I wasn’t impressed with the Foleo when Palm first announced the product. The company believed it was introducing a new line of products known as the mobile companion. The Foleo is a $499 laptop for a smartphone. Well, Palm wised up and canceled the Foleo — a move that came a little too late.

Surprisingly, a few third party developers already created applications for the Foleo. If porting to Linux is easy, let’s hope these companies didn’t spend much time creating a Foleo-compatible version of their software.

I’m not against Palm and I hope the company survives the disaster. In fact, I still prefer Palm OS devices to Windows Mobile and am rooting for the company to come out with a new device to take Palm to the next level.

A second Sidekick III case came in yesterday. It doesn’t work well. The first one had a leather-like cover and interfered with my interactions with the Sidekick. This one fits too loosely and gets in the way of using the device.

I spent too much time searching the Internet for case reviews and suggestions. With so many devices on the market and almost all of them having unique shapes and sizes — it adds up to a whole lot of cases. The same goes for screen protectors.

If you have a case for a mobile phone, handheld or other mobile device and a case or screen protector that you like — please share what device you have along with the brand / model of the case or screen protector. It’d give people a resource for when they’re in need of a good quality case or screen protector.

I can recommend two screen protectors and one case. Just not for the Sidekick III. For the Palm Tungsten III, I use the PA72 classic Vaja Case (didn’t pay that much) and mine is completely black.

For the same device, I use Brando WorkShop Screen Protector. I’ve had it for three years and it still works. It has a couple of bubbles, but they appear on the sides. This happened after I removed the screen once ages ago and couldn’t get the bubbles out. The first time I put it on, it had little or no bubbles. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t sell any for the Sidekick III.

The Dell Axim x51v has WriteShield Crystal Clear protecting its face. No bubbles at all and it works great.

A friend of mine bought another PDA when her Zire 22 wouldn’t charge. I asked her why didn’t she tell me as the solution could be an easy one. Nonetheless, I told her to try a soft reset and then a hard reset. She said she was charging the new one and then was going to put the new one into the old one’s cradle to see if it charges. Good idea, but I’d try the reset first.

Info on resets: Before doing any kind of reset, backup the device, if possible. A soft reset compares to rebooting a computer. Doing a reset doesn’t erase the data.

Most devices come with a small hole on the back. The tip of your stylus might be able to press it. If not, get a paperclip and straighten it. This works most, if not all, the time. Just insert the clip or stylus into the hole until you see the welcome screen appear. Some devices don’t have the reset button in an obvious place like the Tungsten T3 requires sliding it open to access the hole or the Treo 650 that has its reset button behind the battery door.

A hard reset erases all the data and returns the device to the way it was when you two first met. Again (can’t remind folks too many times), back up your data before doing a hard reset. Put the paper clip or stylus into the hole on the back of the device and hold it down while you press the power button until you see the screen appear with either a message asking if you want to erase the data, or the device’s default welcome screen. Also, check your device’s documentation because the hard reset process could be different — but this one is common.

After doing a hard reset, sync your device with the computer to restore the data. Before doing this, check the device’s documentation on restoring data. For instance, Palm OS users need to open HotSync and select Custom. Select the Conduit and click Change to “change the action to Desktop overwrites handheld.” Windows Mobile users open ActiveSync, click on Tools and then Backup/Restore. Select the Restore tab and click on the Restore Now button.

OmniSky, a wireless service provider, has filed for Chapter 11 and sold its wireless assets to Earthlink. Earthlink released a software upgrade for its wireless customers including those who transitioned from OmniSky. After using it for one week with a Palm Vx and Minstrel modem, I’m disappointed with the software because it’s less usable and slower than OmniSky’s software.

It has nothing to do with change since that occurs daily in an IT business environment. It has everything to do with the usability and speed of the application. There are only minor improvements, but they’re overshadowed by the problems.

New Earthlink Wireless users who have never experienced OmniSky likely will be somewhat satisfied with the software not knowing what they’re missing. The only thing they may notice and dislike is the slow connection when surfing the Web.

Trashing

Previously, when deleting an email, there was a popup box that provided the options of deleting it from the Handheld, Handheld and Server, or Cancel. If I wanted to save an email for the home PC, then I’d delete it from the handheld. If I was finished with the email and had no need for it, I’d select to delete it from the handheld and server so I wouldn’t have to deal with it again on the home PC.

The new software makes it an application preference. You can either choose to Delete from Handheld or Delete from Handheld and Server for the entire emailbox. There’s no option to do it on an individual email basis. Now, I am stuck with a handheld mailbox full of emails that I want to address on the home PC, but don’t need on the handheld, and this further clutters the tiny space.

Another timesaver on the old software is that when you deleted an email, it opened the next email for immediate reading. The new one takes you back to the Inbox screen where you have to select the next one to read.

Composing

Replying to emails is time-consuming process with the new software. When replying, it puts your cursor at the top of the email body followed by your signature. It doesn’t allow you to select a bulk of text with the stylus or the keyboard and delete them with one move. Plus, it doesn’t differentiate the sender’s message from yours with > or some other character.

The old software had this capability. I realize many users do reply at the top, but I also know many that reply throughout or at the bottom. However, this is a handheld device and it’s hard to review the original email when your cursor is at the top. The previous software made it easier to review the original response as you entered your response.

When forwarding or composing a new email, the new software puts the cursor in the Subject: of the email and the tab doesn’t work. The old software put the cursor in the TO: and allowed me to tab from To: and Subject: to the body of the email. To boot, the scrolling button scrolls line by line instead of page by page in the old software.

The first few days, the modem failed to connect to the network more often than it succeeded. This has somewhat improved, but not to the excellent levels that OmniSky provided. The handheld keeps spitting a Fatal Alert error (DataMgr.c, Line: 8589, Index Out of Range) requiring a soft RESET. I’ve been able to work around it.

Once, it happened every time I tried to Send and Receive Email and I couldn’t work around it. I called the Earthlink tech support. He instructed me to uninstall and reinstall the software. Since I wasn’t near the home PC, I tried again to bypass the error and got email working again. Unless needed, I don’t plan to uninstall so as to avoid further messing up things.

Mini-Web Surfing

Rarely do I explore the Web on the handheld device, but wanted to see how it worked with Earthlink’s software. It’s much slower and painful to use than OmniSky’s software. It took so long to access a Web site, I lost patience and quit the application. Even with OmniSky, it did occasionally take a little time to load a page. In this case, it happened every time.

OmniSky gave the user the option of using PQA (Palm Query Application), and/or buy a browser, such as the Handspring Blazer, to use in conjunction with the fast Web-clipping format. Earthlink has built a new client on the Handspring Blazer and trashed Web-clipping capabilities. The result is a snail-like and unstable browsing experience

Improvements

The software has a few improvements, but not enough to ignore the problems and live with the software. If you forward an email with an attachment, it sends the attachment. The old software didn’t include the attachment when forwarding. It also has the capability to view attachments.

You can select multiple emails for moving or deleting from a folder. The Inbox interface is better since it provides more information in four columns: Mail, From, Subject, and Date. The mail column indicates whether or not you’ve opened the email and includes a paperclip when there are attachments.

The new software comes with new options such as Select All Messages, Empty Deleted Items, and View Options. There is also a Deleted folder, which wasn’t in the old software. At first, I didn’t like this folder because it added another step to delete messages from the folder. It may be helpful to have this, but it depends on how the deleting works and it’s been tough to figure it out.

There’s no documentation detailing whether or not an email that’s in the Deleted folder will remain on the server for PC retrieval. I tested it and the email did remain on the server and the PC retrieved it. However, it’s confusing because of the Delete from Handheld or Delete from Handheld and Server preference. Does nothing get deleted from the server unless it’s deleted from the Deleted folder? Or does it depend on the preference?

The software has the capability to manage up to 10 accounts. Adding a Yahoo account went without a hitch. It’s easy to switch between the two accounts using the drop-down box.

Earth To Earthlink

Earthlink has been an ISP for a long time and I believe they were thinking like the PC user instead of the handheld user when developing the software. It would’ve been simpler to take OmniSky’s software and add required elements, if any, to make the service work.

It’s commendable they attempted to better the product and try to give us something new, but not at the sacrifice of usability and speed. I never received a survey from Earthlink asking how I liked my service and software.

The software title has a version number tied to it, giving the impression they plan to upgrade. If you use the service, tell them what you’d like to see in a future release.

If you run a weblog using Movable Type, then you can easily make it available for PDA readers. It takes under 30 minutes to set it up.

Select the weblog to convert to PDA format. Click on LIST & EDIT TEMPLATES > CREATE NEW INDEX TEMPLATE (just above the gray boxed area that lists your existing templates) .

In the NAME box, enter a name for the weblog. Mine says, “Portable meryl’s notes.”

In the OUTPUT FILE box, enter a name for the file with a .html extension. Here I enter, “pdanotes.html.”

Copy and paste the following and change the <TITLE> and the <DIV> right after the <BODY> tag.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<TITLE>meryl's notes on the go!</TITLE>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
	color:#333;
	background-color:white;
	margin:20px;
	padding:0px;
	font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	leftMargin=0
}
h1 {
	font:bold 12px/12px verdana, arial, helvetica,
                       sans-serif;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:0px;
}
p {
	font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	color:#333333;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:0px;
}
.Content>p {margin:0px;}
.Content>p+p {text-indent:0px;}
.tinyfont { font:8px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.smallfont { font:9px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.titlefont { font:14px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
a {
	color:#000000;
	font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	text-decoration:none;
}
A:link { color: #09c; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:visited { color: #07a; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:active { TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:hover {
	FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal
	BACKGROUND: #eee;
}
#Header {
	margin:50px 0px 10px 0px;
	padding:17px 0px 0px 20px;
	/* For IE5/Win's benefit height = [correct height] +
[top padding] + [top and bottom border widths] */
	height:33px; /* 14px + 17px + 2px = 33px */
	border-style:solid;
	border-color:black;
	border-width:1px 0px; /* top and bottom borders: 1px;
left and right borders: 0px */
	line-height:11px;
	background-color:#eee;
/* Here is the ugly brilliant hack that protects IE5/Win
from its own stupidity. Thanks to Tantek Celik for the
hack and to Eric Costello for publicizing it. IE5/Win
incorrectly parses the ""}"" value, prematurely
closing the style declaration. The incorrect IE5/Win
value is above, while  the correct value is below. See
http://glish.com/css/hacks.asp for details. */
	voice-family: ""}"";
	voice-family:inherit;
	height:14px; /* the correct height */
}
/* I've heard this called the "be nice to Opera 5" rule.
Basically, it feeds correct length values to user agents
that exhibit the parsing error exploited above yet get
the CSS box model right and understand the CSS2
parent-child selector. ALWAYS include a "be nice to
Opera 5" rule every time you use the Tantek Celik
hack (above). */
body>#Header {height:14px;}
.Content {
	margin:5px 5px 5px 5px;
	padding:2px;
}
.dateheader {
	position:relative;
	width:auto;
	min-width:120px;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:5px;
	z-index:3;
}
-->
</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=Header>... meryl's notes on the go!</DIV>
<div align="left">
<MTEntries lastn="15">
<MTDateHeader>
<div class="dateheader"><H1><$MTEntryDate format="%A, %B %e,
%Y"$></H1></DIV>
</MTDateHeader>
<br>
<DIV class="content">
<span class="titlefont"><i><$MTEntryTitle$></i>
(<$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M%p"$>)<br /></span>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p><$MTEntryMore$></p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<p>:: Comments left behind ::</p>
<MTComments>
<$MTCommentBody$>
<span class="smallfont">:: <$MTCommentAuthorLink$>
<$MTCommentDate$></span><br /><br />
</MTComments>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
</div>
</MTEntries>
</div>
<HR width="75%">
<P CLASS="tinyfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.movabletype.org">Powered by
MovableType</a></P>
</body>
</html>

Hit SAVE and do a REBUILD.

That’s it for the Movable Type portion. Next step is to go to AvantGo and log in.

Click on MY ACCOUNT (upper right side of the screen) > CREATE CUSTOM CHANNEL WIZARD > in CHANNEL LOCATION, enter the URL to your new .html file that you just created. For this, it is: http://www.meryl.net/blog/pdanotes.html.

Click on VIEW to make sure it takes you to the .html page you created to verify it is the correct URL. Once confirmed, close the window and you’re back at AvantGo.

Proceed through the Channel Wizard. It has instructions for each screen so you can determine what you’d like to do. Remember, PDAs holds various amounts of data depending on the user’s PDA. Some are as small as 2 MB and others have 32 MB.

Click NEXT > Enter a CHANNEL TITLE (meryl.net articles) > Enter the CHANNEL MAX SIZE based on reading the instructions > NEXT > Select YES or NO for FOLLOW OFFSITE LINKS based on instructions > NEXT > Determine CHANNEL LINK DEPTH upon reading instructions > NEXT > Select YES OR NO for INCLUDING IMAGES (I recommend NO) > NEXT > FINISH (or go BACK if you need to revise something).

You’ll return to the MY CHANNELS screen. Select EXPORT CHANNELS. COPY the new channel you just have created by highlighting the entire URL and pressing CTRL-C. PASTE it in an email or word processor by pressing CTRL-V. This is the URL you give to others or put in your Web site for others to access your pages through the PDA.

Consider yourself portablized!