Category Archives: Mobile

My views on mobile technologies and software.

A Day in the Life of an Internet Tablet

Posted on by

1

While I’m writing this in Notes application instead of Blogger, I’m impressed with my new Internet Tablet. Not as powerful when not tethered to the seamy underbelly of the Internet, the N810 performs well as a handheld computing device. Even the thumb keyboard is quite comfortable. The device can seem a bit heavy at times. But I prefer a heavier sturdy construction, than a lighter flimsier one.

Ok it is not a phone. But that’s a good thing: I don’t have to pay for data charges, etc. That said, relying on open wireless LANs is not best way to go. I’ve seen interesting networking combinations involving USB-OTG cable, which I’d like to explore.

I like the fact that maemo (the operating system stack running the Internet Tablets) lets you run a large number of applications. I will report on some of them, once I upgrade to the latest version of Internet OS2008 later on tonight.

Waiting for Maemo

Posted on by

Last Thursday I got the chance to play with a Nokia N810 at the TigerDirect store in Mississauga. A pretty nifty device, but the price was not so nifty. So I ordered one via the Web. And hopefully it’ll arrive sometime today. Yay!

My initial review (after using for a few minutes) is that the N810 is a nice little device. I love the fact that I can carry an Internet-capable device in my pocket, without paying gigantic data transfer. Definitely useful to keep connected with people. And having a computing device that I don’t have to share is very useful.

A few negative points: the N810 loads slower than I thought. Faster than most Linux workstations, but slower than my Palm Pilot Tungsten E. The GPS doesn’t lock quickly. And tablet comes with a plastic stylus, instead of a nice rugged metal, rubber tipped stylus.

Getting to run on a Linux environment, means I’m familiar with the applications. Screen resolution is decent enough to handle the majority of sites. The slide-out keyboard is way more convenient than the infrared wireless one I have to tug along with my Palm. And there are a lot of apps already ported to it.

Overall I looking to playing on, working with and developing for the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. I can hardly wait to get mine. 🙂

Open Source Palm-Desktop Groupware

Posted on by

I recently discovered the comfort of using groupware, to organize all my communication and email needs. I never used a groupware application before, so maybe I am just realizing the potential of such software. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I commute to university the majority of the time. This means 3-4 hours on the bus, with little to do. Last semester I began intensively using that time to finish homework, edit papers and so on. One of the things I wanted to do is to write emails on my Palm Tungsten E, and send them later. The Palm came with a Windows-only mail client, VersaMail. Not helpful when your main desktop being KDE running on Ubuntu Linux (Kubuntu 6.10). Fortunately that is where Kontact comes in.

Kontact: KDE’s Groupware Offering
Kontact acts as an all-purpose groupware program. I will not discuss the virtues of this program here. It is a serious contender for replacing Microsoft’s Outlook or Novell’s GroupWare. You should check it out yourself. Kontact comes with KPilot, a great program for basic syncing of a Palm. Unfortunately Kubuntu’s version KPilot had bug in it. Fortunately I found a deb from http://ubuntu.lnix.net/edgy/updates/kdepim-proposed/ that fixed my problem.

Migration
First, I needed to migrate my mail and contacts from Mozilla Thunderbird to Kontact. I needed to export my address book in Mozilla to LDIF. Kontact easily imported this. Kontact also comes with a neat feature for importing emails from other clients. A simple wizard, and my Thunderbird emails resided now in Kontact. An hour later of organization, I readied myself for Palm integration.

Palm syncing on Linux can be a chore. Fortunately, Ubuntu 6.10 comes with easy PDA syncing for most Palm PDAs. To my horror, KPilot actually removed contacts from my Palm. After I installed the updated deb for KPilot, this problem also disappeared. Now I all I need was the Palm’s email program integrating with KPilot.

VersaMail versus GNUGetMail
My Tungsten E came with an email client called VersaMail. Unfortunately KPilot’s email plug-in does not use the MultiMail format which VersaMail uses. Not wanting to buy an email client, I searched for a free solution. I stumbled upon gnuGetMail. gnuGetMail is a simple, open source email client and uses the older single account Palm mail format. All I really needed was something to write emails for later sending. gnuGetMail does both sending and receiving of emails.

I recommend both Kontact and gnuGetMail to anyone considering Palm based emailing.

Kontacts, Palms & Course Juggling

Posted on by

Greetings again!

6 days into a brand new year 2007, and I am starting to feel the ominous feeling of stress. Without getting into details, things are not working out as planned, backup plans seem to backfire and a tense atmosphere has enveloped my personal life. Fortunately I have 359 days left to make up.

School started again on Friday. The last semester started and I am not sure which courses I want to undertake. I do have a less then promising backup plan. I hoped on continuing my journalism training, but getting into the course proves problematic. Oh well.

Today, unproductive in the realm of homework and past work, I dedicated to integrating my Palm into my lifestyle. First I migrated to using the Kontact groupware, as KMail and family works better with KPilot better than Mozilla Thunderbird. The migration proved not too difficult. The problem I keep running into is syncing the desktop to PDA correctly. The PDA keeps on loosing contacts, and not updating the desktop’s todo list. Not to mention that the Palm’s VersaMail client refuses to talk to anyone except itself. My goal for the ending minutes of day is to force both Kontact and the Palm to talk to each other.

Confusion (and angst) are the order of the day.

Update for February 26, 2006

Posted on by

Good morning. The sun is shining brightly, its brilliance reflected off the snow. The sky is a nice light blue gradient, and is cloudless. I’m in a pretty good mood as well.

Actually I don’t have too much time to write this, as the time to leave to church is approaching rapidly. So will be concise. Today will hopefully be a productive day, in terms of actual studying and work.

Yesterday I managed to setup an Apache, Subversion, & mySQL server. I also went out of my way to secure the machine, and to give it a dynamic DNS. So whenever its on, so is my website now. 😉 No, really have not done to much work on it. But here it is anyways: Celestia. I am pretty happy in the fact that I just need to setup three more things: my printer, my Palm and configure that pesky SQL server.

Have to run now.

One More Turn To Take

Posted on by

The purplish sand dunes flashed by as he accelerated his blue mlaren down the course. The magenta sky and the orange-yellow gas giant hung above him in a surreal but serene manner. One more sharp turn, he thought quietly to himself. The race had been a hard one, but now only a few more minutes and it would all be over. And he would emerge victorious.

These last few days have been nerve-racking. My lecture notes and preparation for the assignments pile up, while I continue on struggling with the mere set-up of my box. I have installed everything that I need and that I want. I have fought with getting my Palm, which now is safely and soundly synced with my computer. The software suspend and the splashscreen work partially. Fortunately that is nothing I have to worry about in the near future. Getting a virtual machine running was a hassle. Eventually it worked but not without a lot of arm twisting. It does like to sync with my laptop‘s native resolution, but I think that is because of the DGA mode. All my programs have been acting funny since I started that up. Again, in windowed mode everything works swell. So that is fine for this semester. As soon as the semester ends, the virtual machine is coming off my computer, along with Visual Studio .Net, Windows XP, and SQL Server.

Today alone, I got my web server up and running. The rest of the day was spent playing around with iptables, and so now I have a decent firewall running on my machine. Decent as in it literally chokes nmap when it attempts to scan for ports from the inside. I should try from my brother’s computer, but that would take too long and I am short on time. Heck, I did not go kayaking today even thought my parents insisted. This evening I tried to PHP running in safe mode, which it did. Unfortunately do to permissions issues, things behaved strangely. Silly me. All that is left is to play a second with mySQL for a few minutes and then set up my local Subversion repository. Then I am done.

I need a break, like a walk. I want to go but I think I might have to even stay up a bit, so I will refrain from leaving until EVERYTHING is set up. Then I will go for a walk.

Paper Blogs in the Morning’s Gloom

Posted on by

Its raining again. This is not at all unwelcome or surprising. Most people despise rainy days. I don’t. The gray cloudy skies above enhance the colors of the land below by throwing them against a canvas of clouds. Sure I get headaches sometimes with the changing pressure. Still a little bit of pain and discomfort keep you in touch with the reality of living in a shattered Post-Deluvian world. Besides I love the sight of rain. The beads of clear water clinging to the windows. The fog-like spray thrown up by passing vehicles. Just the silver curtain of rain bombarding the dry, crackled clay ground is a relaxing sight.

I had to start early today, as this time I will be commuting by bus. Not fun but necessary. I was surprised to find out that there is an express bus for Hurontario street. This discovery should cut my travel time significantly. Normally Rudy would give me a ride. Sigh… his dropping out courses has left me stranded with taking buses. The carpooling system is not being helpful either. I want a car. Naturally that is not going to happen anytime soon.

These past few days have been busy ones. Yesterday, I did a monumental backup and now I am rebuilding my Gentoo box. It works mostly except for the framebuffer display and the mouse under X. It will take time to get it in production mode. Also my Palm has been left stranded without a Windows box, and I deleted the evil Documents2Go program. Oh well.

I have a fair bit to do before I set foot in school, so I will leave of here.

Out of the Abyss and into the Clouds Again

Posted on by

Hello, hello again, dear reader and fellow blog-journeyer. Finally had the heart to write an entry again. The last few days since the last entry and this one, I had a bout of depression arising from an all time low self-esteem and self-worth. Today, when I got up to work today I thought today would be the same old low. But no. I got up late, but not tired and with a full reserve of energy. Didn’t really need my customary early morning French Vanilla coffee. But hey, it is customary.

Work itself was exasperating as always. My machine ran OK except for one place where the material would fold up… and everything would die in the messiest way. The lead hand, Malkait tried to fix it. But the machine had its day, and the lead hand got on my nerves. Again. He is a really nice guy, but an utter fool and has the perpetual illusion that his way is always right. I play along since I really don’t care about work, and am not in the mood to stir up problems. Beside I got to finish earlier since I ran out of material. Hey! Who’s your daddy now, T-3?

I have only three more days left of work. Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday and then… freedom 22!!! Now that in itself isn’t would seemed to end the vicious cycle of defeatism. I started to write up that novel I was talking about. I don’t have a title for it yet, but who cares when I actually have a plot, characters and everything else falling into place. This is really exciting, and maybe I will add a bit more content later on Today after I get ready for work tomorrow.

Another success was that my Dad fixed my Palm yesterday, so today I had my precious music. Yay! To top it all off, I actually can keep up my hackey-sack for more than four hits. In fact, I feel like I have been better today, than ever. Now only exhaustion is holding me back, as I got a hold on the technique and the rhythm of the game. I am exhilarated by all of this. I hope tomorrow will be just as good as today. (Maybe I should ask out Kat today, since today seems like my lucky day. Or am I just pushing things again?)

Last Work Night Week

Posted on by

Yay!!! My last week of nights begins today. Wow this summer did go by fairly fast. And unproductively (on the part of my pet projects). But that is about to change.

As for house work today: washed dishes, dug a frozen dinner out of the freezer, and cut the hedge (really proud of that last one). Anyways, I also finished up all the blogs that I missed out on. So go ahead and read through the archive. If you dare.

I plan to get some justCheckers, Insomia, Palm programming and writing work done. But I don’t know in which order. I guess I will work on that sci-fi novel I started recently, xNihlo. It is a mix of my short stories, and a story of a Terran inflitration officer on board one of the deep sea trinit-ships looking for an Neurocis saboteur at work. The whole story will takes place in the far future after the Great Soliation (whats that you say?) in the strange sea world inbetween the ice sheet and unforgiving depths of an ice giant, Trinik Prime. (Got your attention yet? Good!)