NYCDAUG
2004 Meeting Minutes &
ReviewsTo Meeting Minutes Main Page
NYCDAUG
2004 Meeting Minutes &
ReviewsPocket PC Meeting Minutes for November 18, 2004 - by Sam Wagner
Anatoli presented a mini how-to on upgrading to a new PocketPC of the same family. He gaves us tips that may work from one unit to another though this hasn't been tested yet. Anatoli also showed us his new Toshiba E830 with Mobile 2003 SE and presented a little multimedia software called Beta Player that will play pretty much any type of music or video files. We talked about battery life on the new Toshiba units as well as the impact of storage cards on battery.
Charlie showed us his different external battery chargers from Boxwave. Charlie says: “Boxwave offers a system of power alternatives for PDAs (either flavor) and cell phones. The system uses power sources equipped with USB connectors into which a sync cord is plugged. There is a wall-wart for when you have access to shore power, a cigarette lighter plug for the car, and a battery adapter for when you need to be truly mobile. Anatoli reported that the battery adapter, which runs on four AA cells, tends to confuse the power meter of his Toshiba PDA but that the problem is self correcting after charging the unit in the sync cradle. The cigarette lighter plug is not fuse protected so you might do better purchasing a similar item from Belkin which does have a fuse to protect the PDA from overvoltages. Boxwave also offers a cute sync cable that is self coiling on a mechanism much like a window shade. It makes a small unit to carry and the cable never gets twisted or tangled with other items in your briefcase or handbag. It uses a very thin ribbon cable which is supposed to be durable but is not shielded. "
Aaron mentioned Orb, a new service that offers live video streaming to PocketPCs, via Wi-Fi, of major TV stations.
Sam showed Skype, a VOIP program for PPC that allows you to make free PC-to-PC calls from your PPC or you may fill up your account with pre-paid amounts in order to place calls to landlines.
Palm OS Meeting Minutes for October 21, 2004 and Product Reviews by Peter M. Fine
We began our meeting with the standard introduction by NYCDAUG President Peter M. Fine. We now has over 850 members and it's our 10th Year Anniversary. Party anyone? We need volunteers to handle the logistics of such an event. Contact Peter if interested in helping.
The group talked a little about the origins of the group. Since it was an originally an Apple Newton group, Peter mentioned some lesser known facts, like, the Newton MessagePad had an ARM processor a decade ago, an excellent handwriting recognition application built in, and wireless communications hardware add-ons way before anyone else offered it. Newton died because it was too expensive at the time but many still use these devices today.
A member of the group asked for recommendations for hardcopy books that provide information about Palm PDA's - two of which were being raffled off tonight as well! Peter also asked interested attendees to send him their own reviews on hardware and software they have tried for posting and inclusion in our review section.
Peter began demonstrations of a number of hardware and software items using his Treo 600 which has become his favorite integrated device. Peter has included his own reviews for the products he demonstrated at the meeting.
CardExport II software by Softick, $14.95 converts your PDA into a flash drive - only limited in size as that of your SD card! It will mount your SD card on your desktop computer as a removable device. Very neat idea and works with many models as well and both OS4 and OS 5. I have a directory on the SD card just for this use that is not "recognized" as a normal one within the Palm environment.
Now, needing a very short USB cable to make this a real flash drive, the group saw several cables made by Seidio, including a 12-inch USB Sync &
Charge Cable
that costs around $15.00. One end is USB and one end is the Palm Treo 600 connector (they offer similar products for other devices as well).
The synching cables double as recharge cables which is nice as it reduces travel clutter if you must also carry a laptop or powerbook anyway. The small one has a nice switch that starts a sync, LEDs and has ciruitry to protect the PDA as well. There is a 50" model as well and both worked perfectly!
Also from Seidio, the 2 in 1 Retractable Headset for listening to MP3's and which doubles as a hands-free set for a smartphone like the Treo. The switch on the lapel control lets you go from stereo set to hands-free set. Nicely designed, sound was very good and microphone worked as expected. Discounted now on website for $35.00
Pro-Clip holsters for the Treo 600 and they make holsters and car holders for other PDA's.These units come either for vertical and horizontal carrying of the phone, in what feels like a very secure system. I was assured by the manufacturer that the one glued part on the back is very strong and well tested. Either unit comes with a Pro-Clip system for quick removal of the holsters or with a traditional kind of clip that lies flatter to the holster.
The PDA screen is protected as it is held against you, so the screen is not face out. I like that - definately a very good design for anyone who prefers a holster to an enclosed case which is often harder to get to your device in time to answer. Two models offer flexibility of choice but I "think" I like the vertical best.
PalmOne Portable Keyboard for Treo 600, $99.99 list. The keyboard folds up to a very compact size. When open, it provides an ample keyboard with a stable platform for the PDA. A keyboard, and others like it, are great for e-mail. An attendee compared the PalmOne brand keyboard with the older Targus Stow-A-Way which has a larger keyboard platform and not quite as small folded
.
BrightCam, now at v0.5.6 the donationware application, when used on the Treo, can control the screen brightness automatically to benefit the user.It also has other options for controling sound and lots of customization. It generally works well although I would like an overide for when it is in the cradle. Since it is still in beta, any feature is a possibility.
Pocket Tunes 3.0.5 Deluxe which turns a Palm OS5 device into a music player by playing compressed audio files like MP3, WMA, or Ogg Vorbis or uncompressed WAV files from your SD card. They say it can even stream mp3 via an internet connection but he has not tried that. The program has lots of controls over sound with a built in graphic equalizer,cross fading, skins for changing the look and it can play in the background as well. Totally works as advertised and full specs and requirements are on their site. Comes in Deluxe and Basic version and priced at around $28.00 and $15.00 respectively.
Peter next showed off the new edition of "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide 2005" by Landware. $19.95 downloaded. He called it his "argument ender" as it allows him to have all the movie reviews and trivia with him no matter where he goes. Also offers updating of movie premiers by sychronizing with L
andware servers and you can track your own rentals as part of its functionality. Highly recommended.
Since the Treo 600 has a keyboard, the good old standbye Graffiti does not work since there is no input box nor full screen support. However, if you install Jot by CIC, you can add that functionality back as it is on some other PDAs and more. Priced at $39.95, it speeds up those notes one still wants to add fast or entry in any program that you may feel more comfortable using what you already know how to use - short, quick strokes, instead of fumbling with the small keyboard, as good as it may be. However, Jot also adds the ability to write closer to what you may imagine any letter should be and not just the structured entry from Graffiti and this function can be fine tuned as well. I did not realize how much time this saves over keyboard entry.
Toysoft's Live! is now at version 2.1, costs $14.95 and was designed for use with Treo 600. It will capture video to internal or external memory on a device that overwise can not do that using the built in "still" camera. It does it quite well although there is no setting for real time capture as such so you have to play a bit to get it to your liking and this is my only complaint. I was told too many variables to do that. You can export the video as JPG files or MJPG AVI format to the SD card. Their site has a sample movie as well. Very Neat!
Toysoft's LightWav now at 3.0 is $16.95. This product lets you replace the normal system alarm, ringtone, voicemail or other OS sounds of the Treo 600 with music from mp3, wave or ogg format files plus wma if you have PocketTunes (reviewed above). It is more fun than a necessity of course but if this is what you want, LightWav does it right.
Back to our Meeting Minutes:
A few members helped Peter with the demo chores: One person demonstrated the E-Holster which hangs off a belt with leather and metal loops and they also demonstrated a Proporta aluminum case for a Tungsten PDA. Reasonably priced metal cases for many PDAs that have saved their assets many times over!
Wesley Mason demonstrated MMPlayer on his Palm T3. It is a multimedia software application that plays video files, including DIVX, XVID and MPEG4 which means that you can view entire movies on your PDA! Wes has spent a lot of time tweaking and testing different compression settings but using a desktop PC to convert quicktime or other file format, he has made it work so that an entire movie can fit on an SD card. Also see Wes's more in depth review of the beta in our 2004 archives.
Wesley also uses PXA Clocker 3.2 on his T3 to improve playback performance by overclocking certain functions and applications.
Other software that was demonstrated tonight included Phone Magic, Beam Pro and Back-up Man. All work as they are supposed to. Peter also mentioned CardBackup 2.1 as his backup software of choice as it is very reasonably priced and always works.
A raffle was held and winners received LavaSoft Silky Keyboards, Matias Half Keyboard, Handmark's Hearts & Spades and Mobile Tools software, Instant Power for the M500, Landware's Zagat restaurant review software on SD card, Chapura Cloak soda can cozies, PalmOne User Group T-shirts and Handango stylus pens and two books covering Palm programming and Palm OS end user issues. Everyone who attended got something to take home!
Peter wanted to make sure he added online information to the meeting demonstration of Corsoft's Aileron email service. Using v5.5 of the product which has a small footprint, he connected to his own POP email services via Corsoft's secure network.
There are other options like AOL, iMAP4 and Hotmail as well. Aileron is also one of the first Palm OS products to handle attachments in email as well as do it well.
What was nice about this product, which has a yearly subscription fee and offers personal as well as enterprise level connectivity, is the fact that it always worked whereas using some of the competing products did not yield such good results.
The interface takes a bit of time to get used to as it includes complete navigation to all services but once you learn the icons, you can take control. The split view was his favorite.
MMPlayer - Beta Version- Review by Wesley Mason
www.mmplayer.com
July 29, 2004
About two months ago I ran across a very alpha software called MMPlayer. This is a very cool software that plays a slew of media formats (with varing degrees of stability). This includes video. Now I won't say this is the best app out there, but in terms of speed, quality, and size of encoded files, this app blows the others out of the water. Using my PalmOne T3 PDA, I have been successful at playing 428x320; roughly the correct aspect ratio for NTSC video, with 112kbps audio. For those that this means nothing to, that's better quality video than most TVs and also near CD stereo sound. I have only had some glitches when the processing gets too much for it and the buffers deplete. I'll be sending samples to the authors team to try to understand why.
I have had 99% success with 320x240 sized video. This is decent for watching standard TV and is actually the resolution of most Media players out there (example: Archos units). The video I use is encoded using a Divx CODEC, but you can use MPEG2 if that's all you have. I have had some syncing problems with the audio with MPEG2, thus I stay with Divx on that unit. (also the quality is better)
Now as you may expect, the T3's little battery that could, can actually play from 60 to 90+ minutes with the brightness all the way down. Perfect for night time viewing on the train home or indoors. Helps if the video is bright too ;)
I actually have been watching some of the hardest things to watch on such a small screen, subtitled videos - Naruto episodes to be exact, ask directly if you wish. I will say that 320x240 take some dicipline to read. The 428x320 is a godsend by comparison.
This program can also play MP3's, but I think the video triggers the geek factor much more.
As for encoding a AVI form your PC to something you can use nicely on the PDA, you can locate a slew of free software like VirtualDub, early versions of Divx, Xvid codec, Lame MP3 Codec, that with some tweaking can take your collection and make it Palm friendly almost overnight. Your milage will vary.
Remember, this is not for those w/o ARM Processor PDAs. Sorry, but you just don't have the power. Also, the T3 runs at 400mhz by default. Overclockers may help, but in rare cases like with most software that can run overlocked, can cause hard resets. So backup you unit before attempting something risky and read the disclaimers on the overclocking software.
If anyone would like a sample avi clip to test on their unit,MMPlayer has some posted. You will require a Memory Chip to use most of them. Later I'll take a AVI clip, convert it to a format for MMPlayer and then convert it to another format the Kinoma Player will read.
So, to summerize somewhat, MMPlayer is a sharp little App that is worth watching, at least until the others realize that adding better codecs may be useful. Then it will be a free for all. Note, Version 0.2.12 seems pretty stable despite it's unstable markings. That is why I currently use it as a registered user.
Pocket PC Meeting Minutes for May 20, 2004 - by Sam Wagner
First we had a couple people complaining about Dell's support
for Dell Axims. It looks like Dell doesn't have a
direct number for their Mobile devices so people keep getting
bounced from one support technician to another... bit frustrating.
Here is a small list of the software that were talked about:
Pocket-DVD Studio allows you to convert a DVD to mpeg optimized for your device.
We had someone with issues with a Toshiba e340 trying to
connect to 802.11b network; here are two little programs that
allow you to search for
Wifi networks in range. I personally using PocketWinc
as the program has an option to automatically configure the network
card.
WiFiFoFum just looks for the location of the wireless networks and displays them on a map:
Also someone raised the issue about security while using
public wireless networks with either laptops or PPCs.
1) PPCs don't have network shares so technically people shouldn't
be able to get into your device and get info but getting on banking
sites might be a little more unsecure as the packets send over
the air could be intercepted (especially if not encryption is
used).
2) Laptops have default shares and are more prone to intrusion.
The best thing to do would be to get a software firewall such
as Norton Personal Firewall and configure it so that it doesn't
allow file sharing and other private info to be send.
Jerry also mentioned PlayListSync
that allows you to synch music on your PocketPC (thru ActiveSync).
The program selects a
random number of songs and refreshes those songs at predefined
sync (daily, weekly,...). It's also a freeware.
Pocket PC Meeting Minutes for November 20, 2003 - by Sam
Wagner
Jerry presented the programs mentioned below. He also showed us
his new HP4150. Also as a note for H2200 users, HP
has now a 3600mAH extended battery available for $130. The battery
should allow anyone to get quite a few days of use out of their
device.
Sam presented a new little program called Rudeo,
that allows you to remotely control Windows Media Player 9. The
program works over 802.11b,Bluetooth, Ethernet or any other protocol
that supports TCP/IP. The program
doesn't stream audio back to the device but it allows you to view
what's available on your desktop (playlists, all songs...) and
you can create new playlists as well and have them uploaded on
the remote machine. The application has a really small footprint
and runs in real time over 802.11b (no delays). You can also change
the volume from the PocketPC. Rudeo needs to have a server side
app installed on the WMP9 machine which will run in
the background when the computer starts so there is no need to
open WMP before starting to control and play music. The program
is fairly new but I am hopeful that future revisions of the application
will offer significant improvements. The application is available
here for $9.95 (which isn't a bad deal):
Sam showed the group some of the new features in Office 2003 (which
he had installed on his Tablet PC). How Outlook 2003 deals with
junk mail in a more efficient manner. We also talked about how
to protect Word documents (using the document protection feature).
He showed the group a little utility that he uses to replace his
Quick Launch Bar; the application is called Object
Dock, and is made by Stardock. Mac users should like it as
it can replace the Windows taskbar with a OSX-like program bar.
Finally, Sam gave a quick peek at a couple browsers that
he personally uses. Mozilla
Firebird is the underdog but has some really cool features
such as the possibility to add extensions to your browsers. Many
extensions are available as plug-ins, some of them will let you
do quick gestures with your mouse or digitizer to simulate browsing
functions (such as go back, move forward and so on). Firebird
is still in beta but pretty stabile though it doesn't support
everything as well as IE. For that reason, he has started to use
Avant Browser which
basically uses IE and enhances it. It adds popup blocking, tab
browsing and many new features to IE. The program is awesome and
free to download.
Vlad presented another little utility called vxUtil
that allows you to do quick IP calculations (for subnets) as well
as some other cool networking stuff. The other tools for sysadmins
which he mentioned were vxSNMP - allows viewing and modification
of SNMP values, vxWEB - a web server for pocket pc, pretty robust,
not so free, but a 60 day trial and sshCE - SSH client for pocket
pc,15 connections for demo version.