Recently in Palm Category

QuickNews for PalmOS makes it quite clear that it is profoundly upset about something...

Exactly what is not entirely obvious. Naturally, "OK" and "Change Now" have precisely the same effect.

I was intrigued by the offer of a free web based moblogging system at Scripting News.... Well, I tried it. And I tried. And I tried. And I got a lot of screens that look just like this:

The link l used was most certainly what I sent.

Oh well. Back to mo:blog. It ain't trendy. It ain't Californian. It is, actually, 2.0, and it does seem to be in permanent Beta, but, sadly, it doesn't support social meta tagging or crowd-driven meme mapping, so it can't be hip. Oh, and it works, too.

Ok, it's not very nice, big, or clever to mock a free, experimental service. But fercrissakes, why experiment with moblogging. Been there, done that.

(oh yeah.... posted with mo:blog.)

Entering text on Palm devices has always been a bit clumsy. Graffiti, whilst simple and effective, is not a patch on the handwriting recognition in the Newton 2100 (for example), and the screens are just a little too small to comfortably write on. Third party text recognition tools such as MobileWrite are not much bettr in practice, even if the technology is impressive. Of course, one can always pick away using the built in keyboards, but these are not particularly pleasant to use either.

Enter miniKeyboard by ANIMATORsoft, which in a nice bit of lateral thinking, eschews hitech solutions in favour of rethinking the onscreen keyboard.I've been using the demo on my Palm Lifedrive for the past few days, and I'm impressed.. The screenshot below shows the basic idea.

The keyboard can easily be accessed in any application requiring text input by placing the cursor in a text field and clicking on an assigned hard key (Navigator-right by default on the Lifedrive). A few applications are not fully compatible with miniKeyboard, most significantly DocsToGo, but a "compatibility mode" provides a workaround where input is buffered and then "injected" into the active document, a bit like a very fast ghostwriter. There is also an issue with mo:Blog, where it does not properly take control back after exiting from miniKeyboard. However, mo:Blog is in beta (forever it seems) and I have not encountered this issue anywhere else. In any case, switching to another application and then re-entering mo:Blog restores eveything.

Mini-keyboard is fast and intuitive. It is actually much more effective than you might imagine, and enables writing speeds that easily compete with Graffiti or MobileWrite. I can almost match typing speds now on the Palm, and also write in situations that up until now have been frustrating (caveat: I am a strong candidate for World's Worst Typist).

At $20, Mini-Keyboard might seem a bit pricey, but it is worth it, and anyway the price of PalmOS apps has been tending to rise recently, probably as a result of falling demand.

Mini-Keyboard is a highly recommended productivity enhancer. The amazing thing is that nobody seems to have thought of it before. Get the demo from ANIMATORsoft.

LifeDrive No Longer Shipping to Europe: "Recently, Palm, Inc. announced it was no longer shipping the Treo 650 to Europe because this smartphone doesn't comply with new rules regarding hazardous substances in electronic devices.

What wasn't announced was that this also applies to the LifeDrive Mobile Manager."

(Via PalmAddicts.)

This is crazy. These EU directives have been published for ages. It is understandable when old, very limited market cameras like the Hasselblad XPan or Pentax 645 cannot be economically updated, but I'm sure these rules must have been known before the LifeDrive even went into design. Sounds like total incompetence to me. Or another manufacturer gratefully grabbing a chance to save face, stuck with a failed product...

UPDATE - 5:55pm CET - ok, the WiFi card has been claimed - Power2Go still waiting, for any power-mad T3 users out there...

I really don't know if anybody reads this stuff, but maybe this will flush a few people out...

Since I am now using a LifeDrive, I have no further need for my Tungsten T3 accessories. So, the first persons to send me an email in response to this entry will receive a prize:

Either a Palm WiFi SD Card (suitable for T3, T5, and some Treos I believe) or a Power2Go T3 battery pack. Just post a reply, and tell me which you want.

Rules & conditions:

• First come, first served


• You must include a photo of you and your Palm (hardware device, not human appendage). The Palm must be recognisable. You give me the right to post the photo here


• You can only choose one prize


• The prize will be sent by mail. I will pay the costs, but any customs duties or other delivery charges are your responsibility


• Everything was working last I looked (a few weeks ago) but there are no guarantees...


• It's my blog and my decision is final

The first challenge is finding my email address on this site, but it isn't so difficult...

So, anybody out there ?