The Syncing Apple

I’m always on the lookout for the best viewer application to see my appointments and tasks. For a long time I was happy with Agendus, but since was casing way too many problems on the Treo with chattermail, I’ve done away with it. I came across the best looking app I’ve seen for the Palm- TMP. Time Manager Pad is a wonderful little app from lil’ Redspider. It’s only $14.95. After installing it gives a very clear and concise view of the days agenda, and has a cool pop-up showing tasks and a calendar view. It supports the new calendar database in the recent Palms.

For something a bit more technical, take a look at the below paper. It’s short (7 pages) and gives a great overview of BGP in ISP networks- why they do it, what it does and how you can have fun with BGP. I’ve often wondered about BGP is really used in these situations, but never came across something as clear as this.

From: Matthew Caesar
Date: March 31, 2005 1:45:28 PM EST
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: BGP routing policies in ISP networks

Hi NANOG,

Jennifer Rexford and I have written an overview of how BGP routing policies are done in ISP networks. The goal was to write a kind of tutorial that students learning about BGP and people new to the field could use to better understand some of the issues involved in setting up a BGP network, peering with neighbors, etc. We aimed to provide a taxonomy of policies commonly used, the goals motivating them, and a high-level overview of how they are implemented at routers, and we tried to discuss some of the complex issues that can arise which make the job of a network operator so challenging.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mccaesar/papers/policies.pdf

We’d really appreciate your comments on the work. We’d also enjoy learning about other types of policies that network operators use, or other issues you’ve run into when implementing policies in your networks.

Thanks,
Matt

Marc at ChatterEmail has posted 1.0.7rc1 which fixes an issue with ChatterEmail and the new firmware update from PalmOne for Sprint phones. This version will be released soon as 1.0.7 stable. I’ve installed it and not had any problems so far.

Marc also seems to have an OTA updater!: http://update.chatteremail.com

I had problems with the Treo650 rebooting all the time- and it’s not a secret why it was doing it. There were two issues. First, accessing the data connection when the phone has low signal strength just reboots it. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do for this, short of some firmware from Palm addressing this issue. But that isn’t so bad. The other aspect is alarms and Email. I use Chatter mail to keep a constant data connection to my email server (via IMAP) so that I have instant email on the Treo. For whatever reason, alarms conflict and confuse Chatter - at least, alarms from 3rd party date managers.
I had Agendus Pro (and later datebook 5) installed since I’ve owned the Treo. For whatever reason, alarms from 3rd party apps make the Treo reboot. When I finally had enough of the reboots I hard-reset the Treo and built it back from scratch (rather than just syncing back all the data and apps). I only installed the apps I absolutely need: Splash ID & Photo, Chatter and TomTom navigator. Since then, my reboots only occur when the signal strenth is very low. Since Chatter starts up automatically, I hardly ever notice the reboots.

Now, regarding resets. As anyone that owns a Palm knows there are two resets: soft and hard. Soft is something you can do for fun. Hard wipes the Palm clean as if you just purchased it. However, the Treo 650 actually has three resets. Since it has NVRAM, the traditional Hard reset doesn’t go all the way. There is the Super Hard Reset, which I wasn’t aware of and neglected to use the first months of my Treoship. If you are interested, here is the link to the PalmOne support page explaining how to access it.

Note: the Power Button on the Treo650 is the RED button (Hangup). I know this is obvious, but I thought it was the GREEN button for some reason, and this won’t work unless you use the RED button.

Finally they made good on their promise. Palm One has the Treo 650 Updater 1.12 for sprint, which will enable Bluetooth DUN. As well as get rid of the annoying delay in dialing the phone. I’m about to take the plunge. Back in January I tried the hack for this, and it totally messed up my Treo. I’m hoping this works better.

Palm One Updater Page.

Now if they will allow the Apple Address book to bind with the Treo 650 via BT, then we will finally get getting somewhere.

Update: the firmware update installed ok. The only issue was that after I re-synced all my PIM data, the data didn’t sync from the backups into the Treo- it wanted to delete all my PIM data on iSync. I fixed this by forcing a reset of the Palm from within iSync itself, then re-synced. I use Missing Sync to sync with my Mac.

Here is a page on how to setup the BT DUN for the mac. I haven’t tried this yet, as DUN won’t share the data connection- you have to quit any other apps that use it, as my Chatter email app does. So I can’t run them both at the same time.