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February 2004 I bought a couple of new pieces of software this month for my Palm, just to reinforce a couple of areas for a bit more functionality and safety. Firstly I bought a copy of BackupBuddyVFS, which as it’s name implies backs up the Palm. Where this is useful is that you can back your Palm up to the SD card, and if your Palm runs out of power, you can restore directly from there when you get it to the charger - much faster and cleaner than Palm’s backup. The other app I bought has been gathering in popularity for the last couple of years, but I think it’ll really take off now that Palm have announced that it’s effectively killing Mac support with Palm OS 6. Missing Link is a pretty cool app which enabled you to connect the Palm to the Mac; the reason I wanted it for were two fold: One I wanted to be able to mount my SD card on my desktop and move files to and from it directly, rather than the clumsy installer Palm forces you to use, and secondly, it comes with a license for SplashPhoto image viewing.

November 2003 It’s been such a long time since I updated this page, so I thought I’d just update it to let everyone know that I’m still using the Palm! Related to the Palm thing is that my mobile site is no longer wholly geared to PDA/avantGo. There are lots of reasons for this - firstly because there are so many web enabled mobile phones around - certainly here in japan; and secondly because I just got tired with dealing with AvantGo. Why tired? Well, for one, they seem to be very opposed to bringing out a client for OSX, which I care about personally, and secondly, their support for small channel providers has dropped to zero. Indeed, they were just keen on making cash, which is understandable, but asking me to pay $1000 a year to have them provide what is essentially an alias/shortcut to the channel content on my server is a little extreme in my opinion. Because of this then, I generally support Plucker, which does basically what AvantGo does, but isn’t tied to their system. It’s quite logical now as many sites now have moved from an AvantGo system to a generic ‘mobile’ site much as I have. What about software then,? Well, this is what I’m usually using:

On the Mac I still use Pordible to make .pdb files for the Palm, and iSync for keeping everything together. Finally, my Palm 515 celebrates it’s 1st birthday. Hard to believe it’s been a year, but indeed it has, and I have to say that I’m still very happy with it. On top of that, it’s good to see Palm finally get their game together with some great new products, and a smart new OS. All they have to do now is either open up their desktop software code, or at least encourage more vendors to work on this (there hasn’t been a significant update for a long time).

March 2003 Special Update: Brightblack Mobile has made a bit of an impression on Avantgo - and I’ve got the screen-shots to prove it ;) basically, if you go to Avantgo, and select your country as Japan, language as English and switch the filter on for sites from that country, brightblack comes in 9th! And I’m the top entertainment site! (OK, so there’s only me in that category but hey, I’m pleased people think I’m entertaining! Thanks to all those who subscribe! Here’s the proof - screen-shots taken on March 16th at 1700JST - on the left is the list of top 10 sites, and on the right is the entertainment category:

AvantGo Top 9

top entertainment!

December 2002 I’m really loving the new 515, though I did buy a new case for it - an official Palm one with an integrated business card holder. It’s anodised steel so it feels a bit heavier, but everyone agrees it looks nice, and could probably stop a bullet. I’ve always wanted a lot of protection for my PDAs as they tend to get lugged over mountains, beaches, house parties and wherever else I happen to be. I’m also getting a bit of fun out of the space Trader game - kind of a hyper version of Dope Wars in space. It’s GPL, so do yourself a favour and download it.

November 2002 Well, here’s something you don’t hear very often at all - I’ve bought a new Palm! After 3 years of loyal service, I’ve retired my Palm 3e, and bought a Palm 515. The new Tungsten is a great piece of kit, but unfortunately is just a little too expensive for my tastes, so I decided to go for the cheaper colour model, and very pleased with it I am too. The transfer of my data via a re-sync with Palm desktop on my Mac went flawlessly, and now I can do everything again - but faster, in colour and with a re-chargeable built in battery! All my apps run much quicker - especially things like Metro, which needs the horsepower. Palm have released a couple of interesting handhelds over the last month or so - the $99 Zire, and then the Tungsten. I must say that the Zire is interesting - a very low spec, but when you think of the audience, it’s probably a smart move - it comes in a blister pack, and is designed as a basic PDA for addresses and a bit of software. Palm could really get a good market here - young kids and people who bought iMacs. At the other end of the market is the Tungsten, sporting a sliding panel, a hi-res screen and a new CPU and a new OS. Personally, I like it, but I couldn’t bite at the $500 price tag. I’m sure a lot of people will though. I wish Palm all success with these new products, and I’m sure they’ll do well - both look good for their markets, and for once, maybe Palm has equalled Sony for cool Palm OS devices.

July 2002 Still no AvantGo conduit, although I have found a couple more tools. My search for new text reader is over. I have Quickword, which I got cheap about 2 years ago, but it’s pickiness about which files it would let me view forced me back to my old standard, Smoothy, which seems to have vanished from the web of late, sent me in search of a new app - and I think I found one of the best bits of freeware I’ve found in a long time -

CspotRun. A great reader - all the features I need, and along with PorDiBle, it works great - very happy with it. Another app I use a lot, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned here is Strip, an encrypted database app designed for storing login names and passwords, although it can do any kind of data such as bank account numbers - and it is fully AES encrypted. I find it more useful than Palm’s private function - and more secure. As my Palm 3e approached it’s 3rd birthday, I’m thinking of going colour and was interested to look at the Palm 130 which seems pretty good and can be found for $200 less than the 5 range. I like the new 515, but I don’t think I want to spend that much on a PDA.

May 2002 After another rather extended period, here’s another update to the Palm page! I guess there are a couple of bits to add this month - one is that I finally got a USB kit for the Palm which means I can use Palm Desktop 4 for Mac OS X. I have to say it works very well - new interface, and a whole lot of functions - vCards and generally improved addressing allow you to insert information into mailing lists much easier. The whole suite is much easier to use now - in part due to the X interface, and in part as they’ve made it easier to import and export info now. Overall - very impressed. The only problem is that the AvantGo doesn’t yet work with it, although it’s coming. I was using Palm Desktop 4 for Windows, but it’s good to get it back on the Mac laptop! The deal is that OS X doesn’t support serial natively, and neither does Palm, which is why I needed to get USB - or use my Palm in Classic only. I’m also back to using Smoothy as a document reader, although it seems to be hard to find on the web these days so I’m kind of glad I had a backup. I’ve also discovered a pretty good app for OS X for converting files to pdb’s for reading on the Palm - PorDiBle. You might need to hunt around for it, but it’s on versiontracker, and it works flawlessly. It’s actually a UNIX app that’s been ported to X and given a GUI.

August 2001 Well as the PDA market gets even sillier, (which is a good thing for buyers), I thought this would be a good time to do a bit of a software roundup of what I’d been using recently, so here’s a bunch of links and software you might want to try on your Palm.

  • Fire-Viewer - The image viewer gets to version 6. Check out the website…very corporate now indeed.
  • IOU-Mate - nice small utility for tracking what you’ve lent to who.
  • Launcher 3 - an excellent front end for the Palm from a small Croatian company - definitely worth a look.
  • LigaMan - Fancy playing Football manager on your Palm? Try this game - had me going for hours. Carry spare batteries!
  • Palmtracker - Not a just a piece of software, but a great website for tracking Palm software (and Mac or Windows too).
  • Metro - an awesome subway/tube map/router for getting around and it’s free - you must download this if nothing else!!

March 2001 No, there aren’t any missing months, but I just didn’t get chance to put anything new on my Palm to tell anyone about. Now I’ve got a few interesting little things to pass on: Fire Viewer (formerly known as Image Viewer), for viewing images on the Palm - this new version supports Colour too if you have it on your Palm. I’m running version 5.14, available from www.firepad.com. Give it a look. Also worth a quick download for games is Mah-jongg from Astraware If you haven’t already found them, take a look around the Palm disc and track down Subhunt - your batteries wont love you for it , but it’s a damn good game :-) .

Late November 2000 OK, points now to Cesinc software, who got back to me again, and basically said, OK for some reason it doesn’t work on yours’ so here’s a free upgrade to SmartDoc’s big brother QuickWord which is part of their QuickOffice suite; whilst it’s Windows only, it works with MacWord files on the Palm though. So there - Cesinc is redeemed and I get a very good piece of software.

November 2000 Don’t know what to say here…I registered SmartDoc as I was so impressed with it last month and the number Cesinc (Cutting Edge) sent me killed my Palm. I had to remove the batteries for 5 minutes and re-load everything back on. I’ve also been trying out the new Palm Sync-able Mac Entourage from MS. I must admit, although it does pretty much everything Palm Desktop and Outlook Express does all in one , it seems to be a bit clumsy, re-assigning categories for a lot of my address book, and like many all in one packages, it groans a little under it’s own weight. More comments on the Mac page. Needless to say, I’ve gone back to Palm Desktop for Palm addresses etc. and Musashi for my e-mail.

October 2000 Don’t know what to say here…I registered SmartDoc as I was so impressed with it last month and the number Cesinc (Cutting Edge) sent me killed my Palm. I had to remove the batteries for 5 minutes and re-load everything back on. I’ve also been trying out the new Palm Sync-able Mac Entourage from MS. I must admit, although it does pretty much everything Palm Desktop and Outlook Express does all in one , it seems to be a bit clumsy, re-assigning categories for a lot of my address book, and like many all in one packages, it groans a little under it’s own weight. More comments on the Mac page. Needless to say, I’ve gone back to Palm Desktop for Palm addresses etc. and Musashi for my e-mail.

September 2000 Well, a bit of new software, SmartDoc. Previously, I’d been using Smoothy, which I still recommend; the only difference with that and SmartDoc is that SmartDoc lets you edit the document, and has more document handling ability. However, Smoothy does have better text scrolling.

On the subject of texts on your Palm, check out the Stephen King site - he’s selling one of his stories in segments for a dollar a go from the site. I’ve been contributing, and it’s a pretty good read. Give it a go - I wish Mr. King success with it, and I hope other high profile writers try it too.

August 2000 Currently on my Palm I’ve got the usual AvantGo channels, a bit about Ted Nelson in Smoothy, and of course, the full on-list of contacts. More importantly, a friend of mine has got his Palm set-up with his new Nokia phone, meaning that he can connect to the internet via the phone as a modem, send mail - even use Yahoo Messenger. The link between phone and Palm is infra-red too, and I do admit, it’s pretty funky. Here in Japan, with no Palm VII here in Japan until possibly Xmas 2000.