No more ads in blog posts

I added Google AdSense about a year ago and then switched to the Chitika ad service about a month ago and had the ads throughout these blog posts. I wasn't using the ads to try to make this blog a moneymaker, but just to pay for the hosting fees so I didn't have to take it out of my family budget. I buy new devices only after selling off older devices so I can keep this mobile device addiction under control and not have it impact my family too much. However, I enjoy viewing other blogs that don't have so many ads and thus I have decided not have anymore ads mixed in with my posts. I do have a small Chitika ad over in the sidebar and also added a small PayPal donation button in case anyone wanted to donate any funds to my blog.

I also give people advice and assistance whenever they email me and have been seriously considering putting together a Wiki with all the questions so I don't have to keep answering the same questions and this is on my plate to get done. Please do feel free to send me your mobile questions or requests for help and I will get to them as soon as I can since I am quite enthusiastic for these devices and like to share my knowledge and spread the word about these fun gadgets.

Nokia N90 camera, application, and Bluetooth thoughts

I had some more opportunities to put the Nokia N90 through its paces and have some more thoughts and opinions on this new S60 device. My daughters put together their Christmas gingerbread house and I took photos with the N90, Treo 650, Nokia 7610, and my 3.2 megapixel Pentax Optio 33WR. I plan on putting comparison shots of all four in my Geek.com review, but in the meantime you can check out pics from the N90 on my SplashBlog photo blog. You will see all the pics from November 27th on are from the N90 and are much better quality than the Treo 650 I used for the other pics. Nokia includes their LifeBlog application on the device, but since I already have a SplashBlog photo blog and SplashData has a Series 60 client I decided to stick with a single photo blog site.

I took a photo of a piece of paper with writing on it and surprisingly the N90 outperformed all 4 of the cameras I tested, even my Pentax Optio 3.2 megapixel camera.

I took a couple short videos of the gingerbread decorating and viewed them on my PC using Windows Media Player. The videos are saved as .mp4 files and were pretty decent for a camera phone. While the camera shots are not as nice as a dedicated camera, I don't carry my camera everywhere like I do my phone and with three daughters the ability to capture spontaneous moments is important.

One of the first applications I installed to the N90 was the Opera 8.5 upgrade, which is free for N90 users since Opera is included in the shipping model. Browsing with Opera on the N90 at EDGE speeds is very enjoyable and the display is beautiful. I like the easy switch to full screen by pressing the * key too. The N90 switches to landscape mode when you flip to imaging position, but you can only operate camera functionality when doing this. I would like to see someone come up with a hack that allowed me to surf the web in landscape mode since many sites are formatted in this orientation.

I also loaded up SplashBlog as I mentioned above, along with a couple excellent PDAmill games (Jewel Master and Rising Diamonds), HandDBase database application, OliveTree's BibleReader, and Handmark Pocket Express. All work well with the N90 and I find Pocket Express to be extremely useful. You may find issues with some applications not working quite right on the N90 due to its 352 x 416 pixel display and so far I did find the Zi Technology Qix and EZText need to be updated for this new resolution.

GMail was easy to setup with the default Messaging application and at first I set it up to check email every 15 minutes from 0500 to 2200. I then found that my battery quickly drained with this kind of activity and reset the automatic downloading of emails since email isn't so important that I need to constantly ping it anyways.

I received a pair of Bluetake BT450 Stereo headphones that I need to test with the N90, but I am 99% sure the N90 does not include the A2DP Bluetooth profile at this time so they may not work in stereo mode. I did pair the N90 to my excellent Cardo Scala-500 headset and that works very well. One thing I do like about the Nokia devices I have tested is that connecting to a Bluetooth headset opens the audio gateway so I can indeed listen to audio through the headset, even if it isn't in stereo mode. I loaded a couple of my favorite podcasts on the 64MB RS-MMC card and listened from the N90 to my Scala-500. I liked the way RealPlayer showed the album art on the display and it was quite usable with the directional pad. This is one area where the N90 beats the Treo 650 and I prefer listening to podcasts via a wireless headset. I also need to test it with my Parrot Easydrive BT car kit.

One other nice feature in the N90 with Series 60, 2nd Edition is the main home screen functionality. I have the Active standby feature turned on, which gives me 5 customizable slots for applications. I have shortcuts to Contacts, Opera, Calendar, Bluetooth, and SplashBlog which appear on the home screen and allow me quick access to the apps. Since the N90 runs Series 60 you can also multitask and I can listen to a podcast and surf at the same time.

Uh oh, Nokia is missing a vital feature in the N90

I had issues getting the latest version of the Nokia PC Suite to sync to the N90 on my Fujitsu Tablet PC for some reason and after a couple of system restores I still couldn't get it to work. I decided to sync my Nokia 7610 with the Tablet and that worked fine. I then connected the Nokia N90 via the USB cable and was finally good to go so I synced all my Outlook data onto the device, upgraded Opera to 8.5, and installed SplashBlog. BTW, the N90 has a removable plastic cover for the USB connection that people will probably lose in about 2 seconds and is basically worthless. I never had a connection cover on the 7610 and if I am going to use the USB cable I will leave the cover in the box. You can also sync via Bluetooth, which may be the preferred method with the device.

The N90 supports EDGE and I found surfing speeds to be very good using Opera. I am finding that the signal strength indicator shows a bar or two lower reception than my Treo 650. Granted, the bars on the phone are not a great way to compare RF strength between phones, but the N90 just doesn't seem to have as strong a signal as my Treo 650.

Fingerprints show up all over the silver side pieces on the device and I keep wiping it clean with my shirt or optical cloth. I have take a couple photos so far and one or two appeared kind of foggy for some reason. I plan on taking some comparison shots with the N90, my Pentax camera, Treo 650, and Nokia 7610 to see how the shots compare.

One MAJOR feature I found missing on this phone is vibration. I missed a couple of calls this morning because in my very quite engineering office all phones must be set to vibrate/silent so they don't disturb those around you. Thus, vibration is not just a luxury, but a requirement for me and every phone or smartphone I have tried has had vibration mode. I find it strange that Nokia did not include vibration in the N90 and I personally would not spend such a large amount ($700 unlocked) for a device without vibration.

Nokia N90 S60 camera phone has arrived

I was contacted a couple months ago about a new Nokia PR program starting up where they were going to try to get new Nokia handsets into our hands for review purposes. I was very pleased with this new program because it has always been a bit difficult to get Nokia smartphones to review.

The first smartphone that I just received on Friday is the cool new Nokia N90. The most distinctive feature of the Nokia N90 is its 2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. I reviewed the Nokia 7610 that was one of the first camera phones with a megapixel camera and I was quite pleased with many of the photos taken with that smartphone. So far, I am even more impressed with the 2 megapixel N90 camera with its flash that actually works quite well. The N90 also reminds me of the Sony CLIE devices I loved since it has a unique flip and twist design in switching between a closed, flip open, and imaging mode. The camera is usable in both the closed and imaging modes and Nokia takes advantage of the outside display to help make the device more functional. So far, I have found that the RF signal strength seems to be a bit less than what I say on the Nokia 7610. It is definitely a good sized phone so if a small form factor is what you desire, then I don't think this phone is for you. The camera seems geared to those who find a camera an important feature and I plan on loading up SplashBlog soon to update my photo blog with the N90 photos. As a father of 3 daughters, taking photos on the spur of the moment is actually important to me so this device may help keep me from having to take along my 3.2 megapixel Pentax Optio 33WR along all the time.

The N90 runs Symbian OS 8.1 with the S60 2nd Edition UI. The display is an amazingly clear high resolution (352 x 416 pixels) with support for 262k colors. Fonts and images are crisp and clear. It is a GSM phone with EDGE and UMTS support. I found the EDGE speeds on T-Mobile to scream, but unfortunately cannot test the UMTS functionality. If you do have UMTS then you can use the device for video phone calls and photo/video sharing as well. The Opera browser, QuickOffice suite, Adobe reader, instant messaging client, and more are included on the device.

I'll update you with more results of testing as I try to use just the N90 for the next week or more and will also be putting thoughts on Geek.com.

Geek.com podcast nearing first release

I received the Plantronics DSP 500 headset/microphone unit the day before Thanksgiving and started working on getting my first Geek.com podcast up and running. I found an intro audio clip to use and also made a few test recordings that seem to sound quite good. I just hope there are enough inflections and excitement in my voice to get people to listen to the podcast so I can make it a regular feature of Geek.com and maybe even palmsolo.com. I plan to get this first one recorded this weekend for posting early next week. Joel Evans, the Chief Geek, is coming out here to Seattle in a couple weeks and I would like to get him on a show live with me with future plans to use Skype since he is out in the Boston area.

I minimized my kit today and discovered I didn't bring in any headphones to listen to my podcasts. I then pulled out the pre-development QTEK 9100 I still have around and am listening to podcasts via Bluetooth from the QTEK to my Cardo Scala 500 headset. This is one very cool feature of Windows Mobile that I still haven't found a solution for with the Treo 650.

Trend Micro customer service response ROCKS!

One thing that will get me excited about buying products online is responsive and helpful customer service experiences and I am happy to tell the world about such experiences. In the past I have used McAfee and Norton for my antivirus solutions. McAfee kept giving me a nag screen at the end of my subscription that would not go away until I performed a registry hack. We use Norton at work right now and it is a decent product, but I didn't like the interface that much. This year I tried the Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security application and absolutely LOVED it. They had a unique WiFi detection and monitoring interface and an extremely easy and user friendly control interface. They also have a home security pack for up to 3 computers, which is important in today's world where many families (especially geeky ones like mine) have multiple networked computers. My 2005 subscription is about up so I went to try to find out how I could best buy an upgrade for our home computers.

I was a bit confused by the products on their site and couldn't quickly find a link to the product I desired. I shot an email to the PR contact I worked with before and he quickly responded (within 5 minutes) and then said he was shooting an email to their support staff. Within another 5 minutes, or less, I received an email from their support staff with direct responses to my questions and a link to the upgrade for the software. Wow, now that is customer service. I understand that I may have gotten a bit faster service due to my media influence with Geek.com, but even then I never get responses this fast and am EXTREMELY happy with their antivirus and firewall product. If you are in the hunt for a new antivirus application now that 2005 is about to end, I highly recommend you give Trend Micro's product a try.

Updated ROM on Dell X51v

I just performed the latest ROM update on my Dell Axim X51v and hope is solves some of the minor issues I have been seeing, i.e. no WiFi icon on the Today screen, not seeing external storage cards, mysterious battery drain. I really like the display and hardware of this device and look forward to more stability and Windows Mobile 5.0 support. I also am going to install the latest ActiveSync 4.1 software to see if that fixes syncing issues which sometimes occur on my Tablet PC.

I am also finally going to start loading up the device with applications rather than just putting review software on the device.

I haven't yet received a CD to upgrade the X50v to WM 5.0, but that is fine for now since some applications (PocketMap Navigator for instance) still don't run on Windows Mobile 5.0 and I want to keep using these applications.

Feeling good and some thoughts for today

OK, I am back from praying to the porcelain god and in pretty good shape now. It has been quite a few years since I vomited and I don't want to experience it again for several more years. Thanks to all the readers that sent along their thoughts and prayers, I really appreciate it. And sorry if some of you caught the flu from visiting my blog too :)

I received my Plantronics DSP 500 headset yesterday from Amazon.com so I am now going to start setting up to record the first podcast for Geek.com and/or palmsolo.com. I am really into listening to podcasts on my Treo 650 and hope I sound good enough on the airwaves to create a podcast for the sites I write for. Feel free to send along any tips or advice when it comes to using Audacity for recording podcasts.

I started working with Joel to get a Black Friday Buying Guide up for Geek.com, but when I became sick I was knocked out from really contributing so he had to release this version himself. I encourage you to check out the 2005 Black Friday Buying Guide to see if there is anything you may be interested in picking up this week. I personally don't plan on buying any real tech stuff this holiday season since I just had to put $650 into my truck to replace the fuel pump. Why in the world does Chevy have to put the fuel pumps inside the fuel tanks anyways?

The Xbox 360 is all the rage right now and sold out in most retail locations. I have a regular Xbox and just this last week finally had a chance to start playing Halo 2 that I have owned now for about 5 months. I don't really have much free time to play console games and thus the Xbox 360 is not even on my radar. My girls and I are very happy playing Xbox games like Fuzion Frenzy and Rayman Arena.

Slow blog, out sick

Sorry I haven't been posting to my blog, I have been down and out with the flu and extremely busy with my normal day job working on two salvage cases, both grounded oil carriers. I'll try to post more later today.

No more Mobile magazine

I purchased a subscription to Mobile back in June and enjoyed the magazine and even wrote them to try to conduct reviews for the publication. Yesterday I received a copy of MaximumPC in the mail with a cover letter stating that there was no longer going to be a Mobile magazine and that my subscription would be filled with MaximumPC until my subscription ends. So now I am back to only having Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine delivered in hard copy. I get much more timely news and coverage online, but I still do enjoy magazines related to mobile devices because there are times when it is just nice to have a hard copy to read.

By the way, I have a short quote in the latest Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine for Laridian's PocketBible software that I judged in the 2005 Software Awards. You will also see a couple quotes from me in the Sena Cases advertisement.

Busy with salvage case and no home WiFi

I was quite busy this weekend building an electronic hull model and running some analysis for a barge that struck an object down in the Gulf this weekend and started spilling heavy oil. Check out this Google News link for newstories on the incident.

As I posted last week I also no longer have a wireless router in my house at the moment since I gave all mine away and couldn't find the special ac adapter for my old SMC. I have a new SMC 802.11g router with USB printer server that should be here on Wednesday and should then be back in business. I like to be mobile even in my house and not tied to the desktop PC. I also bought my wife a HP fax/copier/scanner/printer unit this weekend for the same price as the Brother one I bought last week and will be taking the Brother one back. The HP model has MUCH better quality printing and I have been a longtime HP product user and really trust their products.

Happy Veteran's Day!

I served 4 years at the US Coast Guard Academy then 8 years of active duty followed by 1 year of Reserves in the US Coast Guard and I am proud of my service to my country. I went to my daughter's Veteran's Day concert last night and was moved by the performances and tribute to our veterans. Veterans (and active members) of the US Armed Forces are the people that all Americans should appreciate and honor since they are the reason we have the freedoms we currently enjoy. As a veteran myself, I can tell you that each and every one of them makes serious sacrifices and gives up a lot to serve their country and I just wish that more Americans appreciated all their efforts and desire to serve. Go find a veteran today and tell them thanks for everything they have done to make this country better.

DataViz answers the call

I was elated to get an email from Cheryl this morning that informed me Documents To Go Premium 8 with native PDF support was now available. I am downloading and installing it now on my Treo 650 and can't wait to try it out. I did try the PalmPDF beta, but it didn't work with all my files and the functionality doesn't seem to be close to what Docs To Go 8 is advertising. If PDF support is important to you then you should check this out.

Knowing the way Documents To Go is better than the Mobile Office suite, in terms of features, I imagine this native PDF viewer will be better than the free Adobe PDF viewer for Windows Mobile devices. DataViz may want to consider porting their apps to Windows Mobile in the near future.

Did I give away too much?

I'm such an idiot :) I regularly help family and friends with their tech issues and provide free assistance to everyone I know. I have given away and setup friends and family with wireless routers over the last several months and just last night was able to get my wife's aunt's house up and running with WiFi and the router I was actually using myself for the last few months. I then planned to go back to the very first router I bought a few years ago that included a print server, the SMC Barricade 7004AWBR. Since my wife's new fax, printer, scanner has an ethernet port I thought it would be awesome to use the print server on this router. Well, I went to hook everything up and realized that somewhere along the way I lost or gave away the ac adapter that works with this router. I figured, no big deal, we have ac adapters all over the house. Well after trying out all that I could find, about 10 of them, I still haven't found one that works with the router :( I brought the router into work to see if they have any extras and if not then I will be off to Radio Shack at lunch to see if they can set me up.

I am also considering a new 802.11G router with print server and will have to check out alternatives there. I should probably check before I give away too much next time, huh?

UPDATE: I went to Radio Shack and of course this SMC Barricade uses a special power source requiring 5V, 2 amps and Radio Shack doesn't carry any with these specs. I hunted online and found one for about $27 with shipping. Now I would also need a USB to parallel adapter since this is an older SMC with a parallel printer interface and this runs at least $20. So to get this setup I would have to spend $47 and hope it worked. Instead I found this SMC 802.11g router with USB printer server for $52 after rebate and just placed my order. Tom's Hardware had a detailed review on this router and seemed to like it. The Brother multi-function unit I bought my wife has a Brother print server for a whopping $200 so I think the $50 on this new SMC is a good deal.

Check out the Geek.com Labs

Joel put together a new section on Geek.com call the Labs where we will be posting initial thoughts and impressions on gear we have under review. This will serve as a teaser and as a place for very quick reviews on some items that don't really need a fuller review. We also want to get feedback on what readers would like to see reviewed.

2005 Smartphone & Pocket PC Award winners announced

I just wanted to let you all know that the 2005 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Software Award winners were announced over the weekend and you can go check out the awards site to see if you favorite products made the grade. Ilium Software had 4 winners, PDAmill had multiple winners, and a few others that I install on my device regularly won as well. I like to visit the awards site to check out new titles and try out software that I may not have tried before. I cut back quite a bit on how many categories I judged this year since I was quite busy and there were a lot more judges than there were a couple years ago when I went crazy and spent over 100 hours judging software.

New ads on blog, Palm Addict survey

I am sure you noticed the new ads in my blog and just wanted to let you know they are from a new service called Chitika that I am testing out in comparison to the old Google Adsense ones I had up. I can customize these ones a bit more with keywords and I understand they could also work in conjunction with Adsense, but I don't have the time to figure out how to get all that working right now. My only intent with the ads is to hopefully get enough clicks to pay for the hosting services I use and so far in 10 months of using Google Adsense I have just about paid for the year so my plan seems to be working so far.

By the way, if you like my blog feel free to go and vote for it over at the Palm Addict 2005 reader award survey.

Checking out Lost and HTC Muse thoughts

I was chatting with some guys at work yesterday and the conversation moved into TV where they both said Lost was an excellent show. I spend very little time in front of the TV and only watch CSI during the week along with maybe a couple of movies on HBO in high definition. I do absolutely LOVE to watch NFL football in HD on my 27 inch LCD that Showtime helped pay for when they filmed me for the Penn & Teller Show. Anyways, I just put the first season of Lost in my Blockbuster.com movie queue so I should be checking out the first episode next week.

I just submitted a blurb for Geek.com on the rumored HTC Muse device found on the msmobiles site. I personally like the addition of a FM radio and don't understand why there hasn't been one in a Pocket PC or Palm device yet since there are still quite a few of us out there that enjoy listening to the radio. I actually probably listen to more conservative talk stations on AM than anything else and it would be great to see AM added too. The 4GB flash drive on the Muse looks great too and you could definitely do away with your iPod with this device. Battery life would be my only concern, but then again you could always have a spare to pop in.

Used over 85MB of data last month on my mobile devices

My wireless data usage went up significantly last month and I attribute this to using the HTC Wizard and Treo 650 extensively with the EDGE data speeds. I generally see about 40MB of usage and this last month I used just over 85MB of data. Thankfully, I have the $20 unlimited T-Mobile data plan and so far T-Mobile has not increased the rates for EDGE use. I don't know if they will change this since even faster UMTS and HSDPA networks will be rolling out soon from Cingular.

My review photo mentioned in a recent podcast

I have been using my Treo 650 with the cool iTunes utility to listen to podcasts lately. While I don't generally agree with Dave Ciccone's unparalleled fawning over HP's mobile devices, he does create some good podcasts. I listened to Podcast 39 yesterday where they interviewed Kristen Pribble from OtterBox and they mentioned the photo of some guy who put a trailer on an OtterBox case. Well that guy was me as you can see in my review of the OtterBox 1900 case. I thought that was pretty funny that the photo was mentioned in the podcast.

I am still seriously considering a Geek.com podcast with some video reviews, but just have to find the time to get it together and now that soccer season is wrapping up I may find some more time. Then again, my day job is getting VERY busy and will require lots of travel in the next 4-6 months too.

Still loving the Treo 650

I have now been using the Treo 650 exclusively for just over a week and haven't even touched another mobile device. I get such a good signal at home that I even use it for quick checking of email and sites with T-Mobile's EDGE network and find that WiFi on a mobile device is more of a convenience for me than a necessity. As faster wireless data networks roll out then the desire for WiFi on a mobile device decreases even further for myself.

I am now trying to crank on some reviews and put together our annual Geek.com Holiday Buying Guide. Feel free to email or post comments with products you think should be in the guide.