Devices under the HTC Kaiser 120 codename

Still got my eye on the HTC Kaiser 120. Devices under the HTC Kaiser 120 codename include:

• HTC TyTN II P4550
• O2 XDA Stellar
• Vodafone v1615
• T-Mobile MDA Vario III
• Vodafone VPA Compact V
  

Review of the HTC TyTN II

Review of the HTC TyTN II at Pocket PC Thoughts. Sounds good. This device is currently at the top of my short list.

Meowlingual

Meowlingual - a device by a Japanese company which claims to translate your kitty's meows. Hmmm. Not sure I'm convinced.

Read the news article here.

TomTom GO 910

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we bought a car. Since I love gadgets, this meant we had to get a GPS too. After some research, we settled on the TomTom GO 910.

The GO 910 is not one of the cheaper GPS devices, but it was the right one for us because it had several features we wanted which the cheaper models didn't have, for example:

• Good range of maps pre-loaded. The GO 910 came with the US, Canada, and Western and Central Europe. Most of the others we saw here just had the US and Canada.
  
• Test-to-speech. Many of the GPS devices tell you when to turn left/right, etc., but don't tell you all the street names as well - the GO 910 does.
  
• Larger screen. The GO 910 has a slightly larger screen than many other GPS devices.

We've used it a couple of times and we're very happy with it so far. :)

What does "HTC" stand for?

I kept seeing the acronym "HTC" in the context of smartphones. I didn't actually know what this stood for, so I googled "What does HTC stand for?" and found this explanation on the PDAPhoneHome.com forum.

HTC stands for High Tech Computer Corporation. It is the Taiwanese company which is the OEM manufacturer for these phones.

I then checked Wikipedia and found an article on High Tech Computer Corporation. Cool.

Looking for a PDA phone

I've never had a converged PDA/smartphone before, having always preferred to keep my PDA and phone separate. However, since the manufacturers are pulling out of the high-end PDA market, if I want a new whizzy device, it's going to have to be a converged one.

I love my current PDA, the HP hx4700. What I was really looking for is a device which is basically the same, but with more:

-> processer - more powerful! faster!
-> main memory - more!
-> iPAQ File Store - more!
-> O/S - upgraded! (I'm still using WM2003SE)

Also, I'd want the device to keep all the things I love about the hx4700, including the large screen (pretty rare these days), dual expansion slots, amazing high resolution screen, etc. Unfortunately, such a device does not exist, other than in the hopes and imagination of other hx4700 fans. :/

I'm not too worried about the size and weight of the device. I'm happy for it to be on the heavier side if it means I can have a larger screen and more power/memory. Other thing is that I'm more interested in value-for-money than actual price. I don't mind if it's a little on the pricey side if you get a lot for your money and it's really packed full of features, power, memory, etc.

I really don't know much about converged devices, so I posted on the PocketPCThoughts for advice. Someone suggested I look at the HTC Hermes 100 and the HTC Kaiser, which I will. A friend also suggested the HTC Touch. If anyone has other suggestions, please leave me a comment!

You know technology is part of your life...

Found this online. You know technology is part of your life when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
   
   
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
   
   
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
   
   
4. You e-mail or IM the person who works at the desk next to you.
   
   
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
   
   
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your mobile phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
   
   
7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.
   
   
8. Leaving the house without your mobile phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
   
   
9. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
   
   
10. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )
    
    
11. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
    
    
12. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

Here's are some more I'd like to add...

1. You set up an email address for your cat.
   
   
2. You set up a blog for your cat.
   
   
3. Your cat gets more blog comments in one month than you do in a whole year.

Hmmm... don't know if those last few are about technology being part of your life, or about being too obsessed by cats. Probably both. Hmmm.

PDAdb.net

Found this useful PDA database: PDAdb.net. Looks very handy. Found it while researching as I'm currently in the market for two new devices: a PDA/smartphone, and a GPS.

Podstar Runner

Do you love homestarrunner.com? Do you have an iPod? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then you need podstar.homestarrunner.com. As Homestarrunner would say... "awesome".

1950s preview of 2004 home computers

Check out this old news article which someone sent me. Very funny!


Caption: "Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use and only..." [rest of the caption is cut off so I don't know what it says]

Update: Apparently this is fake. Still a funny idea though.

50 Best Tech Products of All Time

Check out this list from PC World of the 50 Best Tech Products of All Time. Interesting. And here's the reader's choice list of Best Tech products which didn't make the list.

Prompt reply from Egress developer

So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I contacted the developer of Egress to ask if they could investigate the issue of RSS feeds from Blogger Beta blogs not playing nicely with Egress.

I'm very happy to report that I received a prompt response thanking me for the notification, and saying that they'd found the issue and will implement a fix in the next version of Egress! I'm very happy to hear this!!

My iPAQ is heavily customised and has a great number of third party applications. So sometimes I do come across bugs or have requests. Whenever I email the developers these issues, I always receive prompt and helpful responses. It's really great to see them paying such attention to their users.

Blogger Beta RSS feeds don't play nicely with Egress or Sharp Reader

Something that is really bothering me with Blogger Beta blogs is that RSS feeds from them don't seem to play nicely with Egress. I'm guessing that it's something to do with the changes between Blogger and Blogger Beta because I've been using the same version of Egress for the past few months. Also, Peter is seeing the same problems with Blogger Beta blogs through his RSS aggregator (Sharp Reader)

What happens is that every time I sync (in Egress) the RSS feed from a Blogger Beta blog, all of the entries (or a large number) come down as being published today, even though when I look at the actual blog website I can see the entry being dated weeks ago. Also, the blog entries are synchronising completely out-of-order.

The most annoying thing that's happening is that once I read an entry and it's marked unread, I find that if I re-sync that blog later in the day, all/most of the old 'read' entries become 'unread'. This means that I no longer know when there's actual new content to look at because anything marked as 'unread' might be new content, or it might just be the entry I read a couple of hours ago which has been re-synced back to 'unread'.

I've contacted the developers of Egress to ask if there's any way they can help. I don't know if they can, but I figured it's worth asking. I hope that that something can be worked out because it's really bugging me!

Strongbad podcast

I downloaded my first video podcast a couple of weekends ago. I have had my video iPod for a few months now, but haven't been making the most of it. During the same expedition which had led to the incase case incident, I discovered that Homestarrunner is now doing podcasts! As Strongbad would say, this is totally awesome.

The podcast includes selected episodes of Strongbad's email, and Teen Girl Squad.

ebooks vs paper books

I went into a real bookstore a couple of weekends ago. By 'real' I mean a physical bookstore that sells books made of paper, as opposed to an ebook website. I saw two books I was interested in reading. They happened to be on special and I considered buying them. But then I paused, I just don't know if I can bring myself to purchase physical books anymore.

I find physical books so incredibly inconvenient compared to ebooks. I have many friends who are avid readers and are appalled by these comments. I totally agree with them that there's something really nice about having the physical book sitting on the bookshelf. It looks great, it really does, much nicer than an ebook.

However, I travel quite a bit and I've moved 7 times in less than 5 years, including living in 3 different countries. When moving around this much, physical books are a huge hassle. So no matter how much I feel like buying a physical book, I always stop myself and remind myself that I should go and see if it is available as an ebook.

Back to the beginning of my story... the two paper books I was interested in... I looked them up in my preferred online ebook store, Fictionwise. One was available, the other was not. I've purchased the one which was available, and am going to continue thinking about the other. Perhaps if I wait a while it will appear on Fictionwise?

New iPod case

I bought a 60GB video iPod a few months ago and have been on the look out for a nice case. For gadget cases (iPAQs and iPods), I really like Sena Cases. I have a Sena Case for my hx4700 series iPAQ and Peter has one for his older generation 40GB non-video iPod.

I was going to buy a Sena Case for my new iPod, but discovered that they all come with a flip cover for this model. While I definitely do want the flip cover for an iPAQ, I definitely don't want it for an iPod, so I decided against getting the Sena Case. :(

I am sad about this for two reasons. One is because the Sena Cases are so well made, and I want a quality case for my prized gadgets. The other reason is because I ended up getting another case which is definitely inferior in quality.

I'm really disappointed with this incase brand iPod case I bought. Here's why:

• The leather on the incase case is really stiff and cheap looking. Sena cases are made of strong, but soft, leather which gives them a really nice look.
• The incase cutouts don't line up properly with the click-wheel or the screen. On the Sena cases, they line up perfectly.
• The incase cutouts have a thick layer of plastic over them which make it difficult to use the click-wheel. The Sena Case click-wheell cutout is just a cutout, so you have the same access to the click-wheel as if when the iPod is not wearing the case. However, the cut-out for the screen still has a clear plastic covering to protect it.
  
• Once you put the iPod into the incase case, it's very difficult to get it back out again. I had to get Peter to do it for me the first few times because I actually couldn't get it out! The Sena Cases on the other hand are a firm fit, but it's also not a big deal to extract the device if you want to.
  

I'm really hoping that the leather of the incase case will soften up over time so that I don't up end completely hating it. At this point I'm wishing that I had just bought the Sena Case instead, even though it does have the flip cover.

Here are two of the three members of our iPod family. Mine is on the left
and Peter's is on the right. There's also a baby iPod (a.k.a. iPod Shuffle),
but he's off playing somewhere and didn't want to be part of the family portrait.

Settings that bug me when re-building my iPAQ

When re-building my iPAQ from scratch and re-installing everything, there are some settings in a couple of applications which really annoy. Sometimes it's because the setting is annoying, and sometimes it's because I can't remember how to change it (these are the ones that drive me really nuts)!

I decided that I should write these things down so that I can look them up next time I re-build! Also, I figured that the information might be helpful to others as well.

Removing that annoying Battery Pack Pro power bar that appears in the top bar of the Today screen and interferes with Wisbar Advance

1. Go to the Battery Bar Today screen settings (Start menu --> Settings --> Personal --> Today --> Items tab --> Battery Bar --> select Battery Bar and click the Options button)
2. Go to the Power tab.
3. De-select 'Show Battery Meter'. Do the same for the Memory meter if it is bothering you as well. Upon installing Battery Pack Pro, I find that it's only the Battery Meter which automatically displays itself, so you probably won't need to turn the Memory meter off.
   
4. Click the OK button until you get back to the Today screen.
   

Removing the annoying 'OK' button that appears in the top bar of the Today screen and interferes with Wisbar Advance

The only reason I install Battery Pack Pro is for the Program Bar. I'm not interested in the rest of the features and it drive me nuts when I can't get them to go away!

1. The key here is to install the 'Power Adjust' option (even if you don't want it) as well as the option which includes the Program Bar.
2. Go to the Battery Pack Pro settings (Start menu --> Programs --> Battery Pack Pro)
3. Go to the Power Adjust section, de-select 'Power Task button & menu' and click the Update button. You will get a message that you need to soft reset for the changes to take effect.
   
4. Soft reset.
   

Changing the number of cities displayed on the Today screen with CityTime

1. Go to the CityTime Today settings (Start menu --> Settings --> Personal --> Today --> Items tab --> select CityTime and click the Options button). Note that the CityTime Today settings are different to the regular CityTime settings that you access from within CityTime. I sometimes forget this, which leads me to go nuts looking for the particular option in the regular CityTime settings and not finding it!
2. Select the number of cities you wish to display.
3. Click OK until you get back to the Today screen.
   

Changing the Wisbar Advance clock to display the Australian date format

1. Go to the Wisbar Advance settings (Start menu --> Programs --> WisbarAdvance folder --> Wisbar Advance settings).
2. Expand the 'My theme' list and select Clock Settings.
3. Change the date format from 'M/d/yy' to 'd/M/yy'.
4. Click the OK button until you get back to the Today screen.

If Microsoft packaged the iPod

What would happen if Microsoft packaged the iPod? Hilarious. Found on Mikal's blog.

Third hard reset on my hx4705

My iPAQ had been running very smoothly for the past two days since I rebuilt it. Cool. But then something terrible happened this afternoon - it froze and it wouldn't wake up. Very not cool. :(

Sometimes PDAs freeze and a simple soft reset solves the problem. Easy. But this time a soft reset (quite a lot of them!) did nothing! Very distressing. So, I figured that I was going to have to hard reset again. :(

When I've hard reset in the past I've always done it through Tweaks2k2. I've never actually done it the 'old fashioned way', and so didn't know how. I had a quick look around for the manual, but couldn't find it, so jumped online. Fortunately I found the hx4705 documentation, including the How do I...? booklet and the User Guide pretty quickly.

Now I'm reinstalling stuff. Not too much fun, but if it was going to happen then now is better than later since I hadn't finished re-installing from the last re-build anyway. *sigh*

Nano iKitty

Marissa sent me a link to the coolest nano accessory ever, the Nano iKitty! I don't have an iPod, but this is almost reason enough to buy one! Miaow!!

Nano iKitty from ThinkGeek