Smart Phones

Treo Refresh

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Last night I ended up wiping my Treo 650 and reinstalling all my software. I have been having issues with it rebooting every time I tried to sync my mail using Snappermail. That program is half the reason I use my Treo over the Blackberry, so I was not too happy when it started acting up earlier this week. I had to go on my trip Thursday without being able to use the Treo for email. I got by on the Razr and the Blackberry but I like the Treo better. After the reinstall Snappermail seems to be working. But I have had 2 random reboots since the hard reset. Once after a call to my sister right after I got out of the subway this morning. The other when I was syncing with my Powerbook. The sync reboot also happened often before I wiped the Treo, but I am not sure if it is because of the config on my Powerbook or the Treo.

I will try using for a while longer, but if the random reboots continue I will have to seriously consider an alternate PDA phone. As much as I like this device, I cannot have it randomly rebooting on me almost daily!

New Used Blackberry

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About 2 weeks ago I got a new Blackberry 7520. Well it is new to me. Someone else at work had it, and never used it. They finally gave it up saying give it to someone who will use it. My group was having a new guy start so we were going to give him the Blackberry. Instead of giving him a new one, I decided to “upgrade” mine and give the older hardware to the new guy. Hey he is the new guy.

Well the musical Blackberry’s don’t end there. Someone else’s Blackberry broke this week. Instead of waiting for the replacement we configured my old one up for her to use, and we can wait for the refurbed unit for the new guy.

The new Blackberry is very similar to the old one. The major enhancements are the screen, and screen brightness of the backlight. It is a night and day improvement. Also the new unit has bluetooth so I can use my wireless headset on it, if I wanted to.

I also went out and bought Pocket Mac for the Blackberry. Now I can sync the Blackberry address book with my Mac!

Cool Custom Ring Tones

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I like talking about technology. I work with it all day, and yet I am still amazed at how some things work, and others that don’t. I have been going back and forth with wanting to keep my Treo and wanting a smaller phone. That is why I switch back and forth between the Treo and the Razr. One program that will keep me coming back to the Treo is mRing, by Motionapps. I love the ability to have distinctive rings for a type of call, a person, or a group of people. I keep coming up with cool ring tones for groups of people.

For over a year and a half I have had the carnival circus music play if anyone from work called. I always get funny looks at the office when it rings. Recently I was bored late one night during an upgrade and I programed the phone to ring with the A-Team theme song when everyone from my group calls. It is really funny. I am also programing the imperial march in for when my boss calls. That is funny for the simple fact that his character does not fit that song, but typically when you think “boss” you think something like Darth Vader!

I am trying to come up with other good tones for others.

Fishing For Treo’s

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Today started out very very bad. How bad you may ask? Or you may be thinking come on Scott, everything is dreary to you… Well today was not good. It started out normal enough. That was until I was swiping my metro card to get on the subway. I heard the subway pulling in, so like any normal New Yorker I rushed down to try and get on the train. I actually get caught in the closing doors. Normally this is good because that means I have a good chance of making it on the train. In this case I did in fact make it on the train. But just as I was in the train I realized I wanted out. Why? My Treo that was on my belt was no longer attached to the belt clip. I had felt it and heard it come off as the doors slammed into me. I thought I saw it go down the crack between the train and the platform but I couldn’t tell. My fingers almost got caught in the door as I tried to get out.

My reaction surprised me. At first I was like, screw it. it is just a phone. I wasn’t even going to go back and look for it. Then I realized I have allot of information on it that I don’t want others to get. So I got off at the next stop, and went back uptown to try and find the phone. When I returned to my home station I was happy to find the Treo lying face down in the dirt next to the tracks. I was actually glad it was there. If it was in the middle of the tracks it would be soaked in water. If it was on the platform someone could have stolen it.

I went to the token booth and asked for help. The really nice lady there was like “honey don’t worry, you are the second person today with that problem” she assured me she already called for a special crew to come out to retrieve it. Sure enough about 45 minutes later 2 guys from the MTA show up with this cripping device and pull my Treo and battery cover out of the dirt. Turns out the cover came off when it crashed.

The good news is that the Treo actaully works. Besides some minor (i am a perfectionist with gear so to me it feels like major) cosmetic defects aside the phone was fine. No damage to the screen at all. I was actually plesantly surprised. Why? I don’t think of palms as rugged. My Nextel Blackberry I carry for work is rugged. I have dropped it at least twice on the subway platform or stairs and it has been fine except for some scratches. The Treo seems like a device that wouldn’t wear well. I am glad I was wrong.

The first thing I did when I got to work was password protect the device when you power it on. This was to calm my stolen data fears. next I need an encryptiion program, and something to encrypt the data on my SD card. Overkill? Maybe, but I want to protect myself, especially since this deviec is with me almost all the time and it is small enough that it can “go missing” quickly. Case in point today.

Phone Switch

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I switched back to the Razr today. I like the smaller phone when I am in and around the office. I don’t need the big Treo for going back and forth to the computer room or a meeting. When I am traveling or not the office I like the Treo so I can use email, and use the PIM, etc. I really don’t see getting rid of one of them. Both fit a purpose. And no a small phone like the Razr and a regular PDA wont work for me either. Tried that. I like the Treo keyboard and when I use it I want it to be a phone also. I just don’t need it all the time.

Bye Bye Treo, Maybe?

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I got fed up with my Treo 650 this weekend, and it may be time for it to hit ebay. I am not sure if my problem is T-Mobile or the Treo but I had problems with people not hearing me yesterday. I heard them but they could not hear me. A phone reboot solved that problem. Today I rebooted the phone for some reason (at 7PM) and I got notification that I had 6 messages from that morning. All of the messages were import work related issues that needed to be addressed quickly. Well needless to say they weren’t.

I have had issues off and on for a while. Rebooting the phone solves lots of issues, but should I have to do that? Jayson thinks I should wipe all the extra software I have (i have allot) and see if the phone works fine then. He is right, and the phone probably will work but the whole point of a palm phone is the ability to use the “SMART” features. If my distinctive ring or other apps wont work, why would I want a big phone like that?

The problem is what to do? I have a Blackberry that I need to carry for work, so I get my realtime email. I have been using my SE T610 off and on for a week. I broke down and started using it tonight full time until I can find a permanent replacement to the Treo, or until I calm down and start using it again. I already ordered a Motorola V3 Razr off of ebay. I have been eyeing it for a while and I figured now was the time to get one. I will continue to use the Treo as a palm for now. When I finally decide to dump it I will need to find a new PDA. The Razr should be able to connect to most new PDA’s via Bluetooth so I hope to keep some of my wireless internet features. I will find out when it arrives later this week.

Early Friday

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Got off work early today (due to the holiday!). Jayson and I went down to the Apple store (see later post for details), then headed back to my place. Jay is/was selling his Treo 600 that I sold to him a few months back. He liked it but thought it was too big. he sold it on Craigslist in like 15 minutes. No fees or anything. I was impressed. We ran back to my place to grab the original box and manual for it. I always try to keep that stuff. The guy buying it picked it up today. It was no fuss, no muss.

I hung out at Jays place for a while and played with Pierre. he is suck a funny dog. We hit dinner at Burger Heaven and then I went home to relax. I ended up working on Quicken (see next post) for most of the night.

iSync Perfection or One Big Mess?

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I switched from using Entourage to iCal/Address Book for syncing my data to/from my Treo 650 on the Mac. I want the slick UI and terrific integration of Address Book & iCal, but I am concerned about some issues. Firstly I rely on Palm/outlook categories on my Treo. Primarily I use them for distinctive rings on the phone. if work calls I get a specific ring. if people I don’t want to call my cell are in a specific category they goto voice mail and don’t ring, etc. Looks like iSync does not keep the categories intact if I make changes to the categories. This sucks. If I create new contacts on my Mac I need to manually assign them categories when the contact goes onto my Palm.

It also looks like some fields don’t carry over either. I don’t see birthday’s that I entered into Outlook now that the contacts are in Address book. I think IM names are also not carried over.

Don’t get me started about my iCal invites not working in Outlook. There is some hackish fix out there but I don’t want to mess around with it.

Why then do I move/try to move to this? The integration between Address Book, iCal, iChat, Mail, etc is fantastic. That I can add a contact to address book and associate that contact to my AIM contact list in iChat is fantastic. The same goes for my jabber contacts. Linking every contact to email in Mail is also great. I can also sync everything using .Mac to my min and powerbook! Top it off with using spotlight to search everything, and I am a happy person. It makes for easy day to day use. The problem is when I want to get that information out into my Treo I run into issues. I don’t even care that I have problems when I import everything from the Treo to Outlook. I don’t want to use outlook anymore. I have had so many problems with it recently that I could live with using it just for an email archive. But at least work in the Treo!!! I am continuing my search of the internet for solutions or work around’s to my little issues. So far, no luck.

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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Free Palm SD Card

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I tried to fill out the form for the free 128 Meg SD card from Palm today. Since I have less than perfect vision and Palmone decided (like everyone else I know) to make the serial number microscopic I was unable to pull the info I needed for the free card. Lets face it, I don’t need the card. I already have a 512 meg SD card. Dam, I gave away a 128 meg card to Jayson already. It is the principle of the matter that I want Palmone to pay (even if it is a little bit) for putting only 32megs on their top of the line phone and got burned for doing it.