...more recent posts
Mitch Kapor outlines his mobile device wish list. I agree with everything he says, but of course I want even much more. A camera, for starters (which his Nokia has, but he doesn't mention.) But beyond that it has to have some sort of wireless connectivity (802.11b is the best bet at this point.) Spontaneous local area networks are going to be the shiznit. Yo.
Help. How do I get an HP officejet D135 (an All In One printer, scanner, fax) to work right under OS X (10.2.6)?
They have drivers (4.6.5 and an alph 4.7.something) but both are incredibly buggy and over time consume huge amounts of CPU resources (like over 70%, when it's not even doing anything?) How could this not be fixed yet?
Is Gimp Print my only hope? Doubt that's going to run the scanner though.
For the hopelessly addicted among you, and really I guess that means me, here are four high res shots of the new P810. Now referred to as the P900. One, two, three, four. Looks like the camera will be just VGA 640x420 instead of the rumored 1.3 megapixels.
Frankly, this doesn't bother me. I don't want super high res in my phone cam until the camera itself can spit out thumbnails (why can't they already?) In other words, I'd love to shoot with x million pixels resolution, and store those images in the phone (to download to computer next time I sync,) but I need the phone to make a smaller version (100K or so) that I can send it right away over the slow mobile network (either to a server or to another phone.) I hate to think how long it would take to send a 1.3 MB file over the mobile network I use now.
No word on when this phone will ship (maybe not too soon, seeing as the P800 is still not completely available.)
In other P800 family news, here's a link to an SSH client. The server is presently slashdotted, but when it comes back to life I want to check this out. SSH is a protocol that allows you to log into a unix computer from a remote location using encryption. This is the reason I can have my server in California while I'm in NYC. It's the king of all geek protocols. So, of course, something I really want on my mobile.
And here is a company that has an SSH client for the Blackberry, and a beta of one for the Nokia 3650 & 6800.
I hate how hard they make it for 3rd parties to write software for the SideKick. This seems to be mainly T-Mobile's fault.
Another fun one from gizmodo: Panasonic wireless (WiFi) webcams. Each unit has a built in web server, so you can access the camera from anywhere on your network, or depending on your firewall, from anywhere on the internet. And it has remote control pan and tilt (nice!).
This has been a while in coming, but it looks like Brighthand is set to finally release their SDIO WiFi card. (SDIO is an expansion slot format used in small mobile devices - usually PDAs - that is smaller than the otherwise similar PC Card slots.) This means most PDAs can now be WiFi equipped. August 1 is the release date, and December should see the follow on card that adds 256 megs of RAM to the deal. No word yet on power consumption which at present represents something of a hurdle for these small devices.
MIT Roofnet is an experimental rooftop wireless network testbed for the Grid Ad-Hoc Networking Project in development at MIT LCS's Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group. The goal of our project is to build a production-quality self-organizing network capable of providing Internet service while researching scalable routing protocols.This stuff is so cool. I think my neighborhood would be a good test bed as well. When the software gets to a point where a minor geek like me can deal with it I will see what can be done.
Finally a good (at least for the Mac) p2p client: Poisoned. Connects to FastTrack, OpenFT, and Gnutella. It's only a 0.3 release, but works great.
Left my phone in a cab. Shit. Having one of those days. Sorry if anyone is trying to reach me. Use email here if possible.
Sony-Ericsson P800 vs. Danger HipTop. I too thought the P800 was much bigger. It's actually a very nice size. Seems like a great device, but I'm stubbornly attached to the thumb keyboard for text entry so this one is out for me. But as a straight phone (and PDA, and camera, and web browser, and email reader) the P800 is the best you can do right now. Very cool device.
The P800 vs. Treo 600 will be a better fight. Although by the time the Treo hits the P800 may be replaced by the slightly sexier (or so it seems) P810. So no matter what you buy you'll be out of date quickly. But that's a good thing.
Well it looks like Sony has almost done it. Here is some more info on the new Clie PEG-UX50. If this thing was a phone (with GPRS data I guess) we would have a winner. Without the phone link it's really no use to me, but I can still be in awe of this device. Bluetooth and 802.11b for wireless connectivity. Memorystick Pro (I'd rather have it be Compact Flash, of course, but this is Sony, and at least the pro slots can take 1 Gig memory sticks.) Touchscreen with Graffiti handwriting recognition, plus a QWERTY thumb board. And a built in camera. All in that slick little package.
The problem for me is that it wouldn't be connected to the internet all the time. I want the dream device to have GRPS like my Hiptop (basically data over existing cell phone networks,) but to only sign into that network if there isn't an 802.11b network in range. So if you are in Bryant Park and there is free 802.11b WiFi your device will use that. And if not it will sign onto the cell network (where you'll have to pay somehow for your minutes, but the coverage areas are orders of magnitude bigger.) Maybe someday WiFi hotspots will be omnipresent enough so that we don't need the telephone companies at all, but for now (and probably forever) we need to be able to roam seamlessly between these networks.
It's hard to figure out what Sony is doing. Their cellphone business is all tied up with Ericsson in a way that makes you wonder if the Clie PDAs (from a different part of the sprawling Sony empire) can ever cross over and absorb those features. It will be a shame if they don't because this device is otherwise perfect.