TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

I am a bit of a time fanatic and I like all my clocks, watches and Palms to show the correct time. I even have a monthly Palm reminder to go around the house and set all the clocks using BigClock since it shows seconds. For years I have been using a freeware Hotsync conduit called TimeCopy which sets the Palm device to the desktop time. On the road I used a simple program called SNTP to set the time manually via NTP.

I then found AtomClock which can be scheduled to adjust the time once a day which means your Palm clock will always be correct. It has a simple interface where you select the NTP server (and add your own if required) and then select “Set Clock” if you want to manually sync the time.

Atomclock has 3 themes depending on your taste:

The latest Palm devices such as the Centro (which I have) have no reset buttons. Pulling out the battery for a reset normally messes up the clock. Now my standard procedure after a reset is to run AtomClock. Now I never have to look elsewhere to set my Centro time, I just manually run AtomClock and then schedule it to keep the time correct all the time. My Centro is now as accurate as an atomic clock!

AtomClock is written by Alex Pruss and is available from Palmgear for $4. It has just been updated to support NTP protocol servers as well as TIME servers. TIME servers are being phased out since NTP is a better time sync standard. The latest beta with NTP support can be found at http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145150.

After listing all the launcher’s applications, we will now see how the browser works. Beside the browser (MidBrowser), Ubuntu MID contains a mail client (Claws Mail), a chatting client (Pidgin), a VoIP application (Ekiga) and an RSS reader (Liferea) - these will be presented in the next article.

Although I made networking active in QEmu, Ubuntu MID did not connect to the network. I had to choose the network button and tap on “Wired Network”. So you can control whether it connects to your (Wireless) LAN or mobile phone network or not, but perhaps there will be an option to start the connection automatically, too.

Web Browser

The browser is called “MidBrowser”, but it works exactly as Firefox 3.0: It has not only the same engine (Gecko), but the same settings dialogues, the same bookmark management, download manager and plugin system. If you are a Firefox user like me, you will find again the same features you use on your desktop machine.

Every site I opened was rendered correctly. It couldn’t display YouTube videos, either. But when you install a Flash plugin, this should be no problem.

When I tried to install a plugin (SwitchProxy), it was downloaded, but the installation failed because of the wrong browser (MidBrowser, but it expected Firefox). But after a small modification, this should work too - SwitchProxy didn’t even work on my desktop’s Firefox 3.0, as it expected version 2.x, so the version number had to be added.

The first two pictures show the homepage of MidBrowser in two different zoom levels. As the new Firefox / MidBrowser also supports image zooming, this may be a useful feature when viewing big sites on the small screen (resolution).

Google Maps also works! When I tried to use Google Street View however, there was a message that no Flash player is installed. The fourth image shows the browser’s RSS reader and on the last image you can see different tabs.

The first image shows what happens when you tap on a link to a file (in this case, a MS Word document) - you may know this dialogue already from Firefox. It recommends opening this file in OpenOffice - but there is no OpenOffice in the launcher?! - more about that later. You also see the download manager in the second image, the settings dialogue in the third one and a plugin installation in the fourth one.

The user agent of this browser is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061813 Firefox/3.0

This browser seems to be the right choice for Ubuntu MID. It has one of the best rendering engines and can be customized very well (many plugins, which are availible for Firefox, can be modified to run also on MidBrowser). In the next article, we will show the other communication programs.

Many technology news sites have reported that there is a new special version of Ubuntu for UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) / MID (mobile internet devices). These devices often have a touchscreen, no keyboard and connect to the internet by Wireless LAN or a mobile phone network. TamsPalm has had a look at an early developer’s demo version.

In the first part of this article, I wrote a list of applications appearing in the main menu:

• Pidgin 2.3.1 (client for several chat protocols)
• GPE File manager 0.2.5
• MidBrowser 0.3.0RC1 (similar to Firefox 3.0, web browser)
• Pimlico Tasks 0.1.3, Dates 0.4.6, Contacts 0.8 (personal organizer)
• Cheese (taking photos)
• Moblin Media 0.55-0ubuntu2 (music, photos, videos)
• Claws Mail 3.3.1
• Terminal Server Client 0.150 (frontend for rdesktop, vncviewer, wfica, xnest)
• Neverball
• Ekiga 2.0.12 (Voice over IP)
• FBReader (E-book reader)
• Foobillard
• Update Manager
• Neverputt
• Office Document Reader (converts MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to PDF files for Evince)
• Terminal (uxterm, bash)
• Frozen Bubble (game)
• Alarm Clock
• Galculator 1.3.1
• Mousepad 0.2.13 (simple text editor)
• Liferea 1.4.14 (RSS, … feed reader)

The other parts of this article with a closer look at the applications will be published soon.

Every time I have to travel somewhere I need two cases: A small bag for my clothes and a big one for power supplies, chargers and cables. Working with power-hungry devices that can only hold a charge for a few days or sometimes only for a few hours you’re doomed if you forget the charger for that device. And since all chargers look the same, it’s very likely that you forget at least one of them.

With the introduction of the mobile device charger, Proporta finally put an end to that misery. Now, we’re looking at a new version of this charger, called “Ted’s Six Pack”. Designed by the UK designer label Ted Baker, the well known charger comes in a nice two-tone brown with an abundance of accessories.

Even the box got a new design. No shrink-wrap and no need of scissors. The box is kept shut by 4 magnets in every corner. Very uniqe.

Opened, it reveals a velvet bag full of small parts, the mobile charger itself and a wall-charger.

Everything unpacked we have the small lightweight charger itself, a wall charger (with four plugs suitable for most countries in the world), a 12-volts car power supply, two cables (one for charging the mobile charger and a retractable one) and seven plugs for different devices (Mini-USB, Micro-USB, Nokia, 4.0DC, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Ipod/Iphone) and the velvet bag for convenient storage.

The charger itself is very small (smaller than my Treo 680) and holds 3400mAh of power – enough to recharge several devices in one go or put one device back to business for 3-5 times (depending on the charged device, of course).

Using the charger is completely fail-safe; there’s only one button and two USB-jacks marked “in” and “out”. Just plug the retractable cable in the large USB-jack, choose one of the seven includes plugs, plug it into your device and press the button. That’s it. The charger will fill the battery of the attached device and shut itself off, when no more power is drawn from it.

The really great thing about this charger is the USB-plug – so everything that can be charged with an USB-cable can be charged with Proporta’s Ted Baker mobile charger.

Here I’ve attached a retractable sync-cable to my Treo – works like a charm.

Conclusion:

When you travel a lot and carry a bunch of gadgets around, this is definitely a must-have. Forget about black chargers that all look the same. On your next trip you just have to remember that brown bag with the “Ted Baker” print on it – everything you need to keep your gadgets going is in there. And best of all, it works everywhere in the world – like we do…

The Ted Baker Six Pack can be purchased from Proporta for $ 59.95 (29.95 GBP or 36.95 Euros).

Google Maps recently got “virtual GPS” capabilities on S60 phones - if no real GPS hardware is available, the program used cell ID information to receive an approximate location.

So far, Palm OS devices were left out because the boys partying under the orange orb chose not to expose the cell tower API for some reason or another(except to Sprint).

However, Palm has now released updates for the AT&T and VeriZon Centros which expose the API to the public - and the Google Mobile team quickly released an updated version:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-location-in-your-palm.html

P.S. The Sprint Centro currently does not support My Location. A firmware update is said to be upcoming!

After having received a new E520 from my Olympus dealer of choice(congratulations to the team at Foto Sobotka for their professional handling of the issue), it’s time to redo the sample images posted here a few days ago. As always, click on a small image to get the unmodified one!

All of these images have been made with the out-of-the-box defaults. The external FL36R flash has been disabled in all shots(except the flash ones); image stabilization was enabled on the non-tripod shots.

EZ 1442 - tripod shots
The EZ1442 kit lens is a F3.5 lens that has a focal range of 14-42mm. Here are five small sample shots ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 1600(on the right). Click on the shots to see the full JPEG as it was produced by the E520:

ISO Level	Sample image
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600

Here is the same sequence made at full zoom:

ISO Level	Sample image
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600

EZ 4015-2 - tripod shots
The second kit lens is a mediocre-ranged zoom: its focal length is from 40mm to 150mm(multiply x2 because of the FourThirds sensor). I tortured it with a few day time shots which turned out great. Look at the magnification of the click below to see how raising ISO levels turn out - ISO1600 images look a bit noisy and loose a bit of details, but remain perfectly usable:

ISO Level	Sample image
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600

Zoomed in images turn out a little soft, but can easily be fixed with the Unsharp Mask filter found in GIMP:

ISO Level	Sample image
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600

Handheld night shots - shutter time less than 1sec
A few commenters wanted me to test the IS functionality of the E520. The sample images below have been made at night with shutter times greater than 1/2secs, and turned out surprisingly sharp. They definitely won’t make a 2m poster print - but the local rag I sometimes write for would definitely be able to use them:

ISO 1600 torture image
No TamsPalm review would be complete without a torture test. The Olympus E520 was tortured by having to capture a single frame of a video screened at a recent MetaLab presentation. The sample image below shows the result: running Noise Ninja over it yields a perfectly usable picture.

FL36R - leisure shot
Finally, a leisure shot courtesy of my FL36(r) flash. The guy pictured is a really cool staff member of the UEFA Euro Fan Zone in Vienna; he celebrates having found an abandoned hoodie bearing the Spanish flag:

Conclusion
Cutting a long story short: the Olympus E520 delivers good (albeit slightly “unsharp”) JPG images at its factory settings. Tweaking the parameters around a bit would probably lead to even better photos: however, this is IMHO better achieved by shooting in RAW and processing the files on the desktop.

The bundle I currently use has cost less than 1000€(including the FL36(R) flash that doubles as an autofocus light source). I am very happy with the camera - stay tuned for an unboxing video, a somewhat detailed review and real-world usage experiences…

Someone at Palm’s seems to feel like getting his company a bit of extra headline exposure after all the Apple iPhone news - and announced a product that we have reviewed ages ago: an unlocked Centro for US GSM networks.

The unlocked version of the box is snow white and can be purchased at Palm’s web site for 300$:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/centro/

After not having anything to give away last Sunday(sorry), I am proud to present you this week’s giveaway!

Paragon Group has provided us with free licenses for HandyWeather, an excellent weather program for mobile devices(TamsS60 review here)! We can give away licenses for Palm OS, Windows Mobile and S60 devices, and hope to do so next Saturday.

In case you feel like claiming one of the licenses for yourself, please visit the forum thread linked below and tell us which device you have!
http://forum.tamoggemon.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25

Sir Wright from BrightHand took Access’s “Garnet VM” for a trial run: in case anyone of you is new to the term, we are talking about a free Palm OS 5 emulator for Nokia Nxxx web tablets(NOT S60 phones).

The emulator supports WiFi hotsyncing(no bluetooth or USB), and can not access the underlying system’s memory cards. Alarms are not played back unless the emulator is running.

Other than that, the emulator worked pretty well except for a few small quirks - get the full scoop here:
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=14116

In case anyone of you feels like owning a GSPDA M70 but didn’t order one so far: you are now officially out of luck. Take it as a sign of the things still to come, but GSPDA’s web site is now blank. Additionally, the Xplore web site no longer lists any of the Palm OS handsets - the only remaining handset is the WF100(a Java-enabled dumbphone). Finally: the device is now gone from Expansys.

As of now, little is known about what this actually means for existing M70 owners. It is very well possible that customer support will end very soon; chargers and cables probably won’t be available much longer…

OnBoardC users all over the world will be more than happy to hear that their favorite resource editor has just been updated to version 1.19:

Phillippe Guillot, the maintainer of the product, has informed us about the following changes:

A new version of the on board resource editor BIRD (1.19) is available on http://www.ppcompiler.org/download.php?lng=en
This version fixes some bugs and includes the ability to edit the AppInfo field.

In case anyone of you uses an older version of BIRD(or RsrcEdit), please get this free update immediately!

Dear Readers,
all of tamoggemon.com is currently undergoing a DDOS attack by a very intelligent person who hereby tries to express his disagreement with a review.

Please accept our apologies for the outages in the last few hours!

Tam Hanna and the Tamoggemon and brainsware teams

THE CAMERA HAS BEEN DEFECTIVE! IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY AN OLYMPUS REPRESENTATIVE!

The replacement camera has been on a press conference with me and provided me with lovely images in all kinds of suroundings. I will post samples of these later on(as soon as the DDOS attack by
some a$$ ends)!

Sample images from the new Olympus E520 can be found here…

A friendly photography shop close to my house sold me an Olympus E520 today - yes, not an E510, but the newly-announced E520. I currently work on a complete review of the camera - meanwhile, here are a few indoor sample shots.

Our Olympus EVOLT E520 is running the 1.0 version of the firmware; the included German manual seems to be the production one(the whole camera seems to be a production-grade model).

EZ 1442
The EZ1442 kit lens is a F3.5 lens that has a focal range of 14-42mm. Here are five small sample shots ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 1600(on the right). click on the shots to see the full JPEG as it was produced by the E520(sharpening and noise reduction disabled):

Here are a few crops(1:1) resolution - once again, the images are from all ISO settings available. I see slight noise starting to pop up at ISO 400; however, even the ISO1600 shot seems to be somewhat usable. However, the completely fuxated focusing voids further discussion - the images are unacceptable with out-of-the-box settings:

Zooming in didn’t do much in regards to sharpness(detail shots below, click thumbnails for native picture)):

EZ 4015-2
The second kit lens is a mediocre-ranged zoom - its focal length is from 40mm to 150mm. I tortured it with a few night shots of a closeby railway station(on a stand) - none of the shots was focused properly:

These detail shots show the true extent of the focus catastrophy:

Zooming in made the situation even worse - the images turned out completely unusable.

The detail shots can be considered Pixel Soup at the very best - a 100€ camera can produce significantly better results than the E520.

THIS CAMERA HAS BEEN DEFECTIVE! THE CONCLUSION BELOW IS VOID! A FULL REVIEW IS UPCOMING!!

Olympus aimed for the moon while designing the E520 - unfortunately, the actual projectile went into outer space. The autofocus system of the E520 is the worst I have ever seen on a digital camera: if you value sharp and well-focused shots, look at the sample images above and stay FAR away from the Olympus EVOLT E520.

My camera heads back to the shop tomorrow(for further analysis) - stay tuned.

P.S. This is one of the cases where purchasing a device at a specialist store helps. I am pretty sure that the folks will either find a solution for me(which I hope) or take the camera back tomorrow…

Resco’s excellent password manager(IDGuard) is scheduled to receive a desktop component in a few weeks of time. It will allow you to access IDGuard databases via your PC.

The screenshots below show the current state of the procedures:

As of now, no information is available about release dates or prices - please stay tuned for further info!