Tag: Technology

Reason #243,945 Why I Hate Spam

Lately it feels like I’ve been inundated by spam. Every single e-mail account I have has seen an increase in spam, the blog’s been getting an upswing in trackback and comment spam … I can’t seem to get away from it. I don’t know it it’s just a seasonal thing or if the change is permanent. I’m hoping for the former, because if not then I’m going to have to take some steps to get things back to a manageable level again.

One particularly annoying event that happened in the last 48 hours is that some jerk sent me a virus. Although between Thunderbird and Norton, the virus didn’t infect my computer, the act of cleaning the virus out of my in-box blew away all the rest of the e-mail in my in-box, including a number of communications from friends that I needed to reply to.

In short, spammers suck.

‘Crackberry’ at the Crossroads

Whither the Blackberry?

The maker of the popular BlackBerry e-mail device is facing a critical decision: Pony up a lot of money to settle a long-term patent dispute or inform most of its 3.65 million U.S. subscribers that it may have to shut off service.

I would expect that they’ll find some way to stay in business. After all,

The Department of Justice has asked for a 90-day grace period for federal workers if Research in Motion’s BlackBerry e-mail service is shut down.

Maybe it won’t be RIM, but somebody is going to keep running this business. With demand like that, it’s too attractive to just toss in the trashbin.

Revisiting the Handheld Issue

So while snaking through the security line on the way home from Miami, my knapsack/laptop case got dropped on the floor somewhat hard. Once I’d booted my laptop and discovered that the laptop was OK I promptly forgot all about the incident. I also forgot that my Tungsten C was in the bag and was not as padded as the laptop.

I powered the T|C up today and discovered this:

busted screen

Fortunately the T|C can still sync, so if I choose to pay $125 and go without my TC for about 2 weeks I can once again have a functioning T|C. Right now I’m not convinced it’s worth it.

However, I’m a bit annoyed by the news that, as rumored, Palm is indeed going to be making a Windows Mobile version of the Treo, and that’s affecting my judgment.

My Last Palm PDA?

As the semester has started to pick up steam, my calender has started to fill up with classes and study group meetings, due dates and reminders, as well as regular non-school stuff. Normally I’d be loading all of this into my trusty Tungsten C, but this semester I’ve been strangely reluctant to do so. In fact, for the first time in about a decade, I found myself yearning for a simple paper calender to write my appointments down in.

Then today, I found out that PalmSource, makers of the PalmOS, has been acquired by a Japanese software company. What exactly that means for people who care about PalmOS-based PDAs is unclear right now, but my guess is it doesn’t bode well.

My Tungsten C is a couple of years old now. It’s still chugging along quite nicely, but eventually it will need to be replaced. What’s going to still be on the market when I go to replace it? And will what’s out there meet my needs?

I’ve pretty effectively reduced my dependence on Microsoft products over the past year. Thunderbird has been working well as my e-mail client, and the Palm Desktop as the PC side of my PIM. In addition, Firefox has replaced Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, and iTunes does a fine job of managing my MP3s, although those apps are not going to be affected by my choice of PDA. If I were to buy a Microsoft-based PDA, I’d have to switch back to Outlook, and I never liked Outlook. I used it because I felt that I had to.

Microsoft’s PDA OS has improved significantly from what I saw when I used it back in 2000, but I’m just not very enthusiastic about the idea. Given the choice of getting an MS-based PDA and going back to Outlook, or going to a paper solution, paper looks like a much better choice.

There are other alternatives. By the time my Tungsten finally rolls over and dies, Apple may well have come out with an iPod capable of being an effective PIM as well as a music storage device. Or other new devices may come out that work for me. We’ll have to see.

UPDATE: Amid a bunch of self-congratulatory “I told you so’s”, David Berlind at ZDNet agrees that this is definitely not good news for the PalmOS.

Whither the Treo?

Russell Beattie has some interesting thoughts about the Treo, and by extension, the PalmOS world. His point that although Silicon Valley loves the Treo, it’s statistically nonexistant in the greater universe of portable devices.

It was empirically obvious, most of the people in the room had a Treo, so it must be a really popular platform, right? Wrong. If you’ve got a Treo you might be a cutting edge technologist, but you’re in the backwater of mobility. Trust me. (Actually, don’t trust me, just look at the frigin’ numbers.)

Now, I will admit that here in the U.S. Palm is doing better that its competitors. The numbers I’ve seen show that Palm phones actually outnumber both Symbian and Windows Mobile phones here by a double. But honestly, out of 170 million American subscribers, the total smart phone numbers are still ridiculously low, so I wouldn’t pay much attention to this. The fact is that Palm is a niche player in a niche market (there are more cell phone subscribers in China – 300m – than there are *people* in the U.S.) as time goes by they will increasingly become less relevant as a platform, not the opposite.

I think he’s being a bit too harsh about the potential future of PalmOS and the Treo, but he’s not completely wrong either. Given how much PalmSource is struggling to maintain any kind of relevence in the US consumer market, given the declining number of big-name licencees and the declining number of PalmOS devices available in the market, there’s signifcant reason to worry about the future if you’re a PalmOS aficionado.

And yet — people are passionate about their Treos for a reason. They’re great devices. My Treo 180 died over a year ago and I still miss it. If I could afford a Treo 600, I’d have one. The power of a small, yet dedicated market — especially when key sections of that market are VCs and other players — should not be ignored.

This is Cool

According to the WaPo:

The Smithsonian Institution is entering the highly competitive world of music downloads by offering the Smithsonian Folkways collection of ethnic and traditional music in an online music store.

…

The Web site, www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, will allow searches by artist, geographic location, language, cultural group or instrument. All of the Folkways archives, including photographs, can be downloaded onto a screen. Also in development are scrolling translations of some of the music for use on a personal computer.

I’m looking forward to checking out their offerings.