While paying my Citi Credit Card this evening I find that along with the ads they put in the announcement area of my printed bills, they have also begun adding inline contextual ads to the online statement. Below is an example.
This purchase was for a year’s access to Safari Books Online — which is an awesome service that has nearly eliminated my tech book purchases). How amazingly tasteless Citi.
So I upgraded to Palm Desktop 6.2 from v4 something. I did this so I could try out Pimlical. The desktop app is fine, but the new hotsync application is crap. It’s slower, it broke my bluetooth hotsync setup, and it has stupid fading effects for it’s windows. And I now get an error message about not being able to backup PmTraceDatabase from the Palm. As I did this upgrade yesterday and it appeared that all the parts of the sync that I cared about were working, I ignored the message.
This afternoon, my friend John both pointed out a knowledge base article from Palm describing this problem. Palm;s solution, is to just ignore the error message. While this an acceptable short term workaround, it is not acceptable as a long term fix. John had the bright idea to use Filez to remove the backup bit from that file on the Palm. Problem solved. Thanks John.
I got an email from Palmgear (I purchased Palm software through them back when they were new and actually the definitive source for Palm apps) announcing the Palm App Store. Excited that Palm might be catching up with the rest of the smartphone market, I load that page in the sucktacular web browser on my Treo 680.
Instead of being presented with a webpage, I am offered to download a file called “mobile.php”. I can’t download it to the card (other things download fine), nor can I download it to the device as the Palm has no idea what to do with such a file. I note that this works properly on my wife’s Centro (even though they both claim to have version 4.5.8 of the web browser). I know Palm hates me for not upgrading to the Centro, but considering that my Treo is not even a year old and an unlocked GSM Centro wasn’t out when I bought my Treo, it’s a little sad that they don’t deem my Treo worth their time to support properly.
Following the download link on my laptop, I click the “Send to my phone” option. After providing my phone number I get a text with a url link. Specifically, this link; http://software.palm.com/us/mobile/dl/n/nd/ns/nk/prod7132952/sku15724442/88527282/AppStore.prc. Come now Palm, your web team couldn’t have made a nice short weblink like “http://palm.com/appstore/”? Thankfully, this link works now as I type this post, it provided a php file to be downloaded when I tried this last night.
The download installed an application called “App Store”. Huh, it loaded Blazer (the Palm web browser). Oh. I see. It’s nothing more than an icon for a web address (something that can be done with the third party SharkLinks). Boy, the app store sure looks like the Apple app store. You can follow along with your own browser at http://software.palm.com/us/mobile/.
The menu bar at the top of the screen are done as fixed there and consumes precious screen real estate throughout all parts of the app store. With a measly 320×320 screen, no wasting space needlessly. There are many occurrences of either overlapping text and images or text and images shoved together without the needed whitespace between them, it gives me a bad feeling about the quality of this endeavor. Scrolling through the lists is painfully slow on my Treo 680. Very oddly (since they have the same version of the base OS, 5.4.9, and they have the same processor, a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270) this is not as much of a problem on the Centro.
While comparing the speed of the app store on the two devices I notice that I am offered different applications between the two. There are 40 free apps offered on my Treo and 750 offered on the Centro. While I could believe that they are offering only apps that are supported on one device or the other, there are very few apps that will run on one of these devices and not run on the other (what with them being basically identical other than the form factor). Ah ha, which apps are displayed is based on what device the site thinks you are browsing with (see More, Change Device to change this). The Treo 680 is identified as such, but the Centro is identified as “null” (with a lovely broken image link). Setting the Treo to “All Devices” makes all the apps available to me (and now calls my device type “null”).
While browsing about the app store, I find the game Taipan that I wish to download. Clicking the “Free Download” presents me with the option to “Download To Card” of the file “Taipan.prc” and the message “Your device does not support this filetype (the same thing happens on the Centro). I say sure and I am told the File is saved to “/Palm/Blazer/Download/download_free.jsp” If I then use the third party FileZ (or the Centro included Files app) I can rename the file to Taipan.prc and copy it to the device and run it. Wow, how very simple. I’m sure my wife would be able to figure out those extra steps on her own.
This isn’t the first on device app store for the Palm. PalmGear at one point attempted to convince developers to package their products so that users of PalmGear’s mobile site could download the single program file needed to install an app. I believe that feature died when Palmgear went away for awhile after it was purchased by Motricity (who has since spun the site off again). There is also the the app, “My Treo”, the on board manual and support system, which includes the ability to try and buy software through the AddIt service from Palm. It has a limited selection of software, no searching ability, and a generally mediocre interface, but it does let you try and buy Palm software from the device itself. The “My Centro” app no longer includes the Shopping tab that is in “My Treo”, but it appears to use the same system for the Bonus tab which has a handful of extra apps for the phone that were not (but should have been) loaded on the phone by default.
I sure hope this isn’t any indication of the quality of their big annoucement at CES 2009.
So I’m watching a tv show via Netflix’s Watch Instantly, and as I am loading the next unwatched episode, I notice that the last two episodes are only available via DVD. What the hell Netflix?
“It’s time to check-in” said the subject line of the email from Delta Airlines. I got that email about 24 hours before a flight I was about to take. I hadn’t planned to log in until the next morning, the email was a nice touch on the part of Delta so I went to check-in.
Off to Delta’s website. Nope, they can’t check me in, but I can go check-in at Northwest they said. Off to Northwest’s website, nope I can’t check-in there. My tickets are not Northwest tickets, they were codeshare partner tickets so I have to check-in with that partner. Hmmm Catch-22 I think.
For our anniversary I got my lovely wife a pearl necklace. I knew she preferred short necklaces so I got the shortest length they had, 16 inches. Turns out she wanted a choker. With a good return/exchange policy in hand, I went back asking for a shorter one, and was told they didn’t have anything shorter at the moment but I should call back in a few weeks when they got their next delivery of pearls.
More than a few phone calls back and they never seem to actually receieve necklaces shorter than 16 inches. Today I went in to make what I thought was a reasonable request. I pay for a 16 inch necklace and they shorten it to the desired length. Now, this store has full time in-store jewelers. They offer free restringing of pearls necklaces purchased through them (which oddly they recommend every 2-3 years (this is the same establishment that suggests letting them check your jewelery every six months for maintenance.)) So I really thought that this wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask.
At first they attempted to argue that that wouldn’t be fair that I would be throwing away those two inches (not that they offered a discount). They briefly attempted to argue that I would need to buy a more expensive strand (the words they were spewing forth for this one didn’t make the least bit of sense to me). I even offered to pay for the restringing, they weren’t concerned about that. Why than did it take them 20 minutes to agree to do the thing that I asked for in the first place?
So no matter how I have tried, I can’t seem to get Apple to stop sending me emails with news and announcements. The most recent email was announcing the opening of a store in Modesto CA. Modesto is 90 miles from San Jose (where I live).
Apple stores closer to San Jose than Modesto would include; Burlingame, Emeryville, Los Gatos, Palto Alto, Pleasanton, San Francisco x3, San Jose, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Stanford, Walnut Creek. And there is also the mothership store itself at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino.
One of the 9 measures I voted on this year was Measure W — which adds a $79 fee to the property tax of parcels served by the school district for the next five years. About a week ago, I received a phone call from a teacher at the local high school asking me to vote yes on the proposition. She wasn’t just reading from a script, and she was able to answer all of my questions. All in all a very effective method to campaign for the cause.
Two nights ago, I got a robocall (which are illegal in CA, not that the public utilities commission cares) from a group asking me to vote for Measure W. One of their arguments for supporting the proposition was aimed specifically at renters; it went something like “you don’t pay property taxes and since it’s not your money you should vote for this tax.” The Pro W website has the question and answer: “Do renters pay the tax? No, only property owners who pay property taxes will pay for Measure W.”
This is dishonest and pathetic argument. If I were a landlord, I would add the property taxes into the costs side of the formula that figures out rent. So while it would be possible for me to eat the cost for a year or two, the cost would be passed on to the renter the next time the lease was renewed. I would expect my landlord to do the same, yet still I support this measure.
In January of 2008, Palm released a firmware update for the Treo 680. One of the improvements listed was “Enhanced ringtone support”. Specifically it said “MP3 and other sound files purchased from the web or sent from friends can now be set as ringtones and alerts (formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, MIDI, WAV, and AMR).” Too bad I can find no instructions from Palm on how to use this new feature.
Palm’s own knowledge base has an article on ringtones that says “Your Treo smartphone doesn’t include built-in software to allow MP3 files to be used as ringtones.” This negative sounding phrase is repeated in the onboard help. Thankfully, a palm fansite has the instructions on adding an mp3 as a ringtone. It involves opening the mp3 in Blazer (the onboard web browser). So very obvious.
Before this update, the way to use an mp3 as a ringtone was to use a third party program (such as the free MiniTones). The Palm knowledge base article referenced above about ringtones warns; ”Beware: Some ringtone managers can cause odd behavior, such as crash or reset when an incoming call arrives.”
With the crappy mechanism that Palm themselves provide, and the warning about third party programs from their own technical support group, I found it funny when a representative of Palm’s PR firm makes a post to the official Palm blog about mp3 ringtones. In it, they suggest using third party ringtone manager. Pathetic.
I went to a a movie last night at Eastridge AMC Theatres. It was a busy night for the theatre and there was a long line for the ticket counters. Thankfully their were wonderfully underutilized credit card ticket kiosks machines.
I tap the screen to wake the machine up; tap the date for the day I want the tickets for; tap the field for The Bourne Ultimatum and am given the option to purchase tickets for 10:50. Now I took this to mean that tickets for 9:50 were sold out. Thankfully a cooler brain (that of my friend John) prevalied and he tapped back a screen and selected a different listing for the movie (which escaped my notice the first time through). This time we were presented us with the option to purchase tickets for 9:50.
Now the movie was showing on multiple screens, so I can sort of understand why there were multiple listings for the movie. But I as a consumer don’t care that it was showing on multiple screens, I want to see all the times the movie are showing in one place. It should list all the times that the movie is showing that day and any showing that was sold out, should have been indicated as such. The only excuse for what I saw here is a lazy and incompetent programmer or a poorly written specification.