New Audible for Blackberry

Still in Transition

Replacing a Palm with a BlackBerry has at least two distinct aspects--that of abandoning Palm and that of making the jump to BlackBerry.

The first is often motivated by a feeling that Palm abandoned us first. Over the last few years they've done little to suggest anyone was even awake at the company other than introduce a new desktop with fewer features than previous versions and then call it an "upgrade." Admittedly, the launch of the new Pre is getting as much press as each of Britney's releases from rehab, but for many of us, it's just too late.

On the other side of the coin, is the jump to BlackBerry. Hands-down a better communication device than the Palm, it is not, however, a better PDA. Thus, those of us who've made the jump have done so partly based on the faith that the longer BlackBerry outsells Palm, the faster developers will close the application gap to make the BlackBerry what the Palm might have been if they hadn't holed up in Howard Hughes penthouse to live on nothing but ganga weed for the last few years.

Audible for BlackBerry

One of the first shortcomings I noticed in the application department was the BlackBerry application from Audible.com. I prefer to burn my books to CD and use the player in my vehicle to listen, but lately, I've had more trips than time to burn CDs, so I'd taken to using the Palm or BlackBerry player and piping it through the vehicle stereo. That had the added advantage of allowing me to listen on long walks with the dog without having to find my place in two different media. The problem was that the BlackBerry Audible application had more quirks than Carter had pills. So after a couple months of getting by, I decided surely there had been enough complaint and demand for Audible to come up with something better.

They had. Checking for updates, I found version 1.3 for BlackBerry. It's still not perfect, but it seems to be an improvement over version 1.0.whatever-it-was. Unfortunately though, someone appears to have taken a cue from Palm and the newer version is missing a feature I did occasionally use on the old: bookmarks. Still, overall it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Maybe "Final" Finally Means Final

Months back, Barry posted a piece about those scum-sucking auto warranty folks who had given me more last chances to "renew" my non-existent and supposedly soon-expiring auto warranty than a permissive parent gives a rotten kid to stop hitting his brother. After pressing the necessary numbers to decline their service "once-and-for-all," on at least three separate occasions I began to figure out that they were only kidding. About the final chance part. About me even having a warranty. About being able to remove my name from their list. I suspect that, even if I'd bought their probably phony (ooh, accidental pun there) warranty, they'd have still kept offering me one last chance to buy it again.

At the time of Barry's post, I completely sympathized with his complaint and put the draft of a seconding post in my Dashboard, but never found time to finish it.

In my case, most of the calls were arriving through my Google Grand Central account, so I was at least able to block each number they called from, for what little good it might do. Actually, I thought it had done some good. The calls finally stopped. But I learned today, again from Barry, that Verizon, bless their hearts, took the scum-sucking bastards to court and won a $50,000 judgment against them, which Verizon is donating to charity. Best line from the article: "The main part is, of course, that Verizon customers won't be bothered by these two jackass companies anymore." :-)

Verizon and I got off to a rough start while they were perfecting their "Easy Move" program, but for the last few years, I've nothing but praise for them. They'll keep my business. And AT&T wouldn't win it back if they were the last communications company on earth--but that's all another story. I carry grudges like that in the business world. Die scum-sucking Palm! (Oops. Was that out loud? Must've been channeling for all of us who are part of the five-to-one shipment ratio of new BlackBerry's to new Palms) . . . Want my business? Work for it. Work for it and you'll earn my steadfast loyalty. It's an old model, but it still works for me.

Treo vs Blackberry

More specifically, my Verizon Palm Treo 755p vs the Blackberry 8330 Curve I'll probably have by the end of the day.

I'm not the guy that constantly upgrades to the newest, coolest gadget. That would be my cousin over at Enrevanche, who consistently rides the front edge of the bow wave of technology; me, I'm the guy way back in the wake, who finally upgrades only when the time required to learn a new device interface is at last exceeded by the time spent going "WTF!" over the latest crash of the old one. That time has come.

When my Palm stereo headset began to grow weaker and weaker, until finally I could no longer hear either the books I listen to or the person on the other end of the phone, I replaced it with an LG Stereo Bluetooth headset. That worked for a bit--like a day or two, maybe. Then the Treo's Bluetooth began to randomly reject the headset. Different brand of headset, same problem. Third headset, same problem. Conclusion: the issue is the Treo Bluetooth, not the headsets.

I could invoke the warranty and replace the Treo. (Verizon is good about that, and they've done it once already when the wired headset receptacle locked up and believed there was something plugged into it even when there wasn't.) I could order another wired headset from Palm (the Verizon store doesn't carry them, and non-Palm wired headsets--at least in my Treo--only send the sound down one channel), but enough is enough. You'll find that a year ago, when I first replaced my Palm TX and my separate cell phone with a single integrated device, the Treo, I was initially thrilled with the device, but appalled with the "updated" Palm Desktop software. That blog/rant is here. Bottom line: Even a year ago, Palm was not stagnant; Palm was already moving backwards.

Still, as I said, I change my technology only when the benefit significantly outweighs the pain. So, I spent a couple hours over the last few days reading what's out there on the question of a Treo vs a Blackberry. The best thing I've found was written by Matthew R. Streger, in two parts. Part I , on the hardware, appears on Crackberry.com (a site recommended to me by the Verizon salesperson as a potential crackberry addict); Part II , on the software, appears on TreoCentral. Here is Matthew's conclusion, with my emphasis:

I think in the end, the strengths and weaknesses of the Treo compared with the Blackberry are based on where they began. The Palm platform began as the best personal information management system in personal computing history. It was originally designed to handle calendar, contacts, tasks and memos. Everything else with the Palm was gravy – the connectivity and tons of other software and accessories all grew from the original primary function of personal information management. In comparison, the Blackberry was originally a mobile e-mail device. In fact, for some time, just like the Palm, it didn’t have a telephone.

Today, the Palm is still better at the core information functions – the native applications offer more options for customizing how to view your information. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of handling telephone calls and e-mail messages very badly. The Blackberry isn’t nearly as good at personal information management or customization, but it does an adequate job, it’s much more stable, and in the end I have some degree of confidence that the Blackberry will continue to evolve and fix many of my issues. I do not have any confidence in Palm any longer, and that’s the ultimate reason for my switch.

Bingo! Condensed even further: while Blackberry has the better hardware by far, and Palm, by a diminishing margin, has the better software for personal information management (when it works), Blackberry has a future; Palm's future is oblivion, only because the people who run Palm have been comatose for years now.

I'm a guy who still believes in loyalty. But loyalty has to flow both ways. Palm has abandoned us. (Sort of reminds me of how I felt about the Air Force when we decided to reduce our personnel strength beyond what was workable, so that we could use the "savings" to buy hardware--but that's another story.) So, Palm, pucker up baby, because you are about to kiss me goodbye. And from what I've read over the last couple of days, I am part of a larger exodus that will spell the end of Palm within a few years at most. If you have Palm stock, sell it now. When the rebound comes, Palm won't be a part of it.

PS: If you need a chuckle, this transcript of an online chat I had with Palm support right after "upgrading" my Desktop software may amuse you. Later. I need to make a trip to the Verizon store.

Gorilla Glue

Okay. I love this stuff. Duct tape now has a partner. After Armageddon, if we can find enough of those two things, maybe we can put the world back together.

Over the break, I fell out of a chair. Yes, fell out. Leaned back in the wheeled chair at my father's desk and it shot out from under me like a horse with a bad attitude. On the way down, my Treo case caught the arm of the chair and the force literally ripped the belt clip right off. (Chinese thread isn't that sturdy anyway.) Dad took one look at it and said, "I've got some Gorilla Glue. Think that would work?" "Can't hurt," I replied.

Dude! Ten wicked horses in a team won't separate the belt clip from that case without a machete.

So I come home, and the first shower I take, the wooden-handled back scrubber comes apart and I stab myself in the back as used to happen about every three or four days. Not any more. A quick trip to Wal-Mart made me the proud owner of my own small container of Gorilla Glue. Nothing short of Darth Vader's light saber is separating that brush from the handle again.

Today, the wire rack on my shoe shine box came undone at two of its three attachment points . . . for the last time. That's what I'm talkin' about, Vern.

Gorilla Glue. Get some.

The Good: Super 8 Motel, Nashville, TN

Spend three days crossing the country and there will be bright spots and potholes. Bright spots are more fun, so we're going to start with one of those.

I think of Super 8 Motels as being just one step above Motel 6. There is, after all, no Motel 7. Crossing the country alone, I used to make a habit of staying where they left the light on for me. Traveling with a family full of women, we usually opted for a Best Western or Days Inn. Coming across the country this time, and spending nights we hadn't really planned for on the road, I opted for economy in lodging. At least, so I thought. I am going to tell you, and my daughter would be happy to verify, that the Super 8 Motel at 720 Royal Parkway, just off I-40 at exit 216, has more in common with a Hampton Inn than a Motel pickanynumber.

It has to do, I suspect, with the Wyndham chain being the corporate overlord of the Super 8 brand. For the most part, I'm sold. Though I'm still not likely to re-visit the Super 8 in Asheville, NC, that caused me to associate them with Motel 6 to begin with. But that's not a pretty story, so we'll just skip it for now. :-)

Back in the Land of "Ya'll"

One of my most vivid memories from one of the most vivid expenditures of however many lives I seem to have is climbing out from under my totaled 1975 Carmine Red Spitfire, upside down in a field of corn in eastern North Carolina in 1983, brushing the dust from my shoulders and hair, staring at the underbelly of my car and thinking, "Who can I get to help me turn this thing right side up so I can drive on back to Goldsboro--I've got to fly tomorrow" (never mind that the rear wheels were almost touching in the middle, the point of impact with the telephone pole having been about even with those rear wheels, except about three-quarters of the way through a roll) then turning to walk out of the field and being greeted immediately by a middle-aged, African-American woman of substantial girth, arms raised in praise, eyes wide and white and shifting between God's heaven and the ghost I suspect she thought she saw before her, and voice proclaiming for a now gathering crowd (I'd taken my time crawling out from under that totaled shell, taking inventory of limbs to make sure everything moved and was still attached--something I'd learned from having read Fleming's entire Jame's Bond series over the past year while killing time on nuclear alert waiting for WWIII), "HE'S ALIVE! HE'S ALIVE! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S ALIVE!"

I remember smiling warmly, struck by the enthusiasm of her earnest rejoicing at my fate, then asking politely, "I don't suppose ya'll might have a phone I could use?"

The rest of that story I'll save for another day, but I've told that much because her voice keeps echoing in my head today. My own inner voice keeps paraphrasing her chorus, but the enthusiasm matches her pitch just perfectly, "HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S BACK!" Back in the land of "ya'll," the land of pine, azaleas, dogwoods, sundresses, 30-second-shirt-soaking humidity, red clay, cotton, soy beans, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doobie Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Jack too. Home. Slightly off target perhaps, landing here in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than 3 hrs north, nearer Kannapolis, North Carolina, but closer than a lot of Soviet re-entry vehicles I think, and close enough that the language is the same, the customs much the same, the heritage much the same.

Charleston will have its own character that I may never fully understand--I got that much (and more) from Conroy, but this is still the South, with a capital S. And the differences from place to place in the South stand out far more starkly to someone who's never left it than to someone who's been too much out of it in the past three decades. I see far more similarity across its regions than I ever might have if I'd never left.

So, I'm back. And tomorrow, with the aid of a truly incredible Realtor, I hope to find the right place to live for a bit--nine months at least, while I fill a position as a Visiting Professor at the Citadel--longer maybe, depending on what fortunes the coming year brings. One step at a time.

I'll say this though, coming in those last 20 miles, I found the FM station that became the first new preset on my car stereo. Q104.5, Charleston's Classic Rock, is the clearest station I've ever heard. Ever. I'm nearing half a century. That station must broadcast with enough power to reach nearby galaxies. Classic tunes, crystal clear. I'd been three of the longest days ever on the road, pulling a six-by-twelve-foot trailer heavy enough not to like traveling faster than 60 mph without developing a mind of its own. Last time I'd crossed the country at that speed it was in that Spitfire and I was busting the national speed limit by 5 mph at the time. Having grown used to speeds closer to 80 mph on long trips, I'd forgotten how long such a road trip really can be. (And I have to offer a hat tip here to my teenage daughter who dropped out of warp to follow that trailer at that crawling pace in the same VW Beetle that the two of us had used to make the same trip in only two days heading the other direction only two months ago. Just another half day longer and they have needed to commit us both.) So when I was moving through the dial, looking for static so as to listen to an Audible book from my Palm Treo broadcast on FM, I was stopped in my tracks by the clarity of the sound, then riveted by the appropriateness of the words, as Bob Seger voiced my very thoughts, "And you don't feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through."

That was my welcome to Charleston around 1 a.m. this morning. About the time I was thinking, "This trip almost is through," and about the time I was hearing that big, beautiful, booming, woman's voice in my head, and thinking, "Yes. Yes. Yes. Praise God Almighty indeed. He's back."

"Have a Blessed Day"

Here. Have a chuckle on me. Unhappy with the new Palm Desktop, not wanting to install it on my second computer, and having lost the disc (it's somewhere around here) with the old Desktop on it, I decided to lean on Palm Support Chat for a little help. Ever seen that PhotoShopped picture of the tech support guy on the bicycle with the satellite laptop? (Send it to me if you have a copy.) Well, I got to talk to him.

What follows is the transcript of our conversation. (I could have edited it to make it more funny, but I think it's funny enough just the way it happened.) I thought I asked pretty clear questions. Eventually, I just gave up and went along for the ride. Enjoy. I think I did a pretty good job of keeping myself in check, well, except for just one second--but I got it back.

Status: Analyst Glenn is here and your issue status is: working Problem: Question about PD 6.2

DocI sync with both my computer at work and my computer at home. I live by my Palm. Installed 6.2 at work yesterday. It sucks. Shoot the idiot that thinks it's okay to "update" software and remove capabilities (like color for Calendar categories). I'd like to reinstall the Desktop from my CD, but don't have it with me here. Questions:1)Is there a place I can download the version that came on the CD?2)Until I can do that, or find my CD, will it cause a problem to sync with 6.2 here, then sync with the CD version on the computer at home?3)Will the lack of color-coding on the Desktop affect the color coding on the Treo itself?

Glenn>Hello Doc, Thank you for contacting Palm Technical Support. My name is Glenn. How may I help you?

Glenn>Hello.Glenn>I am sorry for delay.

Doc>I'm here

Doc>Did you read the questions?

Doc>I have not synced the Treo with the computer that has the new Desktop installed. I would like to uninstall this giant step backward and re-install the desktop from the CD but can't find the CD this second.

Glenn>I understand you are facing issue with the Palm Desktop software.

Doc>Your developers have the issue. Your customers are now unhappy.

Glenn>Can I confirm the model of the device?

Doc>Treo 755p

Glenn>Please let me know the Operating System you are using. Is it Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista or MAC at Home and work place?

Doc>XP

Doc>on both

Glenn>Okay.

Doc>So, how’s the weather in Bangalore?

Glenn>It's cool.

Glenn>Let me know you are syncing with Palm Desktop or Outlook.

Doc>Desktop. I prefer it to Outlook. But not the new version.

Glenn>Thank you for the information.

Glenn>For the first question.

Glenn>You can download the software from the website.

Doc>The only software on the website that I can find is the new version. That's what I want to UNinstall. Where can I get the old version until I can find my cd?

Glenn>You can download the latest version of the Palm Desktop for your device.

Doc>The latest version sucks. Thought I'd made that clear.

Doc>Calendar color coding--gone. Auto import of bdays--gone.

Glenn>Could you provide me with the complete error message you see?

Doc>There is no error message. Grab someone with better English skills and read the original questions again. You're pretty good, but there's nothing unclear about the issue if you read carefully. No error message. Personal preference. Like the old version of Desktop better. Want the unimproved update gone. Clear enough?

Glenn>I am afraid you inform, there is no color coding in the 6.2 version Palm Desktop.

Doc>No shit.

Glenn>For the second question.

Glenn>The CD version and Website version is different.

Doc>Glenn. Seriously.

Doc>You keep telling me what I already obviously know. No kidding. Get someone with better language skills. I'm sure you’re a tech wizard, but the language thing is killing you here.

Glenn>The 4.1.4e version is equal to CD version.

Glenn>I apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

Doc>Where can I get 4.1.4e?

Glenn>Can you provide me the log information?

Doc>What log?

Glenn>The log information of the HotSync.

Doc>There is no log yet. I have not synced since installing 6.2.

Glenn>You can get the 4.1.4e on the website.

Glenn>Okay.

Glenn>I will provide you the link to download the 4.1.4e version Palm Desktop.

Glenn>http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/windesk414e680.html#download

Glenn>Please open the below link to download the software from it, let me know if you have any issues doing the same.

Doc>Superb. Thank you.

Glenn>You 're welcome.

Glenn>Is there anything else I could assist you with?

DocSure. Take a shot at questions 2 & 3. Just for yucks.

Glenn>It won't cause any problem syncing with 6.2.

Glenn>You need to assign the color category on the device.

Doc>So, you're saying I can sync with 6.2 here at work, then sync with 4.2 at home, and it won't cause any problems?

Doc>And that the sucky lack of color coding on the desktop won't affect color coding on the device?Doc>Just want to be clear on these answers.

Glenn>Yes, you can sync it on both versions. It won't cause any problem.

Glenn>The color coding will affect the device color category, you need to assign the color category on the device.

Doc>Riiiight.

Doc>Thanks, Glenn. I think we're done here. Have a blessed day.

Glenn>You 're welcome.

Glenn>Have I addressed all your issues?


Doc>I think "addressed" is your most skillful application of the English language during the entire session. Namaste. Out here.


Glenn>Thank you.

Glenn>Thank you for contacting Palm Technical Support. A customer survey will pop up once the chat ends.Please feel free to contact us for further assistance.

Trust me. You are so welcome.

Motorola Razr V3

I'd like to say I've never owned one of these. Unfortunately, my daughter has owned three--none of them for more than a month. The $5 a month I paid for insurance on her phone is probably going to be some of the best money I've ever spent.

On two, even with the phone set to ring, and with good reception, sometimes it would just sit there silently during an incoming call, not even vibrating. On a third, the camera stopped working.

On any of them, even if everything was working correctly, Verizon created rather unique problems through attempting to drive people to Verizon's proprietary software for handling photos. Verizon disables the photo processing portion of the Motorola Phone Tools that you can purchase for use with the Razr. And the Razr has no removable data card. Therefore, the only way to get photos from the phone to the computer, is to e-mail them or post them to Verizon's Pix Place. Problem is, if you take the photo at the highest resolution, you can end up with a file too large to do either, meaning, that photo is stuck on the phone. You can look at it there. Or you can delete it. That's all.

The fourth time she went in to exchange the phone (another one that would sometimes just not ring), Verizon finally agreed to give her a different phone--a Samsung. We've had four Samsungs in the family already. Each has lasted its full two years before trading in for an upgrade. Each has been a great phone.