...more recent posts
Here's a mini review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-C750 PDA. It has the same clamshell with a swivel screen as the Sony Clie PEG UX-50, making it a sort of super sub micro laptop. The Sharp even moreso than the Sony, since it runs linux and has a somewhat improbable 640 x 480 resolution screen (text must be tiny.)
So while it's not a phone, has no built in wireless networking (although it does have expansion slots, so you could add this,) and doesn't even look that great (IMHO,) it is still an interesting device. As phones and PDAs converge I think this sort of PDA-ish form factor will win out. Sony and Sharp have both nailed it, I think, with this basic design (although Sony's is much more stylish I think.)
And the fact that it runs linux means that you - or other knowledgeable third parties - can get into it's guts in order to add functionality. This is so big I cannot stress it enough. The device must run on open (not necessarily free) standard software accessible to the device owner. So go Sharp, go. They win big over the Sony in this department.
Now if someone could just make a combo GSM / WiFi expansion card we could add phone service and wireless to any of these PDA like devices. But without really knowing anything about it, I'm guessing this is not presently possible.
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.