TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

The Palm Z22 has arrived a few days ago – and Proporta already managed to ship me a few accessoires(great timing, woohoo). There are very few cases offered for the Z22 - Proporta has two leather cases with different styles – thus, I decided to review the top-flipping one.

Proporta products ship in envelopes via regular mail from Great Britain. The stuff is packed up well, so transportation damages should be a non-issue:

The aluminium – lined leather case itself is packed in a blister card:

Proporta includes a sort of belt clip, however, I consider belt clips dangerous(theft) and thus will ignore it from now on:

The Palm Z22 is simply “shoved” into the case. There is no mechanical kind of latch; however, the Palm Z22 is attached very firm. You can even turn the case around and shake it a bit – the Palm does not fall out:

The handheld is protected very well:

However, the protection comes at a price – the handheld can’t be charged when the case is closed:

When using the handheld, the case is absolutely not in the way – sort of like the now-famous flip lid of the Palm Tungsten T3:

The magnetic latch works well, however, it takes a bit of practice to make it close perfectly(Update on 5/7/2006:Removing the protective foil makes closing the lid easier!!):

This 3gp video gives you an extra view of the product.

Overall, this is a great case for the Palm Z22. Manufacturing quality is very high, and the case does not get into the way of everyday use. I usually prefer aluminium cases to leather ones because of the extra protection, but the aluminium plate does a good job! If you want to protect your Z22, this is a must have! The price of about 35$ plus shipping is adequate IMHO, as you got to consider the effort wasted when you need to buy a new Z22…

This ad for cigarettes impressed me even though I never ever smoked anything. In fact, it motivated me to unpack my SX1 in a teenage-crowded subway station, write a text and even host it online!

The reason why it impresses me is the incredible simplicity. Most ads are produced burning thousands of dollars worth in actors and requisites, and in the end, they don’t really show the product anymore(for example, those Roemerquelle mineral water ads, will post it online if I find one, one can mistake it for a strip club ad easily).

Our ad above is entirely different. Producing it probably cost a few dollars, and it really puts the product in the first row. The ad text itself says “we don’t show you anything you can’t buy”…its just the smokes and nothing else…

This makes an interesting approach to ads-what do you think about it?

The PalmInfoCenter just dispatched a Palm Z22 loaner unit to my location for review. A review requires a load of time; so here are the first impresions of the package contents of this consumer-oriented device.

The Palm Z22 ships in a blister similar to the Palm Tungsten E2’s one. However, we didn’t get the full blister; we got just the box:

By the way, the box contains a little RFID tag - it can get annoying when entering a store:

The contained hardware mostly is standard Palm stuff. The charger that ships with the Z22 lacks the interchangeable wall plugs, and the hotsync cable has no hotsync button:

Palm ships a flexiskin-like housing with the Palm Z22:

The really ineresting stuff however isn’t the hardware. Palm ships loads of paper along the Z22 - paper that made me think!

The first thing is the get started sheet. This is nothing new: but customers get a real poster this time:

The addon mag contains ads for hardware(none that fits the Z22) and for software. The interesting thing is that many third party products are mentioned…

The ‘mini manual’ is actually more than just a Palm manual - it also contains loads of hints on how to plan your life(no joke).

Screen protector and Grafitti stickers - nothing new here:

Last but not least, here is a first photo of the Palm Z22:

Overall, one immediately sees that the Palm Z22 is targetted at end customers. Posters, a little book on how to organize yourself, a non-global charger - many things that save cash and won’t hurt an end consumer(while killing businessman acceptability). The machine didn’t power on yet - so, more news tomorrow!

This scenario probably is way too familiar to all of you who live together with family or generally others. Your ‘entourarge’ wants to leave and goes bonkers slowly but surely, and you still want that bit of info from someone else.

In a situation very similar to the one above(family heading to Kent, a big turkish restaurant in vienna; I wanted a reg ID from one of my favourite analysts and had skype text connection to him), I recently went bonkers at one of my favourite analysts! Of course, the fit immediately worked and the ID was produced - but as I am cooling off, I ask myself if it was really worth it.

Is a puny little ID and a day of delay when receiving an unlock code for a press evaluation version really worth a heart attack? Is it worth going mad at someone who you really consider one of the few people you really owe much? I honestly think that it isnt!

So, when under pressure next time, stay away from instant IM style conversation techniques. Call me mad, but usually, when using an instant messenger service, you are much more motivated to fire an aggresive quote then when sending an email.

Also, evaluate if it really pays out to fret. A friend of mine never ever frets; ok, she isn’t in IT business, but neverhteless, this attitude has its merits. Fretting over an execution deadline may pay out, but fretting over a meaningless delay is waste of precious calories.

Overall, sometimes, taking it easy is a great way to ensure great relationships between you and your business partners. It may be considered ‘hip’ to be a harsh screaming neurotic manager, but is beeing hip worth loosing the good relationship to your pals?

What do you think? Any similar experiences?

It has been about nine years since the beginning of the whole dispute, which by the way was the cause for the move to Graffiti 2. Xerox decided that graffiti was too close to their own technology, and sued Palm. Now, it is all over finally, and although Graffiti 1 may not be replacing G2 right now, we could possibly see it as an option on new Palms, since Palm now has a valid license for it. Read more in Palm’s press release.

Note: We arent the first to report this, and I am not crediting anyone else with it solely because I do not know who did first. Almost everyone has reported it. Of course, if you are tunneled into nothing but TamsPalm, you may have heard it here first anyway.

I thought I’d introduce myself as a new writer to TamsPalm. I’m Ashley. I’ve been a palm user since the days of the IIIx, and I never really looked back. Since then I’ve owned a number of palms and other PDAs including, a palm V, TRG Pro, Sony Clie NX73, Zire 71 and 72, Tungsten E, HP Jornada 568, and even a Rex 5000.

These days I’m happy with a T3 and a Treo 650. I’ve come along way since my days with the IIIx.

When I started off I thought I needed a palm to keep me organised, and it was very good for that, but, over the years, just like the platform itself, my use of the PDA has evolved a great deal. It is that evolution of how we use PDAs that really interests me.

People use PDAs for increasingly esoteric uses and I want to explore those uses and look at what comes next. What are the outer limits for PDAs, what uses were impossible a year or two ago, but are possible now, and what is to come.

Hopefully you’ll find it interesting too.

Here’s what the member “Lachmann” of the German Palm site “Nexave” saw at the airport in Barcelona/Spain:

http://www.nexave.de/forum/thread.php?threadid=22866
It’s a Palm TX & DVB-T receiver bundle. We have no further information about that yet. But perhaps you? Please tell us what you know!

UPDATE: Palm has this also in its online shop:
http://euro.palm.com/es/es/products/palmtxtdt/index.html

Dear Palm developers,

The wxWidgets GUI toolkit project (www.wxwidgets.org) is seeking a
volunteers to help port a prototype wxWidgets port of PalmOS 6 to
PalmOS 5. When we originally ran a competition to start the wxPalmOS
port, PalmOS 6 seemed like the appropriate target, but now the life
of PalmOS 5 has been extended, we would like to back-port what we
have to the older OS. wxWidgets is a popular GUI toolkit for desktop
and (increasingly) embedded applications, and a PalmOS port would
extend the reach of the wxWidgets API to millions more devices.

This might be a suitable project for students or other open source
enthusiasts, who we would actively ‘mentor’. So it’s an opportunity
for getting involved in the open source community, and making
a significant difference in the industry.

Please send enquiries to abx at abx dot art dot pl, or post them
here as a comment!

Most recent Palm OS handhelds(low-end Zires and a few high-end Clies excluded) run on Intel XSCALE processors. Now, Intel has announced plans to sell the XSCALE division to Marvell - good for Intel and Marvell, but do Palm OS users need to worry about anything?

If you ask me, not really. The only difference that we will see eventually is that our processors will no longer be called Intel XSCALE, but rather Marvell XSCALE. This probably will have an impact on Palm’s marketing department(anyone can still remember the stickers that they put on the T3s saying Intel processor??) and maybe on the place where a very popular Palm OS hacker downloads his CPU datasheets, but not much else.

There won’t even be any stock problems, as Intel continues to produce the processors while Marvell starts to arrange capacities of their own. So, much dust about very little…

What do you think?

A few days ago I got a message about a new site in the Palm world. It’s an online drawing gallery, and all pictures have been painted on a Palm. Nice to see, and perhaps a got idea for a launcher background? Of course everybody can upload his own paintings.

Link: http://www.palmartgallery.com/

I think it’s a good idea. Some German Palm users will already know it from http://pdaforum.de/galerie/.

What do you think?

ShoutCasts are a less known product of Nullsoft, the company that produced the once-famous WinAmp media player. Anyways, ShoutCasts are an interesting form of “internet media broadcast system”, that means, a PodCast is like a FM radio channel that is transmitted over the internet instead of over the air around you. PodCasts enjoyed limited popularity in PC circles for a long time, and PocketTunes 3 now brings them to a Palm OS handheld near you!

I performed the following tests with a Palm Tungsten T3 handheld and a F8T030 Belkin Bluetooth access point. I used an evaluation version of PocketTunes and WebPro 3.5. Opening a podcast on the Palm Os box is very easy - visit the download page with Web Pro, click the download link and click save. PocketTunes will immediately launch and will start playing:

ShoutCast streams exist in a variety of styles, with bandwidth and encopding format beeing the most common differentiators. Palm OS handhelds support only MP3 broadcasts via PocketTunes, so AACplus streams are not usable. The bandwidh says how much data you need to transer per second - and this is where the Palm Tungsten T3 has its problems.

People who read TamsPalm from the very beginning probably still recall the post called “Bluetooth-why art thou so slow” - in case you can’t, here is a link to it once again:
http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2004/11/18/bluetooth-why-art-thy-so-slow/

Anyways, no whining - Palm OS users want to listen to Shoutcast streams. The first test I performed was a 128K MP3 stream from Nectarine. The T3 buffered approximately every 30 seconds, but sound quality was really really high. This 3gp video should help clariify what I mean.

A 96k MP3 Shoutcast stream worked better, the handheld buffered about once per second with sound quality still beeing very good. Here is another 3gp video.

Last but not least, I tried a 48k mono MP3 shoutcast stream. The sound quality was much worse than before, but there was absolutely no buffering(even with VersaMail starting to get mail in the background). A last 3gp video proves this.

Interestingly, pausing a stream for half a minute and then clicking play again really helped combatting lag on the Palm. Don’t ask me why, but it works…

Overall, what should I say. Shoutcast for Palm OS handhelds is a reality. WLAN-capable handhelds like the Palm TX probably can play next to everys MP3 podcast available on the internet, whereas Bluetooth-only handhelds are limited to lower-bandwidth ones if you want totally uninterrupted play.

What’s your Shoutcast mileage?

Many people have said that AOL customer care sucks.

Now, an american customer recorded how a clerk fuxated around with him when wanting to cancel his AOL account. It is hilariously funny, you gotta listen to it:

http://media.putfile.com/AOL-Cancellation

Insane…

After our Linux on Tungsten T3 review, a few readers asked if Linux runs on their devices.

This table contains a list of all supported machines where Linux currently runs, is beeing ported to, etc:
http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/SupportedHandheldSummary

Interestingly, almost every HiRes capable Palm OS handheld has a port for it; however, none of the Sonys is currently showing any real progress.

Usually, a product web page is intended to make customers feel how you trust your own product. It basicaly is a site where you can brag about how great your product is.

Now, imagine visiting the Binary Clock for Palm OS web site only to find out that the screenshots weren’t made with the product advertised there, but with one from the competition(not true btw). Or imagine the scandal when Microsoft hosts its IIS(their web server) homepage with an opensource web server like Apache. Or, when a web host doesn’t host its home page itself…

Anyways, I just found an extremely amusing example of such a “marketing misbehaviour”:

Just visit the PNG association and click on the logo, and you’ll have the same image that we have above here. OK, in this case, the PNG organization probably had a reason to choose JPEG over its own format, but generally, this is a very bad idea IMHO.

What do you think?