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Emulate a Windows Mobile Treo 700wx
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Emulate a Verizon Wireless 700w Smart Phone using Windows Mobile device emulator. As a owner of a 700wx I was especially interested in this writeup from Enumerating. It goes through how to set up a emulated 700w that you can try out software on before adding it to your Treo and possibly being disappointed. There is so much software written out there that is either poorly written or doesn’t support the 240 X 240 screen resolution. This makes it easy to try before you buy without the fear of doing something nasty to your perfectly set up phone.
Have Novels emailed in chunks to you everyday
Can’t catch up on your quest to read a book every once in a while? Try having a chunk of a novel emailed to you every day in easy to swallow pieces. For instance you can have pride and prejudice emailed to you everyday at your specified time in 149 chunks. Of course you control the interval, deciding when you can make time for your literary goals. For busy folks on the run this may broaden your horizons. Try having Tale of Two Cities emailed to your smartphone, or have what ever book you desire where-ever you are. The book selection is decent although for now most are public domain books, however DailyLit is in discussions with new publishing partners.
Check it out
Stream Pandora through flash on a Treo
Minimo, is Firefox’s little brother on Windows Mobile for FREE
The buzz on Windows Mobile is all about Opera and their latest version. However there is yet another option besides Internet Explorer and Opera, it’s Minimo. Thats Mini Mozilla folks and renders like its big brother only smaller. It is still puzzling why they did not name this Firefox for Windows Mobile, however that is basically what Minimo is.
I had had a few issues installing Minimo on my Treo 700wx but after a cold restart (removing battery) it rebooted and was properly configured. Many webpages were rendered not just smaller but easier to read also, which makes sense because you can render a webpage just like its PC cousin but if you cannot read the type it is useless. Rendering seems to be speedy and painless although just like Firefox you have to wait a bit at launch but this is a small price to pay to have a usable browser on my Treo.
Seems to be that Mozilla is trying much harder to capture this market and Minimo may have something worth using. I will be using Minimo as my primary browser for a couple weeks and I will report back as to it’s usability. So far notable coolness is Tabs, Java, RSS, and Widgets.
Beats sending Opera $24! Check it out
Joost, no match for SlingBox
If you listen to the hype coming from Joost you would think they are the first coming of TV on the internet, but the reality is that they are late and ill equipped for what end users want. Each time a new player enters the market we end up being let down by lack of selection or subpar video and this is no different with Joost. How is it that only Slingbox gets this right? After all, people already pay for satellite and cable, why would you settle for less with the content on the PC or Web?
Only YouTube seems to understand that the more unique content you have the better, which is why they are so successful, but why is it that these startups need to reinvent the wheel?
The funny thing is most broadcast TV executives are missing out on a huge demographic. Think about how many people are sitting at work catching the game or their soaps while working or on the road with their PDA or Windows Mobile device with a Slingbox now. These people want to watch the same content just in another place. We are no less addicted to TV we just want our TV now and where-ever we are internet style.
Joost does it’s best to cue up content from multiple providers, but we found the selections severely lacking. This of course is not Joost’s fault but the lack of cooperation from TV Studios probably stemming from a deep seated fear of new technology. They see players like Joost as something that they cannot control and are worried about enabling a possible competitor. Joost also suffers from a client that is both slow and hard for novice users to understand. There needs to be more options for how much screen real estate is taken up with Joost’s player. Compared to Slingbox’s software Joost doesn’t even compare. So why the hype? They simply are cashing in on two words “FREE” and “TV”, I imagine once people play with their impractical software for a while they will look towards alternatives, or write off TV on the internet as a gimmick entirely. This of course would be a shame.
Now there are some real alternatives out there to Slingbox like Orb which allows you to install software on your Windows Media Center equipped PC to place-shift your TV content to your PC. The downside to this is if you do not have a TV tuner or Windows Media Center you are going to shell out money for both and end up paying more than a standard Slingbox. There are also services like TiVoToGo which aim to beam your recorded broadcast to your PC with several limitations due to copy protection.
Update: Also don’t forget Pirate solutions such as TVU
The fact is though, no matter where you get your “internet” TV nothing beats Slingbox right now, because services like Joost are not able to acquire the types of channels and content that you already get through cable or satellite. The only thing we can see that may trump Slingbox in the future would be if your satellite or cable provider’s equipment came with a feature to place-shift, however the regulations governing cable companies make this very unlikely.
Jumping on the smart phone bandwagon
Update: Java for the Treo 700wx can be found at the website below. Just download the cab file (J9 JVM) for free and transfer to your SD card or transfer directly. Double click on the cab file on your phone to install. The Gmail application as well as anything else requiring JAVA will now work.
Check it out
So because there are no really great blogs for a Treo I decided to jump in with Treoblog.com for all of you Treo fans out there. Look for it next month!
