Nerd Life

I gotta spit this out, because it really really starts to bug me bad! >:-[

I have all my CDs in my iTunes at home. And I have all of them auto-synched to the iPod. Then I take my iPod to work, and guess what: I'm expecting to listen to my mp3 files on my work computer! (Creating playlists, etc...)

Is that demanding too much?

I guess not! But, then, why the hell is it made soooo hard for me to achieve this? :!::?:>:-[>:XX

First problem: You can't copy the mp3 from your iPod to your secondary iTunes (the one on the Work computer).

Second problem: You can, however, have iTunes play the mp3s directly from the iPod through the USB connection... BUT this requires you to unlink the iPod from your main iTunes (the one at home). You can relink it later but this is a boring operation full of boring clicks. And you get to do it twice a day!

Third problem: The more you organize your music and the more meta data you add to it (genres, years, album art, personal rating...), the more you get to enjoy it and the more useful the "smart playlists" get... BUT: try to add a little meta data to your iPod songs while you're at work, then go home and try to sync: everything gets overwritten from the home iTunes and you loose all your meta data -- except the personal ratings. (Those ones are not stored as IDv3 meta data. They are stored separately in the iPod Database).

This is so decieving! So decieving from Apple. So decieving from a company that pushes another smart sync tool (iSync) but won't even bother to do a simple 2 way sync based on 'last changed' file dates! :(

I've looked through half a dozen 3rd party tools allowing you to copy from the iPod to iTunes/PC but none of them is working really like I'd want it... Especially, none of them will let me find and copy only the mp3s I've touched during the day... and brute force copying back all 5000 files is a little too tedious... |-|

There's this freeware app, called Torch, that allows you to buse your Series 60 phone as a torch/flashlight by blanking the screen and maintaining the backlight on until you exit the app.

Pretty interesting (you know when you drop your garage keys at night... :P), except the screen backlight isn't even remotely as bright as the the camera Flash LED on the Sendo X. That's what I would like: an app allowing me to turn on/off the camera Flash on demand!

The incredible thing is that apparently noone ever bothered to release something like this... although it's very likely to be just a simple API call... Well... I guess not enough Series 60 developers own a Sendo X... :'(

I still carry around that vintage Palm V that I still haven't replaced by a smartphone to carry around things like my address book and some access codes (heavily encrypted).

Since I moved my email/outlook to my newer Presario X1005 laptop I was a little bit annoyed though... that laptop has no RS 232 serial port! Thus, I cannot connect my vintage Palm craddle and cannot hotsync my email address book no more the way I have been doing it for years... |-|

I thought it would be wise to buy an USB to RS232 adapter... but these aren't actually easy to find. I finally got one on ebay, but that peace of crap came with an unverified XP driver... and I think there's a reason for that: the device worked properly only twice over about 50 desperate attemps... >:XX

Then, I remembered that RS232 ports may have been heavily replaced by USB ports but IR ports have not been wiped out by Bluetooth yet... That sounded so easy I wondered why I hadn't thought about IR earlier! Morevover, I had done that kind of IR sync before on an NT 4 laptop... :crazy:

Well, it isn't quite as easy as it seems... that IR port just wouldn't act like a serial port, so there was no way to get the palm hotsync manager to listen to it. :!: Huh? What's that, it worked on NT 4 a few years ago!

A few days later I finally realized that I needed a missing brick over the IR port driver: a virtual COM port driver! :idea:

Luckily, the open source community has produced such a thing: http://www.ircomm2k.de/english/

Even better: it works like a charm! B)

Now I just wonder: did I install something like that on NT 4? Well, now that I'm thinking about it... I have a vague memory that I did... :oops:

I'm on a train right now (typing this into TextPad) and I'm sort of realizing that the WiFi ubiquity I have been experiencing for the past few weeks was actually an illusion! :-/

It all started last month when I bought a new laptop with built in WiFi. It's the kind of gadget you just can't leave unused, even if it's hidden deep inside the machine. You know it's there and you just gotta check it out.

I thought the cheapest way to give it a try was to buy an USB WiFi adapter and plug it into my desktop. So I went for a Netgear USB key and quickly set up an 'ad-hoc' network between my laptop and my desktop. (For the record, the laptop uses an Intel "centrino family" WiFi chip.)

The other way to go would have been to buy a standalone WiFi access point, maybe even one that's merged into an ADSL modem. This would be called 'infrastructure' mode. I thought ad-hoc and infrastructure were basically the same, except I would not have had to turn on the desktop to act as an internet router everytime I wanted to access the Internet from my laptop. So I decided I'd simply go the cheap way.

Well... I was wrong.

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Sendo has unveiled more of its Sendo X in a press conference today. Let's tell it as it is: that smartphone totally rocks! It's even better than what we could expect from previous announcements.

Of course, in this industry, product cycles are very short, so it's only going to be a matter of months before someone (Nokia?) comes out with something better (I mean a better smartphone, not an experimental device like the 7700! :>>).

The Sendo X should be priced around 500 € (unsubsidized) and actually includes pretty much everything you could wish from a smarphone: compact, true phone form factor, normal keyboard, color display (176*220*16), integrated camera with flash, recording and playback of video (15 fps), sound, music, support of standard formats (mp3, mpeg...)

And of course, it runs on Symbian + Series 60 with Java/MIDP support.

One thing I was pretty unsure of until now, was if it was possible to connect a stereo headset for mp3 playback as an alternative to the built in accoustic system. Not only is it possible, but the headset is provided in the box! B)

The other good news is that the device supports SD cards up to a 1GB capacity and beyond. That's exactly what you need to store the mp3s you want to listen to and all those sound/video recordings you're going to make. Even better: the SD cards are hot swappable! B)

Actually, the only drawback I could find so far is the lack of support for SD/IO.

Also, I had written before that many pocket devices were going to converge soon and this time has definitely arrived (it only lacks an emebedded GPS! :> ) However, I stated that we'd still want PDAs with larger screens and a pen interface to take notes.

Well... the fact is you don't need to take notes no more! Just record or picture the info! You'll process it later anyway. ;) Moreover, when you really need to enter text (for email for example) you can always use T9. (That is for western countries with limited alphabets... :>>) However, for massive emailing, you'll probably want to get the external keyboard accessory. Plus, stylus technologies aren't so reliable anyway!

I am glad I managed to wait that long to replace my aging PDA and phone, because the SendoX is definitely going to replace them both at the same time, with increased efficiency on all my previous plans! ;D

Can't wait! Gotta check availability in France. :)