The Blog of an African NERD

It's all on the line

For those of us that have stood by Palm with hopes of revival and even held on to our Palm Stocks that are now pretty much worthless, Jan 8, 2009 will seal our fate. How ironic is it that in Vegas, Ed, Ruby and Co. will be putting all the chips on the table. While am no Ed Werder, some unnamed sources tell me Nova won't disappoint, so the question now is: How FANTASTIC is it?

Obama Wallpaper for your Treo and Centro

Here is a fun project I initiated after visiting Obama's site a few time and seeing all the cool graphics. His web team really does an incredible job.  If you are a supporter and you have a Treo or Centro, you should like this. Learn more here.

Ringtone Shuffler for Treos and Centros

If you love ringtones, then you should really like Ringtone Shuffler. Learn more here.

Treo 800w's awesome today screen

You mean to tell me that these 3 search fields can’t be consolidated into one smart search field like this or is Palm being bamboozled and forced to have the live search on the home screen?  This whole thing is getting so stupid. HTC, stuck with the same archaic Windows Mobile has been able to create touch flow 3D and this is what Palm has come up with? It’s just painfull watching all this nonsense as a stock holder.  I hope the Matias Duarte dude will fix this foolishness.

Finally, a Treo to get excited about

Whats the point in releasing the ugly looking Treo 800w when there is this reported Treo 850 above that looks pretty sweet?

Who is going to buy Palm’s next SmartPhone?

Jon Rubenstein is supposed to work magic at Palm, bringing along with him some ex-Apple employees and having us all excited about the rebirth of Palm. But has anyone asked the simple question: Who on this planet is going to buy whatever they come up with in 2009? Lets take a look at potential customers.

Corporate/Enterprise Customers
No secret hear, only a minuscule amount of companies deploy Treos for their employees and Blackberry is now the standard.

Current New Treo Users
You know, not to long ago, the Treo was a hot name and lead to many new users. Even Jack Bauer was using it. Heck, I got at least 7 of my friends and company investors to get Treos. That was the good news. Here is the sad news. They are all now migrating to Blackberries and iPhones.

Wooohooo, we already have 1 million new Centro Users!!!!
Well maybe there is hope here, but at the measly price of $99, am not sure if Palm is getting the kind of customers that will upgrade to the upcoming high end Palm Smartphone coming out in 2009, particularly if those folks down the highway at Cupertino keep evolving the iPhone and even build a nano like iPhone before then.

Diehards
There is a smaller( and getting smaller) group called the diehards. If you are still a Palm diehard like me, you either deserve a standing ovation for tolerating all the crap Palm has been feeding us these past 4 -5 years or you are just too dumb to see the light.
I was forced to use the iPhone because it was a business opportunity for my company, but even with all it's glamour, my 755p has never left my side, probably due to the keyboard and key third party apps like ( pdanet, treomemo, etc)
But even diehards like me have gotten wary, particularly since it just feels like Palm has been treating us like..( only if i could say exactly the word)..Simple things like releasing an OS Update, they totally screwed it up. Apple has released 5 updates to the iPhone in less than a year while our friends at Sunnyvale can’t even fix fundamental flaws in the Palm OS and it’s not like we are asking for new features.
Even worse, The Treo online forums in the early to mid 2000s was filled with passionate users and developers voicing and sharing super amazing ideas that could have revolutionized the Treo line up. Heck, if Ed Colligan had just read a few TreoCentral forums back then, he would have figured out that a multimedia Treo should have been built. Something we were screaming for. Now due to the colossal miscalculation by Palm Executives, the whole company is on the brink of fading away. This ain’t funny men, I own a good amount of Palm Stock.
In all, am a diehard, so I must root for Palm, but then again, I ain’t stupid and am really wondering if its time to dump all my Palm Stock cause this supposed Rubenstein miracle might be too little to late.

In summary, forget all the analysis, there are just no good vibes coming from Palm. Nothing seems right. Even Product code names like zeppelin( treo 800w ) depict catastrophic future failure . How can you code name your product after something that was bogusly big and slow when the current trend is all about being super fast and super sleek. I mean, are these people thinking backwards??? If they can’t even get the product code name right, how can they even build something credible?

Savoring the KU championship on the go

One of the main ideas behind UltimatePhone and TreoWeather is that by giving the user the ability to set a custom background for these apps, it would greatly enhance the experience as they navigate within the apps. While am not a big college basketball fan, living in Kansas City I could not help but get on the KU bandwagon as March Madness approached. KU is really a fun team to watch and now that they are champions I can savor all the great memories while on the go and using my Treo.

UltimatePhone is here

Here it is. The new version of DialByPhoto, which we are calling UltimatePhone. Learn more here

GPSing on the Treo

Since I travel quite a bit and depend a lot on Hertz NeverLost GPS, it was only a matter of time before I looked into one of the many GPS solutions available for the Treo. I asked Mr. Treonaut himself who promptly directed me to his review of the Palm Treo GPS SmartPhone.
http://blog.treonauts.com/2007/08/palm-treo-gps-s.html
This stuff is pretty impressive.

New Version of TreoWeather

TreoWeather has just been updated to support automatic weather updates. Enjoy