Palm, then, is clearly a shortimer on shaky ground as Apple has managed to several up their opponents at every turn, and I’m having doubts that they will show up to this party with 80′s grade wine coolers. The iPhone is, after all, Apple’s flagship product already in its short life, besting even the powerful and battle-ready iPod (yeah, the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the phone, so you do the math). This new iPhone is just in time to sate the upgrade needs of the original iPhone owners whose precious non-3G gizmos 2 year contracts are coming up.

Interestingly enough, it appears that Palm is struggling right out of the gate by releasing webOS 1.0.2 today! Reports on PreThinking.com are already saying that the update makes the phone faster and adds a clock widget. Wow. I’m not surprised, since its a very Palm-like thing to do, but its not the kind of message that Palm should want to put out there. Regardless, there has been a great deal of buzz about the Pre and people appear to be loving it, with thousands of tweets hitting the nano-blogging nano-sphere as people pick up their new handsets at a local Sprint store.

The excitement is clear and many of the reports being posted about new Pres is very positive, which is a good sign. The other question is, “Who will win, Apple or Palm?” Fortunately, I’ll break out the old saw and say that neither, its the consumer who wins. Apple set out to completely revamp the mobile market and it did so in less than a year with the first iPhone. It has taken less than three years now for the competition to start catching up, and (this is my opinion) the Palm Pre and the new webOS is the first to offer a valid challenge to Apple. Apple wins, Palm wins, and we all win.

We get a pair of kick ass pocket computers for cheap! Nice work, fighters!

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The key to the functionality of the Pulse is manifold, but it can be counted down to the infrared camera perched under the nib (I’m old, so look it up), the voice recording capabilities, and the special paper the pens use in order to work their magic. Now don’t go groaning over the fact that you have to buy special paper. Have you seen what a simple notepad costs at Barnes & Noble these days? Shocking to the point where you’ll think that paying $20 for a 200 sheet notebook which enables the power of the Pulse is a steal and a half. Combine that with the fact that the most recent Windows version of the software can print blank pages, and you’re on easy street.

So, how do the camera, recorder, and paper work to together to make this powerful combo I speak of? That’s a more complicated question, but there are answers. I am, however, going to quickly describe the Pulse and what the package comes with. First, there’s the pen, of course. Its a large pen, but not much larger than the big, thick, expensive pens which you can buy that don’t do anything the Pulse does. In the box there is a 200 page starter notebook (8.5″ x 11″, college ruled), a nicely small and portable USB magnetic dock, a pair of stereo headphones with a microphone in each earpiece, a lanyard for the headphones, a set of replacement ink cartridges and a stylus tip (nice touch!), and a crappy faux leather case (What happened!?). Take a gander at the image below:

The pen has a display embedded in the side of it. Nicely, there are several options for how you can use the pen, and one of them is to change the orientation of the screen depending on what hand you use (I’m a lefty… deal). That grill you can see under the screen is a speaker and on the top end of the pen is the headphone/microphone jack. I’ll get to the headphones later. They’re super neat. 

Now, whenever the pen is on and you write on the special paper (check out the image), the pen stores everything you write in its memory. I have the 1GB version, though there’s also a 2GB model. So, as long as the pen is on it records what you write. Now for the voice recording. If you tap on the Record button which are conveniently located on the bottom edge of every page then the Pulse starts to record, just like a standard voice recorder. Here’s where the neat trick comes into play though: as you write, the Pulse keeps track of what you are writing and tags the audio recorded to that writing. 

When you’re done taking notes, you click the Stop button. Here’s the next neato trick: While the Pulse is not recording, you can tap on any of your notes and it will play back the audio recorded for that segment. Pretty slick, eh! The trick I’ve learned already is to just write a keyword as I’m recording instead of trying to keep up and missing stuff. If I have a question, I’ll write down a snippet to remind me of the question and then carry on with my conversation. Fraking brilliant! The other controls on the pages allow you to control volume, speed, jumping forward and backward to tracks, and making bookmarks. 

Using the headphones also sports a neat trick. The jack right into the end of the Pulse so you can listen to the recorded audio in stereo. Why? Sure, the built-in mic only records in mono, but when you jack in those wicked headphones, the Pulse records in stereo. That’s why there is a microphone in each earbud. Trust me when I tell you that this is remarkably helpful. Say, for instance, you’re sitting at a table talking with 4 or 5 people. Wearing the headphones (or wearing them down on your neck using the lanyard) lets the Pulse record your environment the same way you hear. When you play this stereo sound back later, you hear the direction people are speaking from. I find it a fantastic way to recall how the conversation was going since I can visualize the meeting. 

Once you’ve collected stuff on your new pen, its time to get that data onto your desktop. LiveScribe nicely offers both Windows and Mac OS X versions of the desktop client, though the Mac version has some catching up to do. For one thing, with the Windows version you can print your own paper. Not so on the Mac. Shame! Interestingly, the box doesn’t come with a CD in it, but when you do download the client for your operating system at least you’re getting the latest version. Once its installed, all you need to do is plug in the dock and place the pen into it. It connects and moves everything from the pen to the desktop client. Once there, everything which has a voice recording attached to it is highlighted in green. 

Now, if that wasn’t enough, there’s more. Say, for example, that you’ve been taking notes for a few months now and you’ve been asked by a colleague or classmate for a note you made back in some project meeting or lecture. All you need to do is load up LiveScribeDesktop and search for the keywords. The software is so smart that it can actually parse your handwriting and show you which pages any hits are on. No kidding! This thing is so smart that it can tell which notebook you are in and which page you’re turned to. Very, very cool indeed. 

There are some other gee willikers things the Pulse can do, but they really don’t add to the functionality except for the calculator. The nice thing that the developers have allowed for is adding new features through software updates. In fact, for the first month I had this thing I received no less that 10 updates to the pen software. Its pretty amazing that the Pulse sports a 150MHz ARM9 processor and a 300mAh LiIon rechargeable battery and crams ups to 2GB of storage space into such a cool pen. 

Simply put, if you pair the Pulse up with an iPhone, BlackBerry, or one of the new Palm Pre devices, you are set to go laptop free. I’m not kidding. The only thing that LiveScribe is missing is some more options in paper products. They have the big college-ruled notebooks and some largish bound notebooks with lines or no lines, but there are no notebooks or calendar books. I’d love to see a notebook which is as long as the Pulse, 3-4″ wide, unlined, with a barrel on the spine into which you can slide the Pulse while you’re not working with it. That and I’d really like to see an integrated calendar management tool. Maybe even synching it up to Windows or Mac OS X. Now that would rock. 

Now that I’ve turned you all on to the Pulse, I would like to inform you that you can have your own right now. You can head on over to LiveScribe’s web site and order one there or you can swing over to your local Target and get it there. The 1GB model runs for US$150 while the 2GB model runs for US$200. The reality is that this is just one of the single coolest gadgets available on the planet and I can only see it getting better and better.

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The ethic behind the Defender Series is to provide the best possible protection without limiting access to or diminishing the value of the device which the case protects. After ensconcing my black Centro in the case, it becomes protected from the elements (aside from full emersion) and yet is remarkably easy to use. It is certainly chunkier, and somewhat heavier, but if you are prepared to protect your phone against almost all damage, then you’re ready to use this case.

The case is very smartly designed. It comes in three components which work very closely together to provide several layers of protection to your Centro. In the box, the case comes mostly assembled in that the hard shell and the soft cover are already joined. Taking apart the case involves removing the rubber soft cover, then splitting the seams to split the hard shell into front and rear shells. Inside the case was a thin, rubbery sheet which had the impression of the frontside of a Centro on one leaf. I soon figured out that this is the internal protection. The internal sheet also acts as a screen protector, using static to neatly attach to the display. The cover is perfectly clear, as well, making it very easy to see through. You can see the parts in the image below.

Once you’ve neatly placed the internal cover where it goes, you slip the front of the Centro into the front hard shell which has the added benefit of stopping the internal cover from moving around any more. Then you pull down the back cover, position it, then slip on the back shell. The two halves snap together easily enough to hold them firmly, but when I took it apart again to take the image you see to the left it wasn’t difficult to get them separated again. Once the whole kit ‘n kaboodle is together, you pull the rubber cover on and fit it to the cutouts and pins which hold it to the shell. Now its all one unit and ready to rock. 

The Defender case isn’t water proof, but it is somewhat resistant to dust and moisture. The case is very nicely designed to offer access to all of the ports and controls on the Centro. There is a clear port on the back for the camera and a grill for the speaker which has a dust cover preventing dust from getting into the case. There is another filter protecting the earpiece on the top front of the handset, as well. To the left of that there is a passthrough which lets you see the power/alert light. There are rubber actuator buttons on the left side which let you control the buttons for volume, ringer, and the option button right through the case. At the bottom of the front of the case there is an internal horn which directs speech into the microphone which is located at the bottom of the phone.

To get to the stylus and the Silent switch there is a peel-out rubber cover. Its very easy to open, and once you’ve practiced with it a bit, a snap to close again. There is another such cover on the bottom of the case which allows access to the sync/power port and 1/8th inch headphone jack. That one is a tad more difficult to close, but it shouldn’t be very often that you have to open it. Overall, the fit of the case is nearly perfect and doens’t creak a lot or limit your access to anything. Sound quality even seems to be improved, especially through the microphone which the case smartly redirects to the front, therefore pointing right at your mouth. 

The feel of the case is wonderful. It sits well in the hand and greatly increases the grip without making it too much heavier than the handset itself. Pushing controls and using the touchscreen through the protective cover is easy. Even using the Centro’s dinky QWERTY keyboard works just fine. In fact, the case may be improving my big-fingered accuracy, which is a feat but can’t be confirmed. The case itself comes with a belt pack which the case firmly snaps into. It takes a good tug to pull the handset out, but if you want this case, then you’re likely looking for protection, which includes not dropping it from your belt. 

I’m quite pleased with the case and the design, fully knowing what the case was designed for. Otterbox has created yet another unquestionably capable, mission-specific case, adding another notch to its already notched up case belt. The Otterbox Defender Series case for Palm Centro is available now and can be had for US$49.95.

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• Palm will introduce a Linux-based touchscreen device at CES. Sure, that’s mostly already known, but my prediction is that it will actually be freaking cool. I’m also going to guess that it won’t be able to run anything which wasn’t compiled for Palm OS 5.x, or at least not well.
• RIM will continue to lose marketshare to the iPhone and won’t see significant growth for the Storm until they release a version of the OS which is specifically designed for touch applications.
• Apple will update the Mac Mini. They might even incorporate AppleTV into it and kill the discreet AppleTV product. The other option is to turn AppleTV into a real DVR.
• Apple will release a 64GB iTouch model and move the entire product line up, keeping prices the same. They may also release a 128GB model, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
• GM will sell Saab back to Sweden and Scania will be returned to the product line badge, right alongside Saab honor and the death of the hideous Saab-badged, GM-made SUV. By 2011, real Saabs will be sold again, and I will buy a new one which will have been made in Sweden.
• Chrysler will die a long, overdue death.
• IBM will buy back the ThinkPad line from Lenovo and start making good ThinkPads again.
• Dell will trim most of its line in a successful effort to become a powerhouse again.
• Microsoft will offer a public beta release of Windows 7 and generally stop marketing Vista after failing to get savvy people to purchase it for 2+ years.
• Microsoft will announce official partnerships with various laptop fabbers to build Windows 7 Approved touchscreen lappies. The plan will generally fail, just like the UMPC, Tablet PCs, and clamshell Windows CE devices before it. (Say hello to Bob, touchscreen Win7 lappy!)
• Nintendo will release a US$99 add-on dongle which will allow the Wii to output up to 1080p video via an HDMI connection, something they had planned on doing all along. If not HDTV, it will be a VGA or DVI or both, which looks really sharp on sets which support that type of input. Think along the lines of Sega’s VGA box for the DreamCast.
• Nokia will finally make the Internet Tablet line an actual phone. At the very least, it will be a data-only arrangement like Amazon’s Kindle or the Peek.
• Google will make all of its applications support Google Gears and offer an update to Chrome which will make it work like a desktop.
• Sony will come to its senses and release a value-priced, non-mobile Playstation Core which will play PSP and PSP2 games at up to 720p and wireless controllers to compete with Nintendo’s Wii. **
• Sega will come to its senses and produce the DreamCast 2 to compete with Nintendo’s Wii. **

And now here are some “doi’s” which you would likely easily guess on your own:

• We will see netbooks from just about every name brand on the planet, including BMW and Sears.
• Apple will continue to take over marketshare in the mobile, desktop, laptop, and PMP spaces.
• Microsoft will continue to lose marketshare to Apple and Firefox.
• Dell will remain the largest single retailer of computers.
• HP will continue to be second in line, but will keep making stupid touchscreen TVs.
• All studios will sign up for Blu-Ray.
• Fox will relent and allow Watchmen to be released, but for 5% of the global profits.
• Toyota will release its Prius plug-in hybrid early to better compete with Ford’s Fusion hybrid.
• Hydrogen powerplants will not make a major splash in any market.

That’s it for 2009, kids! We’ll see how good I am at predicticating. In the past I’ve not been so good.

** Lacking quality skills at prognosticating, these could happen in 2010-11. Not sure. Just a feeling.

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Palm has announced an invitation-only press event to be held at CES 2009 to unveil something new. I didn’t receive an invite, but I don’t feel bad, despite being a HUGE fan of Palm since Day 1 (I have a working Palm Pilot 500). I have a feeling in my gut that Palm might be on the verge of a real, viable, tangible comeback. I’m not the only one, either. Engadget got an invite, as did PalmInfoCenter.

While nothing specific is known about what Palm will be doing behind closed doors, my own personal speculation and the educated speculation from PIC strongly indicate that they will be introducing a radically updated version of their OS. I’m going to put my two cents in and state that I believe that they will also show either a working prototype or a near-term pre-release version of brand new hardware to support the new platform.

As is always the case, we just have to wait and see. I will say, however, (and this is directly at Palm) you’ve disappointed me in the past. Please, please, please, don’t do it again.

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Even in its short life, the iPhone has already captured a sizeable percentage of the smartphone market, and that grab continues to rise. The iPhone is a very complete product and it offers a range of features that no other handset does. At least, not until now.

Just take a look to the left, and you’ll get a small idea of what the G1 is all about. A lot of people use Google for search, but millions use GMail and a Google Maps. Google’s Android, a Linux-based OS, was designed to work directly with these Google functions, and more.

If the rumored price of US$199 is accurate and T-Mobile is not subsidizing that and offers some more open plan options, Apple might very well have a good fight on their hands. At the very least, it should force Apple into offering updates which it has been claiming aren’t needed.

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First, however, the good news. If you thought that the original Jawbone was a revelation in Bluetooth headsets, you’d be right. However, after I was consistenly unable to make it work for me and remained relegated to the bench while watching my wife enjoy every minute of it, I had to consider the possibility that my head and/or ears are mishapen. To my great relief it turned out that others had similar problems. The Jawbone was designed for a particular kind of head, and mine wasn’t one of them.

Instead of railing at the poor, defenseless Bluetooth headset, I opted to not review it and wait, instead, for the Jawbone 2. It turned out that it was only a few months away (my review Jawbone came very late) and just a couple of weeks ago I received my Jawbone 2. I again marvelled at the superior industrial design, how it was so much smaller than the original, at the quality and sveltness of the new, more compact ear hoops, and that super-neato box it all comes in. I was immediately smitten.

The eye can lie, though. I opened it all up and followed the instructions. I bound it to my Palm Centro. I tried various ear bits and hoops in different combinations and on each ear. Again, however, I was foiled. It wasn’t fitting my head and, because of that, I couldn’t hear anything and people couldn’t understand a word I was saying. I thought that, at last, I knew that I was not destined to use Bluetooth. Then, one day, I spoke to a fellow nerd and he said that some people wore them without the ear hoops.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the next day as I was trying to get onto the 10 West-bound I recalled the thought and pulled off the offending dealy and promptly shoved the Jawbone into my ear canal. Suddenly, everything was clear and it worked and it stopped noise from going in and out and, even with my windows down and the radio up, I could hold conversations. Finally, the dream which had been promised in the promotional video was available to me!

It was then, however, that I realized a few things about the price one must pay for such perfection. First and foremost, I lost the ability to hear anything from the ear into which the Jawbone 2 was inserted. I hear reasonably well, but I have a processing defect which makes it hard for me to discerne two or more sources of sound when they are competing with each other. Most people, it seems, are able to focus on one sound and push away the others. I cannot. With the Jawbone 2 blocking my ear canal, my other ear (the right) needed to hear everything else.

This did not go over well with me. I’m a music person. I prefer to have music with me all the time, especially when I’m driving. Now, this little, black communications device was taking away my music. In order to be on the phone or to have it available I would need to wittingly reduce my hearing range to less than half. Hearing works in much the same way that opening your eyes under water in a swimming pool. If you go under and look, you can see okay, but not great. If you wear goggles, you see perfect, but when you take them off, your vision is now worse than the first time.

I take the Jawbone 2 out of my ear, and now the music sounds weird, even when I turn it up loud. Is this the fault of Aliph? Probably not. I can’t imagine their engineers were laughing one day about how they would be the ruination of music. I’m sure there was an earnest effort to make something which had always been sucky, better. I believe they did do that, but sadly at the cost of my ability to enjoy music on the road. This likely means that I won’t be using it and it will go to my wife, who has been eyeing it with hunger.

If I had any other issues with the Jawbone 2, it would be the buttons. Now they are too easy to click and I’m confused by how they work. I’m also a little surprised that, despite the general loathing of power and status LEDs of Bluetooth headsets, that Aliph designed in a way to turn it off. How, then, would you know whether it was on or not? I thought that the white LED instead of Obnoxious Blue™ was a huge step in the right direction. Really, though, I just prefer to use my handset as the remote control. It works for me.

All in all, though, the Jawbone 2 is a fine, quality product which does exactly what it says it will, as long as you’re willing to put up with the loss of hearing. I’m quite sure that there are lots of people out there who are willing to do so, and I’ve seen it in the number of Jawbone 2 devices I see on Angelinos. The headset is available now for US$129.99. If it works for you, it will be one of the best buys you ever make.

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SAG, however, adds that functionality. I can say that, without any equivocation, that SAG does exactly as it promises, and it does it very well. All it does is add an A2DP server to Palm OS devices. Just install SAG either through a HotSync or over the air, connect the Bluetooth device like normal, open SAG, select the device, tap the A2DP button and let it connect, and open your media player. SAG even has a convenient Quick Launch section which you can customize to get to your audio apps fast.

Why is this fantastic? Primarily because the Palm devices are very complete when it comes to doing everything else, but adding A2DP rounds it out even more so. With a 2GB or larger microSD card installed it becomes a personal media player, phone, and PDA, all in one, and a hell of a lot cheaper than an iPhone. Certainly, it doesn’t compare to the iPhone, but at US$99 for the Centro from Palm, its a damn fine handset. Of course, all of the issues I had with the Centro still stand, but it works well and the Palm OS is stable, unlike other Smartphone OSen.

Softick Audio Gateway is available now and is priced nicely at US$19.95, though I’d say it would make more traction in the market were it priced lower. Its solid, stable, works well, and goes a long way towards trimming the number of devices you carry around with you. Nice work, guys!

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This doesn’t work with that. That doesn’t sync with the other. The other doesn’t have services for this. Its all quite annoying, really. I used Palm devices for years, but still I was never quite satisfied. I’ve tried WinMo, but have always been unhappy with the Exchange/Outlook relationship and the closed nature of Microsoft’s technology. I don’t think that even the iPhone 2.0′s newly minted iintegration will make it any better. Of course, I’d likely think different if I got an iPhone 2.0. Right now I’m using a PIM-less Nokia N810. Brilliant device with a wide range of connectivity forms, but with no PIM to show off with its potency is a bit dulled. There is a port of a gaggle of GPE-based tools, but its all very un-integrated feeling and there are a slew of mismatched UI foibles. One app has a menu while the others don’t. That sort of thing. Very annoying.

I’ll have more on the Nokia N810 in a formal review soon. Really.

In the end, I multi-task (a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one. Its not possible to perform multiple tasks at the same time, only to organize your thoughts and actions in a distributed manner enough to work on several discreet tasks with enough time devoted to each one where you make progress each hour your work on said projects, but I digress…) and work on the priorities as I see fit. A little triage and I’n generally where I need to be… Except this weekend. I left The Dojo un-updated for three days! Y’all must’ve thought me dead. I had even considered set up some automatic story posting software but then, serendipitously, along came a salesleech asking me to integrate their junk into my stuff. I thought of my readers and decided that it would be unfair to you. It is me, I presume, that you all come to The Dojo for, after all.

Of course, I suspect, like much everything else, your wandering about the net is mostly object driven and I am not the object. That review I wrote about MacDrive 7 remains the top draw on the site, months after I wrote it. My guess would be that, since sales of Macs keep rising strongly, that it will remain a very popular piece. Well, whatever drives you all here is good.

So, not to make excuses and such, but I was very busy over the weekend, shuttling girls to and fro like some kind of taxicab. One friend of my daughter’s even complained that the supple, leathered backseat of my Saab 900 Turbo drophead coupe was “cramped”. The nerve! Its almost 20 years old and still runs like a champion, and the seats are quite comfortable, thank you.

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