Monday, September 29, 2003

The GameBoy Advance SP - a home run for Nintendo

I bought my flame GameBoy Advance SP this weekend.

Nintendo has fixed the biggest problem with the old GameBoy Advance, the unusable screen. The screen on my GameBoy Color is better than the old Advance.

The SP is smaller than the Advance. The folding design protects the screen, while making the device more compact.
The SP screen is a thing of beauty. The switches in the control pad feel better than the older GameBoys. They are apprently using some sort of microswitch rather than the conductive rubber buttons.

I can't believe how good it is. All my old GameBoy games look better on it.

Using headphones requires an adapter, a bit strange. That's the worst thing I can say about it.

Oh, by the way, the new Pokemon Pinball Ruby/Sapphire ROCKS!

use mobile.aol.com to always be accessable via AIM

Another really cool use for SMS...

If you have an AOL instant messenger account, got to http://mobile.aol.com. They have a service which designates your SMS address as the the reciever of AIM messages while you are not logged into AIM. Your name appears as if you are logged in, with a little phone icon next to it. There is a simple on/off checkbox on the web page to turn it on and off.

Even better....you can reply to these SMS messages, and the sender will get it back as if it was sent from an AIM client.

When you log back into AIM, messages are automatically routed to your AIM client. Very cool.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Photo time stamps and the Nokia 3650

I want to start renaming my Nokia 3650 photos with a date stamp; this gives me a chronology plus unique file names (down to the second).
I friend at work wrote a Perl script that grabs the modification date for the file, and uses that data to rename the file. Unfortunately, the time stamps are not consistent cross platform (happy happy joy joy.)

For example, I have a photo with a 12:08pm time stamp (in the Images app)
In Nokia PC-Suite, the mod time is 8:08am (4 hours ago)
On my PC, via a USB card reader, 4:08pm (4 hours in the future.)
On my Mac OS X G4, mod time is 12:08pm (the same time)

Looks like I'll be doing my file renaming on the Mac. Fortunately, I saved original copies of all my 3650 photos.
The right solution is to have the phone name the file as it is created. But we all know how uncommon the right solution is....

Monday, September 15, 2003

Dis N-Gage

I saw little paper brochures shaped like the Nokia N-Game gaming phone this weekend. The guy at EB even gave me a N-Gage cap. Nokia is really pushing this thing.

I don't think the future bodes well for this device. I hope I'm wrong. t apparently has one memory slot, which can contain either a game or a memory card. So it you remove the memory card to insert a game, everything that was on the memory card becomes unavailable. What were they thinking?

Even worse, the battery cover and battery must be removed to swap the card, making swapping very cumbersome. If this is the case, they should have added an additional external slot to the phone. This would allow a game card and a memory card to co-exist. And while they are at it, add an additional card storage slot.

If it is possible to transfer a game from a game card to the internal memory card, that would help.

It also costs $300. You can buy a GameBoy Advance SP for $99. I can buy a lot of games for $200.

Like the N-Gage, my Nokia 3650 only has an internal card slot, under the battery. It's not a big deal because it is relatively simple to get stuff on and off the phone by other means. I rarely remove it.

Friday, September 12, 2003

Does PhotoFusion exist?

There is apparently a 3650 photo app call FotoFusion from Scalado. It allows the stitching of multiple photos into a panorama, and some photo processing features. And it's inexpensive at $15 :
http://www.scalado.com/m4n/?oid=246

or is it PhotoFusion??? :
http://www.scalado.com/m4n/?oid=455

and which is the right page? :
http://www.scalado.com/m4n/?oid=457

This is not very helpful :
http://www.symbianpages.com/proddetails.asp?nP=994

and where is the download link?

(P.S. I finally heard from the Scalado people. The reason I can't downoload it is because it has not been released yet. Wait 2 weeks)

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Oh, it makes phone calls too....

So, I've got this new Nokia 3650 phone. It has a 100mhz ARM processor. Built in Bluetooth. A really crisp 35mm x 45mm color screen. A 640x480 digital camera. Oh, it also makes phone calls. Other than the second rate calendar program, it is great. It has just about replaced my Handspring Visor. It is really lousy for taking notes. More later...

The brilliant evil that is Game Boy Advance SP

Just played a GameBoy Advance SP. Now I have to have one. Curse you. Nintendo. The new Pokemon Pinball is outstanding. Double curse you, Nintendo.
Ah, back on line again. I'm feeling wordy.

The frustrating Nokia 3650 calendar

Speaking of the Nokia 3650 calendar.....it does not allow the entering of repeating events based on the day of the week and week of the month rather than the date. Can you think of any events that occur on the 15th of every month? I thought so.

Strangely, if I create the datebook entry on my Visor and beam it to the phone via IR, the calendar interprets the event correctly. Inspecting the event reveals that the repeat type is now set to "other". If I change it from other to something else, "other" goes away.

I like this phone enough to complain about things that shold be fixed. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother.

More on the phone later, including my adventures with Bluetooth.