Motorola Shows Innovative Video, Music Phones

LAS VEGAS--Motorola announced only two new phones at its Consumer Electronics Show press event, but both featured the type of dazzling technological innovation we brave CES to see.

The Moto Z10 couples an advanced camcorder with the most sophisticated video-editing software I've ever seen on a handset. And the smooth, glassy Rokr E8 phone/MP3 player uses digital touch technology to change its entire appearance to fit the task at hand.

Continue reading "Motorola Shows Innovative Video, Music Phones"

Firmware Updates: Now It's Cingular's Turn

For those of you who've been wondering when a patch for the Cingular version of the Treo 650 would appear, the wait is over. The patch appeared about a week ago and if you didn't get it yet, here's the link: http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo650updater/cingular.html

I downloaded and installed it a couple of days ago. Applying the patch is a bit of a hassle -- you basically have to completely back up your Treo and perform a hard reset (deleting all your data) before you sync and install the new firmware -- but if you follow the instructions carefully, it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so. And aside from whatever else it fixes, the patch frees up memory, which on my Treo 650, at least, was in very short supply.

How is the upgrade working for you? Let us know if you run into any upgrade problems, or surprises.

Sprint Treo 650 Patch Posted

If you're the proud but perhaps not-so-happy owner of a Sprint Treo 650, perhaps a newly posted firmware upgrade on the PalmOne site might address some of your woes.


I'm with Cingular, so I can't share first-hand experience on this patch (formal name: Treo 650 Updater 1.12). But according to Sprint, it will let you use your Treo as a dial-up modem for Bluetooth devices; add support for additional Bluetooth car kits (including Acura, BMW, Chrysler, and Toyota Prius); connect calls more quickly after you dial them; send SMS messages for missed calls or the call log; and upgrade VersaMail to make it more stable and add unspecified improvements. The update includes other changes made available in a previous patch, Updater 1.08, released in March, Sprint says.


Additionally, PalmOne has a new version of the downloadable user guide that includes the changes in this update.


Let us know how this update goes for you. Good luck!

A Good Deal on a Treo 650

Wanna buy a Treo 650 in the next few days? EarthLink (the ISP which also sells Treos and wireless service) and OfficeMax have a Father's Day deal that does, indeed, sound like a deal. Full price for the EarthLink Treo is $599 at OfficeMax. But until June 18th, if you sign up for a two-year service contract you get a $150 "instant rebate" (read: discount) and a $150 mail-in rebate offer, for an eventual cost of $299--and they throw a Bluetooth wireless headset in, too. And EarthLink charges $20 for all-you-can-eat e-mail and Internet access, which is one of the cheaper plans out there.

If I hadn't already picked up a 650--for $399, sans wireless headset--I'd be tempted to snap one up during this sale...

The Treo Goes Overseas

I'm about to go to Paris on vacation, and I'm taking my Treo 650 with me--and hoping that it will not only work, but serve as one of my major means of communications during the trip.

Cingular tells me that I should be able to roam in France, but just in case, I'm also one of the many Treo owners who convinced Cingular to unlock my phone, which should let me buy a low-cost prepaid SIM card for use on the continent.

If you've got a Treo, have you taken it on international travel? Any travel tales, good or bad, to share?

Treo Kills Hotel Room Keys?

I was in New York for a conference last week when the plastic key to my hotel room stopped working. The key required re-programming, and I didn't give it another thought until a few days later when the same thing happened in a different hotel.

The person at the desk asked me if the card key had been next to any tech gadgets. That's when I realized both cards were in the same pocket as my Treo.

So in addition to generating weird chirping noises on almost any audio equipment, my Cingular-based Treo appears to erase hotel room keys. Anybody out there experience the same?

Handhelds: What's in a Name?

Michael Ducker over at TreoCentral has a nice piece on PalmOne's upcoming rebranding as Palm, Inc. (Here's our own Denny Arar's post on this news.)

As a guy who's been following Palm since it was a tiny company that made software for Apple's Newton, I'm glad to see it's getting its maiden name back. But the change got me thinking that there seems to be something about PDAs and ever-shifting naming strategies.

When I first saw a preview of the original Palm handheld back in 1995, it was going to be the Taxi. But there was another product by that name, so when the handheld finally shipped, it was called the Pilot. Then it became the Palm Pilot (a name which, while short-lived as an official moniker, is still in wide use as a nickname for handheld computers in general). Then the Pilot pen people groused, and the handheld became the Palm. Then the "Palm" started getting modified by product names such as Zire and Tungsten. Along the way, Palm the company became PalmOne...and now it's Palm again. I'm not even counting the fact that the Treo was once the Handspring Treo, is currently the PalmOne Treo, and will presumably become the Palm Treo real soon now.

As for the chronology of names applied to devices based on Microsoft's handheld operating system...I'll try, but I'll probably get it wrong. The earliest machines, with clamshell cases and keyboards, were known simply as Windows CE devices. The first completely pen-driven ones were called Palm PCs--until Palm, Inc. squawked, at which point they became Palm-Size PCs...which evolved into Pocket PCs. Today, Microsoft believes it's very important to draw some sort of distinction between the OS (Windows Mobile) and the devices themselves (still Pocket PCs as of the last time I checked).

Confused yet? If the sum of the money poured into all these PDA rebrandings had been spent on R&D, we'd probably have razor-thin handhelds with holographic screens and hundred-hour battery life...

Award-winning Palm Apps at PalmSource

More than 20 new Palm apps were announced at PalmSource today, but the ones that got the most attention were the four winners of PalmSource's Powered Up awards honoring innovative new products.

The ones most likely to appeal particularly to Treo users: SplashData's SplashBlog, a $30, super easy-to-use mobile blog where you can share images captured by the Treo's camera, which was recognized as best multimedia solution; and Stand Alone's Quick News, a $15 RSS reader with podcast support, which was named best wireless/over-the-air solution.

The Missing Sync, Mark/Space's $40 synching program for Mac users, won the award for best enterprise/productivity solution, but the application that clearly caught the imagination of reporters at a news conference was LDW Software's $20 Village Sim, winner of the game/entertainment solution prize. The app, from the same folks who brought you the Tamagotchi-esque Little Palm Pet, puts you in charge of a tribe of primitive people whom you must not only feed and house, but teach and guide as they explore their island habitat. There are puzzles to solve along the way--and even when your Palm is turned off, life in your little village goes on. So, when you return, things have changed. I'm looking forward to playing!

PalmSource Loses Its CEO

This just in: David Nagel, the first and only CEO of PalmSource, the company that develops the Treo 650's Palm OS, stepped down yesterday. Patrick McVeigh, a senior vice president, is interim CEO.

The timing is startling, because this is the week of the company's developer conference (which is also called PalmSource), and it was all supposed to kick off tomorrow with a keynote speech from...PalmSource CEO David Nagel. The speech (which presumably may still happen in some form) was going to be titled "Simply Wireless," so you can bet that the Treo would have gotten some mentions.

Anyhow, PC World will be at the conference, and while I don't know who will be giving the keynote, we'll have a reporter on the scene. Stay tuned for reports on what we learn.

All Your Music on Your Treo All the Time

Like my colleague Andrew Eisner, I've been enjoying listening to Shoutcast audio on my Treo, courtesy of NormSoft's excellent Pocket Tunes music software. But what I really wanted to do was listen to my own music collection on the Treo--and more of it than I could cram onto the 1GB SD card I've got.

So I rummaged around a bit on the Web and found GlooNet, a free service which works with Pocket Tunes Pro (which costs $28) to let you wirelessly stream music and photos from any Windows PC with a Net connection onto your Treo. GlooNet uses a server application that sits on the PC, redirecting music to any device with a browser and MP3 player software that can handle M3U playlists and MP3s stored at URLs rather than locally. (It's a bit like Orb, an intriguing service which also handles video and which works with Pocket PCs and a variety of phones, but not Palm devices.) It took me about five minutes to sign up for GlooNet and install and configure the software, and I was up, running, and listening to my songs on my handheld.

GlooNet throttles down the bit rate of music on the fly to match the bandwidth of the device you're listening on. With the Treo, it initially played music at 32-kbps, which sounded a little like AM played on a vintage 1970s RadioShack FlavoRadio. I told GlooNet to convert music to a more listenable 96-kbps, and that worked just fine.

The service did indeed give me access to every tune on my home network, allowing for iPod-like variety. But not, unfortunately, iPod-like ease-of-use. You select songs in the Treo's browser, but it hands off a playlist to Pocket Tunes for the actual playing of music. The browser's a tad sluggish as usual--bogging you down quite a bit if your music collection is as big as mine--and hopping between two programs to manipulate your music is bearable but not exactly intuitive.

With a little experimentation, I figured out how to save and rename these playlists on my SD card, which let me jump back later to an artist or an album from within Pocket Tunes, without having to first use GlooNet in the browser. That still doesn't provide a wholly satisfactory user experience--you can't see a song's title without playing it, for instance.

All in all, GlooNet makes the most sense if you just load up an album or other long list of songs and sit back to listen, rather spending a lot of time picking and choosing specific tracks. Of course, it only works when you have a data connection, so it doesn't go some of the places I most like to listen to music, such as on a plane. But hey, it's free and fun, and I bet I'll be using it quite a bit. If you have a Treo and like digital music, you need Pocket Tunes; if you have Pocket Tunes, you should check out GlooNet.

(Side note: Don't even think about trying GlooNet unless you have an all-you-can-eat data plan; I hate to think about the data charges you'd rack up if you were paying by the kilobyte.)

Some of the current quirks of the GlooNet/Pocket Tunes combo may be addressed by Tunesonthefly, an upcoming service from NormSoft based on the GlooNet technology. Here's a press release about it.

Oh, and a Shoutcast tip: If you've got a Treo and Pocket Tunes, and want to listen to Shoutcast streams, don't go to Shoutcast's own site to find stations. Instead, head to TreoBits.com, a site optimized for viewing on Treos--it's got a handy-dandy directiory of Shoutcast programming that's much easier to navigate on a handheld.