Mobloggin'

[jazzfish]

I've acquired aDana. It's a laptop that runs PalmOS, or alternately a Palm with a good keyboard and wide screen. Useful for writing on the go. I expect I'll be able to use my 'vacation' over Thanksgiving productively now.

So far I'm quite happy with it. I like the keyboard better than any laptop keyboard I've ever used, and I'm slowly getting used to PalmOS. [Never, ever closing applications is kind of weirding me out.] The web browser that comes with Dana is substandard but functional; the email client looks /very/ good at first glance. The LJ client [hblogger] is okay but I miss Semagic's coolness, alt-I and alt-B and alt-shift-U and preview post. [Also, hblogger isn't wide-screen enabled, which is very sad.]

So, um, yeah. Any thoughts on must-have Palm software would certainly be appreciated.

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Comments

[mneme]

The Palm doesn't actually "never ever close" applications.

Instead, it automatically closes applications when you leave them, freezing their data into a database, and they auto-unfreeze when you enter them again (you see this much more obviously with applications that have to freeze a lot of data when you leave them, and end up hanging onto the processor for a while before they let it go, and from badly written apps that don't always, or ever save their data when you leave).

One thing that annoys me about the architecture is that it doesn't really have multitasking aside from the bad, symmetric type, so palmphones don't get always-on email or AIM except via a hack or two. In theory, Cobalt will fix this, but I haven't heard anything about a machine with it hitting the streets, which is why, at least for now, I've jumped ship to Zaurus-land.
(admitedly, for a palmtop, the Zaurus 6000 has one of the -worst- built-in keyboards I've ever seen; not as bad as some of the add-on ones for the palm, but...it doesn't have every key (no | is really annoying in Linux; so is no `), it doesn't light up, doesn't have raised dots or the j and f (so it's pretty much unusable in the dark, and this from a habitual touch typist), and doesn't have a modal shift, for some lame-ass reason. I'm hoping that about half these physical problems can be dealt with by open-zaurus when it's SL-6000 safe, but we'll see. (and, of course, one can get add-on keyboards, but I'm not sure what works and what doesn't).

[rbandrews]

That's odd. The Zaurus 5500 had a | key, as well as backquote. And a modal shift.
The | may not have been labeled (it's been a while since I've used my Zaurus regularly; I have an iBook now) but it was there. Fn-space maybe?

[mneme]

Oh, wow.

Thank you!

Yes, the 6000 has an unmarked | at shift-space,
and an unmarked ` at control-space. (no actual control-space, though, which is annoying for Emacs users).

Doesn't mean my other complaints aren't valid, but that's a good thing.

Palm software

[jonny-law.livejournal.com]

You might want to visit the forums at Brighthand (http://www.brighthand.com/). It's a bit much at first, but it's my standard PDA news site. "Essential Palm Software" is a recurring theme there.

Free software:

Avantgo (http://www.avantgo.com/frontdoor/index.html). It's like multiple newspapers in my pocket, plus you can save Mapquest driving directions (but not the map).

EasyCalc (http://easycalc.sourceforge.net/) is an excellent graphing/scientific calculator, but I don't know if that's useful for you.

TuSSH (http://www.tussh.com/) is the telnet app I use, if you need to do any SSHing.

Pilot Install (http://envicon.de/e/pinstall/pinstall.html) is for the sync computer, rather than the Palm. It'll hijack the sync function so that it only installs programs instead of doing the full data sync. Useful if you want to try out a bunch of different software. Don't put the exe in your Palm directory; that will cause it not to work.

I prefer FileZ (http://www.nosleep.net/) for mucking about in my Palm, since it has no native file browser. Also useful if you don't want to buy a launcher shell (like ZLauncher) but want to manipulate files on a memory card.

Commercial software/Shareware:

I have great affection for Mapopolis (http://www.mapopolis.com/), but I have a fast color Palm. Also, a map usually runs to the multiple megabyte size.

I like Wordsmith, but you've already got word processing software, and you probably aren't carrying this thing around to make short memos so you probably don't need a Memo replacement.

CIC's Jot, if you are actually writing on the screen instead of using the keyboard, is far superior to Graffiti, so much so that Palm bought it for OS 5. It shows your "ink" on the screen, which makes it unbelievably easier to write accurately.

I'm using ZLauncher (http://www.zztechs.com/) as my program launcher, mainly so I can use a pretty wallpaper in my launcher.

I'm using TealMaster to manage hacks and TealLaunch as my only hack. TealLaunch brings up a menu of programs since I don't have enough hard buttons, plus it effectively doubles the hard buttons by mapping programs to both "press" and "hold." Also, it displays date and time on the menu, useful if I don't want to exit what I'm doing to check the time.

Astraware (http://www.astraware.com/) ported most of PopCap's games, but I don't know how fun they are in B/W.