A major frustrations of standardisation advocates is multi-media. Anywhere you go on the Web, Window$ is assumed to be your operating system and their specialised formats too. Arguably, a dominant impact of lacking standards is associated with audio and video. There is, however, a shareware GUI-based program that can convert a common video file into an animated GIF. Such files can be viewed on any platform with the most basic support for Web graphics. Included are my example of AVI2GIF conversion and a link to the convertor’s homepage.

Mail checkers are light-weight programs which notify the user when new E-mail messages arrive. They rid the user of the need to run heavy mail applications in the background. I have used a variety of mail checkers and here is a summary:

For Windows: PopTray (left-hand-side) offers a very large range of features, but perhaps too many. It also does not support a pop-up preview of new mail. SyTinem (middle) is a mail checker that I have used happily for almost 4 years.

For Linux: KBiff (right-hand-side) generally fits most of my needs, but it sometimes fails to distinguish between old and new mail.

Scott Tobkes sent me an article from the Herald Sun and here are the interesting bits:

During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Centre PC froze and wouldn’t respond Mr Gates’s efforts to push the remote control.

Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a new video game, but the computer monitor displayed the dreaded “blue screen of death” and warned, “out of system memory”.

So, Windows is stable when put in the right hands. Correct?

Questions:

• Which MP3 players are available for the Palm platform?
• Which one is best to choose? (a question I will not answer)

Objective Answer:

• AeroPlayer (left in image below) – Cons: No auto-sync with iTunes. Pros: Use of Ogg files instead of MP3 files makes the application 100% free! (hint: don’t tell anyone)
• PocketTunes (middle) – Cons: Pricy; Windows is recommended. Pros: High-resolution support; Large variety of options.
• RealPlayer (right) – Cons: Forces installation of additional (unnecessary) software upon PRC installation; Rather simple. Pros: Reliable; Easy to use.

Cited by: PalmAddict

UseNet participants from uk.comp.sys.palmtops and alt.comp.os.palm have come up with an SOS this morning. It turns out that Tungsten 5 and Tungsten E users (at least) are affected by a serious bug that can permanently disallow Palms from being switched off. The bug came into effect only yesterday. David Gerrie from uk.comp.sys.palmtops writes:

Solved!! Palm have put a fix on the website, all to do with birthday reminders apparently! Obviously posting here (UseNet) provided the impetus to fixing it!

Update: David Gerrie has E-mailed me the direct link to the solution. Here is his explanation:

It’s knowledge base article is number 26450. It’s not an actual patch, merely a workaround solution. Not sure if they are planning on patching or not..!

Cited by: PalmAddict

In the past year I have come to realise that I no longer need a laptop, or a telephone, or an MP3 player. Micro-device technology is advancing so quickly that it is able to match functionality of much larger ‘workhorses’. With a full-size folding keyboard, headphones and a PDA, one can be most productive anywhere at any time.

Would you believe that 1 gram SD cards hold half a gig a gig of memory?

Cited by: PalmAddict

Dvorak has published a little item about the growth of the Web browser Mozilla Firefox. Here is a snippet:

…Firefox is gaining marketshare by a lot. But more interesting is the fact that unlike with other browsers the Firefox users almost all quickly converted to the latest version. This shift is very noteworthy as it shows that the Firefox users are proactive. Note this is the International market where you find a lot of Opera users. And they usually have Opera report that it’s MSIE to fool certain MSFT websites…

He inspired me to take a closer look at Webalizer (I prefer AWStats, but I have used Webalizer for 3 years and it is more popular) to provide some proof that Firefox has become rather dominant on this site (see below).

According to AWStats (Web site): MS Internet Explorer (49.4 %); Firefox Mozilla (40.7 %); Unknown (3.2 %); Safari (1.5 %); Netscape (1.4 %); Opera (1.4 %); Konqueror (1.2 %); Camino (0.3 %); WebTV browser (0.1 %); Others (0.1 %).

In terms of operating systems: Windows (67.2 %); Linux (27.2 %); Unknown (5.7 %); Macintosh (2.8 %); Sun Solaris (2.4 %); WebTV (0 %); CPM (0 %); AmigaOS (0 %); FreeBSD (0 %); NetBSD (0 %); Others (0 %).