Versamail update.

For those of you with the Treo 755p, this update works perfectly on my device.  It also has an important fix that stops Versamail from "loosing" the fact its supposed to be receiving push mail from an Exchange server.

Obviously use at your own risk, but I upgraded this morning, and have been receiving email and appointments all day without a hitch.

The Ebookwise 1150

I've been a HUGE fan of ebooks since 1999 when I bought my first Palm IIIe and found the peanutpress.com website. (Now owned by Fictionwise and called Ereader secure). Over the years I have bought over 300 books from various web stores, and converted a heck of a lot of fan fiction and been from Project Gutenberg.

I've always read on my PDA starting with the iiie, iiic, Tungsten T, Lifedrive, Treo 650, and Treo 755p.

If you look those models up you'll notice the screen has gotten smaller as time went
on, my eyes have also gotten older. Last week I started the hunt for a dedicated ebook
reader.

My first stop was amazon to have a look at the Kindle since that's the one getting
all the press right now. Unfortunately for Amazon I live in Canada and they only sell their
device in the US so I moved on.

Sonystyle. Now this was a reader that had some features and the price wasn't that
bad at all. I had pretty much decided to go with this one since the other e-ink readers
all had price tags that I just didn't want to deal with right now.

I then read the reviews of E-Ink and while most people love it, the one thing that bothered
me was the lack of a backlight (Or the lack of a free light for the reader, the backlight from
Sony is another $70.

Since I don't sleep my wife spoke up and told me I would need to find something that wouldn't
require a bedside lamp.

I started hunting for a LCD reader with a backlight, and stumbled across the www.ebookwise.com site which is owned by Fictionwise. I read the specs, and checked out the reviews online and even though this is seriously old tech people still LOVE them. I hauled out the old plastic and ordered one up.

The device got here in 3 business days, and was packaged very nice, the case it comes with
is functional and I can chuck my ebook in my briefcase with everything else and feel it won't
be damaged.

I promptly set everything up and registered the device and had access to my online bookshelf.
It asked me if I wanted to import all my previous fictionwise purchases (Multi format only) to
the new bookshelf and I let it.

I also picked up the librarian software from their website which allows one to use the USB cable
and "Online Bookshelf" to connect to your local computer where you can place your own created
books. With a bit of work I was able to remove the DRM and convert some of my previous .LIT and Mobipocket books into HTML and from HTML it was a breeze to convert to the IMP format.

The fonts are very easy to read and the brightness / contrast controls allow you to tweak it
to be viewable in almost any light. I went outside and in everything but DIRECT sunlight the
ebookwise is very readable.

The big buttons for changing pages are GREAT, and so is the touch screen for entering some
search terms. I also really appreciate the dictionary that comes with the device, as it is very
easy to highlight a work and look up the meaning. The device also lets you take notes on the
book directly on the page itself, if you need more room you can add a blank page and write or
draw until your hearts content. This will come in very handy!

While it's not been a long time yet, I think I will be happy with this device for a while to come.

www.ebookwise.com for more info.

PDA Reach

PDA Reach by June Fabrics is another application that I have owned for quite a while now and have recently started using again.

The talk about the Redfly winmo device got me thinking again how much I really wanted a Palm Foleo instead of the eeepc I ended up with.

One of the things about PDA Reach is that with the limited space on the EEEPC (Once windows XP is in there) is the fact that I wanted a quick and easy way to use my email clients / contacts without installing a lot of crap.

This works amazing. Just like the redfly I am using the programs directly on my palm, but with the keyboard on my eeepc. You can also just connect to the internet on your phone and use the Blazer web app etc on the eeepc where wifi isn't available without breaking any contracts.

June Fabrics does have another program called PDA Net that allows you to use your Treo as a modem for connecting to the internet on any windows computer. I have tested it out and it does work, but it wasn't one I stuck with due to the current license with Telus mobility. (I now have unlimited data for $30 a month on the phone, and don't want to loose that!)

More Treo 755p Goodness.

Couple of cool things I've done with the Treo the last week and a bit. The main thing is switching launchers from Launcher-X, to Initiate. This is a really sweet launcher that allows you to just type what your looking for and voila. Including contacts, apps, files, etc. Check out the website for the full deets.

He also has a number of other software that I use and love. The genious! program makes searching for things very easy as it can search online or locally etc.

The other one I love is Power hero. My favorite parts of PH are simple, the scheduling of the phone on and off, and the bluetooth auto connecting when in my car. Yes the treo takes a few seconds to connect but I just answer by picking up the phone and in no time at all the speaker in my car kicks in.