Usually, readers read web sites and – sometimes – talk back. However, a TamsPalm reader who identified himself just as Carsten dropped off a few vintage handhelds at the Tamoggemon booth:
I now own a Palm Tungsten T3, a Treo 650 and – really cool – a working Clie 770c(thanks to Clieler for pointing out the hold switch thingy).
A big thank you goes out to Carsten for the handhelds - /me always loves new handhelds!
It is a long-established tradition to bring along rare or otherwise interesting handhelds along to the PUM. Last year, we had a transparent Vii and a Palm Tungsten x420. This year, we were treated to a Dana Wireless and a – strangely non-working – Janam XP30:
Dana Wireless
The Dana Wireless is among the most boring handhelds ever – one picture says more than thousand words:
Janam XP30
Do not ask me where this box came from, but it was in the locker in the center of the room:
A Nexave employee gladly handet it out to me – unfortunately, the machine didn’t power up. Nevertheless, here are a few comparison images next to a Treo 680:
Frequent TamsPalm readers will definitely be familiar with Group Sense’s latest products(M70 and M70s) – a friendly Palm User Meeting visitor allowed me to take a few shows of one of the predecessor models. Here comes…the GSPDA M28:
First of all, the M28 is a “slider”-type phone. The bottom must be slid down in order to expose the (rather small but usable) keyboard:
Specs-wise, the two devices are very similar. However, the M70 has Bluetooth and some sort of NVFS – two features missing on the M28:
Last but not least, here’s a picture of the devices shipment box. The M28’s hardware bundle is said to contain an extra charger for spare batteries – an accessory missing from the M70’s bundle.
In the end, the GSPDA M28 was a kickass phone when it originally hit the market. It is a real pity that GSPDA’s devices aren’t known to more customers outside of Hong Kong. However, today, the M70 offers significantly better value…
Traditionally, the German Nexave Palm Community holds a nationwide meeting of Palm OS users on the Friday of the CeBit fair. This meeting is called PUM – and always brings along a few surprises.
This year’s big surprise was brought along by vivomobile – a huge crate full of broken handhelds, planars, parts,.. – they all could be taken home for free(loads of toys for tinkers):
Clemens Schuchart from the PUG Neuss Podcast held a 30min talk on how to use a Palm(and what to use it for) – while most of this wasn’t really interesting for professionals, beginners still could learn a lot here:
After that, Palm’s Mr. Weiss had a short presentation and answered a few preprepared questions from the Nexave team. Generally, Mr. Weiss’s answers were rather bland and did not contain anything new or especially interesting:
As always, a load of German Palm freaks was around:
This year, yours truly also had a small booth demoing various handhelds not running on Palm OS. The devices attracted a huge load of onlookers(including some very prominent ones) – many used the opportunity to look at Windows Mobile(and a jailbroken iPod touch):
Of course, some StyleTap consulting was also needed:
In the end, it was a rather interesting evening – I’ll try to make it there again next year:
Stay tuned for extra stuff(and some surprises) soon!
Dear Readers,
yours truly will be in Hannover this Friday. I will attend the following tradeshows and would be happy see one or more of you:
First of all, I will definitely attend the CeBit - which is one of the biggest computer fairs worldwide. Expect loads of hands-on pictures and interviews to leak out in the coming months!
This year, Tamoggemon Software will have a stand at the Germany-Wide Palm User Meeting in Hannover. Please stop by for a chat, to have a play with a load of devices, and maybe even for a fun game!
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!
All pictures are copyright of the Leopold Museum 2007 and their creators. We had to constrain the resolution to VGA and add the texts due to a restrictive contract pressed upon us by the museum administration. We apologize for any inconveniences! - the TamsPalm team
The Leopold Museum in Vienna(shown below) is not the place where one would expect to see any kind of technical innovation worth of a TamsPalm article - but their exhibition titled 24 Stunden im Leben von Wien(24 hours in the life of Vienna) is worth it. The reason for this is simple - all the pictures shown were made with a stock(according to the museum) BlackBerry Pearl smartphone:
The exhibition is in two rooms of the top floor. The rest of the museum showed interesting artworks…but hey, this is TamsPalm and not TamsArt. Each room had a showcase with some kind of BlackBerry in the middle. The firs room had a ‘family tree’, the second room’s showcase contained a BlackBerry Pearl with Swarovsky crystals:
The pictures were about 70×50 cm big, with one or two of them being even bigger. All of them looked good from a distance of about one meter - here are a few sample pictures(the Museum forces us to put that text bar over them, sorry):
Here is a closeup of a picture that looked like it was made on a very close range. The strawberries look very natural and accurate from about one meter away - if you come close, you can see the slight ‘fuzzyness’ shown below:
Night pictures turned out surprisingly noise-free and looked pretty good:
Chromatic aberrations were not visible either:
Pictures shot at daylight contained surprising amounts of detail:
Overall, the pictures shown in the exhibiton were of exceptional quality for a cameraphone - since the exhibition was sponsored by BlackBerry, it’s very probable that the machines used to create these pictures were not exactly stock ones(software and/or CCD upgraded). The images probably also were modified on a workstation. But nevertheless, this exhibition clearly demonstrates what today’s(next-gen) camera phones are capable of capturing when paired with a good postprocessor…interesting viewing for every technology freak!
Sometimes, taking a look at the past can be a great experience. Here are a few images of classic handhelds:
The Palm V
The Palm V is a classic handheld. Its sleek shape and metal housing have insipred generations of industry designers, and the machine’s price and its accompanying advertising campaign(featuring naked women) caused loads of controversy. The power button and the digitizer broke down regularily, but the machine still introduced a few legendary features like the electronically adjustable contrast. In fact, a Palm V can even be upgraded to OS4 to run Tamoggemon BinaryClock as a desk clock…
The Palm IIIc
The Palm IIIc basically was a rehash of the III chassis(in black) with a color screen and a rechargeable battery. The machine was ridiculed for the bigger size, but the battery stamina was incredible:
The color screen was a topic of discussion. It was a TFT, slowed the procesor down and had just 8bit color resolution. Thus, it was difficult to use outdoors and was bad at displaying photos. However, the indoor contrast was incredible, one of the best screns I ever saw and used. By the way, the IIIc could also be updated to OS4:
The Palm Vii
The Palm Vii…was nothing short than a legendary machine. Basically yet another rehash of the trusty III chassis, a model was created with transparent housing for distribution at the DevCon:
The big innovation was the radiotransmitter, it was powered by an internal NiMH battery. A flatrate was offered for the data only service very soon, something that still didnt make it to Europe:
The style of the Vii is unparalelled, too bad that Palm killed off the .net service…
Miscellaneous stuff
The classical Palm Portable keyboard(a prototype) acompanied he Vii. The keyboard was great, much better than the average notebook keyboard. Nobody knows why Palm discontinued it…
These badges were distributed at the DevCons in the USA…
Do you have something to add? Send your photos to Tamog AT gmx DOT at to get them published!
I visited the Cebit in Hannover, Germany, and just want to share some of my impressions with you.
As a TamsPalm author I’m interested in mobile computing in general. And of course especially in smartphones and handhelds. At the Cebit one can find many interesting devices and I’ll show you some of them:
For all the Linux-enthusiats the GPS smartphone from ImCoSys might be both interesting and disappointing. One the one hand it’s interesting because it’s running Linux, has integrated GPS, Bluetooht, Wifi, supports Java and VoIP via the SIP standard. On the other hand it might be disappointing for some of you because the Linux Software has been modified and is not an open platform like Debian, Ubuntu and other “normal” Linux distibutions. It’s more like a proprietary OS which means that you cannot easily port Linux programs to this smartphone. The company did this because they wanted one consistent platform and they spent three years for developing this device. The smartphone originally should have been presented in June, but because of the Cebit they showed the prototypes now.
I also wanted to test the Loox T800, but FujitsuSiemens only had one device behind glas:
At the end of this article, here are some pictures from the “Origami” UMPCs:
