TimesToCome Mobile

One of the things I did most with my Palm Treo was to read books while stuck waiting some where. Multimedia is great but not appropriate entertainment in all locations. When first fired up a PDF novel on my Windows Mobile phone it was unreadable. By the time I made the font readable you had to scroll every which way to read the page.

Pocket PDF is what you need to read PDFs on your Window’s Mobile phone. There is a box you can check to tell it to display ‘text only’ and it will reformat the text to fit the screen you you can read your PDF  with out scrolling from side to side.

I found this on the Treo Central Forum. If you have problems, go there, read the thread and see if someone had run across your problem before.

First if you have TCPMP installed on your phone remove it.

You will need two files
TCPMP Smartphone version

and
Flash Video bundle ( You need a free TreoCentral.com account to download the file. )

Both files must be installed on either the card or phone.

Do a soft reboot on your phone.

Go to YouTube.com. When it redirects you to the mobile site go to the bottom of the page and click the link to ‘classic view’ and you’ll return to the main YouTube site. This plugin does NOT work on the m.youtube.com mobile site.

Pocket PC Freeware also has this software TCPMP & Flash Plugin for Windows Mobile. I didn’t try the versions there. I see no reason that they wouldn’t work just as well.

The TCPMP player will also let you listen to streaming music.

If for some reason you still don’t get it working try XDA Developers YouTube Tutorial

Many sources now have photos and confirmation that a white, Palm OS phone that is slimmer and will retail for about $100.

Palm Centro Smartphone coming to Sprint

I also saw an 800W coming to Sprint late this year but no 800P on the Sprint list. #$*&! Bah humbug! I’m waiting for a Linux based smart phone with a decent sized screen. It’s been a very long wait and doesn’t look to be getting any shorter.

See also:
Dear Palm: It’s time for an intervention

WHEN Paul Biba, a lawyer in Bernardsville, N.J., finds himself stuck waiting, he likes to pull out his Nokia E61i cellphone and read one of the 20 or so books he usually stores on it.The virtual bookshelf in his pocket currently has science fiction like “Falling Free” by Lois McMaster Bujold, all of the novels of Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, “Eminent Victorians” by Lytton Strachey and the September issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.“Once you get use to having books with you, you get use to reading in places where it never occurred to you. If I’m waiting in line at the supermarket counter, why not read one of my science fiction magazines?” he said. “Believe it or not, I’ll sit down in my chair at home, pull out my phone and read a book.”

An Entire Bookshelf, In Your Hands

All you need is Adobe Reader and some books.

Free book sites:
Creative Commons Wiki
Planet PDF
Many Books

Your cell phone tries to keep you constantly connected to the grid. When you are off the grid your cell phone will try every few minutes to find a tower. This hunting for towers is a large drain on battery life.

If you know you’ll be away from cell towers for a few hours, pop your battery until you reach civilization again. Otherwise it might be dead when you get there.

If You’re Out of Cellphone Service for a Long Time, Remove Your Battery – Consumerist

If you have a phone you can’t remove the battery from it might keep calling home and stick you with a $4800 bill from ATT

This is one of those rare items that has to be filed under bad things. National Geographic put out a camera phone book last month. With great hopes and anticipation I ordered up a copy from Amazon.

What the book really is, is a digital camera how to book, not a cell phone camera book. The tips and techniques are all those you find in standard digital camera books. The list of equipment they recommend misses the whole point of a cell phone camera – ie that it is very portable and you don’t have to spend time setting up shots.

Save your money and skip this book.