Engadget Podcast.23 03.21.2005 - Engadget
After a long absence, and a strange “3/20″ quiet launch meme that got passed around SXSW, the Engadget Podcast is back!
It’s queued up on my Shuffle, and I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’m glad to see it’s back. Eric Rice, podcast producer for other WeblogsInc podcasts like Autoblog and Gadling, is the host. Looks like no more Phillip Torrone and Lenn Pryor for us, but pt is busy doing all sorts of cool stuff for Make Magazine, and Lenn has welcomed a new baby to his family, so they’re understandably otherwise occupied.
The Engadget podcast was part of the inspiration for TinyPodcast, and we consider TinyPodcast to be a spiritual sibling to the Engadget podcast, so we’re glad to see that it’s back.
Go have a listen!
It’s Radio Go Daddy. Yo, ho, ho! We’ve got a radio show.
Bob Parsons’ blog is an interesting view into GoDaddy.com. He announced today that GoDaddy is starting a radio show, available on both Sirius and XM, and local radio stations. He says shows will be available at RadioGoDaddy.com after they’re broadcast, but doesn’t make any mention of making them available as podcasts.
It would be very easy, Bob - just offer an RSS 2.0 feed with the MP3 files as enclosures. I’d subcribe, and listen. But I doubt that I’d go to the trouble to manually go and download a show to listen to. Podcasting has made it so easy to connect with people who want to listen to you.
The site’s not live yet (he’s planning on launching on March 30, and says the site will be up a few days before). Let’s hope that podcast support is there when it goes live!
Here’s this week’s podcast. As usual, about 40 minutes. Download the MP3 file directly, or subscribe to the TinyPodcast feed to get the show automatically in your podcast aggregator.
Highlight: Kevin gives us a hands on review/demo of the Delphi MyFi XM2Go XM Satellite Radio receiver. Satellite radio in your pocket!
I’ll get some detailed show notes up later, once I have a chance to listen through the show and type them.
Pocket PC Thoughts - T-Mobile Pulling iPAQ 6300 from Retail?
This has been around all of the gadget sites today, and I’ve got a friend here at work that has confirmed it. The iPAQ 6300 Pocket PC Phone Edition no longer appears on T-Mobile’s site, and according to my friend, T-Mobile support has said, over the phone, that not only are they not selling the device anymore, they’re not going to support it, either.
The purported root of the problem is a bevy of user complaints and problems, and lack of support from HP. This brings up an interesting question - as devices get more and more advanced, and more and more difficult to support, are wireless carriers like T-Mobile going to be able to support them? My experience with T-Mobile support is that they can barely support the “dumb” phones that they carry, let along the smartphones and PDA phones.
Carriers are going to have to make a significant investment in building and training their support infrastructure for these devices, right along side investments in next gen wireless services and network upgrades. What good is an advanced Pocket PC Phone Edition device, or a speedy 3G wireless network, when customers have nothing but problems, and the carrier can’t or won’t provide support?
I’m not fishing for attention, it’s a serious question. I do most of my “geeky” posting here at TinyScreenfuls.com, and my “non-geeky” family stuff goes to GadgetFamily.org.
I started GeekBlog.org because I had delusions of grandeur, of turning TinyScreenfuls into “one of the premier mobile devices sites on the net”, and I wanted to keep any non-mobile device geeky stuff separate. Thus GeekBlog.org was born.
I have since then caught the Cluetrain, and refocused TinyScreenfuls to be my thoughts and my voice on mobile gadgets and technology. When I find something worth posting about, it’s usually here, just because this is where a lot of my interests lie. So posts here to GeekBlog.org have become more and more scarce.
Without digging into my logs to look at the numbers (my web host’s tool for viewing logs is slow and painful), I get the feeling that not many people actually read GeekBlog.org.
So, here’s my question. Do you read GeekBlog.org? If you do, how would you feel if I redirected it, and started posting stuff that would have gone there here at TinyScreenfuls.com? It would be one fewer site for me to maintain (not that it’s that much work), and allow me to focus more on TinyScreenfuls.com.
Please do me a favor and leave a comment below, and let me know what you think. I’d like to get an idea of what the impact would be of closing/redirecting GeekBlog.org.
Thanks!
TinyPodcast is going to be late this week, since I am attending a funeral today. Brian and I are going to try to get together on Friday and put a show together for you.
I really like the Audiovox SMT5600, but there is something about it that’s almost ruining the user experience for me. The phone’s largest appeal is its connectivity, but I have learned that I never know if it’s connected or not.
I can illustrate my frustration with an experience from last night. When I woke this morning, I checked my phone for the envelope icon to indicate whether or not the phone had downloaded any new email from my POP server. There was none. When I got to work, I pulled up the web interface for my email account and found that I had 8 new messages. I powered my phone off and then back on and within minutes, the phone had pulled down the new emails.
It kinda defeats the purpose if I have to do that every time! I am getting frustrated because it is great technology and I want it to work, but the never-ending guessing about connectivity is killing me! Well…maybe not killing me, but…
that are still people who keep their calendar on a medium extracted from dead trees? As I walked through the cafeteria this morning, I noticed that there were a number of people who keep their schedules on paper (how first century)! Some were bound into planners and some were raw printouts from Outlook, but they were all so static and single-purpose. All kidding aside, it made me think for a few minutes about my organizational past.
I worked for Franklin Covey back when Covey Leadership was a competitor and I carried every size of day planner they sell for years (except for the 8.5 x 11 version). When I got my hands on my first Palm Pilot Professional, things changed forever. I have turned away from paper-based planning systems and will never look back. A few things my PDA can do that a paper planner can’t:
- Dynamically display my calendar in any format I want (agenda, day, week, month, etc)
- Keep mountains of data without growing in size
- Store the equivalent of a book worth of maps
- Play music while I work
- Synchronize my checkbook data with Microsoft Money on my PC
- Allow me to reply to email off-line (or online for that matter)
- Browse the internet, and
- Schedule appointments with other people
That’s just the list of things that I came up with in 30 seconds without thinking too much about it I am sure that if I spent a little time, I could at least double that list. I am absolutely addicted to my device and can’t imagine ever going back to paper, but I know that planner companies sell millions of calendars every year. I just don’t see the appeal. What do you think?
Google Mobile
There have been versions of Google formated for the small screen of PDAs before (www.google.com/palm, etc.), but it appears that Google has made efforts to make their web, image, and local searches more accessible for those using mobile phones with tiny screens and simple browsers.
In fact, Pocket Internet Explorer on my Axim x50v seems to be too advanced, because I get the same “explanation” page in PIE as I do on the desktop. However, you can get directly to the new mobile interface at
www.google.com/xhtml.
It looks nice, if you’ve got a very small screen (say, on a Windows Mobile Smartphone, which is only 176 pixels wide, or a Treo 600, which is 160 pixels wide), but if you’ve got a PDA with a QVGA, or even better, a VGA resolution screen (like my x50v), I find that the full version of Google’s searches (local, images, news, etc.) works much better.
Go here for more info on how to use this new feature to the fullest.
Pocket PC Thoughts - Dell’s 10 Days Of Deals — Axim X50v $399CDN Today
If you’re in Canada and interested in a Dell Axim x50v Pocket PC (the 624MHz VGA screen one that I have and love), you can pick one up today only for $399 Canadian. That’s about $330 USD, much cheaper than any deal on this device that I’ve ever seen.
Maybe Dell will offer a similar deal to U.S. customers soon.
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
Still quite useful. 
