2006 September » TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog

ICQ kills accounts

Sep 242006

A TamsPalm reader sent this in a few days ago. Do you have any ideas what could be done?

Hello, my name is 52553672,

Many of us use one of the oldest, stable instant messaging system known as ICQ, But recently a dark side of this child company of AOL had shown its face to me. apparently ICQ had turned its back on the users and had stopped serving them.

I have been using the same ICQ number since 1999, the one I mentioned above, but about two weeks ago, with no warning, my user had simply stopped functioning.

Since then, I had tried finding out what might have gone wrong. I found out that the account was completely disabled! I could not even access the password retrieval system, the page redirects me back to the main page.

Here is a small challenge, every number has password retrieval, except
mine:
https://www.icq.com/password/retreive_password.php?uin=52553672
compared to:
https://www.icq.com/password/retreive_password.php?uin=12345678

Thanks to an Israeli Linux portal known as ´whatsup¡ I manged to get ICQ’s phone number and address. The company originated in Israel and apparently still operates from here.

Anyone can reply to them to the following address (I added +972 for international callers):

Phone: +97237665555 Fax: +97237665566
Address Mail Box 58161, Tel-Aviv Postal code 61581.

So I called ICQ, on the 11/9/06 11:30am.On the other side answered an operator that refused to give her name. I told her that my ICQ number had broke in the ICQ database, then I asked if I got to the right place where I can get support. She reapplied that there is no tech support in ICQ at all. A little confused from that answer I asked: ´so what do you do here?¡ to which she replied ´we work here!¡. I asked if there is anyone in ICQ that can help me, where she replied that there isn’t any ICQ person or service, in Israel or abroad, free or by payment that can support ICQ users.

I asked ´how can that be¡? and she answered ´many freeware programs have no support¡. I do not know if this statement is true, since many instant messaging services have some kind of human support, at least via e-mail (I think even MSN has support).

I thought that the users should know this wired fact:
ICQ had removed their human support from there site since April this year, their official support forums are full with messages like the following (this is one of the less rude ones):

I think ICQ administration doesn’t watch this forum at all. They say:
“O, users will talk each other, we will not touch them”. And, in my experience, they doesn’t answer on e-mail (taken from this thread: http://tinyurl.com/lgjle)

Currently I use a different number, I don’t know if and when ICQ will disconnect me or anyone else.

It can happen to anyone any s….

Please help us…digg our DOS emulator story

TamsPalm internal 1 Response »

Sep 232006

Dear Readers,
please help us.

If you have a Digg account, please digg this story:
http://www.digg.com/gadgets/DOS_Emulator_for_Palm_OS_released

Best regards and thank you from the TamsPalm Team

A true x86 emulator for Palm – first facts and pics

Software News, Software reviews, Uncategorized 155 Responses »

Sep 232006

A few days ago I got a mail from the developer who ported an emulator that lets you use real PC apps on a Palm. It’s the Palm OS port of the well-known DOS emulator DOSBox. It doesn’t only emulate an x86 CPU but also a DOS environment, so you can’t install another x86 operating system. But you can run many DOS apps / games in this DOS environment, even Windows until 3.11 and maybe even Windows 95 / 98.

This version is the first alpha release and very buggy, of course. But I can confirm that it’s no fake, and some things already work relative well:

CPU emulation works without many problems (though it’s relative slow)
80 columns x 25 (43) rows color screen
VFS access
mouse is controlled by touchscreen, but very uncalibrated
my Tungsten C and my on-screen Graffiti 2 inputs aren’t recognized

The port contains all necessary program parts in one PRC file which is about 400 KB. In the app you can set the size of RAM and some CPU settings. Other settings can be stored in a file dosbox.conf in the root directory of your card, for example autoexec commands.

As this version doesn’t support entering text – at least on my Tungsten C – I have to set the app I want to start in the auto execution list of dosbox.conf. This works, and I can show you some screenshots:

DOSBox command prompt

Microsoft QBasic

Microsoft DOS Shell

Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS

A screen mode with 43 (instead of 25) lines is also supported!!!

I’m already waiting very long for such news. A DOS emulator is, of course, NOT meant to be a replacement of Palm OS. But it makes you able to run your old DOS games on a Palm, to write small scripts in QBasic or to run apps that aren’t out yet for Palm OS.

I don’t want to upload this here yet because I don’t know if the developer agrees and I want to ask him first. But I want your feedback – now. And perhaps you have some feature requests I could send to the developer. So please comment.

Noah Pro – a free English dictionary

Software News, Uncategorized No Responses »

Sep 232006

On Freeware-Palm.com you find a new dictionary software that shows you definitions of 122,000 English words. It is called ‘Noah’ Pro and has the following features:

definitions of 122 thousand words

lookup words directly from other programs (resident mode)

copy & paste definition to clipboard for use in other programs

support for external memory cards (SD/MMC memory cards, Memory Stick)

bookmark interesting words for future reference

3 different ways of displaying the definition * display customization – choose your own fonts and colors

efficient use of memory thanks to high compression of data

support for latest Palm OS 5 devices

support for 5-Way Navigator in Treo, Palm Tungsten

Noah Pro Screenshot

I tested it shortly and can confirm that it works well on my Palm Tungsten C. The dictionary files (almost 7 MB) can be moved to the card, and although they contain 122,000 words, opening a word is quite fast. The only thing I miss at the moment is small font support. So, if you’re looking for a free English dictionary, try this and tell us your experiences.

Download: http://www.freeware-palm.com/download-noah-pro-english-dictionary.html

The Proporta Aluminium case for Treo 600

Cases No Responses »

Sep 232006

The Treo 600 is a classic smartphone, and aluminium hardcases are classics to. This combination would immediately score big in the Retro carnival – but let’s see how Proporta’s aluminium hard case for Palm Treo 600 fares in a TamsPalm review:

The aluminium case ships in a blister labelled in french – this was funny, but doesn’t affect performance in any way:

When the blister was open, I found yet another belt clip. Since I really loath belt clips, it was quickly stowed away…

The case itself is a classic aluminium hardcase with a single card slot:

Inserting the Treo into the case is easy – however, the metal retention module will eventually scratch your PDA(happened to Alex, look at the back of his machine). So, if you want to remove the Treo often or want it to stay in mint condition(hell, my TT had dents), stay away from this case.

The top and bottom of the Treo aren’t covered in any obtrusive way. This is good, as it reduces the ‘insertion cycles’ and makes your life easier.

The cutouts in the front do a good job – one can see the LED really well:

The volume buttons are accessible while the Treo is in the case:

Cutouts for camera, speaker and reset button can be found in the back of the case. The sound quality wasn’t degenerated at all….

When typing, the case is a bit in the way – however, typing still is bearable:

Overall, the Proporta Aluminium hard case for Treo 600 offers exactly what one expects from an aluminium hardcase: good protection for a low price of 34,95$. The cases only mayor weakpoint is the dangerous insertion procedure…which could be a dealbreaker for some…

Amazon launches Fulfillment beta…simplifies selling hardware

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Sep 222006

Three reasons kept me from doing Palm OS Hardware myself about two years ago:

Shipping
RoHS and other crap
Manufacturing

Amazon now announces Fulfillment Beta according to David Weiss of Microsoft. The basic system is simple: ship the stuff to Amazon, they store it or you and ship it out(along their wares). If someone wants to do some hardware, this could be truly great to have!

You can get the full scoop here:
http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/2006/09/inventory-and-shipping-costs.html

Symbol bought by Motorola

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 222006

According to PalmInfoCenter, Symbol was recently purchased by Motorola. Symbol is a company that sells, among other things, Windows Mobile and Palm OS PDA’s for business users. To be perfectly honest, this is not very interesting for the Palm OS community – the Palm OS stuff for sure wasnt the main reason why Symbol was bought up.

Since no new handheld was announced since 2002, you may not have all handhelds in the back of your mind – but HandHirn to the rescue:
http://www.handhirn.de/en/

Last but not least, Symbol also had a OVGA color machine ready for release – but it never hit the market:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=2949

Sex sells – nurse marketing

Public Relations No Responses »

Sep 222006

Sex Sells is the oldest marketing credo…and it probably also is the most overused. But today, I say the following in the subway:

The back of the two girls reads: Bahlsen Cookies…fight winter depression.

In Austria, nurses are a popular sexual desire(like schoolgirls in Japan)…and some creative guy decided to use this to differentiate his cookies.

By the way…when advertising stuff like transistor switches, the classic Eibensteiner lab coat would still work better – but here, it somehow fit…

What do you think?

The 160-megapixel camera

Hardware News No Responses »

Sep 212006

The swiss company Seitz has announced a 160-megapixel camera. Don’t ask me what you need this incredible amount of megapixels for(1GB per image), and dont ask me who is willing to pay over 30000$ for a digital camera – but if you want a free ride for the freak show, visit Engadget here:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/20/seitz-6×17-digital-shoots-at-160-megapixels/

P.s. I consider 8.1MP too much actually…

How to fuxate a presentation, big time

Web sites No Responses »

Sep 212006

Getting a good presentation done is considered a dark art by many…PowerPoint slides, talking styles, creating handouts and so on. Loads of work and fear ahead. But doing good presentations is learnable, it is not a skill that you get at birth.

Pawel of Software Project Management has posted an interesting tutorial called how to ruin your presentation:

http://managee.blogspot.com/2006/09/recipe-for-presentation-disaster.html

Got any hints to share?

Why I want a white screen background

PODS, UI design No Responses »

Sep 212006

Jeff Atwoods of CodingHorror recently wrote about IDE color schemes. He looked at black background-white text schemes – and IMHO forgot one of the biggest problems: reflections.

Both CRT monitors(I love my Siemens tube…its my central heating) and consumer notebooks(Acer Aspire 5622 WLMI) have reflective screens – and the blacker the background becomes, the more reflections you see.

Here are a few comparison shots(at the same ambient and screen brightness levels):

How is your UI set up?

Coreplayer for Windows Preview

Uncategorized No Responses »

Sep 202006

I know this is primarily a Palm site, so you might ask why I am doing a review of a Windows program? Well, this is the preview version of a program that is going to be out with a Palm/WM/Symbian preview in the next couple days (the Palm side of which I will review). You can take this how you like it, either as a review of a cool Windows program, or as the first part of a comparison between the desktop and mobile versions of the program.

First, I need to give some background. In the beginning, there was Betaplayer, which was the invention of an incredibly talented programmer by the name of Gabor Kovacs (goes by Picard on the forums). This program was insanely popular in the Windows Mobile realm, but one day he announced the intention of porting it to the Palm OS. Shortly after this was done, he linked up with the Corecodec network, headed by Dan Marlin, a former DivX executive. The player was renamed into TCPMP, or The Core Pocket Media Player. This program has been going through successive beta releases for some time now. The reason this program is set apart from the rest is solely the work of Picard. He wrote all the codecs for the player (except the FFMPeg codecs), and they are so efficient that they enabled media playback on devices that would have otherwise been relegated to the task of task management. Realizing the potential of both the (mostly) untapped mobile market for media (video+audio) players, they (a steadily growing team of software engineers) decided that this player was not going to simply be just a mobile player (its that good). Along the line, Dan announced the naming change to Coreplayer, and that it would be released on pretty much every platform (this includes the Xbox360 and PS3, though they will not be supported anytime near Coreplayer’s launch). On Monday I received a preview Windows version of the player. Lets get on with it!

Coreplayer for Windows

So, the player installs very quickly. I would say in less than a minute. It simply stores its codecs in the proper folders, and thats pretty much it. Loading up the player is instantaneous in all cases. It makes iTunes and WMP looks like they are trying to crawl out of frozen quicksand and molasses. Even loading large videos (I have a couple 1080p reference videos I am using) it opens in about 1/4 of a second. The current UI is very simplistic, with a Play/Pause, Forward, Reverse, Playlist, Info, and Playlist Selection buttons. Some parts of the UI here may change in future versions, and it will be skinnable at release.The real strength in this player though is its codecs. Besides being written by Picard (and maybe the help of a couple other Corecodec programmers) there is just a huge number of available codecs. YOU CAN PRETTY MUCH PLAY ANYTHING. Divx, Xvid, WMV, MOV, AVC, anything MPEG are all supported. In the realm of audio you have MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, OGG, Speex, WAVPACK, FLAC, MPC, TTA, AMR, ADPCM, ALaw, MuLaw, Midi (stripped from the readme). When was the last time you played AAC, AVC, WMA, and WMV in the same player, all licensed? I could tell you again how amazing the codecs are, or tell you that I am able to play 1080p videos on my 2.0Ghz Core Duo system. Now, this may be a feat in itself for a desktop player, but these specs for a player are unheard of in the mobile realm. Show me the mobile player (on PalmOS) that does WMV?

The Things I Like:

Fast installation
Fast loading and playback (no more waiting just to play a file you want to hear quick)
Even when released in its full glory, it will have a simple UI
It has what is probably the fastest AVC decoder available (even without hardware decoding, which will be available with their pro codec)
Plays everything, on all platforms. Remember you heard it here first that Xbox360 and PS3 are in the long term plan
Skinnable, and screen can be easily resized

Things I Do Not Like So Much:

No real easy way to organize all of your media, though I think this is related to the CoreTheque database, which will handle this function.
No easy on screen way to fast forward, just to skip

(If I think of another one ill add it)

So, if anyone has any questions, ask away!

PS: Here is another picture for your enjoyment…

The Treo 600′s screen

Hardware Reviews 3 Responses »

Sep 202006

When I bought the Treo 600, my main fear was the lowres DSTN screen. My previous experiences with DSTN were very bad(Gericom 3500A, anyone?) – slow, bad contrast, not bright enough and so on.

However, the Treo 600 has beaten by expectations by far. The screen is much brighter than my T3′s, and colors are vibrant enough for working, too. Here are three comparison shots in average lighting:

Outdoors, the Treo also does a decent job. This picture was taken in very bright light:

Viewing photos is not too great an experience on the Treo – the screen essentially should be considered 8bit instead of the advertised 16. You can see whats on the image, but the T3 fares MUCH better here.

Playing videos and Doom is possible, you see mild streaking. This photo of MovingBoard should clarify what I mean:

Overall, if work(aka email) is what you want(and you can live without HiRes), the Treo 600 will meet your expectations. Having a HiRes screen would be nice for the extra zoom levels(SheetToGo), but overall – the Treo 600 leaves me mostly satisfied!

P.s. When buying a Treo, check that its screen is free of orange blobs. The class action lawsuit still takes some time!

On the value of the USP(unique selling proposition)

Editorials No Responses »

Sep 202006

I recently was out with a friend. She feared loosing her job at an austrian state agency to a person who was a very good talker. One of the people in her department has to go, and it will probably be her as she has the least job experience.

Before we come back to Pat, however, lets look at a program I know very well: the initial version of WarpSpeed. Dmitry Grinberg entered a market which was filled with two big competitors – they did almost everything he did.

But Dmitry had one brilliant idea: he made an extra option for silencing screen whine, and then rode this point into town hard-core. And this is what worked…PxaClocker could silence screens too, but Dmitry got the public’s attention.

Binary Clock for Palm OS is a similar thing – Binary Clocks for Palm OS are dime a dozen. But Tamoggemon’s has a highly configurable display system – and this is a feature I try to ride into reviewer’s and customer’s neck.

A product needs a unique property that no one else has – the unique sales proposition pushes your product into the cash area and makes it unreplacable. You need to ride it onto the analyst’s hides and into your ads – people choose on differences, not on similarities.

Pat now gets her USP – good outwards attention in the form of a few testimonials from friends of mine. But think about your product – is it a Patricia, or a WarpSpeed?

Older Entries Newer Entries

TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

ICQ kills accounts

Please help us…digg our DOS emulator story

A true x86 emulator for Palm – first facts and pics

Noah Pro – a free English dictionary

The Proporta Aluminium case for Treo 600

Amazon launches Fulfillment beta…simplifies selling hardware

Symbol bought by Motorola

Sex sells – nurse marketing

The 160-megapixel camera

How to fuxate a presentation, big time

Why I want a white screen background

Coreplayer for Windows Preview

The Treo 600′s screen

On the value of the USP(unique selling proposition)

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