The Astronomy Space Gun - The Meade mySKY

So this was a cool item I saw at REI the other day when I was looking at GPS units. Its a gun you point up at the night sky and it calculates where you are, the direction you're facing and what angle the gun is tilted at and lights up it's display and tells you what you are looking at (with a picture too).

Unfortunately, it was daytime and I couldn't use it. The one I saw was the Meade mySKY Personal Guide for Sky Exploration, this might just be something I need. This is the Official Meade site for the mySky (with some video)

it can identify 30,000 unique items

500 audio descriptions to keep you well briefed

built in GPS receiver

2 inch wide 480 x 234 LCD

Sandy Wood (from StarDate) is who narrates the sky for you

interfaces with some Meade telescopes

looks like a space gun / phaser

Popular Mechanics gave it a great review. But a lot of the people reviewing these seem to have them dead out of the box or problems getting the GPS to "lock". The ones who it worked for absolutely love them. Possible other problems: Waving a gun around outside or trying to get it through airport security. And for some reason you can only update it on a Windows machine (via an SD card).

The Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium seems to be a similar product, but it's not as cool looking but it's a year older and I think they've worked some of the bugs out. Many of the SkyScout complaints seemed to also be with getting the GPS to "lock".

And. of course, there is s chart to compare the mySky and SkyScout.

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Posted by Gary on Sunday at 12:42 PM on December 9, 2007.
Related categories: handheld, science

Will it Blend? - iPhone

The title really says it all. But you have to see it to believe it!

And when you're done watching it, you can bid on it and other extras (it's up to $1,100 for some weird reason).

Technorati Tags: Apple, blend, eBay, iPhone, will it blend

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Posted by Gary on Sunday at 6:54 PM on July 15, 2007.
Related categories: apple, handheld, portable, technology
Thanks for the 2 comments/trackbacks from: kilax: Guilty Secret

Senator proposes law to ban crossing the street while listening to iPod

This is insane!

State senator's bill would make it illegal to cross the street tuned into portable electronic devices such as MP3 players and BlackBerrys.

For one, you can have these devices with headsets off (and not actually outputting audio) and not distracting you. And the other is that Deaf people cross the street all the time without hearing traffic. While they do have more practice if they're talking to someone (signing and watching the other person) they're definitely distracted and this bill. (Have you ever ridden in a car with deaf people signing to each other? How about while they're signing to the people in the next car over?!?) And I'm not sure if this covers if you're texting or just using audio? What if you're reading the paper or a book? Or reading a billboard ad on the side of a bus?

Either way, I just want the gov't to start supplying someone to hold my hand while I cross the street. That's what we really need, right? It's certainly what they're leading up to...

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Posted by Gary on Friday at 2:41 PM on February 9, 2007.
Related categories: apple, handheld, portable

When Arcade Game Creatures Attack!

So imagine this: You've got some kind of handheld inviso-detecter-o-rama and through the viewfinder you can see the invisible creatures in your world. Better yet, if you can see them, you can shoot them. Now imagine this handheld device looks an awful lot like your Treo.

ToySpring has created a game, called Arcade Reality, using your Treo that uses the live image from your camera to to superimpose the creatures on. So it appears as if you are fighting arcade creatures in real life. Here are some more screenshots.

Personally, I don't see how they can get enough processing power out of these handhelds to do this, but the machine might have overlay capabilities that I'm not aware of (I've never tried to program a Palm like that). Or they might just be faster than I think. I have seen some zippy video games, I juse don't play them that much these days...

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Posted by Gary on Thursday at 8:24 PM on February 8, 2007.
Related categories: games, handheld, technology

So I bought an iPhone!

No not that iPhone. The iPhone that's been out for a while, the one that Linksys/Cisco owns the trademark to (but debating that is not the purpose of this thread). It's a regular old looking phone, kinda cellphone-ish, it's cordless and you can carry it around the house and it connects wirelessly to your Windows PC and can make and receive Skype calls. Your Skype friend's list shows up in the display and you can dial from there. I thought it was pretty cool and it was on the odd clearance rack at Target (the UPC on the box didn't scan and the had an extra price tag on it, like they received it by accident but needed to tag it to get rid of it) it was a great deal! It's even got a spot for me to plug in a headset!

I like Skype, it's a great idea and even though I only intermittently use it, it always seems to work for me. You can call other computers for free from your computer to and from anywhere in the world (this includes conference calls and video calls). You can call land lines in the US or Canada for just pennies a minute with no monthly fees (or unlimited for $30 a year) from anywhere in the world. Calling other countries cost a bit more depending on the location. Getting a number where people can call you at your computer (no matter what computer you are at, anywhere in the world) is about $60 a year. So going on vacation, it doesn't matter where you are just load up Skype and connect to the net and people can call you! Get several skype numbers, one that's close to Grandma and one that's close to the kids in college and you're just a local call away for each of them.

Then phone's charging and so I haven't even used it yet. But I can't wait to try!

FYI, they do make some other models of the iPhone that don't require a computer, they just need WiFi to work. I see that as a minor problem in some places since you need a web browser to activate the Wifi (Panera, McDonald's, Border's, etc.). And they're a lot more expensive. When they get smaller and cheaper, or better yet when they come built into my cell phone...

Technorati Tags: Skype

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Posted by Gary on Thursday at 9:03 PM on February 1, 2007.
Related categories: apple, handheld, portable, technology
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: Gary Said...

Google Maps On Demand for my Treo!!!

So they finally released Google Maps for Treo so I can run it on my SPrint Treo 700p. With this application I can pull up Google Maps from an application, not just via the web! This means I can zoom, get directions, see satellite views, get very cool driving directions, find local businesses, see traffic patterns (this is a little hard to decipher) all while dragging the map around with my stylus. Very cool!

It's been out for some other handhelds but it never ran on mine. It's pretty zippy with the Sprint EVDO speed. It's pretty big, it weighs in at 423k. It seems to do a good job caching the maps, I wonder how it runs on the slower models and slower networks...

You can down load it directly to your Palm (and other handhelds) from http://www.google.com/gmm

It's missing two features:

The ability to look an address up from your address book.

The ability to add a local business that you find to your address book.

It'd be nice if I could look up the longitude and latitude for an address/location. (Just because)

From the Google Blog.

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Posted by Gary on Thursday at 8:51 PM on October 12, 2006.
Related categories: handheld, portable, reviews, technology

So I've been testing blog clients for my Palm 700p cell phone (updated)

So if you've seen any short test posts lately it's 'cause I'm testing blogging clients for my new Treo 700p handheld. Some old some new, some worked some didn't, some the new versions didn't. I just updated this post since I got slightly confused between a few of the clients when writing this up. The winners IMHO are:

Mo:Blog - easy to use (but I did have to look at the manual a few times), stand alone. I only did a few test posts so we'll see later. One bug - when getting the blog id from the site the numbering got goofed up somehow, since none of the other clients did this I thought I'd mention it. The other odd thing was you pick the category when you set the blog up, not on individual posts. It's about $15.

Azure - I think this was my favorite on my old phone too. It requires some kind of Java environment (I used IBM's) to be installed. It does allow for the extended entry (and one category) and will download previous posts (this always makes me nervous on the mobile clients due to field length). And it's free. See below for install information.

I'm always surprised at how hard it is in some software to find out the web site of the company that makes/made it. It's not in the about, or in the manual. I'm especially surprised in the ones that want you to register, it might have been on the page where you got it, but it's gone (or you forgot where you got it).

For new users to mobile blogging Mo:Blog is probably better, the Java VM stuff is a little tricky (unless you've used it before).
For those interested:

None let me use the extended entry (except Azure).

Most clients give an error when posting (but still posts). Flickr does this to me too, so it's an MT thing or something with my install.

The other ones I tried include KaBlog 1.42 (limited but always reliable, couldn't get newer versions to run once I hit edit post), plogit, blogplanet (stable but missing a few features), uBlog, handx, hblogger and I thought one other but...

The thing is I can do most of this with the MT quickpost option and it lets me use the extended entry (I compose in memopad first). Several programs seem like they'll work directly with the photos on the palm (and the camera) but no luck with any for me. But I can use the Flickr e-mail option to post photos and text to the blog for that (which works great).

Decision, decisions...

FYI - To install Azure: First download the IBM Java WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment (CLDC 1.1 /MIDP 2.0) on your computer and install J9JavaVMMidp20.prc and JavaVMCheck_enUS.prc (in the JVM/ARM4T directory) on your treo. Then once that's installed, launch it, say install and type http://web.vee.net/projects/azure/azure_0-5.jad and it will download it from the net and install it. Keep in mind when running Azure it's got all the options in the menus (title, body, excerpt, extended, bold, paragraph) and you have to go “Back” for some menus. It takes a minute to figure it out, but it works. When it asks for your blog address, what it really want is the long xmlrpc address for your site.

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Posted by Gary on Sunday at 1:56 AM on June 18, 2006.
Related categories: blogging, handheld, portable, reviews
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: vox

Viewing the Web on a PDA (or phone)

So it's always a hassle to view web sites on your phone / PDA. Google has been making this smarter when you search from their mobile site. If you search for “gary said” you get this list and when you click my link (which is first) you get a pretty nice stripped down page. Now I offer my site as a PDA/cell phone version but the graphics are still full, I noticed Google strips them down a bit and removes animated gifs (which is a mostly good thing). The other thing is Google continues to alter the pages as you follow links keeping your browsing experience zippy (I don't do this but my lower pages are sort of small screen friendly).

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Posted by Gary on Sunday at 4:55 PM on February 26, 2006.
Related categories: handheld, portable, technology, web sites

What are your Top 5 electronic toys you can't live without right now?

Apple 12 inch Powerbook: Software, Internet, Music, Audio Books, Podcasts, eBooks, Movies and more. It's got just about everything I need.

Palm OS Cell Phone (Samsung i500): Phone, Day Planner, Address/Phone Book, a few games, slow internet (but I can get info and check my mail), it'll work as a modem for my computer in a pinch.

Digital Camera (Minolta Dimage Xt 3.2MP): Photos, short Movies, Audio recording and in a pinch it'll work as a thumb drive (I think it'll work as a webcam on a windows machine).

iPod 60GB color (no video): Music, Podcasts, eBooks, my (read only) calendar/addressbook, some eBook files and works as a really big thumb drive.

TiVo (250 GB DVD recorder): Plays TV (what I want when I want), Records what I want every week (and makes suggestions), plays CDs, DVDs, Video CDs, streams audio and photos from my computers. With the new (free) HME options I can check the weather, movie listings, RSS feeds, photo feeds, flickr streams, play games, play my iTunes, back up shows to my computer and more (people keep writing these modules).

All are pretty mullti-functional devices that are converging. The Powerbook + TiVo have pretty similar capabilities and the phone + palm + camera + iPod are certainly sharing some capabilities too. Merge those in to two devices that let me doc them together and life would be good. The only thing missing is a real video recorder (and that's probably coming soon).

I'm pretty covered, I'm not sure what else I need. Other than the newer / faster / smaller versions of these same gadgets, of course (I'd like the iPod video player). Maybe something to power/charge all these gizmos. Obviously I need a TV/projector for the TiVo (and speakers for the surround sound) but other than normal appliances these do pretty good for me.

From Top 5 Friday.

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Posted by Gary on Friday at 9:39 PM on November 18, 2005.
Related categories: handheld, meme, meme, portable, technology

My Cell Phone

So I know all it seems like is that I'm talking about these days is phones, music, iPods and cable bills lately, but I've been really geeked about the new Apple “toys” and I always like reducing costs on recurring charges (like phones, cell phones and cable). Saving $10-15 a month each on your phone, cell and cable, while avoiding any overages could be $500 year. That's not being cheap, it's avoiding being wasteful. If you don't care about saving money this'll be a boring post so just skip it.

Speaking of reducing charges, I've also reduced my cell phone bill and maybe my savings can help you too. I'm with Sprint, whom I occasionally hear people complain about, but I think they're great at home (Detroit Area) and when traveling I've almost always had great service (it was a weak in the Grand Canyon). I had a lot of minutes on my phone, I haven't been using them all (not even a third) but I'd rather have a cushion and not go over than the pay the huge overages (100 minutes over at 40 cents a minute is $40!). But they've had this fair and flexible plan which if you go over they charge by blocks of minutes at a much more reasonable rate. I looked at them before and they didn't strike me as great, but I just looked again and it seemed a better deal (I don't know if it changed or I just wasn't paying attention). I lowered my plan by 400 minutes so I'm saving $15 a month and it's $5 increments for 100 minute blocks if you go over (a lot cheaper) after that. So unless I go over 300 hundred minutes I'll be paying the same price but at the rate I've been going, I'll definitely be saving money. YMMV with other phone companies...

I also just made the leap to ditch my POTS land line, so I really wanted to make sure I'm not going to get nailed for overages. At $40+ a month with taxes, that with my other savings is another month's mortgage payment. FYI, if you can make an extra mortgage payment a year it shaves about 7 years off your total mortgage.

With Sprint, changing your plan means generally (99% of the time, especially if lowering your plan) means redoing a 2 year contract. I had 6 months left so I really only ended up tacking on 18 more months. Plus, they gave me $150 to spend towards a new phone if I want it since I renewed the contract (for my mother's line they only offered me $75 towards a new phone).

They also offer 6 o'clock nights so if you do a lot of you calling starting then you can add that to save some minutes (if you have a 9pm nights plan it's $5 for 7pm and $10 for 6pm to start unlimited calling). If you've been with them for a bit you can usually get them to waive the 7pm fee. A little haggling and you can get them to wave the $5 for mobile to mobile free calling and if you really have been with them for a while you can get a 5% courtesy discount, I know there are people with better plans than that, but I haven't been able to do better. To get any of the “discounts” like these you have to ask several times and sometimes re-word it before they give you some of the options. I haven't been able to get them to give me the 6pm nights for even $5, they want to throw away my $5 discount and charge me the whole $10, we'll see how the plan works with the new stuff.

They've also lowered altered the Vision data plans, it looks like if you don't have a camera (or video-player) in your phone you can get the $10 plan ($5 for additional phones) instead of the $15 plan.

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Posted by Gary on Friday at 11:30 AM on September 9, 2005.
Related categories: general, handheld, portable

FutureBoy! The game...

A new adventure game, coming out for just about every platform (Windows, Macintosh, Linux/X11, BeOS, Palm OS and Pocket PC). Be sure to check out the site and the trailer.

This won't be out until September, what really excites me is the multi-platform deployment all at the same time. If we start seeing more of this in the future it'll really level out the playing field in computer OSes

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Posted by Gary on Monday at 12:12 PM on September 6, 2004.
Related categories: computers, general, handheld

Some PDA's do not come with a cradle...

Some PDA's do not come with a cradle to syncronize, just a cable. The solution for one magazine? Paper cradles for the cradleless Clies. "You need the cable that came with your CLIE, some cardboard paper, scissors, tape (and of course) a PDF that will be published in the Spring Mobile Press Magazine (Japan only) later this week.

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Posted by Gary on Monday at 8:31 PM on March 22, 2004.
Related categories: handheld, money, portable, technology

Finally, a "Smart-PDA" from Apple?

It looks like Apple might be finally entering the PDA market! This is a good thing since Palm OS 6 doesn't plan to support the Macintosh.

The odd part of this is that even though Macintosh has a small percentage of the computer market, many of the Palm OS people that I know are Mac-users. The question to me is what percentage of their sales go to Mac-users? The only reason I put Windows back into my house after 20 years was to get better synchronization with my Macintosh. I wanted some of the geekier conduits and they just didn't exist for the Mac. Some third party company (the Missing-sync folks) will write a Mac-driver if the market is there...

But I digress:
It'll probably have a hard drive (ala mini-iPod) and Firewire, USB and BlueTooth . The second article mentions WiFi and cell phone. There were hints of it playing music (actually downloading music while in the waiting room). Of course it'll support QuickTime and sync with all of the iApps. And (wait for it...) it'll support Windows. Maybe not the first week, but soon. You can't tell me that all the Windows people who bought iPods (and considered iPods) won't at least consider this device. I'm assuming it's share files in a variety of ways (like target disk mode and such). The only thing I haven't seen mentioned is a camera and GPS. I'd subscribe to .mac I think if this tied into it...

One of the articles I read said something like 'people spend more time deciding on a phone or a PDA than any other electronic device'. I know I do, if I'm going to carry it everywhere, I'm going to be fussy about it. My 2 cents: No mini-keyboard/thumbboard. Let me use grafitti or something similar. Let it support a regular USB keyboard (or mouse) thought the USB port (or via WiFi?)

You can check out this article from MacNet2.com and part 2.

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Posted by Gary on Monday at 7:22 AM on February 16, 2004.
Related categories: apple, computers, handheld, portable, technology, wifi

What's your score?

Actually I haven't played Scrabble in a while. If you like Scrabble and you have a Palm (or PocketPC) handheld they make an excellent version that you can play against the computer or others.

But I digress. The reason for tonight's post is that I saw this on Heather's Blog and had to do it myself... Especially since mine is bigger than Heather's.

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 32. What is your score? Get it here.

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Posted by Gary on Friday at 9:48 PM on February 6, 2004.
Related categories: friends + family, games, handheld, meme, web sites
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: heather

OQO - The true 'Pocket PC'

How's this: "The OQO computer has all the functionality of a ultraportable notebook computer, with a 1GHz processor, a 20GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, color transflective display (for easy indoor and outdoor viewing), 802.11b wireless, a removable lithium-polymer battery, and FireWire™ and USB 1.1 ports. For input and navigation it includes thumb keyboard with TrackStik™ and mouse buttons as well as digital pen and thumbwheel." It even has more than that! All in a handheld computer which fits in your pocket (I can't find size specs on the web site).

Patrick is at CES and he showed it on TV a minute ago. It comes with a funky connector that has usb, firewire, svga and all the other ports you need (you can use this as a docking connector) It has a USB port built in so you can take a full size keyboard with you! I've been asking for this on palms for years!

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Posted by Gary on Friday at 7:15 PM on January 9, 2004.
Related categories: computers, handheld, portable, technology, wifi