TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

When one of you has a problem with a technical device, he tells the manufacturer the system specifications right away. Hell, some of my customers have even included a full list of all files in RAM into their bug/CS requests. However, asking customers for system specs can go very wrong…feast your eyes on the true story below (anonymized to protect the guilty):

I work as an IT guy for an upscale Austrian ***** company. So far, all has went well - until yesterday. Our CEO called the customer support hotline of a major software manufacturer, described her problem and suddenly started screaming at the support rep as if he/she had been gravely insulted.

After interrogating her to see what the problem was, I found out the following mind.boggling truth:

The CS guy asked her: “what computer do you have”?

Our CEO didn’t understand that this information was needed to actually find and fix the bug. Instead, she thought that the manufacturer was trying to blame her holy (Apple) device - and became pissed as sh*t.

For me, this story once again proves my basic assumption: what is clear to us, isn’t clear to others. Tell customers WHY you ask them for data - it might cost you a bit of extra voice, but will pay out in the long run…

Feel like telling us your worst-ever CS experience?

Usually, the EFF’s newsletter is a rather boring, legalese thing that one reads to stay current. However, their last issue contained the gem below:

A bit of explanation: in Austria, a weird sect called Watchtower Society/Jehova’s Witnesses has plastered the streets with critters who hand out weird free “newspapers” called Watchtower and Wake Up! The funny thing(and where UMG gets into the picture) is that these peddlers always try to talk you into holding onto such a paper forever and never throwing it away(as if it were a handheld ;)):

In a brief filed in federal court, Universal Music Group
(UMG) states that, when it comes to the millions of promotional CDs (”promo CDs”) that it has sent out to music reviewers, radio stations, DJs, and other music industry insiders, throwing them away is “an unauthorized distribution” that violates copyright law. Yes, you read that right — if you’ve ever received a promo CD from UMG, and you don’t still have it, UMG thinks you’re a pirate.

This revelation came in a brief for summary judgment filed by UMG against Troy Augusto. Augusto buys collectible promo CDs at used record stores around Los Angeles and resells them on eBay. UMG sued him last year, claiming that the “promotional use only” labels on the CDs mean that UMG owns them forever and that any resale infringes copyright. EFF took Augusto’s case to fight for the proposition that a copyright owner can’t take away a consumer’s first sale rights just by putting a label on a CD. In other words, EFF believes that if you bought it, or if someone gave it to you, you own it.

For EFF’s legal perspective on the issue of “promo CDs” in UMG v. Augusto:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/umg_v_augusto/AugustoMSJBrief.pdf

For this complete post by EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/umg-says-throwing-away-promo-cds-illegal

Nice to know that the UMG now adopts sect-like marketing techniques. I guess that Gong! now has an entirely new meaning…

I have had my fair share of standoffs with Palm’s customer care myself; but this story trumps it all - here’s the best excerpt from it:

…
So I asked employee C11329 to be transfered to her manager. She told me she was the most senior person at Palm. I asked her again politely to transfer me to her manager. She told me she had none. I asked to be transfered to the person that was reviewing her work, giving her assignments, etc.. I was told she had none. I told her I felt that was odd as, apart from the chairman and CEO, I didn’t know of anyone in a company not having a manager. She told me she was the CEO.

For a second, I paused. “You’re the CEO of Palm, Inc.?” I asked again, not really believing what I was hearing. “Yes, I am” she replied, now with a defiant tone. “So you’re telling me you’re Ed Colligan?” I asked. “I am the CEO and that’s all you need to know.”

Well, turns out I was now in a very odd situation. I had been at several industry events where Ed Colligan spoke (including a number of product launches from Palm) and, as far as my memory was concerned, his voice was neither feminine nor did it sound south-Asian in its inflection. My memory might have been playing games on me but I was pretty sure I was not talking to the CEO of Palm.
…

Head on over to tnl.com for the full scoop…hope this helps all those of you frustrated with Palm’s Customer care to a good laugh…

P.S. Wonder how I found this? I was actually looking for horror stories on a courier service…more about that on request!

Apparently, things are very rotten in the state of T-Mobile - after the weird stories reported by TamsPalm readers some time ago, the company now decided to attack Engadget…

The reason for the bad blood is simple: the Engadget Mobile logo is magenta, just like T-Mobile’s logo. Someone in T-Mobile’s legal department decided to fight boredom by sending a letter requesting a name chgange(does that remind anyone of OZ Communications???).

As of now, nobody knows if T-Mobile plans to actually sue Engadget - if they do, the backlash could IMHO turn out to be extremely painful for the carrier…

Get the full scoop at Engadget’s - let’s stay tuned how it all turns out…

The Pakistani lethal mobile phone virus is no longer the funniest cell phone related story coming out of the east - I proudly present the following story straight from Kabul:

Taleban have recently begun to target cell phone towers, as they accuse them to support NATO/Afghan army troups. In order to prevent further attacks, all operators have now caved in to the demands, leaving Afghans blacked out. The government is attempting to “persuade operators to restore coverage”…but, as of now, Afghans are still offline…

For me, this is especially funny - in Austria, the police permanently bickers about how criminals use the cell phone networks to organize themselves. That’s how the priorities change…..

via the bbc

The PalmInfoCenter has just claimed that “a trusted source” has informed it that the internal name referring to Palm OS II is going to be Nova; and that the operating system is currently being tested on a new handheld codenamed Zeppelin.

Immediately, commenters began to bicker about how NoVa means won’t go in French - as a person who can read and write French a little, I can tell you that this is completely wrong. In France, negation always has two parts…which are usually ne and a second word, commonly pas. So, a negated French statement looks like this:

ne statementnegator word(pas, rien, plus..)

The grammar above leads us to ne va pas…so we are facing yet another urban legend.

However, NoVa means something else to Austrians: it is a type of tax that is to be paid when new cars are purchased. This so-called Normverbrauchsabgabe(average consumption fee) is calculated by the amount of Fuel needed by a car; and is intended to discourage people from purchasing cars that need loads of fuel.

Our German comrade b@tze(photo of b@tze at the PUM is here) has managed to sneak out a table cloth bearing “Palm” insignia from a pub in the Netherlands:

In case you wish for a link to the “source” pub, please visit his blog here:
http://www.baetze.com/wordpress/?p=159

Apparently, Apple’s latest iPhone ad(featuring a pilot who claims that the weather information provided by his iPhone is more accurate than the tower’s) has already begun to annoy pilots.

A plane’s takeoff was slightly delayed due to rain. An iPhone user checked the weather online and went on to ask the crew what really was the reason for the delay(as his iPhone indicated that there was no rain). The captain’s response was priceless:

“If the passenger with the IPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave.”

While the authenticity of the story can never be proven; I still got a good laugh out of it…enjoy!

via PlaneBuzz

This review has nothing to do with PalmOS but it makes just as much fun though it is not very useful: The Brando USB Misslie Launcher.
The device is shipped with a paper target, 3 missiles and the software for the PC. Once the launcher is plugged into an USB port, Windows recognizes it as a “Human Interface Device” and installs the needed drivers automatically. The software - which is Windows Vista ready - for controlling the launcher can also be installed onto an USB drive so that you can carry the device with you.

The size of the device can be seen in the image below:

How the device acts and how the controlling software works can be expressed the best way by a video:
USB Misslie Launcher video on youtube.com

After you have hit the “Fire!” button you will hear an audio warning for three times until the missile launches.
Instead of using the software + mouse to control your launcher you can use the keyboard for:
- moving (left-right-up-down): arrow keys
- fire: space
Even though the rockets are build out of foam plastic, please do not aim or shoot at humans or animals!

In my opinion this little toy is a great way to skip some time when it is getting boring - e.g. in your office

You can buy the launcher for 35 USD at the brando shop:
USB Misslile Launcher at the brando shop

This review is available in german, too.

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…

Apparently, Palm’s employees still haven’t completely satisfied their lust for Treo 700p update whac-a-mole! Verizon’s version has just been pulled once again because of “of increasing customer reports of network connectivity issues following the updates”.

(sarcasm on - you know who we talk about)
Senior Urp Burp management has been seen hitting Eeker 900f’s with over-sized, furry rubber spoons all over Urp Burp’s office; celebrating that their developers have managed to bork up the Eeker 900f maintenance release once again.

Urp Burp expects that the permanent borkups with the eeker 900f will lead to significantly increased sales of the new Eeker 955f - a device that offers only minimal improvements over its predecessor and has been difficult to sell to new customers after the arrival of the Apple iPhone.
(sarcasm off)

Let’s be honest: there is a pattern behind this, folks. It could be very possible that Palm is borking up the maintenance releases on purpose in order to increase sell-through for the Treo 755p. In fact, this is entirely possible - what does the Treo 755p offer that makes it worth 300$ to a 700p user(let’s ignore the form factor for now)?

Incompetence could of course be a reason, too - but why has Palm then managed to release a rather well-working Treo 755p?

What do you think?

P.S. I wouldn’t wonder if carriers start to “upgrade” their customers to 755p’s for a nominal fee to keep them happy…
P.S.2 I guess that you now know why Palm won’t use ALP. Yes…customers could switch to another manufacturer easily after such a borkup…without leaving all their old software behind. If HP would bork around with my ipaq as much as Palm did with the 700p - I’d just get a box from somewhere else!

According to the PalmInfoCenter, Palm’s Treo 700p ROM update has been delayed yet again. It looks like Palm wants to take the Palm OS Vaporware crown from AstraWare’s Zap Evolution and put it onto their ROM update - but more on that another time!

We recently ran a Paul Loeffler masquerade contest - and here are the winners:

3 spoons go to BrentDC

Dear Valued Customers:

The long awaited Treo 700p ROM update has finally been released! But we are sorry to inform you that this update is a paid one. The ROM update can be found at your nearest Sprint store, and is called the Treo 755p. Do not be alarmed if the salesman takes your 700p and replaces it with a 755p, this is normal and part of the update process.

Thank You For Choosing Palm,

Palm Inc.

Two spoons go to PhrkOnALeash

�700p users,
We have released our new patch for the 700p! While it is buggy and only 1 in 10 actually work, it technically solves your problem.
It can be a complicated process and it has taken the engineers at Palm 3 full months to create this. It is quite a revolutionary fix, really. Instead of wasting^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspending the time to create an actual patch we have created an app that will flash 0s to the Rom, rendering your device unusable! The intruder couldn�t axploit the find bug if they wanted! never worry about your security patches again!
This patch is not applicable to 755p users as the bug was fixed for them��

Notice his 1337 technique to the find fix�

Thank you all for contributing Paul Loeffler quotes - I enjoyed each and every one of them! The TamsPalm team bangs two spoons together to congratulate the winners - please email us at Tamog AT gmx DOT at to claim your price!

P.s. L�ffel…German word for Spoon…

Palm’s Paul Loeffler recently said the following about the Treo 700p patch:

Timing for the 700p maintenance release hasn’t changed since we last posted to the blog (April 17th). At this time, we expect the software update to be available the week of May 28th. We will post an update if the timing moves.

Paul Loeffler

Now, dear readers, I whole-heartedly invite you participate in a masquerade contest. Create your own text passage, and post it as a comment below! The three funniest passages will be posted on TamsPalm, and will additionally receive one Tamoggemon product of choice for free!

Here’s a sample of what I mean:

Dear Fools who still cling onto the Treo 700p,

We expect you to update to a 755p soon - hey, you paid 500$ for that 700p…you can afford it. Just in case anyone of you comes up to us with a lawyer though…we will give you a basic patch to save out sorry hides. It wont really work - but it’ll be enough to keep lawyers away.

And now leave me alone!

And now, have fun! I look forward to hearing more from you!

We have heard all kinds of weird stories about mobile phone virii recently - but the one the German news service GMX is currently spreading really hits the bulls eye.

According to them, Pakistani people are afraid of a mobile phone virus that doesn’t only attack their mobile phones, but also kills the phone’s owner. So far so good…but the rumor has apparently caused such a load on carrier’s call centers that the carriers ganged up to calm their users down!

All I can say here is..eeek, I feel it, I’m gonna die soon…laughing myself to death =).