Anyone wanting to get his hands onto a black Centro(not the white/green version), can now preorder his box directly from the manufacturer for 299€.
The device seems to be shipped for free ATM – however, no information is given about when the boy will actually become available(aka when you get your hands onto it).
In case anyone of you feels like giving Palm an interest-free loan, please keep us posted!
P.S. Expansys still doesn’t list the Centro…
With the first NVFS handhelds, a memory region commonly known as DBCache has been introduced. The DBCache holds databases that have been decompressed from Flash in order to be used – if it runs out, no more databases can be opened. So far, flushing the DBCache required you to either use Resco Explorer or softreset the device – can this app improve the situation?
OffFlush has a very simple, self explaining UI:
When the handheld is powered off and the free DBCache is below the threshold, OffFlush delays the power-off and attempts to flush the DBCache. This process usually takes 30secs to 1 minute on my Treo 680 and can not be aborted.
The program needs 10k of RAM and cannot be installed onto an external memory card. It has not caused any crashes so far. This mini-review looked at version 2.0 of the program, it can be downloaded here.
In the end, one question remains: what for? This program can automatically flush your DBCache – but do you need it flashed automatically? My Treo 680 has never had any DBCache issues, so I say no. People having a Palm TX or a Treo 650 could consider it useful, though…
Palm apparently has released yet another update for the recently-updated Treo 680. The Palm Update page states that this new update brings the device to software version 2.12(compared to 1.12, which was achieved by the last update).
As of now, no further information is available on what this update changes – I will install it onto my Treo tomorrow and will keep you posted!
The vienniese FunkFeuer project has managed to significantly expands its coverage in Vienna recently. A meeting in the MetaLab enabled me to have a quick talk with Aaron Kaplan – here goes:
Please tell us a bit more about yourself
I am one of the founders of the FunkFeuer initiative. FunkFeuer is a wireless community network that currently covers Vienna, Graz and other parts of Austria.
What is FunkFeuer all about?
FunkFeuer…umm..first of all..the name is one of the few words that English speakers can never pronounce. It is made up from the words Funk and Feuer; the combined word means as much as aircraft beacon signal. But we aren’t talking about aircraft here…but rather about a citywide mesh network.
Mesh networking means that a bunch of access points are linked together – and as long as one of them has internet uplink, packages are routed around wirelessly from router to router.
In the end, it becomes one huge city-wide WiFi network…
Does this mean that we are talking about municipal WiFi?
At the moment, we are still mostly a research network. We cover the whole city, but only on rooftop level – we don’t quite penetrate down to the floor yet.
But – on a long-term view, this is definitely where we are heading to!
What do you need in order to log in?
At the moment, we still wish the network to grow. Thus we require people to install the so-called optimized linkstate network protocol stack. Once the program is up and running, your device becomes part of the network.
We may eventually open the network to all clients – however, as of now, we do not want freeloaders and thus do not allow anyone to connect.
For what platforms is OLSR available?
First of all, you need WiFi.
We currently have the program running on Nokia 770, apple iPhone/iPod touch and a select few Symbian phones.
At the moment, we still are very focussed on routers. However, crosscompiling the software should be easy – it’s open source and pretty portable.
As already said, this is a community project – if you feel like giving it a pop, just download the sources and get it compiling!
You mentioned power consumption before – what were you talking about exactly?
As of now, WiFi still is very power-hungry. However, we expect powersaving chips to become available soon, which will cut power consumption significantly.
Additionally, OLSR is permanently being optimized for lower power consumption – we permanently work on reducing the power need of the protocol (stack).
Are there similar installations existing where everyone can connect?
Please let me emphasize this once again – we COULD turn this feature on any time. However, as of now, we want to keep the network growing. Later on, enabling this is a matter of running an access point service next to the mesh routing daemon…as said, we could do it any time.
What are the future goals?
First of all, power consumption awareness and universal compatibility with mobile devices. In order to achieve that, we need to reduce our CPU utilization(something we have done very effectively in the past, reducing client overhead from O=n*n to O=n*log(n)). Additionally, we also plan to experiment with routing metrics…and…last, but not least, complete coverage down to street level…
Anything you would like to add?
Yes – visit www.oslr.org to check out the current development status!
Should you have any questions, please leave a comment – Aaron is an avid reader of this blog!
The folks over at BoyGeniusReport’s have managed to snag up an AT&T Centro from somewhere – and have posted an unboxing gallery(which is currently offline).
Anyways, the most “striking” picture of them all is below(hosted safely by the folks at BrainsWare’s) – why, for God’s sake, give a white phone GREEN keys….
P.S. We are scheduled to receive a Centro by the end of the Month!
The screen in GSPDA’s M70 is a bit of an oddball – no other Palm OS licensee has ever used screens with a resolution of 176×240. Additionally, reflective screens have been as good as dead since the epic Tungsten T, having been replaced by transflective or transmissive screens. Anyways, can it stack up against Palm’s current offerings?
The first comparison object is our trusty, first-gen Palm TX. Even though its display is very bad, it still manages to produce a stronger green. All other colors are on-par.
Palm’s Treo 680 beats the M70 in all disciplines except the black screen:
In reflective mode, the devices are on par:
The transmissive screen found on the rx4240 has no problems beating the M70:
In the end, the M70′s screen definitely is less colorful than its competitor’s when used indoors – I would rate it more-less on par with a Palm m515. However, the reflective screen manages to play out its strengths outdoors, beating all but the Treo 680 with great ease. If you can live with the resolution(aka you don’t need HiRes because of tiny fonts,…), you will not have problems with the color depth…
While we haven’t heard much from Access Linux Platform in the last months, the last few days brought along a load of ALP-related news. Here’s a quick roundup:
Access distributes developer tools to the masses
While ALP developer tools were available to a select minority of developers since last summer, the company has now released them to the “wider public”. Interested developers can register themselves at a new web site called ADN, and can then proceed to downloading an ALP SDK and a so-called Garnet VM compatibility kit.
P.S. It looks like the “legacy” Palm OS documentation is available from this web site, too.
P.S.2 ALP developer documentation can be downloaded without registration.
ALP integrated into MontaVista Mobile Linux
Access and MontaVista have ganged up by creating a version of ALP that can run on top of MontaVista’s Mobile Linux kernel. As MontaVista has a pretty large user base(among Linux phones), this has the potential to ease ALP device creation significantly!
Orange plans ALP handset in “summer”
The folks at BrightHand’s have managed to scoop up that Orange is planning to offer an ALP-powered device “this summer”. They claim that the operating system will debut on a yet-unreleased Samsung box called i800(so, it’s not the Haier phone that they used for testing).
As of now, no further information is available…please stay tuned!
Last but not least, here’s an ALP stack diagram from an official Access Co PDF – the Palm OS components are in the small rectangle on the top left…while the big rectangle on the right is all dedicated to NetFront….I guess we shouldn’t have any problems surfing the web with ALP boxen…:
Thanks to AlphasmartUser for pointing this out!
For all those of you wondering where our Treo 500 review is(not 500v – we’re talking about the unlocked version here) – Part 1 of the review has just gone live over at TamsWMS’s:
BTW: if you currently use a Palm OS device, don’t even think about cros grading to the 500v. You will DEFINITELY be unhappy with its operating system…
Recently, I was the beneficiary of a “sweet” deal from Resco. Resco Suite is comprised of many of the company’s apps for PalmOS (See Tam’s review). Since I already owned Resco Explorer 2007, Resco Viewer, and Resco Backup Pro, the suite didn’t really interest me until they decided that users who owned 3 or more Resco products could get a 70% discount on Resco Suite! I was sold so I now own the lot. My first idea was to use IDGuard instead of SplashID to keep all that information protected on my palm.
What about a desktop conduit? I should get this out of the way right at the beginning. SplashID has a desktop conduit and IDGuard doesn’t. I spoke to Jan Slodicka at Resco about what he thought the timetable for getting a desktop component for IDGuard would be. He thought that there could be a conduit in about 6 weeks. In my opinion, this is the major benefit of SplashID over IDGuard. Once IDGuard has a conduit, it will be hands down the best PalmOS Identity protection app out there. IDGuard NOW has a backup conduit!
Importing records: The first hurdle was getting the data from SplashID into IDGuard. At first I had problems, the import feature in IDGuard choked when importing a vID export file from SplashID – it imported just 29 of over 300 records I had. On the Other hand the import of the SplashID pdb went fine (once I took the password off the SplashID database). Resco was great when it came to troubleshooting this and now the import works perfectly, vID or pdb file. For your own protection IDGuard can’t decrypt the SplashID database, you must know the password and remove it first.
Some benefits of IDGuard over SplashID:
You can attach documents to a record. These documents can be in most formats you find on your device – doc/xls/ppt/pdf/images/html/zip/txt/audio/etc. When you attach a file IDGuard asks if you wish to delete the original. In this way you encrypt a file and delete the unencrypted version. You can open the document directly from IDGuard, with 2 caveats – 1) you need a reader for the type of document you are opening (e.g., Documents 2 Go for .doc files) and 2) the reader needs to be in RAM. By default I keep all my D2G applications on my card (you can move applications to the card from within D2G). When I tried to open a .doc file the screen blanked for a second then returned to the login screen of IDGuard. After I moved the application into RAM it opened beautifully. Depending on the application, IDGuard will either make a temporary file that is opened, then deleted when it is finished (as with images viewed with Resco Viewer), or the app will warn you that a file will be made in a certain directory on your card and you will be responsible for deleting it (if you view an image with Media).
I played an audio file (mp3) directly from IDGuard without any problems whatsoever. If you have a mic on your device you can also record your own audio attachments.
Another great feature is the reminders. You can set a reminder on records.
I found when I was recategorizing my records in IDGuard that it had so many fewer choices of icons than SplashID had. This can be somewhat frustrating in that I like to be able to quickly look at records and know what they are from their icon (especially if I’m in the icon view). When I imported my database over to IDGuard all my SplashID entries that had been marked with an icon of a PDA were now marked with a CD icon or a question mark. I prefer distinguishing my software serial number entries between PC software and PDA software. It is categorized that way and should be “iconized” that way. There is a smartphone icon, so I decided that was how I would differentiate. There should be a book icon, in my opinion. I guess I’d just like to see more of a selection.
Overall IDGuard is a superior piece of software. The ability to encrypt so many different kinds of documents/files and view them straight from within IDGuard is a tremendous advantage. Once the desktop component for IDGuard is out I’ll be taking SplashID off my device. Jan as Resco said they will be incorporating the encryption technology used in IDGuard into Explorer 2008 – I can’t wait! I also spoke to Nikolai Filipov at SplashData. Nikolai hadn’t even realized that Resco had released their IDGuard product until I had contacted him. Nikolai said in his email, “… it appears that their application is based on SplashID. SplashID has been the best-selling password manager for Palm OS for over 6 years.” SplashData even provided me with a reviewers guide and a serial number to help with my review. In going through both apps, I became more and more impressed with IDGuard’s abilities. At the same time It is evident that the SplashID interface /GUI has had more time to mature and has slightly more flexibility. Some graphical components are the same on both apps, lending some credence to the assertion by SplashData (for instance, the font selection dialogues are very similar in both apps – note that all skinning in these screen shots was done by SkinUI).
A nice ability that SplashID has is to be able to change the background colors in the list view. Although this seems minor, it is extremely useful when you change to hires mode. In IDGuard, I can barely discern the background colors, which makes it easier for my eye to accidently slip from one row to the next. In SplashID I changed the color of the colorized rows in hires to a darker color, and that made all the difference in the world.
The below screenshot show the SplashID choose color dialog:
To wrap it up I’ve made a chart showing the differences and similarities (I’ve highlighted in red the items I believe are the most important differences):
| Feature | SplashID | IDGuard |
| GUI | Customizable in different views – generally more flexible | Customizable in different views |
| Encryption | 256-bit Blowfish | Industrial standard AES |
| Desktop Component | Yes – Vista compatible | Yes (edited) |
| Document processing | No | Yes – encryption of all types of documents |
| Attachments | No (except notes) | Yes – Attachments can be created also with built-in camera or audio recorder |
| Reminders | No | Yes |
| Customizable record templates and categories | Yes | Yes |
| Secure memos | No | Yes |
| Special data editors for address/ phone number/ e-mail | No | Yes |
| Data Sources (Databases) | Yes – Synchronize multiple SplashID databases single data source on palm | Yes – Multiple data sources on Palm |
| Backup/Restore | Yes | Yes |
| Export/Import/Send | Yes | Yes |
| Password generator | Yes | Yes |
| password strength meter | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-locking | Yes – auto lockout after 10 failed attempts, Time to Auto Lock after exit is configurable at immediately, 1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,25,30 minutes | Yes – wait time gets longer after each failed attempt, Time to Auto Lock after exit is configurable at immediately, 1, 2, 5 minutes |
| Hint for Password | Yes | Yes |
| Web Auto Fill – one click to open a website on the desktop and login automatically | Yes | Yes |
| Custom icon support | Yes | No |
DialByPhoto(TamsPalm review here) was GX5′s first attempt at giving Palm OS Treos a new phone interface. UltimatePhone plans to extend this stylish interface to include application launching and web favorites – can it stack up?
When starting UltimatePhone for the first time, the product presents you an eight-page tutorial about some UltimatePhone features(unfortunately leaving out the core functions):
After closing the tutorial, UltimatePhone displays its regular start screen. The currently-empty squares in the middle are ‘photo containers’ – they can contain contacts, web sites and/or applications that are opened when the square is tapped(look at our DialByPhoto review for more info).
The squares can be aligned in a variety of styles:
Like with the regular phone app, typing letters allows you to browse contacts. Alternatively, a skinned dial pad is available:
Alternatively, voice dialing can be used if VoiceDialIt is installed(never was a fan of that feature…all hail the duffergile 
)
The new feature in UltimatePhone is the web view – pushing the right nav key opens a tab where you can place your favorite web sites for one-click access:
Both web pages and call are handled by the native phone/web browsing applications. However, the product can now bind the launch button. It then replaces the standard launcher and allows you to launch applications by typing their name:
As always, the product’s look can be customized heavily – you can adjust the background picture, and choose overlays,…:
Unfortunately, international users can not use the included fonts – they lack accented,.. characters:
This review looked at DialByPhoto version 1.5007 on a Treo 680. The product needs about 3MB of RAM. It was exceptionally stable in the testing period, and the periodic slowdowns seen in DialByPhoto have also been reduced significantly.
In the end, UltimatePhone is not an application that should be rated on its merit or usage value – that simply is not the point of the app. It is intended to give your Treo a fresh new look – if that’s what you want…get it for 20$ and sacrifice the 3MB…
Palm’s recently-released VersaMail 4 for Centro can be installed onto a Treo 680 with ease – I tried it, and must urge you not to do so!
At the first glance, VersaMail 4 is a smooth upgrade. All data is retained, the program runs smoothly and the new background send/receive facility really works a-ok.
In case you never sync your emails with your desktop, update to version 4 – you have little to loose and gain the aforementioned new feature. If you use the hotsync conduit though; DON’T DO IT. Once VersaMail 4 is on the Treo, you can kiss synchronization goodbye.
Centro owners – can you hotsync VersaMail email accounts with the PC using the software shipping on your Centro’s CD? Please let us know!
The German CeBit tradeshow is commonly known for cool devices, sometimes a load of snow and a great press center. Great – for all those who are let in. For most tradeshows, getting in is a matter of proving that you publish something – not so for the CeBit. I have just received my press card for this year’s trade show – please look below for a comparison to last year’s(on the right):
This year’s version states “ONLINE JOURNALIST” right across the Press text – sort of like bloggers are second-class journalists who basically are completely irrelevant to today’s technology world and who are just let in as an act of courtesy from the CeBit media department. Many bloggers have press cards from renowned journalists associations(e.g. yours truly) – but still aren’t worthy of proper treatment in the eyes of the Deutsche Messe AG.
Please keep in mind that this isn’t the first time the Deutsche Messe AG discriminates online mediums(and bearers of press cards not issued by German agencies) – 2000, journalists from really big news sites(e.g. Tom’s Hardware and The Register) were banned from entering the tradeshow). Last year, everything went well – and this year, the bork-ups begin all over again. It feels like a late revenge stunt – hey, we can’t kick you out, but we can still discriminate you by giving you a differently-looking(or stamped) press card.
Dear readers, please help make this public. It may not concern you today, but it will most definitely concern you when your favorite news services can no longer access a trade show or concert which is relevant for you. Please send a link to this article to your favorite news services, and post it to your blog. If you have a Digg account, please digg the article here.
Dear colleagues, feel free to use the image I have posted above in your publications – I hereas place it into public domain(click for bigger version). It may not concern you – but please help us fight back. You could receive an inferior press badge just tomorrow – please spread the word so that this discriminatory practice can be stopped in its roots!
When seasoned Palm OS freaks see an M70 for the first time, they usually react with an age old question:”and you can actually use this thing”? Indeed, GSPDA’s candybar phone is very small..but I dare to say that it can be used very well. Follow us along for Part 3 of this review to find out why…
The front of the GSPDA M70 is dominated by three things – its screen, the hardware buttons and the truly gigantic multitap keyboard:
While a multitap keyboard never is as fast as a QWERTY one, this is one of the best keypads I have ever used. Keys are very big and have a clear and clacky pressure point…if every phone would have such a keypad, the world would be a much better place. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true for the joystick:
The back of the phone is dominated by the camera, loudspeaker and battery compartment:
The top of the device contains the power button(on level with the housing, which is great as it reduces the probability of erroneous touching), a wrist strap dock and the multicolor signal LED(also visible from the front):
Like most other Asian manufacturers, GSPDA is very fond of plastic covers to protect ports. The headphone jack(2’5 inch) at the right side and the sync port at the bottom both are covered with plastic lids – the one at the bottom can be removed easily, while the headphone cover seems to be fixed to the device for real:
The IR window is located on the right side, the left side contains three buttons, the reset hole(can be operated with the stylus tip) and the memory card slot(protected with a dummy card):
GSPDA’s stylus can be considered an engineering masterpiece – it fits into the bottom of the M70 and can be pulled out to full length like some replacement styli for the TT series. When fully retracted, the back is extremely thin and the stylus is unstable…here is an image showing it next to a few others:
In the end, the M70 is a great candybar phone with few, minor flaws. Of course, the joystick and the stylus could be overhauled – on the other hand, the Treo 680 has that anti-power-user recommended breaking point and the awkward reset procedure…
Palm’s UK web site currently shows the following banner on the smartphone page:
Clicking the banner takes you to a site very similar to the American one for the GSM Centro – however, the red and pink models are missing. No information on pricing is available as of now, the folks over at PalmInfoCenter’s claim an unlocked price of 300€.
P.S. Expansys does not list the device as of now(not even on preorder)….
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