shahine.com/omar/

That title is one of the main reasons I seriously considered a Treo 650 (and ultimately got one). If you wish to purchase a Pocket PC Phone in the US, you have four choices (that I am aware of).

• HP H6315 (T-Mobile)
• Audiovox 4100 (AT&T)
• Audiovox 6601/XV6600 (Sprint/Verizon) & Siemens SX66 (Cingular)
• Samsung i700 (Verizon)

Not a lot to chose from. All these devices are quite large with the exception of the 4100 which is pretty small. But all are bigger (some more) then the Treo 650. The HP has been around since July 2004 and T-Mobile is the only carrier that sells it. Other carriers were supposed to pick it up but none did (T-Mobile had a 3 month exclusive on selling it). I guess the reason lies in the fact that, well, it does not appear to work consistently as a phone.

I owned the Audiovox 4100 for a few brief weeks. At first it was love at first sight. Then a few weeks later I realized it sucked. Not only did it not reliably work as a phone, but it did not reliably work as a PDA!!! Sometimes it would not turn on after I locked it, most of the time I had trouble answering calls, and generally speaking it was flaky. I loved the idea of a Pocket PC phone, but ultimately it's size, problems, and quirks had me return it. Additionally, dealing with Audiovox was not fun. They do not make this phone and know very little about it, so getting support was problematic. I ended up trading the 4100 in for an Audiovox 5600 Smartphone which was much more reliable and small. Of course I lost the PDA functionality and doing email on that device was problematic. It was a great read only device though. But I was never satisfied due to the form factor I really wanted (keyboard), and the minor phone problems with the 5600 (I also had problems answering calls, but no lockups).

I thought my 4100 problems were just limited to that device but it appears that even HP is having such problems with their H6315 that T-Mobile stopped selling it more than 6 months after it was released. That is a vote of no confidence IMHO. I mean if HP can't get it right who can? Their products are usually top notch!

"The H6315 was released last July as HP's answer to the popularity of palmOne's Treo smart phone. HP added phone capabilities to one of its iPaq PDAs (personal digital assistants) with a GSM/GPRS (Global System for Mobile Communications/General Packet Radio Service) modem, and also installed an 802.11b wireless chip and Bluetooth connectivity. Early reviews were kind, in part because of the device's ability to shift seamlessly between GPRS and 802.11b networks.

However, since its release users have been underwhelmed by the device's phone capabilities, according to numerous posts on handheld-enthusiast Web sites and user-review sites. The device does not appear to work consistently as a phone, as many users reported having to frequently reset their units after software lockups."

[PC Magazine]

This is not good. Especially because HP will also be releasing the iPaq Mobile Messenger sometime this year. If I were a telco I'd be hard pressed to sign up to sell one of their devices. I do not like to frequently reset anything. Especially not knowing that my device is locked up till after some one has tried to reach me.

Now, with the palmOne Treo 600/650 you will find it's sold by:

• Cingular (650)
• AT&T (650)
• Sprint (650)
• Verizon
• T-Mobile

Not only that but you can buy directly from palmOne, call them for support, if the thing breaks they will send you a unit in advance or returning yours (not something Audiovox would do for me when I complained about my 4100), send them email. Not to mention the fact that you can buy accessories and software for the 600/650 almost anywhere phones and PDAs are sold. But best of all, the 650 does appear to work consistently as a phone.

Yep, I'm in Hawaii. Specifically I'm in Oahu right now. Lora has been doing a part of her residency here for the past few weeks and she'll be here till early May. However, remember, she is a Resident which means she works like a dog. Anyhoo, Hawaii is cool. The weather hasn't cooperated much (it rained today, and is super humid), but I think that's still better than the lame weather we've been getting in San Francisco.

Thank goodness for people who go buy a wireless router, plug it in, and never touch the thing. As a result I have free wifi.

BTW, Gas prices are CHEAPER in Hawaii then in San Francisco. Crazyiness. I'll post some pics when the sun comes out (hopefully it does). This is my first vacation since early December, and boy I really needed one.

This has got to be one of the funiest things I've ever read. [via Furrygoat]

It seems that Paul Thurrott is astonished that Apple would apply DRM to purchased music on the client (iTunes) rather than the server. Seems like a really bad design decision and a good way to open the door for two programmers to crack it.

The statement from their blog is precious:

"Our intent was not to circumvent copy protection, and if Apple did DRM on the server, we would leave it in place! But applying DRM in an opensource project is not worth the time it would take to code it."

If memory serves me right, when Apple first released Software Auto Update back with Mac OS X they did not cryptographically sign their updates, which of course opened them up for a man in the middle attack delivering malicious code to their customers. Nor did they use any form of HTTP authentication or certificate validation when downloading updates. I remember this because when we developed our software update for Microsoft Office X I was sort of astonished that they did not code sign their updates or use https. Well it was a matter of time before they had to fix it.

I guess hindsight is 20/20 (that goes for everyone). But personally I'm not surprised.

One of my co-workers, Imran, is a prime example of how powerful a rich and licensable DRM system allows people to build a business on your platform. The site that he helped create is called Masala Downloads and operates much like Cinemanow or Movielink. The difference is that Imran isn't a big media company, just a guy with an idea. Pretty cool. Here is what he has to say:

"...I was thinking about the huge Indian movie market and how the Internet could be used to deliver movies to this market.  I thought what if there was a web site where you could go, choose a movie and it gets downloaded to your computer so you can watch in less than five minutes.  It could use some system of rights management ensuring that the user can only play the movie for the time they have rented it for."

I think it's awesome that he is able to bring a bit of the Indian movie market to anyone with an internet connection and a PC. The movies are in fact DVD quality which is very impressive given that Cinemanow and Movielink have paltry collections of DVD quality stuff. He built this business by leveraging our platform APIs for Audio and Video.

Eric Virro has a great site that covers all aspects of ripping digital audio. Highly recommended reading if you are curios about lossless, transcoding, cleaning, converting etc.

Steve Rider, who works on start.com, started blogging about it. I'm super excited about the work they are doing. They are out there, on the live site, shipping bits, addressing user requests, and making improvements along the way. Part of me is jealous .

When did it become OK to answer a phone call in a meeting? I personally find it incredibly distracting. I *never* answer my phone during a meeting. I try (and some times forget) to place my phone on vibrate, and if I need to answer the call (because my house is on fire), then I walk outside. While that is a bit distracting, it's not as bad as answering. If something is an emergency, my family knows to call me twice if I don't answer (or send an SMS).

I am guilty of doing email in meetings. Working on that one. The solution there relies on getting less email though so I don't feel like I constantly need to be on mail.

In spite of recent events I hope all of you have an Advanced Health Care Directive and Power of Attorney should an unforseen event render you unable to direct your own medical care. Don't let the courts decide; that's all I'll say.

If you live in California, it's very simple. Here is the form, and good advice from the state.

Last year I went to the Conservatory of Flowers and took some pictures with my D70. I made one into a desktop background and for some reason I really like it. I made some different jpg sizes in case you want to use it.

• orchid-1024x768.jpg (143.42 KB)
• orchid-1280x1024.jpg (211 KB)
• orchid-1600x1200.jpg (279.65 KB)

I've been thinking how to best structure my experiences with the Treo 650. I have a lot to say on the topic, too much to write in one sitting and too much for a single blog post. As such I'm just going to start now. Expect a Part 2 later this week, and a Windows Mobile vs Treo at some point. I'll also write about all the programs I'm using.

Ordering

I ordered the Treo 650 unlocked. Because I am an ATT Wireless subscriber, I was unwilling to change my calling plan (breaking my shared plan) to get the carrier subsidized version (it was $399 from ATT, $599 from palmOne (locked)). Plus if I ever change my plan over to Cingular I would have to get a new phone. So, I ordered the carrier unlocked version ($699). Of course that left a crater in my checking account. My Treo 650 arrived 2 days after I ordered it. By the way, Cingular/ATT have royally screwed up this acquisition.

Along the way palmOne would send me lots of updates in mail. This included a final email the day I received my Treo that was pretty helpful in getting started. Nice touch. Free FedEx shipping and no tax made the purchase less painful than it could have been.

Out of Box Experience

The Treo 650 comes in a nice box, with a charger, cable, installation CD and manuals. The first thing I ever do when getting a new PDA type device is order a screen protector from BoxWave. This ensures that I don't inadvertently damage the screen as I tend to keep my phone devices in my pocket.

The first thing I did was start charging the device. I also installed the Palm Software from the CD. Installation was smooth, and I configured synchronization with Outlook. One nice thing is that the conduit is now provided by Palm, and not by a third party.

Synchronization Setup

Before synchronizing with my computer using HotSync, I decided to configure my Exchange account in VersaMail. I found it a bit strange that Exchange ActiveSync configuration is managed through VersaMail. Once you configure the account, you get mail and calendar Synchronization. I wish that contacts also synchronized as well, but if I were to pick I think I would have gone with mail and calendar. More on Exchange support in Part 2.

After entering my account settings I sync'ed to Exchange. I have to say, EDGE makes sync much faster than using GPRS. After I did this I connected the Treo to my laptop using the sync cable and got my contacts, tasks and notes on the device. So far so good.

Bluetooth Synchronization

Bravo palmOne for not making Bluetooth sync suck. It took me < 2 min to sync via Bluetooth and this is the only way that I sync now. Contrast to ActiveSync which throws an epileptic fit when you try and use Bluetooth. It's some sort of punishment to try. In fact, I managed to get Bluetooth sync on my 5600 working once in 6 months. It required enabling 2 checkboxes on my phone, a horrible pairing experience, and thousands of dialog boxes from ActiveSync whenever I rebooted or resumed from standby. Constrast to HotSync which only throws up one dialog box. This all stems from the fact that the bluetooth stack in XP can take a long time to boot, often after ActiveSync or HotSync have already decided that something has gone horribly wrong and annoys you about it. Thankfully though, HotSync will continue to work after things have gone back to normal.

Hardware

What can I say about the hardware. I LOVE the device form factor. For a while I thought that maybe it was a bit large, but after using it for a few days I cannot imagine it being any smaller. I can operate the device one handed very easily. In fact, it was much easier than my Audiovox 5600. And light years better than any Pocket PC device. I have only used the stylus in my Treo 3 times in a week, and that was just for applications that didn't support the keyboard navigation on the Treo.

The screen is bright and beautiful. Its resolution is 320x320 which is 4x greater than the old Treo and way more than my Audiovox 5600. This makes reading emails, browsing the web etc a pleasure. Everything looks really nice due to the pixel density on this device. If only palmOne would license ClearType so they could have some nice anti-aliasing.

The keyboard is wonderful. I can't believe I ever used a device w/o a keyboard. I am much more efficient. And it's not just about writing emails, but writing sms messages, entering URLs in the browser, configuring my account settings, entering passwords. Its a million times better with the keyboard.

I keep the Treo in my right pocket, and to be honest, I don't feel like I have a PDA in there. It's probably 30% larger than the Audiovox 5600, but much smaller than every other Pocket PC device I've used.

Operating System

This is an area that took some getting used to. And to be honest, this is an area where Windows Mobile kicks Palm butt. This device comes with Palm OS 5, which is really a hack built on a long old foundation of hacks. The OS is not multi-threaded, on occasion has crashed and rebooted spontaneously, and does not have some of the basic things I'd expect from a PDA operating system. The navigation is a bit strange, you are constantly launching and quitting programs, there is no back button (which I like). If you are doing a HotSync you cannot receive phone calls, practically everything is "modal", which is very annoying. It's like using Windows ME after using XP for 3 years.

However, because of some of these limitations, some things actually work better. Phone calls work 99% of the time. I have never gotten "Unable to answer call" or any other lamo error message about the fact that the phone part of the device wasn't working. Because Windows Mobile is multi-tasking I've always believed that the radio stack had to fight to get any attention from the OS. On the Treo it feels as if the radio stack can hog the device as much as it wants, which is a good thing on a phone device. Actually, when I call my device from any land line it rings on the first ring that I hear on the phone. My Windows Mobile devices had this 1-2 ring lag, which always resulted in me answering my phone towards the end of the ring sequence, and missing calls a lot.

Telephony

Generally speaking, the address book integration is great, dialing, answering, switching to call waiting etc are all great. I don't have any complaints about the phone features. I will also add that the default ringtones are all excellent, and Palm has done a fantastic job picking different and unique tones for different events. For some reason, the Windows Mobile devices use the same tones for 80% of the events, so you never know if that was an SMS, Voice Mail, System Alert etc.

The audio quality of phone calls is good, and for some reason it works much better with my ETY*COM headset. Another nice touch is that the device will sync the time with GSM services that provide time synchronization (Cingular and ATT). I can't stand any "network" device that cannot do this basic functionality. Windows Mobile does not do time sync over GSM and I believe this is because it's implimented in an operator specific manner. Whatever, I just want it to work.

Finally, the Treo does not cause the super annoying radio interference that my 5600 caused. That phone could make speakers in any room start to make strange noises. I assumed this was due to my constant syncing with exchange, but it doesn't happen with the Treo 650.

SMS

This is where the Treo shines. SMS integration is sweet. I love how they make everything a conversation. For SMS'ing my wife it's wonderful. I am using SMS much more than before because it's so darn easy and convenient. It's also much faster to SMS some one from the phone book then it is on my Windows Mobile devices.

To Be Continued... (PIM, Exchange, Applications, Battery Life, Camera, IM)

David Weller discusses what it's like to program on a Mac. Back when I was a Mac user, I desperately wanted to write some programs. The barrier to entry was huge. I didn't know C++, didn't know Java, and still don't know Objective C (and don't care to ever learn). There was AppleScript and that is where I wrote all my stuff. Later I learned Java (in college), but all that really taught me was what object oriented programming was about, and for that I'm forever grateful. However, I still couldn't do anything with Java on a Mac because the JVM sucked big time. Not to mention Java apps looked funny with all their non standard controls.

Anyway, this little company called REALSoftware came out with a product called REALBasic and I was hooked. For many years after that I wrote a bunch of stuff using REALBasic, and wrote most of my prototypes for Outlook Express and Entourage with that application. Then, I discovered .NET, Visual Studio and have been hooked since. I think the pivital moment for me, the one where I thought I could no longer work on the Mac was when I went to the PDC in 2003. It opened my eyes.

When OS X came out I took a look at the various products for writing code, and pretty much felt the same way as David. I was just perplexed. None of it was intuitive to me. Thankfully Apple has realized it has a good thing with AppleScript and has continued to invest in that platform. I hear that Mono is doing pretty well on Mac OS X these days, and if they can get Windows.Forms support that would rock.

My good buddy Mike Fullerton has been writing Mac software for most of his life. He has been around the block, writing games for big game developers, working on one of the first "Frameworks", MacApp, is published in MacTech, and then spending almost 7 years working on MacIE, MacOE, and Entourage. Recently Mike started working on the Hotmail team and it's fascinating to talk to him about writing .NET code. We joke that he thinks it's so "easy". I hope he writes more on the topic some day, as he has an awesome perspective. Not too many developers go this path.

[update: corrected PDC date]

I have this term, Geek Tax, and I have to pay it every few months. Geek Tax is the amazing waste of time that you must endure when crap stops working. Today my internet stopped working. I've been troubleshooting various things for the past few hours, and I'm not sure I've accomplished anything. I think the problem is upstream from me, but I didn't get to this conclusion before unplugging, uninstalling, restarting, cursing, for a few hours. I almost redesigned my network topology in the process.

Of course the next tax will surely be in the form of re-installing windows or something like that.

Aghhhhh.

Joe Wilcox did an awesome four part series on his experiences with PlaysForSure, Napster To Go and the new PlaysForSure devices. Awesome read and is very close to my sentiments on the matter.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

[via  Chris Lanier]

I think this is the kind of stuff that makes me feel like Google is a human company. How cool and fun is that. It made me smile .