Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

Internet Archive: Details: Portland Geek Dinner with Chris Pirillo 2005-04-22

I chatted with Chris and his fiancee Ponzi about their Pocket PC Phone Edition devices, what they like and dislike about them, and just general geeky chat.

We had dinner at McMennamin’s Blue Moon restaurant on NW 21st and Glisan, and after dinner, wandered around NW 23rd St, which is quite the place to hang out on the weekends, and stopped for some gelato for dessert.

The video is about 12 minutes long, and weighs in at 48 MB. You can download the video file here (Windows Media Format, 320×240, 512Kbps).

Hope the video gives you a taste of what the geek dinner was like, and makes you want to join us next time! Let me know what you think of the video, and look for lots more TinyPodcast Video Edition in the future.

Breaking: Google Launching Personal Portal Page - Gizmodo

An interesting (if predictable) move from Google.

Now, Google, how about the ability to add a box linked to an RSS feed of my choosing? That would make this about a million times more useful. Looks like “the ability to add any standardized feed” will be coming “very soon.”

Here’s this week’s show. You can download the MP3 file directly (right-click, save as), or subscribe to the TinyPodcast RSS feed in your favorite podcast aggregator to get the show delivered automatically to your computer and MP3 player.

It’s been two weeks since we have been able to do a show, and we had tons of stuff to talk about today. Even more next week - so much cool geeky stuff going on! This week, we chat about the new Motion LE1600 Tablet PC, how much more effective Tablet PC advertising would be if they got a few hundred tablets into the hands of influentials/evangelists/connectors, my ongoing phone saga (brief flirtation with a Treo 650 then back home to a Windows Mobile Smartphone), some game hardware news coming out of E3, Xbox 360, PalmOne LifeDrive, and more.

This week’s show is jam packed with good stuff, and we still didn’t get through everything we wanted to talk about. We ended up at about 45 minutes, 21.5 MB. No TinyPodcast Video Edition this week, but we might have some Video Edition exclusive stuff coming up in the near future. Watch this space.

As always, we love to get feedback! You can email us at tinyscreenfuls@gmail.com or call our voice feedback line and leave us a message - 206-339-TINY. Let us know how we’re doing, any comments you have on stuff we talk about, or just say Hi.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next week on our regular day (Tuesday)!

This week, Brian returned the Audiovox SMT5600 Windows Mobile Smartphone that he had been borrowing from me. I’ve been using a Treo 650 for the past week or so, long enough to get a feel for what I like (and don’t like) about it.

The day I got the Smartphone back, I switched over to it to make some direct comparisons with the Treo (web browser, email client, etc.). I sort of intended to go back to the Treo and keep using it for a while, to get a better long term feel for it, but it was such a nice feeling returning to the Windows Mobile Smartphone platform after such a long absence…

I switched from my Motorola MPX200 Smartphone to the Blackberry 7100t last October, because I wanted to get some real-life usage of a new platform. The Blackberry was a great device, and I’ll post more detailed thoughts sometime soon. Suffice it to say that I felt like I had explored the limits of what it could do, and was hungry for a new OS experience. Enter the Treo 650.

The Treo is also a great device, and I can definitely see why it’s so popular. I’ll post some detailed impressions of it, too (I’m still sorting all of the pros and cons of these platforms out in my head), as well as some discussion in audio and video on an upcoming TinyPodcast. But having used all three of these “smartphone” platforms over the last year plus, I have to say that coming back to Windows Mobile felt like coming home.

I am a Windows Mobile guy at heart. And I feel like I’ve come home.

I love the compact, solid feel of the SMT5600. I love the integration between the mail client, MSN Messenger, and the fact that I can set preferences for alerts in one place, instead of in every app. I love how well Bluetooth works - handsfree, voice dialing, Activesync, and using the phone as a GPRS modem for both my Dell Axim x50v Pocket PC and my laptop. I love the fact that the email client actually checks for mail every 30 minutes, instead of lying about it and delivering a big batch of messages every few hours. I love the fact that I can get a (text-only for now) version of Skype for the Smartphone. I love the fact that it has Windows Media Player 10, so I can stream all of my podcasts, music, and video from home using Orb.

It has its drawbacks, and areas where it’s bested by the Treo and/or the Blackberry. The Treo’s camera is much better. I miss a QWERTY keyboard (though T9 came back like riding a bike). I miss the larger screen and higher res of the Treo, especially the Blazer browser.

I’ll ruminate more on these items over the next little while, and I might switch from one to the other for a day or so to make some more detailed comparisons. I just wanted to give everyone an update, and let you know that Daddy’s home!

Motion Computing - Tablet PC Products and Services

The wraps came off of Motion Computing’s next Tablet PC offering this week:

I’m attracted to this new tablet, but a couple of things turn me off. First, this new, flashy Tablet PC is still saddled with XGA (1024×768) screen resolution. Ugh. Second, their “View Anywhere(R) Display” is available, which I guess makes the screen more viewable outdoors, but it’s a $300 option! What the heck do they do to that little 12″ screen to make it worth a three hundred dollar upgrade? Am I missing something here?

Right now, I’m torn about which tablet I want most. The Toshiba M200 is still the front-runner, but this new Motion LE1600 looks great (the only Sonoma-based tablet I know of), and the upcoming IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X41 is quite sexy, too…