footnoteblograndom musings and missives

What element in our world keeps us happy in the dreary WInter months? Why, light, of course! Interacting with your light source is always a good thing. Check out this cool, adjustable lamp box from Conran. Available in white and black.

Dubbed the “smartphone for soccer moms”, the Palm Treo 680 is an incredible phone. But what people don’t realize is its long-standing, solid Palm OS has been around longer than Windows Mobile, and much simpler to use. I know, I’ve had both. I mention the below applications here because they take advantage of the platform’s very handy features, e.g., high-resolution, voice and audio input, etc.

One of my favorite apps (besides Phone, naturally), I constantly use is Planetarium, especially with Night Mode turned on. This astronomical tool (in the literal sense) has a host of fabulous features, including a compass view to ferret out exactly where a heavenly body may lie. This is an essential tool for photography, as well as stargazing. Why? It has the schedules of sunrises and sunsets, as well as moon phases and horizon times practically in perpetuity. I love it, and I love taking it camping on a crisp, clear night. I really should install KB LightsOff or finally get ProfileCare to shut off the backlight at night.

As great as the Treo is at one-handed operation, life wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t utilize the included stylus, right? One such application that does help in that area is MobiSystems Paint. A very full-featured, bitmap-based drawing tool for jotting ideas, and even some decent sketches. You can output to JPG and bitmap format, making for easy export, though a 320×320 square, however more resolution than your typical Win Mobile screen, is still a bit cramped for a masterpiece.

Another great program for your burgeoning music career is PhonTuner, a cochleal (spiral-shaped) visual tuner that’s very accurate, useful and fun. Tune your voice, guitar, or select your own octave range. “Can you give me an ‘E’?”

For traveling, one great piece of software is WorldMate. It combines weather reports and satellite imagery, time and alarm, time calculator, sizing charts and travel (air) itineraries, and a lot more into one great-looking app. The program retrieves the latest weather data and flight itineraries right over the phone’s internet (GPRS/EDGE) connection. Granted, it hasn’t been updated in some time (it could use an updated alarm system, enabling day selections, for instance), but it works now, and works great.

I haven’t mentioned TomTom here, although it’s been reported version 5 does work with the Treo 680, the latest version 6, as of this writing, does not function correctly. I have used TomTom 5 with the 650, and it’s safe to say it’s one of the better applications out there. I would recommend getting the maps on the card; although you’ll pay a higher price, you’ll be installing maps from CDs, and that’s definitely no fun.

So, I guess, to really push the limits of this phone, I’d like to know if there are more applications out there that really are incredible. Comment if you do.