The Syncing Apple

What to use to get your Treo 650 photos onto the Mac? The easiest thing I’ve found is SplashData’s SplashPhoto. I’ve been a staunch user of SplashID for a few years now, and have entrusted all my sensitive data to it, but I haven’t looked to closely at SplashPhoto until recently. I got my Treo 650, took some pictures and soon realized that I wanted to get those photos on my Mac.

SplashPhoto has a really nice Palm interface that is integrated with the built-in camera on the Treos. See the little camera icon at the bottom of the screen? Click that and your in camera mode. It also has a nifty slideshow mode that can play back MP3s.

SplashPhoto also has a great interface on the Mac, and a conduit that will sync your photos back and forth between the devices. SplashPhoto is $30.

For Christmas I got the cool Boxwave DirectSync Bundle for the T650. You get a sync/charge cable, a car adapter, a mains adapter and a battery (4 AA) charging module. This is some cool kit as the cable provides syncing and charging off your USB port. I don’t understand why PalmOne (or Sprint) can’t include a cable like this. They give you a USB sync cable with a weird pass-thru for a separate mains charger…. I guess if you don’t have a computer you need the mains adapter. The AA charger is nice for a last ditch charge: keep it in my bag, and if there is no other means to charge it I can use the batteries in this to charge up the 650. The DirectSync cable also has a nice button on it for HotSyncing.

The one thing the Treo 650 has to do is email. It’s replacing my BlackBerry 7XXX, so it got to do email– very well. The three main functions for a smartphone are: email, phone and schedule (synced with my Mac). The last thing was impossible with the BB. The BB did email very well, it also did the phone thing very well and it sync’ed — with Outlook and our local Exchange Server. Which did me no good on the Mac. The Treo needs to do all that, plus work well as a Palm Device, that is, run the Palm apps that I’ve come to rely on, number one being SplashID.

So for email I’ve spent some time with VersaMail 3 (free with the 650, in ROM), SnapperMail ($60, Enterprise version) and finally ChatterEmail ($25).

I’m only interested in IMAP clients, as I need to be able to download only a portion of the email and am not interested in POP access. I use a Cyrus IMAP server on linux as my mail host.

Without a doubt, Chatter Email is a clear winner for a number of reasons. While it doesn’t have some of the features of SnapperMail (namely the ability to store older messages to a Storage Card) it has some amazing syncing features that keep your email on the Treo exactly the same as on your chosen IMAP Inbox (and other folders if you choose). Of all three, only Chatter tries to sync all the status types from Treo to server and vice versa (read, deleted etc…)

While Chatter needs to add some support to better utilize the higher-rez screen of the 650, it fully supports the 5 Way Nav Pad very well, and moving around the application is easy with one hand. Chatter has a mode called Sync, where it stays connected to the IMAP server all the time, and changes are propagated down to the device nearly instantly. Of course, this sucks the battery dry in a day, as it keeps the data connection to Sprint up and in use all the time. A more realistic mode is QuickSync, where Chatter will connect and sync up in a given time period, say every 30 minutes.

There are two forums (TreoCentral &MyTreo) where the Chatter author provides support, and an email list for annoucements is available at the Chatter website.

If you use Apple’s apps (iCal, Addressbook, Mail.app) like I do, you really get used to the complete integration of these applications with one another. It’s getting Newtonesque. If you also use a Palm, you probably are using iSync to syncing these apps with your Palm’s PIMs. One constant irritant however, is the lack of support of Categories on iSync to Palm synchronization. For some reason Apple engineers can’t sync my Addressbook & iCal categories with those on the Palm. Everthing new on the Palm shows up as Untitled on the iApps, and vice-versa. Not a big deal for me, as I’ve just given up catagorizing my contacts and appointments. However, if you are addicted to catagories, I did see a nice hint on how to make it work somewhat over at Mac OSX Hints.

I talked about waiting to get the newer, much slimmer Playstation Lite back in September, when it was just announced. Unfortunately, Sony hasn’t made very many of them, and they are a real bugger to get. I got lucky once again and stumbled into Best Buy about a week ago to get a brush-less vacuum (don’t ask; think oriental carpet) and what do I see but a BB clerk opening up three cartons of them. Employees from all over the store were running over to get one- that was the first shipment of them they’d had in a month or so. So I grabbed one of course. It’s very intriguing how small this version is, given how big the original one was. This new one has ethernet built in, and came with one controller. I picked up GTA:San Andreas and have been captivated by this game since then. It’s well worth the $200 ($150 for the PS2 and $50 for GTA:SA).

After leaving Sprint earlier this year for a BlackBerry Nextel, I had to give up the hate and go back. You see, I just couldn’t resist the new Treo 650. I’ve had it now for a few days and I love it. It does many things much better than the BB, but some it could improve no. Still no sign of the BlackBerry Connect for Palm. I’ll post more thoughts on the Treo 650 later, but so far it’s everything it claims, and the two big problems most trumpeted about on the ‘net (the memory issues and audio quality) aren’t affecting me at all.

At least as consolation for having to go back to Sprint, I got the phone at the new subscriber cost, which saved me $150. One good thing is that the Treo gets consistent and strong coverage inside my house in West Philly, which is surprising, since both T-Mobile and Nextel are bad (random drops) in the center rooms (my house is long and thin– it’s a twin) of my house. Verizon’s reception has been the best, but they may not have the 650 till mid 2005.

Ted Mann is turning into quite the closet hacker. After a Friday night dinner discussion at Marathon Grille in West Philly (which is more difficult that it sounds, try it once) where Ted and I talked about RSS feeds onto blogs, he’s gone and dug around and got a cool solution up and working. Now, before he tries to shrug this off as just using someone else’s tools, he should step back and realize: that is exactly what a good hacker does. Doing useful things with the least amount of work is good hacker ethics.