The Portable Geek Gym
Phillip Torrone (pt) is a geek’s geek.
While most of us in the professional geek world play with PDAs, Smartphones, SPOT watches, PCs, Macs and the occasional Linux box, pt truly lives the geek lifestyle. He has multiple robots around his house while most of us are content to have “just” a Roomba robotic vacuum.
Recently, pt supplied us with some information about what he’s calling the “Portable Geek Gym”. This is a lightweight improvement on his “Geek Gym”, which features such items as a treadmill-mounted Tablet PC and XBox. Here’s a picture of the “Portable Geek Gym” and his description of the picture:
here is the portable geek gym. tiny bluetooth gps velcro’d to my shirt, it talks to a pocket pc, which has a video feed to my sunglasses with lcd screen. also attached, a heart rate monitor, a pedometer, all fed to a health watch via rf, and also a spot watch - to check up on the news and instant messages. optional - my phone, which is used to check email via bluetooth and fed to the glasses which is usually playing the gps feed
(maps) or a video based on my location. it’s all really light too - so jogging is still fine.
Sigh. It’s SO hard to keep up with the pt’s of the world! 
Video is available here:
Quicktime MOV file
Windows Media file
MARGI Systems’ Presenter-to-Go SD Now Compatible with Tungsten T3
The good people at MARGI Systems let us know that Presenter-to-Go SD is now fully compatible with the palmOne Tungsten T3 for both presentations and for mirroring the handheld’s screen contents. The mirroring function can be used in both rotated and extended modes.
If you’re a registered Presenter-to-Go customer, you can download the free updated software that supports the new features at www.margi.com.
Fossil Wrist PDA - Dead or Just Late?
Palminfocenter.com reported recently that the Fossil Wrist PDA, basically a PalmOS PDA in a wristwatch, has been cancelled. They apparently will come out with a new, less expensive but more powerful device that will come out in the middle of 2004.
With many electronic devices, it’s not what you bring to market but WHEN you bring something to consumers. In this case, I’m willing to bet that the MSN Direct Smart Watches (also made by Fossil) drove the proverbial stake into the heart of the Fossil Wrist PDA. They’re a device that has a single set of functions that can be easily used with a small 1″ screen, while a lot of us in the PDA biz were wondering how the hell people were going to interface with a PDA with that little real estate. I frankly think Microsoft is heading in the right direction with the Smart Watches and Voice Control for Pocket PC; one of these days, I can envision a Microsoft device that will strap to my wrist, supply me with data like my Smart Watch, but will also act as a voice-controlled Pocket PC.
I think Fossil is definitely moving towards coming out with something in the PalmOS arena later this year - PalmGear.com is still advertising the SDK for developers who are interested in writing software for this new platform.
Ballshooter Announces Blackout for Pocket PC
The folks at Ballshooter.com have sent us info about a fun new arcade game for Pocket PCs - BlackOut!
From their description, “Oops! BlackOut happened! Panic in the City! Now your aim is to restore the power. You don’t have to be an electrician or electrical engineer to play this game, but you need to be a brain-macho, super geek, rocket scientist and Albert Einstein combined. Hey, who said it’s going to be easy?
BlackOut is a tough and challenging arcade game that requires instant decisions and leaves no room for errors.
It’ll be hard to do and you’ll have to be quick. The time allowed for this operation is very limited. Can you handle that? Try now!”
You can download BlackOut for free to try it out, or buy a copy for $14.95 from Ballshooter.com.
SPOT Watch Mods Already
Geek extraordinaire Phillip Torrone never ceases to amaze me - he can take any piece of technology and find new and different ways to use or abuse it. He already has a number of Fossil and Suunto SPOT-based Smart Watches, and has started taking them apart to see what he can do with them. He’s building a standalone SPOT desk clock out the parts from one Suunto N3, and also did some of the first watchband modifications. The latter is something a lot of us would like to see since the Abacus band….uhhh….sucks.
If you want to see what the inside of one of these watches looks like and see what he’s doing, take a look here: http://www.philliptorrone.com/spotmods/
Coming Soon: The HP iPAQ h63XX Series
What could be better than the HP iPAQ 4000 series (41XX, 43XX)? After all, these two devices come loaded with Bluetooth, lots of RAM, and integrated WiFi. Well, rumors have been flying around about a new series of Super-iPAQ with all of the crunchy features of the 4000 series but also adding built-in GPRS!
That would make this new iPAQ a real powerhouse with the capability of acting as a well-connected PDA around the office or on the road. Personally, I’d like to see them sell this complete with a Bluetooth headset to turn the iPAQ h63XX into an amazing mobile phone without the big problem of Pocket PC Phones — the grease spot on the screen after you’re done talking. This device would give me all of the goodness of the current two-piece solution I have (HP iPAQ 4150 + Nokia 3650 Bluetooth phone) in one compact box.
There’s been no word on expected pricing or availability, but it seems fairly certain at this time that the h63XX series is close to release.
Off-Topic: A New Record for Spam In The Inbox?
This is a little off topic… I was having difficulties with just about everything dealing with PDAntic.com lately. First, there was a week long problem with ftp access to the site, which made it just about impossible for me to get new content posted. Then I started ran out of bandwidth - not a bad problem, but still something that caused me to have to make a switch to a more expensive hosting account. Well, a few days ago I started running into problems with email access AND I was running out of space on my site, which seemed odd considering that I always empty my mailbox on a daily basis.
Well, it turned out that I wasn’t checking ALL of my mail. There is an administrative account that I didn’t even know about that has been collecting spam for over two years, and it had grown to about 150 MB in size! When I first looked, there were 24,887 emails in there. It’s taken me just about two days to clean out this garbage. It would be fascinating to know if anyone else has ever had a similar problem and how many junk emails THEY had to clean out. Leave a comment below…
PDAntic.com eBook of the Week: Cats On The Counter
This week’s Fictionwise eBook of the week pick is “Cats on the Counter” by Larry Lachman and Frank Mickadeit. While it may seem strange that I’m picking a book about cat behavior, this is service two purposes. First, I had a cat that was near and dear to me that passed away today. Second, it shows the tremendous range of ebooks that you can now buy from Fictionwise.
If you have a cat or are thinking about getting one, this book is absolutely great in terms of telling you why cats behave the way they do and how you can try to resolve behavioral problems. Definitely a good read!
Let Me Reboot My Watch…
Well, my Smart Watch decided to black out last night, although it showed me that it had over 50% charge left. It acted like the last one did when it died. I ended up putting it on the charger overnight, then had to do a “reboot” this morning by pressing Previous, Enter and Next simultaneously.
I hope this doesn’t happen on a regular basis! It’s kind of annoying to have to reboot your watch, especially when you depend on it to wake you up. I guess I’ll just plan on putting it on the charger next to my bed every night, letting it get juice and hopefully waking me up at 5 AM on weekdays…
PDAntic.com Thanks You! Lots of Hits, Not Much Bandwidth!
Wow! I’m shocked.
This evening I received an email from my web hosting provider telling me that I had blown through my month’s allotment of bandwidth in just 13 days and that I was well into chewing up additional bandwidth that I’ll be paying for. I want to thank everyone for coming by and visiting. It appears that everyone was dropping by to read the latest reviews that have been posted; the latest info on the Smart Watches for MSN Direct, the HP iPAQ 4150 review, and even my review of Macintosh to Pocket PC Sync Tools.
Since I don’t have many large advertisers (thanks to Ilium Software for their continued support!), this site is on the verge of becoming a money-losing proposition due to the larger appetite for bandwidth. So, for the first time in the history of this site, I’d like to ask those of you who appreciate this site to step up to the plate and make a donation. I’m calling it the PDAntic.com Bandwidth Fund, and your donations will go towards the care and feeding of this site. To make it easy for you to donate, I’ve set up a PayPal button below. If you currently have a PayPal account, you can use it to help support PDAntic.com. I’ll leave it up to you on how much you want to donate and I’ll greatly appreciate your support. Thank you!
Some SPOT Details…
Sorry about all of the postings about Smart Watches and Microsoft’s Smart Personal Objects Technology lately, but since this is the first week that these products have been available I thought it was appropriate. There’s been a lot said about the newly available Smart Watches, the first SPOT products available to the public. But not a lot of details have come out about the guts of these devices.
According to an article in the January 2004 edition of IEEE Spectrum, “Microsoft has partnered with National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., on a chipset that includes an ARM7 central processing unit, 512MB of ROM, 384MB of static RAM, and a 100-MHz radio receiver chip. “ The article goes on to mention that Smart Watches use a scaled-down version of Common Language Runtime, which is part of Microsoft’s .NET Architecture, and that the content is delivered to the devices at about 12 Kb/sec. The radio network is called “DirectBand”, covereing 80 percent of the U.S. population in the country’s 100 largest cities. That’s why you need to check the MSN Direct site before you buy a Smart Watch - you may be outside of the network area… Microsoft leases FM sub-carrier bandwidth (as the Spectrum article notes, “the space on the dial between stations that’s good only for low-bit-rate data transmission” ) from radio station operators.
I was frankly irritated with the Spectrum article by Harry Goldstein, which had a smarmy and sarcastic ring to it that is more at home in WiReD than it should be in a professional journal. The article spent three half-columns to talking about the technology and almost three full columns saying why it wasn’t going to make it in the marketplace. I also question the accuracy of the figures in the article - a half gigabyte of ROM and a third of a gig of RAM seems to be much more than is required to decode and display digital signals, so I’m almost wondering if the real specs are a half megabyte of ROM and third of a megabyte of RAM.
Goldstein did note that this could be a move by Microsoft to have the infrastructure in place so that you could have SPOT-enabled mobile phones, laptops and PDAs that receive information tidbits. That’s kind of a nifty concept. With SPOT technology built into a PDA, you could have a constantly updated stream of news, weather, sports and calendar data. Cool!
That Is A Dead Parrot!
(With apologies to Monty Python for the title of this post…)
Well, the Abacus Wrist Net Smart Watch died on Thursday night, moments after I posted my review! That still doesn’t shake my confidence in this technology; having worked with electronic devices for most of my life I’m used to seeing cases of “infant mortality”, that is, situations where devices die right out of the box. Amazon.com was great (as usual) about the return, and I should have a new Smart Watch strapped to my wrist Monday night.
After the review was posted, I received an email from a management person at Microsoft wondering about my comments on the design of the Smart Watch user interface. I’m including part of my response in this post:
I guess my main complaint with the UI on the Abacus watch and the other Wrist Net devices is the number of buttons. In my experience, five buttons is about three to four too many! While I was able to pick up on which button performed what function rather quickly, my guess is that a non-techie would have more of an issue with the UI. It just seems counterintuitive to have such a nice display, and then have to figure out which of the five buttons on the device needs to be pushed in what order so that a particular item comes up. I had done some thinking about the UI while using my watch on Thursday and it occurred to me that those five buttons could be replaced with a single scroll wheel with push-in capabilities. Here’s a quick description of how this could work (since I don’t have my watch on my wrist right now, you’ll have excuse my memory!):
To start browsing the channels, the watch user would simply push in on the scroll wheel. This would bring up the current channel name. By rolling the scroll wheel up or down, the different channels would appear on the display. If the scroll wheel had a detent about every 36 degrees or so, it would make it easier for the user to scroll by feel to a particular channel from a starting place. Once the user had the desired channel in the display, they could do one of two things - stop scrolling, which would eventually cause that channel to take over the display, or press in on the scroll wheel a second time, which would let them choose the sub-channels (or whatever you call them!). Here’s an example. First thing in the morning I put on the watch, which is currently showing the time display. I remember that I haven’t charged the watch and need to check the settings to see what the current battery level is. I push in on the scroll wheel, which shows that I’m in the Time channel. While the “Time channel” announcement is still on the display, I push a second time to bring up the list of items under the Time channel, then use the scroll wheel to go past Faces and some of the other “subchannels” to Settings. I push the scroll wheel in to select Settings, then scroll to “Watch Info” using the scroll wheel. A final push of the scroll wheel shows me my watch info, and I use the scroll wheel to move up and down through the list of info.
This would also come in very handy when using the Glance mode. I’m bored during a meeting and I’m watching info pop up on the display, and then I see a business headline about my employer. I push in on the scroll wheel to select the current news item, then scroll through it using the wheel.
I’d be interested to hear from any PDAntic.com readers who have their own ideas about how a better Smart Watch interface could be designed. Hit the comments button below to post your ideas, or send me an email.
PDAntic.com Review: Abacus Wrist Net Smart Watch for MSN Direct
The new “Wrist Net Smart Watches for MSN Direct” were announced today, but they’ve been available for several days. I have been using an Abacus Wrist Net Smart Watch for about 24 hours and I’m pretty happy with this new geek toy! Read all about it here, or go to the Reviews index by clicking the link at the top of the page.
Press Release: Take Your Quicken? Financial Data Anywhere With Spb Finance Quick Edition
January 6, 2004 - Building upon the success of Spb Finance, Spb Software House announces the release of Spb Finance Quick Edition, an enhanced version of Spb Finance that offers seamless synchronization with Quicken? data while retaining all the powerful features of Spb Finance.
Seamless integration with Quicken was a critical goal for the software development team at Spb Software House. “We had a straight-forward goal when it came to synchronization”, says CTO Vassili Philippov, “in that we wanted the customer to be able to put their Pocket PC in the cradle, and be finished with the process. No imports or exports, no complicated procedures. Seamless and simple - that was our goal.” When Spb Finance Quick Edition is installed, an ActiveSync conduit is also installed. This conduit handles the background synchronization of Quicken accounts, transactions, categories, classes, memorized transactions, and budgets.
Spb Finance Quick Edition retains all the powerful features of Spb Finance, including a powerful register view, transactions splits, customizable auto-complete, reports, budgets, customizable categories and classes, and data encryption. Multiple currencies are supported, as is a Today-screen plug-in that allows for quick, at-a-glance data, and an additional layer of protection using AES (Rijndael) encryption is offered through password-protection.
Spb Finance Quick Edition is available for immediate purchase for $19.95 USD. Existing users of Spb Finance or Spb Quick can upgrade to Spb Finance Quick Edition for $9.95 USD. Further purchasing and upgrade details are on the Spb Finance product page.
Spb Finance Quick Edition is initially available in English, and by February 2004 German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian versions are to be released. It has been tested with English and German versions of Quicken 2001 and later, and should work with other versions of Quicken in localized languages (though these are not officially supported).
Further Information and Downloads
Further information regarding Spb Finance Quick Edition 1.0 can be found on our Web site:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance
Features demonstrated through screen shots:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/screenshots.html
A free 15-day trial can be downloaded from:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/download.html
Upgrade information for previous owners:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/upgrade.html
About Spb Software House
Spb Software House is?a?software development company, specializing mainly in?Pocket PC?software. Founded in?1999, the company offers advanced software solutions for use in?a?wide range of?applications.
SpotStop.com - The only SPOT community
I received a note today from Brian Beeler, President of Operations for a new site focused on Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object Technology devices. Unless you’ve been ignoring my recent posts , you know that the new Smart Watches for MSN Direct from Abacus, Fossil and Suunto take advantage of this new technology. SpotStop.com is the only online community dealing with SPOT and the new devices. Give it a try today!
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Joy of Tech!
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MacLevelTen
