Lil Red Spider- Time Message Pad (TMP)--

A New version of TMP with lots of new enhancments is out, some are Treo650 specific.

And speaking of OTA PIM and email suites, I've recently been using Zimbra as my primary email server, after deploying the free version on my own linux server. They promise syncing to the Treo soon (in the coming months) for the paid version, which would make it very compelling. Their web-based 100% ajaxified client is impressive and has replaced Thunderbird for me.

And, even further afield, the SE M600 Phone looks very interesting. The news I've read about it mentions that it may have Blackberry Connect.

Matthew Mastracci has booted a Linux kernel on his Treo. His site has the current status, and he has setup a Treo650 page on the Handhelds.org Wiki site.

My Treo 650 (from Sprint) has been working fine for me. The only real issue I have is the Sprint Service in West Philadelphia. I want to use it as my primary phone (and do, and just put up with the missed calls), but there are still issues of service coverage while inside my house. These super thick brick walls are just not nice to the Sprint signals. Other than that ChatterEmail has been superb, and I use it most of the day to keep me on top of my email, when I'm not in front of a computer. In that respect the Treo has been near flawless. I have no plans to flash Linux onto it, but I can see how it could become very interesting on the 650: with the keyboard, built in connectivity and a decently rezed screen.

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.

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

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.

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.

• Agendus 9.03
• ChatterEmail 1.0.3.1
• TomTom 2004 [Support for T650]
• Hand/RSS is now QuickNews

So Sprint has a big problem with replacement phones... namely, their replacement service sucks. You can spend $450 on a brand new Treo 650 and if it breaks the next day, you get a replacement Refurbed phone... not a new one. Not to mention that you wait about 2 days (unless you are willing to do the leg work yourself). And there is no way to forward a Sprint number except from the phone itself! (If you have use of your cell phone buttons, its *72) But all that is another story, which I'll tell soon. Others have Sprint horror stories...

Now I know why people with SIM cards laugh at all the idiots that bought into the bullshit of CDMA non-sim phones. You are screwed if your phone is kaput. I came this close to walking over to the Cingular store and getting a Treo 650 with a SIM... It was only the unexpected intervention of a Sprint Store Manager that treated me like a human, instead of a annoying customer that saved my account at Sprint.

Meanwhile, anyone that has a 650 knows about the key-guard. Any button that turns on the Treo does so only for a few moments, unless you press the big button in the middle of the nav group. So what happens when that stops working? You can't do crap with your Treo for one. One day this week that button stopped working. Then all the hardware buttons stopped working. Then they came back, then stopped again. I needed a new phone. I hadn't done anything to it, other than keep it with me and use it. After mucking around with Sprint Tech support, dropping off the phone and finally chasing down a replacement in Philly, I got a refurbed phone. Which, at that point I was very happy to take.

But now I'm worried: is this Treo going to lose its buttons too? Is this a defect with these things, or did I just get an unluckly Treo? I guess I'll know in another month. Meanwhile I suppose I should start researching the Blackberry 71XX on T-Mobile, just in case.

I'm sick of reading about the Tivo Deathwatch... I love my Tivo and I'm not ready to invest the time and energy in Myth TV. Apple will do it right, and they should be flush with cash by now, after making their 40% on all the ipod shuffles they'll sell.

Om Malik discusses how to save Tivo.

There is a whole new website, www.chatteremail.com which is a huge improvement over the old site. This has great forums, so now there is no more hopping around from mytreo and treocentral forums to get the latest skinny on Chatter.

It's now just $32, which is a steal compared to some other more bloated packages out there....

The coolest thing you can do with Chatter is read an email, realize you need to contact the sender, see that their email sig has a phone number, double tap on the phone number and have the Treo dial the number. It's Newtonesque.

PalmSource Mail for BlackBerry Connect Overview

PalmSource Mail for BlackBerry Connect is the standard email client for Palm OS Garnet to connect to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server™ or BlackBerry Internet Email Service™*. The mail client provides end-to-end secure access to corporate mail servers and seamlessly integrates with existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server installations.

This looks very interesting. (Less so I should say, since I've found ChatterEmail and Chatter has gone 1.0.) However, reading more about this I see a strange thing in the suppport details: it's only going to work on GPRS networks? What? So Blackberry Connect is only going to work with the GSM Treo's- like on Cingular? I just got my 650 from Sprint, and Verizon would be my second choice. How can this only work on GPRS?