Lovable Lyle » Palm http://lylejohnson.name/blog Covering Software Development with Ruby and FXRuby Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:08:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Palm and Mac Users http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/13/palm-and-mac-users/ http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/13/palm-and-mac-users/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:56:40 +0000 Lyle http://lylejohnson.name/blog/?p=188 It’s old news — from about a year ago, actually — but Palm has once again shafted Mac users by providing their Palm TX Enterprise Security Update (which adds support for stronger Wi-Fi encryption methods and authentication protocols) via a Windows-only installation process. Someone has probably figured out a hack to get this to work with Macs, but it’s just one more example of how little Palm values its Mac-based customers.

I hope that Apple destroys the market for Treos with the iPhone. It would serve Palm right.

]]> http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/13/palm-and-mac-users/feed/ 0 Universe 3 Web Browser for Palm OS http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/12/universe-3-web-browser-for-palm-os/ http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/12/universe-3-web-browser-for-palm-os/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:53:28 +0000 Lyle http://lylejohnson.name/blog/?p=187 Via Lifehacker, news of Universe 3, a new open source web browser for Palm OS. If you’ve used Blazer (Palm’s built-in web browser software) or Opera Mini, you know that browsing the web on a Palm handheld can sometimes be an exercise in frustration. Despite its “Release Candidate 1″ status, it sounds as though a lot of users are running into problems using Universe 3, and so I’m not going to actually download it at the moment. I just wish I could get to their developers blog (which seems to be down at the moment) to see else they’ve got planned.

]]> http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2007/03/12/universe-3-web-browser-for-palm-os/feed/ 0 Blogging from the TX http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2006/01/09/blogging-from-the-tx/ http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2006/01/09/blogging-from-the-tx/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2006 15:44:00 +0000 Lyle http://lylejohnson.name/blog/?p=120 Plogit is an open source blogging client for PalmOS. If you can read this, it means that I got Plogit to work!

Edit (from the PC): Well, it sorta worked. The article’s title didn’t come through properly and instead ended up in the article body. I will have to investigate this a bit more…

]]> http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2006/01/09/blogging-from-the-tx/feed/ 0 What I Got for Christmas http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2006/01/06/what-i-got-for-christmas/ http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2006/01/06/what-i-got-for-christmas/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:55:00 +0000 Lyle http://lylejohnson.name/blog/?p=118 I haven’t had much time to write about one of my favorite Christmas presents because I’ve been spending so much time playing with it. When I started trying to implement GTD in early 2005, as an attempt to get my act together, one of the investments I made was to buy a Palm Zire 31 handheld. Although my previous attempts to actually get in the habit of using a PDA had always failed, things finally clicked for me this time around and it has been a really indispensable tool for me. In October, when Palm announced the new TX handheld, I knew that I wanted one. And since I’ve been a good boy, Santa brought me one for Christmas.

One of the unexpected cool things that you can do with a Palm TX (and other modern PDAs, to be fair) is watch movies. It turns out that the TX’s 480×320 screen provides a really decent picture quality, and with the use of free software like the excellent TCPMP, you can watch movies in a variety of file formats. I’m told that the battery life for the TX is pretty good and that watching movies doesn’t eat up the battery as much as you might expect, so I’m looking forward to having this with me the next time we fly somewhere.

There are a few other applications that you’ll want to add to your collection after you pick up TCPMP:

  • nosleep software’s FileZ is a free file manager that is indispensable.
  • MetaViewSoft’s PalmPDF is a free PDF viewer that is much better than Adobe’s aging PDF viewer for Palm OS. I do hope that MetaViewSoft is going to focus some attention on the UI for PalmPDF, though, because although the PDF rendering is really great, the UI is really lousy and awkward to use.
  • Plucker is a free offline HTML and eBook reader. If you like Plucker, you might want to check out Sunrise, which is a good replacement for the Plucker Desktop software.
  • Mobile Stream’s free “Home” button for the TX (look near the bottom of the screen) is nice little hack that replaces the magnifying glass “Search” tool in the lower left-hand corner of the TX screen with an infinitely more useful home icon.
My only real disappointment with the TX isn’t a complaint about the device itself, but rather VersaMail, the mail client that comes preinstalled on it. After entering my ISP’s e-mail account settings and playing with VersaMail for a just a short while, the program crashed and reset the TX. Thinking it was a fluke, I tried using VersaMail again but it continued to crash. A quick Google search revealed that this is a well-known problem, and the workarounds suggested by Palm just didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Fortunately, I do have some options. SnapperMail, Agendus Mail and Eudora Internet Suite are some of the third-party solutions that I’ll be evaluating in the coming weeks, and I feel pretty sure that one or more of them will fit the bill. If you have advice about some other mail programs for Palm OS that I should be considering, let me know!

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