Friday, October 29, 2004

Need a Backup

I've been having a number of hard-resets on my Sony handheld recently. Fortunately I haven't lost any important data, as I've been backing up my whole handheld every couple of days with the MSBackup software which came with the Clie, as well as copying files to the Memory Stick. So far I've been lucky, but sooner or later I'll forget to do a backup. Backups done with MSBackup have to be manually started, so a Backup Utility with scheduling capabilities would be ideal.

The first one I tried (or second, if you count FlyBackup, which really wasn't a contender), was BackupMan. This simple $10 software does scheduled backups, but lacks advanced options like selecting files to exclude, compression and encryption. Despite that, it works well.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Backup doesn't fly

While I was looking on FlyZip's website yesterday I came across FlyBackup.
Aha, backup utility with compression and encryption for $10. I really need a backup program which has scheduling capabilities, let me try it.
The first backup didn't complete, possibly because TealLock interrupted it, and a second backup ran for 2 minutes alternating between displaying either 17 minutes or 14 minutes to go. (It DOES compress though!)

Several minutes later, with 9 minutes to go the stupid program ran out of space on the card (there was only 6MB left on the SD Card). Why couldn't it have told me beforehand?
Maybe the simpler BackupMan will be better.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Fly "Zip"

The name sounded intriguing, so I'm trying FlyZip on my handheld. This little Palm Utility "Zips" programs in memory to save RAM. It can also "Zip" programs to a Memory Card & create a shortcut to run the "zipped" program, like PowerRun. I use Zip in quotes because the format is not compatible with programs like WinZip. For that you need a program like Resco Explorer or LightNzip.

FlyZip has some really cool animation, the first when it starts up and the second when it "Zips" or "Unzips" an application:



If I didn't already have JackFlash and Resco Explorer I would have serious considered buying this utility.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Treo 650 smartphone is here!

Well, officially anyway.

The differences between the Treo 650 and the Treo 600 are:

Bluetooth wireless technology.

320x320 pixel screen

Built-in MP3 player.

Removable battery.

Nonvolatile memory (Like the Tungsten T5).

Camera now captures video too.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Big download

Finally managed to download Knoppix Linux, which is a bootable Linux. I had tried a few months back, but given up. After the second FTP site said it would take 22 hours I almost gave up again. I decided to try Bit Torrent, which is a P2P download method (see Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide) requiring Bit Torrent software on the local machine. I started the download and left it to run all night. It took just under 7 hours for the 700MB ISO Image, but it worked. One advantage of broadband is not having to worry about the line dropping, although I've downloaded a 700MB ISO Image in less than 20 minutes. I had actually downloaded 5 CD images of varying sizes in a couple of hours earlier the same day.

Oh, and Knoppix Linux - it looks cool!

Thursday, October 21, 2004

First Sony, now Sharp, this sucks!

FresnoBee.com: Technology: Sharp to stop selling PDA in U.S.

The Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 was on my shortlist of PDAs when I was hunting for a PDA last year. Although it's Linux based, it can run the Palm OS Emulator, and has a slide out keyboard.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Channel..I mean Web..surfing

I've discovered a new way to surf the Web.
StumbleUpon is a downloadable toolbar which works with most (Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox) Browsers and on a number of Operating Systems. Basically, once you've downloaded and installed the toolbar, you choose topics which you are interested in (the more the better). Then you just click the "Stumble" button on your browser to begin channel surfing - give a "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" to the websites you like or dislike, and surf on. Really great fun.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Gimme space

What's happened to the extra space promised by Hotmail?
In June there were reports all around like this one in USA Today in June: Hotmail and Yahoo to offer more email storage space and another at CNET Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage

Yahoo increased its space within days of the announcement. So did a number of other free web-based email providers like Myway.com.

So Microsoft, where's the increase in Hotmail space?

YAIEB!

Yikes!, Another Internet Explorer Bug

[Secunia - Advisories - Microsoft Internet Explorer Disclosure of Sensitive XML Information]

Monday, October 04, 2004

What, no Tungsten T4?

The new Palm Tungsten T5 PDA is here. With 256MB of flash memory (215MB available, of which 160MB is an internal flash drive), 416MHz Intel XScale processor, stereo headphone jack, Bluetooth but no Wi-Fi, and NO slider!

Saturday, October 02, 2004

What's in a name

I was curious about the multiple name changes for "the browser now called Firefox".

First, it was Phoenix.
Then, it was Mozilla Firebird.
Now it's Mozilla Firefox

According to Geek.com, the Mozilla Foundation had to change the name the first time because the name Phoenix was already trademarked. The second change has come in the wake of unhappy words from the Open Source Firebird relational database development project.

Mozilla's FAQ about the name Firefox

Friday, October 01, 2004

Found PrefBar

Well, I found a version of the Firefox extension "PrefBar" which works with Firefox 1.0 Preview version for download at www.extensionsmirror.nl