Jack The Scribbler

(We interrupt this blog entry with a very important announcement. No Palm Pre or iPhone 3GS was physically handled nor fiddled with before and during the course of writing the piece below. As of posting time, only the iPhone 3GS is available in the Philippines. Palm has yet to make an announcement regarding its Pre’s Asian foray.)

Is Palm Pre the iPhone killer?
Depends who you’re asking.
Folks at Sunnyvale, California – Palm Inc.’s headquarters – would like to think so.
In fact, the company’s betting the farm on its latest gadget, a WiFi-enabled, bluetooth-compatible, GPS built-in, touch screen mobile device that is shorter but thicker than the latest smartphone from that company over in Cupertino.
The Pre is Palm’s strongest bid to show both allies and antagonists that yes, its mojo remains intact despite its market share (3.9 percent, compared to iPhone’s 19.5 percent and Blackberry’s 55.3 percent in the US).
Much is riding on the success of this eight-gigabyte, iTunes-friendly, $199 mobile handheld, including the business acumen of newly-appointed CEO Jon Rubinstein, who helped develop the iPod.

Palm Pre picture procured from Endgadget.com (there goes the alliteration!)

The Pre is expected to boost phone sales (which have plunged 42 percent year-over-year to 482,000 in February) and increase the company’s share prices (down by 73 percent since March.)
Launched last June 6 in the US, the device sports curves so embarrassingly sleek it makes its chunky predecessors look like they were designed by Soviet engineers fuelled by bad vodka.
Unlike the iPhone, the Pre features a slideout keyboard that has earned two thumbs up for its “solid typing experience,” according to an Endgadget.com review.
But two-handed typing, no matter how comfortable, isn’t all the Pre offers: it also boasts an ingenious multitasking interface in the shape of “activity cards.”
Each card represents an application: say, the phone’s dialpad should you wish to make a call using the touchscreen or its built-in internet messaging (IM) software (that combines SMS and online conversations in just one view; useful in replying via text messaging to an IM chat).
Each active card is prominently set at the center, occupying around two-thirds of the screen’s precious real-estate.
It’s an elegant way of maximizing the Palm’s screen, which is a fourth of an inch smaller than the iPhone’s 3.5 display.
With more than one card open, you can switch between multiple applications at the swipe of a finger – faster and easier than thumbing through a Daiana Menezes centerfold – without going back to the Launcher, the OS’s main menu.
With this multitasking power, you can (for instance) put the Pre on speakerphone, call up your rich spinster aunt and switch to the Memo app to find out what inheritance issues you should settle before the old biddy goes into the hospital for heart surgery.
With older Palm smartphones such as the Treo 650, you’d have had to go back to the main menu and launch an application while you were talking to Tiya Moding in Mangatarem.
By the time you’d finished all the fumbling and gotten around to discussing the will, she probably would already have signed over the whole hacienda to your evil idiot brother who happened to be using a Nokia 5110.
The secret behind the Pre’s multitasking magic is a brand-new operating system: Palm has finally said goodbye to PalmOS and introduced its successor – webOS.
The new system integrates the Pre’s programs into a seamless whole: the company claims the OS will automatically integrate all your contacts, email and Web 2.0 info into one view.
In addition, virtually all of the device’s apps work with the Internet – right down to “over-the-air” backups and updates, including data erasure should your phone be lost, stolen, or used by jealous partners for blackmail.
Those Palm fanatics stuck with dozens of PalmOS apps will be happy to know that the Pre will have an emulator that will allow it to run many legacy programs.
Will the Pre’s features defeat competition? Not necessarily.
News of the Apple iPhone’s death – supposedly resulting from the Pre’s launch – is greatly exaggerated.
Just two days after the Pre launched, Apple introduced its newest iPhone, the 3GS.
Not only is it faster that the two previous iPhone incarnations, it also allows users to shoot and edit videos, all in a package slightly longer yet thinner than a pack of cigarettes.
And get this: the eight gig entry-level model is just $99 (with a plan), half the price of the Pre, which can only play – not shoot nor edit – videos.
The lack of video recording and editing may be a dealbreaker for some, including those indifferent to the online directorial debut of Hayden Kho.
Palm should have known better than to cheat its friends (and users) and waste the chance it has been given with the Pre.
To compensate for this oversight, the gadget has a good camera, according to Endgadget.com.
Besides having a flash, the Pre’s 3.2 megapixel camera has significantly reduced shutter lag time, useful for instantly documenting encounters with celebrities and their respective wardrobe malfunctions, should these occur.
However, the camera alone may be insufficient to create converts nor attract old members of the Palm faithful.
Even before the Pre’s US launch, local Palm smartphone users have already been dismayed by the company’s rush to maximize profits.
Although they were impressed by the Pre’s Touchstone — which allows for wireless battery recharging — they were surprised to learn that the technology involved accessories to be sold separately.
But at the same time, brand loyalty does go the extra mile.
Despite these sore points, a number have agreed to consider getting the Pre once it reaches this side of the Pacific.
Ederic Eder, who uses a Palm Centro but keeps his Treo 650 handy, told this writer that the Pre is “superior” to the iPhone 3GS.
While he recognized that it would be “hard” to defeat the iPhone, the Pre’s features — multitasking capability, physical keyboard, removable battery, wireless charging, unified messaging, among others — “offers useful newness.”
So for fat cats, rich kids, and those with some cash to spare, even in a crisis that has claimed millions of jobs, what will it be? A Palm Pre or an iPhone 3GS? The jury is still out.
Unfortunately, enthusiasts in the Philippines might have to wait a while before they get their hands on the device.
Palm is reportedly concentrating on marketing the Pre in the US and Europe and has so far been silent about when it will introduce its product in Asia.
Globe Telecom Inc., the country’s exclusive iPhone distributor, has already announced that the 3GS is now locally available.
For its part, Smart Communications Inc. has yet to reply to queries made about the Palm Pre.

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From the Thanks, God Dept. Minimal editing for this piece was rendered by Mr. Alan Robles, the Philippine correspondent of the South China Morning Post.

Take the Treo 650.

Launched four years ago, the smartphone has proven itself more popular than its previous incarnations, even helping rivals widen the appeal of a digital organizer doubling as a mobile phone or vice versa.

However, because of its unmistakably masculine qualities—it is wider and bulkier than most phones—the Treo 650 isn’t exactly the portable communication device for everyone. This was not helped by the fact
that a brand new unit in 2004 cost about twice the price of a mid-end mobile phone.

Never an early adopter but nonetheless a former Palm Pilot owner (I got myself a IIIX in 2000), I waited for the right time to get my hands on a Treo 650, used or otherwise.

The fateful moment arrived a little more than two years ago when a professor-friend of mine decided to ditch his device because he had, in his words, “grown tired of it.”

He then offered to sell me his 650—including a spare battery, a desktop charger, an adapter for a regular earphone jack, among others—for a very friendly price.

I bit.

It was one of the best decisions of my electronic life, inaugurating what may well be the start of my—pardon the exaggeration—mobile digital odyssey.

Besides allowing me to surf via GPRS (whatever that means), the Treo 650 enabled me to write a draft of a blog entry while inside a fastfood outlet. (Naturally, it was about the benefits of having an easily accessible handheld computer while waiting for the rain to subside.)

And thanks to Documents to Go, I was able to edit a feature story on the fly, beating a deadline in the process.

But that’s not all.

After having installed TCPMP—The Core Pocket Media Player, one of the best free apps around—I have seen episodes of my favorite shows on the Treo while in transit. Not to mention the fact that I have regularly beaten the computer in the Palm version of Monopoly.

To this day, the Treo 650 helps me keep track of my schedules, website passwords, and titles of the books I’ve read since 2007.

Indeed, the Treo 650′s usefulness knows no bounds.

About a week ago, I installed two new software apps that have made me grateful that the phone’s technology—despite its age—has not been rendered obsolete.

The first app I installed was Life As I See It, a digital diary best suited for the phone’s extended keyboard.
Not only does it allow users to type in their thoughts instantly, the app’s also features password protection, allowing secrets to remain that way.

While no such privacy guarantees exist in HiMoney, its features as a personal expense software far exceed expectations.

With provisions for both income and expense accounts, HiMoney 1.0a assists users in categorizing costs and, if so desired, putting them in graphs and pie charts.

Both old but free, the applications have made me feel proud that I have three Palms, two organic and one digital.

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Picture of the actual Treo 650 that I use taken with the 2 MP camera of a Nokia 6120. Picture was enhanced using my newly-acquired Adobe Photoshop skills. And by the way, the person featured on my Treo is Colonel Saul Tigh, one of the toughest guys onboard the Battlestar Galactica.

SMARTPHONES can be useful.
Especially if a summer downpour catches you unawares, leaving your underpants wet and forcing you to seek refuge in a fastfood outlet whose airconditioning is slightly above the temperature needed to produce ice.
Which is exactly what happened to me Tuesday night in Quezon City on the way home.
Immediately after getting off a jeep at Philcoa, I had nowhere to go. A small body of dirty water had formed right in the middle of a tricycle terminal where the last leg of my journey home usually begins. In the meantime, the rain gave no indication that it was letting up anytime soon: it poured continuously from the moment the train I was on pulled into the Quezon Avenue station until my untimely arrival via jeep at Philcoa.
Although I could take an alternative route to the apartment from Philcoa, it involved a far too complex process to be appreciated by greedy, predatory cabdrivers intent on making a quick buck or two from desperate commuters such as myself.
Besides convincing a cabdriver that the road home was free from flood, traffic, zealous policemen, and criminals, I was expected to fork out extra for his kindness, that is, if he actually decided to take me.
Unfortunately, since I was already drenched and stranded, my extra reserve of goodwill was in dire need of replenishment. It absolutely dried up when another driver told me that the leg room of his cab’s front passenger area was inundated with rainwater. It was drier than the humor of columnist Conrado de Quiros.
Incensed, I ran for cover, which was an exercise in futility—if there was one—since I was already gearing up to become a finalist for a wet t-shirt contest: the fat Filipino male version. I then whipped out my smartphone, and continuously pressed just one single button to dial a pre-programmed number: my wife’s. Upon being connected, I told her that I would be unable to pick her up immediately because I couldn’t get to Charing—a 1994 midnight blue Toyota sedan we inherited from her parents—who was parked at home. (As it turned out, my wife was given a lift by a very close friend who had an errand to run. Thanks, Barry. And Maya too for her thoughtfulness.)
In the meantime, since I was already stranded in the area, I told my wife that I might as well have dinner at a nearby fastfood outlet where I proceeded to freeze my balls off, as earlier mentioned.
After I ate a hasty supper of chicken and spaghetti, I once more unsheated my underutilized smartphone—a Treo 650. With two hands, I began to do the finger mambo on the unit’s qwerty keyboard using the Documents to Go application.
As I whiled the storm away, I eventually produced a short but nevertheless workable draft of a piece whose parts were enhanced to produce the blog entry which you are reading now.
Moral of the story: it pays to have a smartphone handy especially if you’re going to be stranded in a cold fastfood restaurant—it keeps your mind off from your freezing balls.
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FROM THE ENGLISH USAGE DEPT. Re: phrase “catches you unawares.” Is it catches you unawares or unaware?