender, subject and body of the emails from the related EmailArchive table onto my Action layout.

This let me go through each email one at a time and enter a next action on it or mark it to archive. Worked like a charm!!! I felt very happy taking these unprocessed emails and deciding what the next step was. It makes all the difference.

More later as I get the projects aspect going too. It's started but not easy enough yet to link the actions to projects. This is a great way to discover projects I see. When I stumble upon them as I try to make emails into NAs, I just suggest to myself that this is going to require more than one action and I need to create a project out of it as the next action.

I've been scouring the web to find software tools that will let me process emails as to do items on a Mac. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that FileMaker could help.

Tungsten T5 Worth Considering

The early comments I've seen on PalmOne's Tungsten T5, which was announced yesterday, have been mixed and mostly on the disappointed end of the scale. I have to disagree on this one.

I'll grant you that the T5 doesn't appear to break much new ground and has one singular missing feature people have been hoping for - wi-fi access. Just the same old Blue Tooth that's been in all the Tungsten T models. Throwing in wi-fi might have made this product a runaway success.

But, if you really want the wi-fi, you can get it in the Palm wi-fi SD card which lists for $129. I know, you don't want to pay extra for it and would rather have it integrated. Agreed, but this is a good second best.

And, there are some cool features in the new T5 which I think warrant your consideration:

Small is beautiful - the T5 is simple, slender and elegant compared to many other handhelds.

It runs at 400 mhz which should handle anything you throw at it in the Palm world. You don't need quite so many mhz on a Palm as on a PPC.

It's got a ton of memory (256 mb) built-in. It's a USB drive with 160 megs of free space to store Palm or non-Palm files. After wishing for just a little more memory with devices that have 16 mb or 32 mb, this is a big plus.

The main memory is flash memory so doesn't go away when the power runs out. I've lost more than my share of data on portable devices.

The high rez 320x480 screen turns sideways easily. With software sleight of hand, the graffiti area toggles with a click. The screen is brighter than the T3.

I'm looking at this device for myself compared to my Zire 72 because I would get 50% more screen pixels and be able to view horizontally which would be great with web surfing. The T5 is just a little better in a lot of ways as just stated above.

If the T5 had a built-in, perhaps flip, keyboard, I would be champing at the bit to replace my Zire 72. One feature I would miss on the Zire would be voice recording. The T5 also doesn't have a built-in camera, but I can't feel too bad because I much prefer the results I get with my small digital camera and have a camera phone already. How many cameras do I need? I'm glad they spent the camera money on other features I don't have elsewhere.

There are lots of choices out there, but this is a strong offering, especially if you appreciate the convenience and simplicity of the Palm OS. If you are interested, you might like to watch this 4 minute interview with one of Palm's regional managers showing off the T5.

Go Kerry!

I was very impressed with John Kerry watching the debate last week. He clearly won the debate. To me it was a dramatic victory. Not even close.

I don't usually write about politics on Tech Ronin, but this is important. I'm a Democrat. I would like to see a better social safety net in this country. I would like to see government advocate for both business and everyday people, not just big business.

I would like to see a much stronger commitment to the environment in many areas such as global warming and pollution in its many forms. We need to make changes to alleviate problems with worker safety, too low minimum wage, healthcare and food safety. I don't like big government, frankly, but we've already got it and I would like what we do have to be a lot more helpful and representative of its citizens not just the richest 1%.

I've read several books about the Bush administration and am very concerned for the safety and well-being of our country and the world with the Bush administration at the helm. Things have changed dramatically in many ways since Bush got into office.

Environmental regulation has been trashed. Almost all regulation has been dismantled or hamstrung. The US has cancelled treaties on many fronts. World opinion has shifted dramatically against the US - and for good reason. The situation in Iraq is tragic, dangerous and totally out of control. al-Qaeda is clearly stronger and better established now than prior to our invasion of Iraq.

If you favor Kerry, please vote and make your opinion known among your friends and acquaintances. If you favor Bush, I hope you'll watch the debates and think seriously about what you hear.