Dell Axim X50v arrived...

Today I finally received my Dell Axim X50v testunit. It has an extra 2200mAh rechargeable battery AND a VGA cable to connect it to an external monitor. Very neat. It says nothing about USB charging capabilities in the system settings, but Seidio is selling a retractable sync/charge cable for the Dell Axim X50, so I guess it should be possible.

high quality recordings with an ipod

The website "hack a day" has information on installing Linux on an iPod as a second operating system (you can decide at boot time if you want the standard Apple OS!) to enable the high quality recording options on an iPod.

finally a headless iMac?

Rumor site Think Secret speculates about a 500$ iMac G4 without screen, that might be introduced at the coming MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. I will be the first to order two, if the rumor proves to be true.

Revolution In The Valley, the new book from Andy Hertzfeld

Just received Andy Hertzfeld´s book "Revolution In The Valley", subtitled "The Insanely Great Story of How The Mac Was Made" with a foreword by Steve Wozniak himself. Beautiful!

use Palm or Treo as a flash card reader/writer

Softick Card Export II allows you to use many PalmOS devices as a flash card reader/writer. It emulates an industry standard USB Mass Storage device on most PalmOne handhelds.

Berlin & Beyond at the Castro in San Francisco

From 1/06 to 1/13 the annual Berlin & Beyond film festival is happening at the Castro in San Francisco. In collaboration with the Goethe Institute, they are showing new films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. And if you happen to be in San Francisco, don´t miss the opening and closing parties!

Eartha Kitt live at B.B.King in New York city

Orson Welles once called her "the most exciting woman alive". On New Years Eve, she is performing live at "B.B.King, Blues Club & Grill" in New York city. Unfortunately, my flight to San Francisco is booked since months, so I won´t make it this time...

Fujitsu 100 GB 2,5" drive

Yesterday, just in time for Xmas, I received a 100GB 2,5" drive (Fujitsu), just 9,5mm thick. Not long ago a 100MB drive for a notebook PC with 19mm thickness was considered state of the art. Now MacOSX, all my normal data plus my entire music collection fit all on one hard disc.

another great camcorder without tape

Hopefully I will receive a Pentax Optio MX4 today. It´s a camcorder with 10 times zoom, 4 Megapixel stills and SD/MMC for storage. No tape! More details and tests soon. Unfortunately it cannot charge its internal battery via USB, so one more charger to carry...

TV-B-Gone

TV-B-Gone is a small universal remote, that sends 209 different off codes of the most common TVs within a second. Only 14.99$. Very neat idea. Now if they could develop it in software for PalmOS and PocketPC devices and sell it for 5$...

comparison FS PocketLook720 and HP4700

Fujitsu Siemens PocketLoox 720 +Design (nice, small), real D-pad, 1,3MP Camera, Flash, scroll wheel -no charging via USB HP 4700 +charging via USB -Design, trackpad, no camera/flash, no scroll wheel

MacOSX on PocketPC

After charging the batteries of the Fujitsu Siemens PocketLoox 720 for the first time overnight, I installed aVNC viewer for PocketPCs with VGA resolution via Bluetooth. Then I set the resolution on my Mac from 1280*854 to 640*480 and connected from the PocketLoox via WLAN. Voila, MacOSX on PocketPC! Great. Afterwards I switched my Mac back to 1280*854, and before I reconnected from the VNC client on the PocketPC I forgot to change the Mac to VGA resolution. Oh wonder! Even though, OSXvnc1.4 doesn´t officially support server side resolution scaling, the Pocket Loox shows the FULL 1280*854 MacOSX screen scaled to its VGA screen. Possibly client side scaling? Everything quite small, but still usable! Big wow factor! Now to VoIP: next I will install Skype and a SIP client on MacOSX and PocketPC and try to make a link from VoIP to and from the legacy phone world (mobile phones and landlines). Keep on reading!

PocketLoox VGA arrived...

Just received a brand new Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox 720 with VGA screen. Right now it is charging, as the battery was completely empty. Nice features: Battery has 1640mAh capacity, 1,3 Megapixel camera with flash, an optional USB host adapter and all the 640*480 pixels fit within a 3,6 inch screen. Neat and tiny. As soon, as the battery is full I will install a highres VNC viewer to run MacOSX on it!

WiFi on Treo650!

Shadowmite, a member of TreoCentral hacked the Tungsten T5 WLAN driver so PalmOne´s SD WiFi card works on the Treo650. Currently there are still some rough edges and right now it seems not to work on the Treo600. A download of more than 3 MB is here. Now if only someone would write SIP and Skype clients for PalmOS!

another VGA PocketPC

There is another VGA Pocket PC from Asus, called MyPal A730W. In addition to VGA, WLAN, Bluetooth, SD and CF it boasts a 1,3 Megapixel camera with flash! Available in January 2005. Pricing should be similar to the Dell X50v.

One Xmas 2004

Nokia Medallion I and II

The Nokia Medallions I and II, small LCD displays to show pictures taken with a mobile phone, that you wear like jewelry around your neck, are loadable only via infrared capable phones. So no way to use the Nokia 6630 sans IRda as an image source for the Nokia branded "jewelry".

amazing Nokia 7280

Yesterday I had the pleasure to play around with the new Nokia 7280. Amazing! I thought it´s just a fashion phone, but with TriBand, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth and IRda it is a great external modem for PDAs and Notebook PCs, too. And all this in just 84 grams including a display of 104*208 pixels, that turns into a mirror when off. Even a decent VGA camera and a FM radio are included. Instead of the usual number keys there is a scroll wheel, similar to an iPod for navigating the menus. If Nokia could cram UMTS into the sucessor of the 7280, there is no more need for an Apple iPhone.

more Nokia 6630 "features"

I just found out by reading Russell Beattie´s blog, that there are more problems to the Nokia 6630 than just the missing IRda port. The RS-MMC card in the Nokia 6630 must be a new "standard" called Dual Voltage Reduced Size Multimedia Card (DVRS-MMC), that is available nowhere right now and that the Nokia 6630 has just around 7MB of free RAM available to the user.

high definition flat screens that suck...

Nearly every day I see some "high end" LCD and Plasma TVs advertized that cost a fortune and when I look at the small print, the resolution is 852*480, essentially a wide version of VGA, hence the name WVGA. On the other hand there are some low cost big screen LCD TVs with 1280*720, 1280*768 or 1366*768, that just look great. Especially the Hyundai HQL 320 WR LCD TV for less than 2000 Euros seems to be a real bargain with exceptional features...

an even better media player, but only NTSC...

The Roku HD1000 seems to be a great networked media player with support for high definition video and SMB network volumes without the need for any server software. There is some third party software available for video playback, RSS.... Unfortunately, right now it only supports NTSC for video output on RCA and S-Video connectors. On VGA and DVI out this shouln´t be a problem, though.

great media player from Australia?

Zensonic preannounced the Z500 Networked DVD Media Player with Gigabit Ethernet, WLAN 802.11g, USB2.0 for external hard discs AND compatibility with MacOSX and Linux. Even plays high definition content. Available in March at a recommended retail price of US$299. Great! Now if they would just get rid of the special server software for Windows, Mac and Linux and connect to any network volume, so you could any networked hard drive...

new book: The Cult of Mac by Leander Kahney

If you have a Mac or if you are wondering what you are missing, read "The Cult of Mac" by Leander Kahney.

VNC viewer for PocketPCs with VGA resolution

There seems to be a VNC viewer for PocketPCs with VGA resolution called PTvncHiRes from Parys Technografx. Hopefully it will support any standard VNC server for MacOSX, NewtonOS..., and not only some Windows VNC servers, as stated in the docs... Downloads at PocketGear.com and PDATopSoft.com.

PocketPCs with VGA resolution

I will test some PocketPCs with VGA resolution in the next few weeks, namely, HP, FujitsuSiemens, Toshiba, Casio and Dell. First I thought that they are nearly identical, but they differ a lot featurewise. Some have a camera included, some have rechargeable batteries, that you can change, some seem to support USB host mode, albeit without an standard USB connector, some have VGA or SVGA out capability, and best of all, one seems to be much smaller than the rest of the pack. More details within a few days...

Why no USB host on PDAs?

Since more than 10 years all PDA makers implement their own connector to connect to PCs and peripherals. And to make matters worse, even if you buy your PDAs always from the same manufacturer, as they change connectors on a regular basis, there is a good chance, that the peripherals and cables you bought for your last PDA won't fit on the new model. Bluetooth is great to connect devices without wires, but for charging purposes you still need wires. So why isn't everybody using USB? What a shame. Life could be so much easier...

Incredibles from Pixar

The Incredibles, the new movie from Pixar finally comes to Europe this week. Can´t wait to see it, finally.

get info on link before going there...

One of the nice things in using a web browser on a PC (or Mac) besides tabbed browsing is the status line. When you move the cursor over a link it shows you the URL behind. The main problem with browsing the web on a handheld for me is, that I never know what lurks behind a link without actually going there. Seeing the URL and beeing able to copy it to the clipboard is such an essential part of using the web for me, that I would even switch from PalmOS to another OS just for this feature. Any hints or ideas?

how many mobile phones are useful?

Back in the old days of landlines (POTS) I had two phone lines. One with an unlisted secret number, that I only used for outgoing calls and another one, that I gave everybody, for all the incoming calls and the answering machine. Then at the end of 1997 I got a GSM cellphone and got rid of all my landlines. Luckily I could access the Internet via cableTV and later through fixed wireless. Pretty soon I found some good reasons to have more than one mobile phone. Primarily it is redundancy. There are locations all over the world that have great coverage with one provider and a terrible one with another and vice versa. Secondary is cost. Calls in the same network normally are cheaper than outgoing calls to another network. Third is roming capabilities and cost. Some providers are great for calls inside a given country, others are great for roaming purposes, which is especially important for GPRS data access. So since a few years I am carrying now two mobile phones with SIM-cards from different providers and I'm quite happy with them. I would be quite interested to know how many mobiles other people are carrying and why...

Andy Hertzfelds new book

O'Reilly just brought out the new book from Andy Hertzfeld called Revolution in The Valley about the making of the Macintosh. I learned to know him in 1986, just a few months before the first Radius Full Page Display came out, where he wrote the drivers for. He is one of the geniuses that created the first Macintosh. Can't wait to read it.

media players that work with Macs...

I am looking for a decent media player, that let's me view videos on my Sony TV, that are stored on some harddrives connected via Firewire to a MacOSX box. I tested the first version of ElGatos EyeTVhome a few months ago. It worked ok, but the retail price before the last price reduction was just too high, you couldn't access live TV from a connected EyeTV PVR and it doesn't run on a G3 Mac. I heard about a MacLink software for the KISS network DVD players, but didn't receive a KISS test unit yet. Right now I think I will stick to a Sony Playstation with network adapter and a software called Medio to turn a networked Playstation into a media player for any PC, that can run Java. MacOSX and Linux finally officially supported! I already got the Medio software, now I just need the new network Playstation and I should be set. Any other recommendations on media players for Macs?

San Francisco January 2005

I will be in San Francisco from1/02 to 1/18 for the annual MacWorld Expo. I got my plane ticket and my place to stay, but I still need a bicycle to save me from walking around for hours and hours. Anybody there, that has an unused bicycle to spare for two weeks? Any ideas abour interesting events, parties... during that time?