The Blog of an African NERD

Palm Employee records Barry Bonds's record breaking* home run only to realize the crappy video quality

“It's amazing to witness historical events first-hand, but it's even cooler when you can record it and take a physical copy of the memory home with you”
So says a Palm employee ,who recorded Barry Bonds's Historical* home run. Have a look at the crappy outcome.

It is high time Palm improved video and picture quality cause more and more people experience timeless moments on the go. Just a few months ago, I was fortunate to be in a Party with Jay-Z P.Diddy, Usher and 50 cent. I whooped out my Treo to take some memorable shots. Look at the nonsense results i got
http://www.tunjiafonja.com/tunjis_weblog/2007/05/partying_with_j.html
I mean shoot ,the nokia n95 has a 5 megapixel camera for Christ Sake. You mean Palm can’t even do half as good as that?

Simpsonize your Treo, DialByPhoto Style

For those of you that have DialByPhoto and TreoWeather, here is your chance to pimp out your Treo and give it the whole Simpsons treatment.
See full gallery

Here is the .Zip file with all the icons yours truely put together. Simply put them in the DCIM folder on your Treo's sd card and set your photo contacts to any of them. The zip file also has a bg_thesimpsons.jpg to use as the background.

MyTreo.net reviews TreoWeather

Read here

The African Nerd gets on Public Radio

I was invited  to share my thoughts on the Treo and iPhone on Kansas City's KCUR-FM 89.3. A very cool experience. We touched on a few topics, some of which are
-Why experience is everything
-Why I think Apple has been successful with the iPhone
-What we do at Gx5 and how we do it
-how no third party apps on iPhone kills innovation
Here is the Story.
Here is the mp3 from the interview

My Treo vs. My iPhone

Okay. I have been playing with an iPhone for a week now. Here is how things are going.

Qwerty / navigation
This is too early to say, but I get the feeling I can adapt to this Apple’s virtual keyboard. Only time will tell.  As for this whole “hold iPhone on left hand and use index finger on right hand to touch”  that Apple is try to force people to adapt to is just plain nonsense if you ask me. Fortunately, you can still manage one handed use of the iPhone in most cases. The Accelerometer is driving me nuts. There needs to be a feature to turn this thing off cause it is just rotating the screen at times when I don’t want it to.

Now lets compare some applications side by side. Please note some of these apps were created by my company so excuse any slight bias.

Sms on Treo vs Sms on iPhone
This is one big lawsuit waiting to happen if the folks at Sunnyvale were smart enough to patent threaded smsing as Apple essentially copied this and made it fancy.

Iphone safari vs, Treo Blazer
The Treo blazer browser gets the job done, but of course Safari with the real internet blows it away, although Apple needs to to support Flash cause I don’t know how you can claim the “real internet” without the Flash Player.

iPhone Phone app vs DialByPhoto

U.I. goes to DialByPhoto hands down. With the ability have photo contacts and customizable layouts and backgrounds, you can’t beat this.  I have over 700 contacts and this finger scrolling on the iPhone is cool but is a bloody waste of time and pretty much useless if you have ever used the search and dial feature on Treos.

See the full gallery here.

Google Maps on iPhone vs Google Maps on Treo.

The one on the Treo gets the job done but the one on the iPhone is just freaking unreal. iPhone Google Maps wins hands down.

IPhone Memo vs TreoMemo

I think TreoMemo has a better stickie pad skin and has options for more skins.  However, on the iPhone things are more fluid and crispier because of a more powerful OS. On the functionality side, the iPhone Memo is a piece of crap if you have used TreoMemo.

Why? With TreoMemo, you can
- set mp3 alarms( its one thing to write a memo and another thing to remember )
- search memos
-sort memos
- type to get a memo( wait till you have tons of  memos to see how important this is)

iPhone Weather vs TreoWeather

They are both sweet but I would still take TreoWeather for the ability to customize.

See full gallery here.

iPod on iPhone vs mOcean on Treo

This is a tricky one. mOcean is essentially a duplicate of the original iPod. It takes the original iPod and makes it a touch screen. So the question here is do you prefer the original iPod or the new iPod. Personally none of them impresses me anymore mainly because I have worked on an upcoming media player that blows away both of them.

See Full gallery here.

Some other Factors

Ringtones
No Ringtone Support on iPhone, although we know this is coming in way that screws the consumer and forces them to pay up. With the RingCare Suite on my Treo, I can create and manage any ringtones I want. The power of creating ringtones is one of the best experiences on my Treo.

Sprint TV
Try going shoe shopping with your girl or being stuck at the dmv and you will realize how sprint tv can be a savior particularly with NFL network and its cast of characters that include Ocho Cinco and Neon Deion

Summary
So what now? Well, at least for me, these two devices can actually coexist. It is really simple for me. My Treo will continue doing contact management, telephony and things that iPhone won’t do well or won't even do , while I will use the iPhone for web browsing on the go and hopefully skype. Oh by the way, big confession, Many of the apps am showing on the Treo are not built in. They are 3rd party apps you have to purchase, something Palm could have easily rectified if they would have just listened to a little bit of advise

Initial thoughts on iPhone

I haven't even turned on this thing and the only thing i can say is  Un"freaking"believable. Even as hardcore Treo as i am, am worried this might be the last night i use a Treo.

TreoCentral reviews TreoMemo

More Thoughts on the Foleo

The Big 5
Ed Colligan claims that most Mobile Professionals do 5 things on the go:
Email, Word, Excel, Web Browsing and Solitaire.  I agree.
In short you don’t need a software bloated and weighty laptop running the ever retarded vista to achieve these 5 tasks. The light weight and long battery life Foleo could be a better alternative that is cheaper.

Battery Life
Lets face it, laptop battery life stinks. I go on a lot of business trips and I see this a lot at the airports. So if the Foleo can achieve the 5 hrs Jeff Hawkins claims. This is a huge plus

What is Missing
Well for one, if am going to consider a Foleo, I will have the anxiety of not being able to run other apps on my laptop now sitting back at home. This is no problem, because with a solution like GoToMyPC you can remotely run the laptop u left behind. I anticipate this maybe one of the first killa apps to appear on the Foleo. See example here

The future
In a few years, smartphones maybe as powerful as many of the laptops we use now. It is very feasible that a smartphone with a 1ghz processor will emerge. So essentially the Foleo may becomes just a screen and keyboard that displays all your information, video, audio etc, via  high speed wireless streaming and when this happens we can see some really cool Smartphones with all kinds of radical designs since the need to have a dedicated qwerty will no long be required.

Free Goodies for your shiny new Treo 755p

The Palm Foleo, a Victim of Hype

Nothing hardly lives up to the hype and thus with the announcement of the Foleo, the whole tech community screamed a big WTF.  I myself was so distraught; my whole day was just ruined. And why? An unnecessary build up of hype and tantalizing hints of a "top secret third category" of mobile devices. Even worse, it was fueled by many Treo blogs and websites, leaking everything from patent drawings and glorifying quotes from Jeff Hawkins.
I know I will never use this in the foreseeable feature, but the more i think about it, the more I realize there is a big audience for this device. Oh well, time will be the ultimate judge.