TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Classic voltage regulators like the 78xx series can be integrated into a circuit easily, however, their energy efficiency is terrible. Getting out higher currents at a high voltage drop makes these IC’s behave like mini stoves; and getting them to increase output voltage is impossible – not the kind of behavior needed when creating a circuit for a battery-powered device like our ever-famous Meazura(even though it can source an insane amount of current).

Switching converters address both of the problems outlined above, offering extremely high efficiency and being able to amplify voltages – however, these features come at the cost of increased complexity.

Dallas Maxim has an excellent application note covering the theory behind SMPS’s – enjoy:
http://www.maxim-ic.com/appnotes.cfm/appnote_number/4087

Many TamsPalm readers eagerly await the release of the Asus eeePC mini-laptop – after all, the idea of a brand-new laptop without a hard drive and up to 3.5h of battery life for like 300$ sounds fascinating. The boys at LaptopMag.com have now managed to get an eee PC 701 for review:
http://laptopmag.com/Review/Exclusive-First-Review-Asus-Eee-PC-701.htm

They didn’t install Windows XP onto the box, but rather stuck to the standard software Asus ships on each eee – and were impressed with the functionality and speed of the package. The reviewer states that: the Eee PC runs circles around UMPCs powered by Vista and XP in terms of performance, price, and ease of use, but not application support.

Being perfectly honest – I will wait for the XGA-screened version…

In many countries, the clocks are turned back again. Here a photo of my two PDAs:

How do you PDAs, computers + other devices react?

The latest iPod nano truly is an impressive device when one ignores the missing features – I almost caved in and bought one for a friend while in London(I still prefer a Treo 680 with the latest version of PocketTunes).

Anyways, the boys at CNET’s have whipped up a little presentation of a 4GB iPod Nano getting “ripped up” – if you like gadget teardowns, head right over:
http://www.news.com/2300-1041_3-6215077-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg

TealPoint has released a new application in its beta section. TealScan shows information about your system, memory and helps you diagnosing problems. Currently it has four tabs:

Status

System information (battery, memory, phone signal). The “system” button shows another window with additional information about the operating system, CPU, Flash ID, … The “storage” button leads to a fatal exception and “BG Proc” shows apps that are active in background.

Scan

This section seems to be inactive. Once completed, it will scan the device for special issues. At the moment it shows only “MORE COMING SOON”; a tap on the “Scan” button causes a soft reset.

Maintain

Here you can probably set up tasks which should be performed regularly. But it is also inactive right now.

Update

This seems to be something similar to TrackerDog. Using the internet, it checks if your applications are up-to-date. On my device, it shows only one app which is too old. This could be because their update database is still small.

You can download the second alpha version which crashes very often and is many missing features. But if TealPoint continues developing, it could become a very interesting application for every Palm user!

Opera has released the third beta version of its mobile browser Opera Mini. New features, according to their blog, are:

• Added Opera Link support
• Added Speed Dials
• Added RSS feed support
• Added shortcut *+0 for feeds
• Added shortcuts for speed dials (‘*’ + speed dial number)
• Added function to ask the transcoders for the title and favicon of a new bookmark or speed dial
• Stylus devices can now scroll shortcut help overlays
• Changed “Fit to width” to “Mobile view”
• Changed “Autozoom” to “Show overview”
• Low, medium and high image quality setting
• Images fit better to the screen (no panning)
• Improved BiDi support
• Page position and scaling is now preserved after reload of page
• Stylus devices without pointer motion events should be able to scroll anyway, just not in realtime
• Faked transcoding progress when using feeds
• Show numbers in ordered lists
• Improved stylesheet handling
• Focus highlight now looks inactive when loading
• New and improved server side cookie handling

Well, Dmitry Grinberg of PalmPowerUps fame has done it again. He is currently completing work on his latest hack: a T|X ROM reflasher. This application is not Dmitry’s/Palm, Inc’s “TX2″ reflasher; it works, not only on the overflow ROM area, but on the rest of the ROM, OS and all. There seems to be quite in interest in this application, especially among the ‘Old School’ Palm users, the folks who used to use and love the Jack* applications.

Dmitry has quite a few cool projects (here, here, here and others) going at the moment, and it is very cool to finally see a TX ROM reflasher! Unlike his previous reflasher, PowerRom is completely Dmitry’s code (not a hacked ESU) and will be marketed as shareware.

Dmitry expects to be done with this application soon and you can be sure TamsPalm will be there to cover it!

PS: Dmitry is in need of a Tungsten T5. If you would be willing to donate a T|T5, contact him at dmitrygr AT gmail DOT com!

DataViz wrote an article about the iPhone as Apple announced to release a SDK for the iPhone next year. This is what DataViz announces in their blog:

“So what does this mean for DataViz, you ask? Hard to say at this point (after all, the SDK was only announced yesterday and won’t be available for a few months), but imagine Exchange ActiveSync access to your email, editing Office files, and having all of your PINs and passwords encrypted and easily accessed on your new iPhone!

We’ve been getting more and more requests each day asking us – begging, in some cases – to bring our applications to the iPhone, specifically Documents To Go, RoadSync, and Passwords Plus. Thanks to this announcement, we’ll be able to give this serious consideration. You can bet we’ll have our hands on this SDK as soon as possible. I can’t guarantee anything, but please, if you are interested in having DataViz software on your iPhone, let us know!”

TamsPalm has summarized Linux support on the different machines again.

http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/SupportedHandheldSummary
http://www.hackndev.com

Did you try Linux on your Palm already?

TamsPalm has covered GSPDA’s Treo competitor extensively in the past – and I’ve finally managed to get my hands close to a GSPDA M70!

Expansys has just received an order for the box(costing 175€ before tax) – it should be in our office in two weeks or so. Expect a detailed review the moment it hits my table…

OtterBox is known for a variety of so-called OtterBoxes…plastic boxes designed to protect gadgets from water, dust and crushing. Since quite a few of their products scored rave reviews at TamsPalm’s, I was naturally excited to find out that a case crafted specially for the 680/750/755p was available. But can it stack up?

OtterBox ships the 1921 in a well-padded box along with a detailed manual and a few spare parts. Most of the OtterBox can be replaced easily according to the manual – a truly excellent idea.

The 1921 itself is made of plastic and a rubbery substance that ’stops drops’ – Its overall look reminds me of the Aceeca Meazura: A variety of colors is available, too (yellow Meazura, anyone):

Inserting the Treo into the case is simple. First, the clamp on the back is opened in order to ‘eject’ the bottom. Then, the Treo is inserted. Afterwards, the bottom is installed again and the clamp is closed.

The case adds quite a bit of bulk to the Treo – here’s a picture of a Treo 650, a 680 and the case.

OtterBox did a great job at keeping the Treo usable in the case. Opening the glass door allows you to access the touch screen via a thin, clear membrane, the keyboard and side keys remain functional. A bottom door allows you to access the hotsync port.

The speakers and the headphone port have ‘cutouts’ covered with a special fiber that blocks dirt and water, but allows sound to pass through relatively unhindered. I would not insert headphones, though (see below).

A stylus can be docked into the side.

The camera gets a see-through window, however, the window significantly affects image quality. Also, the keyboard layout is fixed to QWERTY, and some of the alternative characters aren’t correct for a Treo 680.

The IR cutout is in the wrong place, too. The manufacturer claims that the case is not waterproof. However, it survived 15 secs under a strong beam of water without a single drop getting in…of course, the headphone membrane was intact and the sync door was closed firmly. OtterBox claims that the case survives drops from up to 1 metres. However, neither of these was tested with an actual Treo as OtterBox takes no warranty whatsoever for the devices inside.

Overall, the OtterBox 1921 transforms your Treo 680/750755p into a device that gets close to the Meazura (aka big blue tank) in terms of ruggedness…if the manufacturer would manage to certify the waterproofness. As it is now, the 1921 still is a good buy for everyone who’s Treo needs the extra protection.

EDIT: Oberhausen seems to be a pretty big city, having approx 220000 inhabitants and an active Palm community!

Apparently, Palm wasn’t the first company to have the idea to call a product Centro. Google AdSense has produced the following, pretty interesting URL:
http://www.centro.de/

Following this link leads you to a German shopping mall/entertainment center containing a variety of companies. The mall was opened 1996; and is located in a town called Oberhausen.

As of now, we don’t know if the CentrO folks know about Palm’s Centro phone – if the machine comes to Germany, we could expect a name change…

Dear readers,
the controversy around OZ Communications has calmed down – we just received the following message:

Hello Tam,

Thank you four your reply.

I am only asking not to share the application with third parties. It’s all right to talk bout it. I can see that some of the bloggers are asking you to send them a copy.

http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2007/10/16/centro-im-client-works-on-a-treo-680/

Thanks

Jacques Lemoine | General Counsel | OZ

So, TamsPalm is out of the game…whew.

Just to calm you all down…we won’t get sued after all. But lets get back to technology now!

Creating a networked application is simple for everyone who knows Socket Programming…but creating a secure networked application is an almost impossible task. Apress’s recently-released book covers a variety of topics related to software security…can it stack up?

The book is subdivided into four parts containing sub-chapters. The first part looks at the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ of security – how to create a secure program; what the word security actually means; and so on.

The second part of the book starts out by looking at various kinds of malware. It then goes on to looking at buffer overflows, as they are one of the main attack vectors for such programs. After that, the book goes on to look at a variety of subjects related to web applications…while a lot of this isn’t directly applicable to mobile device applications, it is very interesting nevertheless.

Last but not least, Part 3 looks at cryptography. While the actual mathematics behind cryptography are not covered, the book manages to introduce you thoroughly into both symmetric and asymmetric encryption. This knowledge is detailed enough to use a cryptographic library to increase. The authors also added two chapters on key management and signatures/MAC’s – very interesting reading…

As usual for APress, the book’s paper is of high-enough quality; allowing you to make notes with a Parker 45 easily. Many images and code examples make the well-written text a pleasure to read! A variety of exercises at the end of each piece allow you to check your skills and train your brain.

Overall, if you are creating a network application, purchase this book by all means. The knowledge contained in it could easily make the difference when a black-hat hacker chooses to attack your application. People who don’t create networked applications will benefit from the cryptography parts… . The Amazon price of 27$ is justified…