Cameron's Thoughts

Zakai Hamilton has been working on Screens Environment for a number of years now (previously known as ScreensOS), and every day it's getting closer and closer to reality. Zakai recently posted a FAQ on his website that runs through the reasons why this OS will rock the PDA world and will even make people wonder why they can't have something like this on their desktop.
I was involved with the concept and idea's for this a lot near the beginning, unfortunatly I have not been able to be as involved due to being quite busy at home. Sorry Zakai

Just saw this news from a link at 1SRC. The Register has some information on Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 that will be released for some upcoming smartphones. For some reason Cobalt 6.0 still hasn't been released on an actual device yet, but hopefully the Tungsten T5 will come with it. The screenshot is amazing though. Support for TrueType fonts, alpha blending and drop shadows all are built in to the graphics system. That's some pretty modern stuff since those features weren't even seen on a desktop until Windows XP was released, and even then, Windows XP doesn't really use that much. I love the transparent Virtual Graffiti area. Discussion can be found at 1SRC.

The Jackito is a device that has been announced at a number of websites. One such news story was this one at Brighthand. This device is not a PDA as the company that makes it says. It's a 'TDA', Tactile Digital Assistant. Why is this? You don't use a stylus, you use your oily fingers to touch the screen. The website for this product has a lot of good to say, such as "7 parallel processors" and all kinds of features such as a color screen, high-sound quality, wireless capabilities and weeks or use on a single AA battery. But, is it a lot of talk, or is there any truth behind this greatness? So I investigated. First, a trip to the pricing. The base unit, $600. Oh, but you wanted color? Not included, an extra $138. And what about the wireless capabilities? Also, not included. Bluetooth, an extra $80, WiFi, another $150 on top of that. Would you like a camera, add on another $100. So, just for a decent PDA, and by that I mean color screen and WiFi, this device is already going to cost $888. For that price, surely this thing must be powerful. How much RAM is there? 2.5MB. Yes, that's not 256MB, that's 2.5MB, or about 2500KB. Don't worry, they do throw in 14MB of NOR Flash memory so you can store your apps and things somewhere. That is, if anyone makes any apps for it. Must have a good sound system since it's advertised to have "high-quality sound". To start with, the MP3 function, which is also not included, will cost an extra $45. But, they do offer an FM radio, for $30. So, what kind of speaker is built in? From the webpage: "LCD loudspeaker 100Hz-10KHz - 0.1 Watts". Very low range, and a tenth of a watt?? Plus, I have no idea what an LCD loudspeaker is, almost sounds like the LCD screen is the speaker. This was a bit too strange for me, so I didn't feel like researching that any further. They do mention that you can buy headphones for $20, or a Bluetooth headphone for $100. I just hope they have a standard 3.5mm minijack so normal headphones can be plugged in. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some proprietary jack they use forcing you to buy there headphones. Hmm, so what about the "7 processors". This raises a number of thoughts.

• Won't it be hard for developers to program for seven processors?
• How can a single AA battery last 'several months' powering all those processors?
• With such little RAM, why so much processing power?
• Is this even for real?

The main CPU is a Mitsubishi CPU (M30803) and from what I can find, that tops out at 20MHz. The other "CPU" mentioned is the Texas Instruments CPU (MSP 430), a 50 cent processor that, while it has low power consumption, doesn't seem to be all to powerful. Couldn't find any specs other that it's a 16-bit processor. Seems that it's mainly used to perform simple tasks such as controlling an LCD screen. The other "CPU's" mentioned are simply programmable logic chips probably also used to control other simple functions on the device such as sound and video. So, there are just a number of simple microchips all performing basic tasks to power this device. Every PDA or computer has a number of chips that back up the main CPU to perform tasks. These are never mentioned, but at the same time, if your main CPU is only 20MHz, you certainly can't advertise that either. So, for $600, you are getting a device that, hardware-wise, competes with the $20 PDA's found next to the calculators at Wal-Mart. The only thing that this device has going for it is the 'no-stylus' marketing gimmick. Also, during the reading of the discussion at Brighthand about their news artice, Ed Hardy mentioned Roland Piquepaille's site. He had an interview with the maker's of the Jackito. Somewhat interesting, but didn't really touch on any of the issues I brought up here. It does have a video of the device. I would have to say the software doesn't look all that bad. But time will tell this devices fate. And I don't think time will play nicely.

My home on the web, ClieSource is no longer. With the news of Sony suspending the Clie line, it was decided that something would need to be done with the Cliesource website as it would die eventually. Cliesource has been running since December of 2001 and I became a member there back in October of 2002. In October of 2003, Cliesource spun off a new site for PalmOne devices called PalmOneCity. I think the big reason for this was due to the release of the PalmOne Tungsten T|3 handheld. This was PalmOne's big comeback device and many Clie users switched over to it.
With the Clie line ending, it was decided that combining the communities of Cliesource and PalmOneCity into one would be a great idea. Not only that, the site now supports all PalmOS based devices, so there are now forums for the Tapwave Zodiac, the Garmin iQue, and also the Samsung, AlphaSmart and Kyocera devices.
Not only are the sites combining, other things are being changed too. For one thing, the forums have been streamlined. That are now less topics to wade through to try and find a thread you are looking for. For example, Apps, Launchers, and Games have all been combined into just Applications. They are all technically applications and are all related. There are still separate forums for the newer Clie lines, but all older Clie devices now have just one combined forum.
Also, the software powering the forums has been updated to the vBulletin 3.01 from a much older version. This means that there are nice features such as drop down menus and basically a much cleaner look. The cleaner look isn't just in the forums either. The front page is now much simpler, though currently I find the font much to small to read.
But, there is still a lot missing from this new combined site. Reggie did an amazing job throwing this all together at the last minute. I don't think he slept at all during the Memorial Day weekend. He even took Tuesday off work to finish readying the site since it was planned to be finished by midnight of the 31st, just in time for the big Clie announcement.
But, for anyone who hasn't already done so, make sure to check out the new 1SRC site and if you have any suggestions or comments, post them here.

Big news in the PDA world today is that Sony is announcing that they do not have any plans to continue making Clie devices in the future. The way they are wording the announcement is that they might consider producing them again in the future, but not anytime soon. It appears that Sony is trying to streamline their operations and that would only make sense to discontinue at least the Clie or their smartphone line since the two products compete with each other in many ways. And the smartphone market has a much better sales potential.
This news is being reported at many sites such as Sony Exits U.S. Handheld Market and Sony to Suspend Clie Handheld Line. Unfortunately, ClieSource does not have any annoucement yet on this as the site has been down for the past weekend as some major changed are being made. The forum software is being updated to the newer vBulletin 3.01 and there is also a major change as a result of this announcement by Sony. It seems the updates are taking longer than planned as ClieSource was supposed to be back up before the Sony announcement, but hopefully it will soon be ready.

This is a freeware app for Palm that allows you to access SMB shares (SMB is the protocol Windows and some other systems use for file sharing). This software has been purchased by Hands High Software and will only be available commercially in the future, but this version is distributed under a freeware license so is free to use and further distribute.

Click here to download (174kb)

I had wrote a couple of posts in the past about playing Divx on Palm PDA's:

• Divx playback for Clie's!
• Divx Playback Update

At the time when I wrote those, Divx support was brand new on Clie's. Things have changed since then. There have been some updates to the MMPlayer app that made it possible. But the biggest change happened within the last couple of weeks. Fellow ClieSource member CliePet was able to accomplish an amazing task. He figured out a way to access the high quality audio system that is built in to the OS5 Clies. Here's some history. The NX, NZ, and TG series of Clies all have Palm OS5. OS5 has a built in CD quality audio API. Sony choose to remove it and include there own audio system. Problem is, only two apps can access the CD quality audio. The built-in MP3 player and built-in video player. Other than that, all you could do is have the old style beeps and blips, or you could do 8-bit 8kHz mono sound. Not to great for trying to playback MP3's or watch videos when CD audio is 16-bit 44kHz stereo sound. Newer Clies don't have this limitation any more, but Sony would never revel how developers could access the sound on the older OS5 Clie like the one I have (NX60). Now, back to today. CliePet, using the same magic he has for other projects like this, not only figured out how to access the audio, but created his own API known as MCA (Modern Clie Audio) and modeled it after the PalmOS5 streaming sound API. What this means is that any developer only needs to make a minor change in their apps to support this. The developers of MMPlayer have been the first one's to do so only days after this has been released. This is the download for the experimental beta version of MMPlayer with MCA support. I have tested it on my NX60 and am very impressed. I took a Divx movie, and do zero audio conversion. I did convert the video bitrate down as the player doesn't handle high bitrates due to CPU limitation of the Clie. But, the sound was crystal clear. Unlike previous tests where the sound was very rough and sometimes hard to make out what was going on. On a 128MB MS, it's unlikely a full movie will fit and still have high quality audio. But, for people with 256MB, and larger MS's, not only can you fit full high quality videos on your PDA, you can now have high quality audio. This really opens the door to mobile movies on the older Clies since it can now play any Divx movie that will work on any other Palm or Pocket PC. Also to note, MMPlayer also know supports a variety of video formats including MPEG1,2,4,H263, DivX and MJpeg. Also limited MOV support. I haven't had a chance to test any of that yet though.

In very sad news, Bozidar Benc, one of the most revolutionary programmers for the Palm platform has passed away. He was the creator of apps such as Launcher III and Launcher X and was basically the man who created the modern launcher that apps such as ZLauncher have been based on.

"It's with the greatest of regret that I pass on the sad news that Bozidar Benc passed away yesterday. As some of you may know he was involved in a serious car accident in early February. Hopes were high for a full recovery, but unfortunately his condition worsened and finally he succumbed to complications caused by the original injuries. Bozidar was 47 and is survived by his wife and two daughters. He will be sadly missed."

More info at LauncherXplanet.

I have just listed an Atari Retro card for sale on EBay. It's an MMC card and works in any Nokia Series 60 phone (except the 7650) and works on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) 2002 machines and up with SD card slots. Also works on all the PalmOne OS5 models. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the Clie since Sony had to use the Memory Stick. This item will be listed until about this time on Sunday.

I was just reading this article about the upcoming Cobalt OS and I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed. PalmSource didn't add the updated GUI. I didn't mind that so much as long as they were too busy getting everything else working.
But, I also read that they support higher screen resolutions (up to 32000 x 32000!) but they don't entirely support them. The article said that the OS doesn't completely support VGA and a licensee would need to make some changes for full VGA support.
Plus, there is NOT support for switching between landscape and portrait modes. As Ed mentioned, he was told there would be support for that, and I could have sworn I read that in some document that described the OS6 API. I wondered what happened.
I also posted this at Cliesource to see what other people think about this.

Here are some screenshots of the new Palm OS Cobalt (formerly known as OS6). These are from Palm InfoCenter and there are a couple more at their website. PalmSource didn't make quite the interface overhaul they had originally planned, but it seems they will wait until the update to Cobalt is released since they didn't have time to rework the interface yet. I think the minor updates they did give a fresh look to the OS while keeping it's time tested simplicity.

Images from Palm InfoCenter

The next two Operating Systems from PalmSource have been announced today, Palm Cobalt and Palm Garnet. Palm Cobalt was originally thought to be called OS6, since all OS's prior have been named by there version number. But, PalmSource has decided to change that. That is because Garnet is actually a newer version of OS5 specially designed for use in smartphones. PalmSource thought it would be better to show that the two OS's are designed for different uses while both being up to date. If they were simply called OS6 and OS5.4, then the smartphones would have trouble selling with an 'old' OS.
I personally don't know if this is the best strategy. Microsoft has done something like this by having Windows Mobile and Windows Smartphone OS's. But with Palm OS market share dropping fast to competitors such as Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian Series 60, I don't know if this is the best time to segment their main products. Time will tell.

After being discovered a couple of weeks ago, Sony Japan has announced the arrival of two new Clie units, the TH55 and the TJ37. There is also info about a TJ27, but it looks like Japan won't see that device. Also of interest, it seems Sony is going to give Japan, American, and Europe all different devices with different wireless setups. It seems like in Japan, only the TH55 is getting WiFi, while in the US, both the TH55 and TJ37 are rumored to include it. The test devices the FCC seen also had mention of Bluetooth, so it's quite possible that feature will only be seen in Europe, like they did with the NX73 being BT only in Europe. There is also a nice Flash demo of the TH55 on Sony Japan's website. Here are some specs from ClieSource Clié TH55 - OS: PalmOS 5 (Ver.5.2.1) - CPU: 123MHz SONY Handheld Engine (same as the UX-series) - Memory: DRAM - 32MB / ROM - 32MB - Display: 320x480 / 65536 colors - WiFi: 802.11b - Clie Organizer - 0.31 megapixel - digital camera (640x480 max. resolution) - MQV (Quicktime), MPEG-1 Playback - Voice Recorder - No mention of Bluetooth although some images do have a Bluetooth LED. - 2.89 in x 4.78 in x .62 in (approximately) - Comes in Black or Red

Back in November, I mentioned a chance to win a free SD card. It was a long wait, but I finally received the card I choose a couple days ago. I signed up for the Atari Retro game pack. It's pretty cool and has some of my favorites like Missile Command and Asteroids. It was advertised to be on SD cards, but in fact it was on an MMC card. For those who don't know, the cards both have the same basic form factor, SD card format is a little newer, but adds a write protect switch, a couple pins for a security setup and is nearly twice as thick. Almost all SD cards slots will accept an MMC card, but some devices will only take MMC. This was nice, because my good 'ol 3650 only takes MMC cards and this Atari Retro pack works for that too. Actually, it is playable on all Palm OS5 systems with MMC/SD card slots, all Pocket PC 2002 and above systems with MMC/SD card slots and all Symbian Series 60 phones with an MMC slot. When I signed up, I thought it was only for Palm. And my Sony Clie doesn't have an SD card slot, only Memory Stick, though I was hoping to copy the files from the MMC card to the MS using a card reader. I tried it, but it would never work no matter what I did. I also tried playing the games on the 3650, but it just was not the same playing with the little direction arrows on the phone. So, my experience hasn't quite been what I was hoping for. If I could get it to play on the Clie, I would probably enjoy the game more. But, I have instead decided to sell the game, so I will probably be putting it on EBay shortly.

Reggie, the founder of Cliesource has asked me to be a moderator at the site. Cliesource is basically my home away from my actual house and work and I would love to be able to contribute to the site more, so I accepted his offer. I will now be joining Reggie, Joel, Rod(rldunn) and Leslie(yellowrose) as part of the ClieSource staff.

If anybody cares. It appears that Napoli was not banned from ClieSource last night when everyone thought he was. He went on another posting spree today. But the mods had there eye's on him today, and they deleted some postings. Joel has informed me that he is now in fact banned.

Well, it looks like the napoli problem has already been dealt with. It was noticed at ClieSource that napoli has been removed from the ClieSource member database. I have never heard of them doing that before. Even previous trolls like UtahJazz85 had numerous warnings, then a month suspension, then a three (or maybe six) month suspension. He eventually just left I think. But his user ID is still there. I don't feel bad though. This guy is one of the worst trolls I have seen at ClieSource.

It was only July 10th when I had hit the 2000 post mark at ClieSource and that didn't even seem that long ago. A couple of days ago I now hit the 3000 mark. I'm not sure if this is an accomplishment or what. My posting frequency there was actually gone done since Hailey was born. My post per day count was steadily increasing until I reached 8 posts per day. Now I am down to like 7.3. Not a big difference I guess.
There was been a bit of annoyance there recently too. Some poster by the name of napoli was been stirring up trouble in every thread he can. Every post in the NX forum is "You should just get an UX50". Then he keeps harping on newbies (which he is himself, he just thinks he's superior because he now has the title of Senior Member only because he has posted almost 200 times without any content in the posts). What's really annoying is the constant use of CAPS LOCK and incorrect spelling. (I have bad spelling, but he doesn't even try). He calls himself a Sony Product Analyst, but I think he is just some 13 year old kid getting off on causing trouble. Another thing that is annoying is something he started today. Every time someone made any small talk not 100% related to the topic, he has to respond "this isn't a chat board, please stay on topic, I'm trying to improve these forums by keeping them about Clies only" or some crap like that.
He is driving me nuts. Oh well, the mods will take care of him by tomorrow.
I also hope to have some good news involving ClieSource here in the near future, but I don't think I should post it just yet.

Mobile Digital Media (MDM) is giving away a one software title to the first 5000 people who provide them with a little personal info about themselves (name, address, phone number, that soft of stuff). You even get to choose the software title you would like to receive. The choices are:

• Rayman
• Atari Classic
• Sega Classic
• Dictionary/Thesaurus
• Travel Software

The software is available on SD cards, but if you have an SD card reader for your PC, you can transfer the apps to another media (like Memory Stick for us Clie users). Oh, and the link for this offer is here: http://www.gomdm.com/registration.asp

It looks like the rumors of the Tungsten T3 are actually true as more details are unveiling about this device.

With built-in Bluetooth and a 480x320 screen supporting both landscape and portrait modes, I really am thinking this would be the ultimate device to pair up with my Nokia 3650 (sorry NX, you just can't connect to the Internet as easily).

I should have probably included some actual pics of the Zodiac itself in the last post. Anyways, here are the first pics that have been released of the Zodiac:

For those of you who haven't visited PDArcade recently, there have been a number of screenshots for games that are going to be released for the Zodiac. These games look amazing. I hope you aren't visiting this on dial-up.

For those of you that don't know. The Tapwave Helix is a PalmOS5 based handheld computer that is designed specifically with gaming in mind. It's got a 480x320 screen, and it looks like it has a lot of processing power to back it.

At ClieSource, Ayasin posted a sneak peek of the next Clie coming out. Looks like they improved the audio system a bit, and it will be a pretty powerful machine. And, in the tradition of the NZ series of Clie models, they didn't quite consider the size of this unit. I thought the NZ was a bit big, but they might have gone a bit overboard with this one. I don't know what they will do for the next NZ device.

The Tapwave Helix gaming device has now been renamed to the Tapwave Zodiac. It's going to offer some pretty impressive games. PDArcade has some previews of some upcoming games. And here is a pic that shows a comparison of the game SpyHunter with the Zodiac. It's compared to the GBA, the Nokia N-Gage/Series60 phones, and the older low-res Palm version. This looks to have graphics close to the PS1.
Here's another link. http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=34709834&m=4620975863 Don't put your Palm in the oven, or you might regret it.

I read this story at Brighthand and thought maybe their website got hacked. Apparently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating $7.5 million to schools to purchase Palm Tungsten T2 handhelds for educators. If Windows Mobile is so great, why wouldn't they use that money to purchase some Pocket PC's for the schools. I personally think Pocket PC is a pretty good system and don't have a problem with it even though I use a Palm handheld. (I used to use a pre-Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device, an NEC Mobile Pro 450 running Windows CE 2.0 and loved it.) But, it seems like it would hurt Bill Gates' future credibility if he tried to convince people that his product is superior because when it was his foundations money being spent, it was spent on the competitor. If Bill Gates chooses Palm over Windows Mobile, then at least I know I made a sound decision.

While the last couple of days, the big PDA news has been the UX handhelds. Sony actually announced two handhelds in the US, nit just the UX50, but also the UX40 sans WiFi. But today there have been pics going around from China showing a prototype of the Palm Tungsten T3 handheld. The Tungsten T2 hasn't even been released, but it looks like they are already testing this model that will probably be available by the end of this year or early next year.

Based on this article from The Inquirer, it looks like the updated Tungsten device that they are describing. So, this device might even be out by November. My Clie NX will be a year old by then, and might be ready to retire . If this is the same device that's described, then it will be running Palm OS6, though that's not shown in the screenshots. Probably the prototype is running a modified version of Palm OS 5.2 since OS6 isn't ready yet. From earlier screenshots at Palm InfoCenter, it looks like OS6 will natively be hi-res+ (320x480) like the device shown. Sony and Garmin already have devices with hi-res+ screens and Tapwave has a device on the way. The Clie UX is rumored to have the OS6 API's built-in for it's hi-res+ screen and so will the Tapwave device. I bet Palm will wait until OS6 is actually out until it has a device with the OS6 hi-res+ API.
I think that a hi-res+ screen is a must on any device I own in the future. The screen is amazing to look at. Plus, this TT3 looks fairly slim, especially compared to some of the recent Clie devices. I hope this device is really coming by the end of the year. I would miss abandoning the Clie platform, but if Sony doesn't put something like this on the market by then, I've have no regrets moving to a Palm device. Sony was keeping way above Palm with the quality and technology of there devices, but now Palm has Sony beat. The Tungsten C, and now the Tungsten T3. Sony better have something up their sleeve, and it better be something better than the toy of a PDA, the UX-50.

Been a little busy recently. Back to work now, and Nickcole bought a new car, a 2003 Chevy Caviler.
Some big news in the PDA world. Sony is going to announce in the US on Friday a new Clie that is totally different from anything else they make. It looks a lot like the Zaurus unit that came out not to long ago.

This is yet another clamshell PDA and it has a hi-res+ (480x320) screen, but it is in landscape, not portrait orientation. The older Handera QVGA device was able to do landscape, but it wasn't the native orientation.
I'm not so sure if this is a device I would use. I am still very happy with my Clie NX60. But there are a few items the UX50 has that I like. It is the first PalmOS device with both Bluetooth and WiFi. Very 21st century. It has a new CPU made by Sony which is called the Sony Handheld Engine. Only runs up to 120Mhz or so, but it has a ton of functions built-in to the chip. It is a scalable chip, like the Intel XScale, but the scaling function is actually enabled on this device. (I don't think a single PDA actually takes advantage of the speed scaling abilities of Intels chip. The only softwares that do are a few over/underclocking apps. But this new chip scales on demand anywhere from 8MHz up to the top speed of 120-something MHz. This is great for the battery life because has fast does the datebook or your e-book reader have to go. You only use the battery power when you need it.
Sony has included some new functions into this device. One thing that opens up a lot of possibilities is the built-in software based OpenGL. It's only software based, so it will probably be limited, but Sony is already taking advantage of it by including a 3D application launcher.

The keyboard on this unit looks like it might be the best one of any of the Clie devices. I can see this as being more of an E-mail and IM on the go device. It kinda has a look like the Danger Sidekick device. If they made a GPRS version of the UX50, it might really be some competition for the Sidekick and the Blackberry.
What are some things that worry me though. Accessories. My NX60 was able to use NR screen protectors. As does the NZ. This is a new size screen I think. So no screen protectors for now. Sony probably has one, but it's probably priced high too. The Hotsync port. It has been a standard for a while now. All the T-series devices, the NR, the NX, the TG, the NZ, the SJ. They all have the same connector. Not the UX. So if you have something you want to hook up, too bad. Hope you didn't buy that $100 speaker cradle. Or a GPS unit. Or a game controller. Another thing, you can't use the headphones remote control with this device since it on'y includes just a standard stero headphone jack. Many of the higher-end devices (maybe they all do) have an extra plug that a remote control plugs into. Very nice for controlling your MP3's without having to open your device and fiddle with the stylus. Also, the jog-dial is no longer a tool to help with using your device one handed. Its on the bottom and is more of a knob, than a wheel. Sony pulled a Zire. They only have three hard buttons on the front. Every PalmOS device (except the $99 Zire) has had four buttons. We are looking at a $600-700 device here. Hope your certain app (or game) doesn't expect you to have certain buttons.

It's getting late, I need to sleep. I could probably go on, but you can find more info elsewhere. This is just my opinion, you might love this device. I think I'll hold out for the next NX. Hopefully OS6, Bluetooth, WiFi, 64MB (or more) or RAM. Doesn't sound too outrageous when looking at the UX.

Well, I got the movie to work. I had to do some slight trimming to the final movie I made because even though it was 123MB like I was looking for, it was about 300KB larger than my Memory Stick could hold. The movie did play like it was supposed to, though the audio was awful. Might be due to the MP3 compression I used. I still have a little bit of work to do to perfect converting the videos to playback properly. At least it's possible now!

MMPlayer has been updated to include Clie support meaning now Clie handhelds can have a full multimedia player on our machine that doesn't require files to be converted. The sound playback for the Clie's ain't all that great though (8kHz) since Sony won't release any info to developers on how to fully use the sound system (and for the fact that even though Palm OS 5 has a standard audio system built-in, Sony decided not to use it). Right now I am doing some experimenting converting a Divx movie into a 320x176 Divx file that will fit onto a 128MB Memory Stick. But the Memory Stick will only actually hold 123MB of files. I have the movie down to 125MB by using a Divx calculator and changing the bitrate to 164kB/sec and changing the audio to a 1kB/s MP3 stream (which translates to 8kHz mono audio). Then I chopped off most of the credits and the opening sequence that displayed the 20th Century Fox logo. Now I have to converting the video from 24-bit to 16-bit color since that all the Clie can display. Hey, looks liked it worked and the file is exactly 123MB. Hopefully this will all work now.

Up until now, the only way to get movies on the Clie was to use either an app called Kinoma or use the built-in Sony Movie Player. Kinoma's okay, but the file sizes are large since it uses the older Cinepak mobile compression. The Sony Movie Player plays MPEG-4 based movies, but the are in .MQV format. It is based on a Quicktime format and the only way to make the movies is to run it through an app called Image Convertor which will convert .MPG's, some .MOV's and some .AVI's. If the movie doesn't work, you have to use another app to do a 'pre-conversion'. I use QuickTime Pro for .MOV files and convert the files to .AVI format. I use VirtualDub for Divx files. One thing to note is, the audio has to be uncompressed for the Image Convertor to work. Basically all Divx movies have the audio compressed using MP3 and a lot of higher quality Quicktime videos have some form of compression too.
So, for a video to work, you have to run it through an app like VirtualDub, and then just totally guess on what kind of settings to use to output since the Image Convertor does a pretty good job of compressing, but it's hard to tell how much it will do, especially if you want to convert a full movie and fit it on a 128MB stick. (These movies are over 4GB in their original format.)

So, whats this got to do with native support for Divx on the Clie? Well, to fit a Divx movie onto a 128MB stick, it still needs to be converted since these movies are normally around 600-700MB so they will fit on CD. But, the good news is, I can tell exactly the setting I need to use to convert in VirtualDub, since there is only one conversion being done. I just use an app called Advanced Divx calculator, plugged in the movie length, size the outputted movie needs to be and audio bitrate and it tells me what bitrate to use for the video. Plug these settings into the Divx settings (leaving some leeway) and away it goes. Takes about an hour to do the full conversion on my PC (Athlon XP 2000, 1.6GHz).

To anyone interested in handheld gaming, Brighthand has an article giving more details on the upcoming TapWave Helix game machine running PalmOS. It looks like it will be a jack-of-all-trades type device that probably won't be as good as the PSP at gaming, but will have a huge collection of Palm software available for it and you will finally be able to have a good PDA and a decent gaming machine in one, without having to carry both your Palm and Gameboy. One thing this device has that will blow away the Gameboy and PSP is the screen. This will have a 480x320 screen and will be very nice for gaming.
(Image from Brighthand.com)

I have now accumulated 2000 posts at ClieSource. I guess all that time posting and reading is gone forever! Seriously though, I don't miss it. It has been fun so far and I have made a number of friends along the way. I remember not too long ago, some friends of mine would meet people online and consider them friends, though they had never met in person. I thought they were freaks. But, now I can understand that even people online can be friends as many people at ClieSource have shown me. I have been to a number of message boards, and still post once in a while at some like PalmInfoCenter and BrightHand, I have never quite felt the sense of community I feel at ClieSource. I guess much of the crowd there thinks in a similar way to myself. I want to post more, but a big storm has just hit, and I'm kinda worried the power might go out. Maybe if I still have this on my mind, I will finish tommorrow.

Well, it look's like Sony is finally updating the NX series software. They did some updates to Clie Files and a few other things in the past, but now they finally updates the Macromedia Flash player to accept Flash files with MP3 encoded audio. This should have been included in the first place, and I've had it on my NX for a little while, thanks to the fact that the TG series Clies came with the updated Flash player a few months ago. Plus, an offical NetFront update is nice since I have heard of many issues with the software. Don't use it myself since I don't have any Internet access on my Clie, but it's still nice to know that maybe Sony does care just a little bit. You can find the links on my NX page (http://nx.cbulock.com), I am kinda tired, so I don't feel like looking them up at this moment.

I don't know if it's just a coincidence, or if there is actually something up, but I have noticed a lot of Clie NX users experiencing hard resets recently. Or maybe it's just being talked about more. Or maybe my recent experience with them has just made me notice more. I first noticed this trend in a thread at ClieSource titled "The NX Blink from Hell". Over the last week I have had two hard resets. Once, I was doing something that made my Clie freeze up, and a soft reset turned out to be a hard reset. Then, while playing TableTennis 3D , my Clie froze again. I think it had a Fatal Error. Upon reset, I didn't get a logo, but instead, my screen quickly blinked white on and off. Kinda like a strobe light. I tried soft resets, warm resets, nothing would work. So hard reset it was.
Well, today I was reading CliePlanet and noticed that Shaun McGill, another fellow NX user has also had a recent hard reset. I hope this doesn't continue, or else we can't make fun of those PPC users anymore.