Hello LifeDrive, goodbye T3

PalmOne's LifeDrive mobile manager has officially been released. Noticeably missing from the Tungsten Series section of the PalmOne online store is the Tungsten T3 - I would have thought that the LifeDrive would have replaced the Tungsten C, especially with WI-Fi support.

Firefox bug fixed

Mozilla has released Firefox version 1.04, which fixes the "Code execution via javascript" bug. Pretty quick fixing!

Firefox bug

Mozilla recommends turning Java off in Firefox until a patch is released for this Zero-Day Bug, according to eWeek.

Yahoo! Mail up to 1GB

Online storage space is increasing in leaps and bounds. I've just noticed that my Yahoo! Mail account is up to 1GB of space. Okay, that's less of an incentive to clear out my Bulk Mail folder....

CNET Admits PDA not Dead!

CNET finally admitted that "The PDA is not dead" in their On-the-Go Weekly newsletter of April 14, 2005 (okay, I know this is old news, but I only got to that piece of email now)

Wireless phone for my land line

Okay, so it's a cordless phone for my land line, not a wireless phone ;)

I've been looking for the ideal cordless phone. This has really turned out to be a challenge.

My requirements were simple:
- It must have an answering machine
- must support multiple handsets
- should not interfere with my home wireless network.

The solution to last point would appear to be a no-brainer - just get a 5.8Ghz phone, since wireless networks run at 2.4Ghz - right? Well, an number of so-called 5.8Ghz phones also run at 2.4GHz. To quote an excerpt from the owner's manual for the AT&T E5865 5.8 GHz Cordless Speakerphone/Answering System:

"RF Frequency Band (Handset to Base) - 2400 MHz ? 2483.5 MHz
RF Frequency Band (Base to Handset) - 5725 MHz ? 5850 MHz"

Um, why do I see 2.4GHz there? I must confess that I would not have picked this up if it wasn't for the excellent Consumer Reports magazine and website.
To quote from Consumer Reports "Cordless phones: Sound distinctions" dated October 2004:
"Some phones are dual-band, which means they transmit between base and handset in one band and receive in another. You can't switch the frequencies. One of those bands might cause an interference problem"

One of the true 5.8GHz phones I came across was the Uniden TRU 8885-2. The only problem with this combo is that it does not have a battery backup. A newer model, the Uniden CLX485, does have battery backup, but is a lot more expensive, and - as yet - unproven.

Cordless phones also seem to be getting closer to cellphones with features like:
- downloadable ringtones
- picture caller id (in color!)
- synchronize phonebook (yes, they have phonebooks!) with Outlook
- handset-to-handset talk
- lighted keypad
- multilingual menus

Other resources which proved useful during my research were:

CNET Product Reviews and the websites of stores like Circuit City, both of which have customer reviews. Manufacturer websites like AT&T and Panasonic are wonderful places where you can download owner's manuals.

Couldn't resist...

Okay, so I wasn't going to review Desktop Search engines, but since I'm trying another one I'll give my views on it...
After uninstalling the Yahoo Desktop beta in disgust, I looked around at the other ones out there. I decided to try Copernic Desktop Search, even though it doesn't index ZIP files. Version 1.5 had just come out of beta, so I installed that one. The machine that I intended to use it on wasn't a fast one (a 500MHz AMD K6), so I was interested to see what it would do. For comparison, I also tried it on a 1.7GHz Pentium 4. Of course the indexing went much faster on the newer machine.
Copernic Desktop Search indexs in the background, just like it's competitors. There are settings to make it pause when you are using the machine and resume when the machine is idle (default is 30 seconds). There are also settings for when to scan folders, contacts, emails, etc. It is easy to pause the indexing, or to see the indexing status.

I must say that I'm impressed with the search engine's user interface. It clean and well thought out. Under the Search box are dropdowns to refine search by file type, size, date and even folder. Okay, so even Windows 2000 and XP have this. It's the options that Copernic gives you for building the search index which are so powerful. There are options to include or exclude folders and file types from the index: C:\Program Files was excluded by default - which makes sense - but you can remove this exclusion. You can add folders to be searched for documents, pictures or music. In the advanced options is where it really gets fun - you can add new file types to index (as text).

The search results features a preview pane, something that Google Desktop Search is missing.

Copernic Desktop Search is staying on my machines (for the moment anyway).

Tungsten E - the sequel

PalmOne has just released the Palm Tungsten E2
Here is the PC Magazine review

So long YDS

Well, after running Yahoo Desktop Search on my new machine for almost a week, I decided to install the latest beta of Yahoo Desktop Search. The support forum for YDS has no search facility (it makes the Yahoo newsgroups look good) so I emailed support to find out if I should uninstall the previous beta first.
No reply, what a surprise!
So I installed the new beta over the old one. It asked for my Yahoo signon so it could index my Yahoo IMs - I don't have any, but the program insisted it wanted a Yahoo userid and password. So I gave it but blocked YDS from connecting to the internet with Norton Firewall when it tried. It came back with an "Invalid userid or password" type message and then it began rebuilding the search index. This was a marathon process - much longer than the first one. When the re-building was finally over I started up the Desktop Search and discovered that they had tweaked the interface for a larger search results pane, so a button had to pressed to show the "Refine Results" section.
All of this aggravated me so much I uninstalled Yahoo Desktop Search completely. Maybe I'll try it again when it's out of beta...

Naked Launch

I decided to uninstall ZLauncher and use the Default Palm Launcher on my Sony NX60.
The default (Standard View) Launcher screen definitely looks naked after ZLauncher.
I also really miss ZLauncher's File Manager.

Google Mail 2Gb!

According to
My Way News: "Google Doubles E-Mail Space"

Well reviewed

With all these reviews of Desktop Search utilities in PC Magazine and Blogs, I've almost been tempted to join in the fun and trying them all and reviewing them. But it's been done. Instead, I'm using the Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta, simply because it's based on a highly recommended commercial product, and can search within ZIP files.
Of course, that doesn't mean that I haven't already downloaded the Copernic Desktop Search for testing on my other machine...

Mozilla Updates

It seemed that I just blinked and there were updates to the Mozilla products:

Firefox 1.02 with several security fixes.

Thunderbird 1.0.2 mail client

The Mozilla Suite version 1.7.6

I must have been sleeping, because I've only just heard that the Mozilla Foundation plans to stop further development of the Mozilla Suite, according to an article in PCWorld, as well as this mozillaZine posting.
Also, the official "Transition Plan" from Mozilla.

1.5 million TEs

That's 1.5 million Palm Tungsten Es.
Among all the verbiage of PalmOne's Financial results is the interesting point that 1.5 million units of the Tungsten E handheld computer have been sold in the 14 months it's been on the market and it has consistently been the best-selling handheld in the United States since its introduction.

Links...

Yesterday I mentioned the Facer and Today launchers without giving the links
Facer Launcher can be found at Pocket Craft.
Today can be found at FreewarePalm (beware - popups)
Of course that's the freeware Today, not to be confused with the shareware TodayPLUS, which is at this Flashy website

Shareware Launchers

For the uninitiated, the idea of a replacment Application Launcher may seem strange, but in the Palm world a good Launcher program can really improve the user interface.
LaunchPlug has some good tips about Launchers, although it is a bit outdated - most of the products it mentions now support PalmOS 5.x.

I've used ZLauncher for quite some time, I initially bought it for the sheer utility - it was about the same price as PowerRUN at that stage (PowerRUN enhances launching programs from a memory card, saving precious RAM on a handheld), and as well as doing what PowerRUN does ZLauncher has a decent File Manager and numerous other features. I can't say that I'm really into Background pictures and customized icons on my Sony handheld, but if I wanted to ZLauncher would allow me to go to town.

Yesterday I tried MegaLauncher 5.5 from Megasoft 2000, just out of curiosity, and I was very impressed, It has an intuitive interface, and I really liked the way the To Do and DateBook items can be displayed. Unfortunately it seems that it uses a lot more RAM than ZLauncher, which is really a pity.

The latest generation of Launchers give the PalmOS a "Windows" interface, like Hi-Launcher (check out their awfully colorful website here) and Win Launcher

Others, like Facer, and Today, emulate the Today screen of PocketPCs

Free Palm software

I tried out some other freeware Palm programs:

DES Journal
According to the program documentation:
"DES Journal is a small PalmOS application that is designed to aid in keeping a journal".
The program stores its journal data in the Datebook, which is a fairly good idea for getting data to the desktop. Other than that, there's not much else to it. I prefer eDiary though, which allows the Journal to be protected with a password.
Of course, IMHO, the best Journal/Diary type program out there is DayNotez. It's not free, but is incredibly versatile.

Maximus
Their description:
"Maximus is a Palm supplement - personal organizer for home and business use. The wide choice of icons, colors, groups, etc. presents only few of the features that will help you better organize and visualize your daily activities."
Hard to nail this one down. It has a very pretty interface, but it seems awfully difficult to enter anything into the program. It stayed on my handheld for a while (because, it's so pretty and colorful) before I finally deleted it.


Pretty Maximus

Well done

I've just been trying out a freeware Launcher for the Palm called iSpin. If for some reason you want your Palm to look like Windows XP, iSpin will do it.
Unfortunately I installed some other freeware programs just afterward, one of which is clashed with iSpin and caused my handheld to crash (Fatal Reset - Soft Reset). Kudos to the developer(s) of iSpin though, as the program detects that it crashed last time it was run and asks if you want to continue. Of course if you say yes it crashes again, but if you say no you get out of what could be a nasty loop-de-loop situation.

Free Clipper

After looking at The Basic to C Translator (BCX) the other day, I was wondering about Harbour - which I had last seen sometime ago.
Harbour is a free software compiler for the xBase superset language often referred to as Clipper (the language that is implemented by the compiler CA-Clipper). Clipper is a one of the myriad of "4GL" (Fourth Generation Language) xBase compilers that grew out of the now defunct Ashton-Tate's dBase III and dBase III plus. Ashton-Tate was bought by Borland in 1990 or 1991 (depending on which source you look at)

Clipper was also the second programming language I was trained to use after mainframe COBOL (Unfortunately I never got to really use it, but that's a different story).
Clipper's main failing was that there was never a Windows version. Richey's Delphi Box has a quote that "Clipper would be the greatest dBASE-Compiler (if it were Win-able..)"
Instead of "Clipper for Windows", CA in all it's wisdom re-designed the language from scratch, calling it "Visual Objects". Now this was a great idea in theory, because with this powerful new Windows Development tool you could do OOP (Object-Orientated Programming). If fact, if I remember correctly, you had to do Object-Orientated Design as well. This was great, but unfortunately Clipper for Windows this wasn't. All DOS-based Clipper programs had to be completely re-written to run on
Windows. This was no good. Now it appears that CA has dumped Visual Objects

Unlike Clipper, Harbour compiles and run on MS-DOS, MS-Windows, OS/2, GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. There is a variant of Harbour called xHarbour (extended Harbour). To confuse things, although xHarbour is an Open Source project, there is also a commercial version of Harbour, called xHarbour Builder.

Can't beat the price

I was looking at some free/freeware programming language compilers on freeprogrammingresources, and came across XBasic which I'd tried but given up on - even though it's a multi-platform Basic.
XBLite, which only runs on Windows looks a bit more promising, but I haven't tried it yet.

One I have tried is BCX, the Freeware Basic to C Translator. I wrote a utility for myself in BCX (you write in Basic, and then in one step the code is translated into C and compiled with a C compiler). At that stage I was too spoiled by Visual Basic's visual design environment, and got frustrated when I needed to create a user interface. So I rewrote the utility in Delphi 3 in less than half the time. (Delphi is similar to Visual Basic except for the language, which is Object Pascal).

The original BCX is available here, and there is a newer "GPL'ed" version on SourceForge, as well as the BCX DevSuite Pro which includes a C compiler and some Form designers.

Of course BCX is free, and Delphi isn't.