Tao’s Blog

To correctly sent Palm contacts to T610, you need to arrange the following fields in the right order, namely, you should always have the following field order:

Work
Home
Email
Mobile

When either Work or Home is empty, but not both, you cannot set primary contact field to Mobile, otherwise, one of the fields will not be sent to T610. Strange but true, when both Work and Home are present, you can set primary field to any four of the contact field, all fields will be transmitted to T610. That is very strange.

After I sorted out the Palm address book to T610 issue, I went on to export the Palm contacts to the GMail. That turned out to not as easy as I expected.

First, I simply exported the Palm contacts to csv formats, then tried to import the csv file to GMail, but failed. Finally, I figured out that when exporting, Palm Desktop doesn’t put a header line on top of the csv file, and I must manually add the header line. Second, I must manually remove those unnessary fields in the csv files, I only need email fields in the GMail. I tried to un-check those unnecessary fields during exporting, but the resultant csv is totally messed up. The reason is a mystery. Anyway, I managed to exported a clean copy of Palm email contacts to GMail, it worked.

Yesterday, I mentioned that one cannot access gmail using a Mac OS 9 computer. Although offically that’s true, technically, you can find some workaround to check and reply your gmail with a Mac OS 9 machine. I tried last night, the following is what I discovered:

If you are using IE 5.1 (the highest version of IE you can go on Mac OS 9), it is impossible to access gmail. You will get a warning, if you choose to log on anyway, you will be asked to activate Active X. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as Active X on Macintosh platform.

I tried Netscape 7.0 (the highest version of Netscape you can run on Mac OS 9), at first, you will get a compatible browsers caveat, then you can choose log on anyway, then, you will be ushered into the gmail inbox. Everything works fine, until you need the keyboard shortcuts: somehow, you cannot use keyboard shortcuts directly, you must first click inside the mail area to be able to use the shortcuts, that’s terribly inconvenient. But, anyway, it works, as long as you don’t mind this kind of shabby keyboard support.

I also tried Mozila 1.2.1 (the highest version of Mozilla you can run on Mac OS 9), it is almost identical to Netscape 7.0, but with better keyboard shortcut support, although the support is still not as comprehensive as IE 6 for Windows, it is almost good enough. You don’t need to click in the mail area to be able to use j, k, p, n keys, as soon as the web pages load, you can type to move around, reply, go back, etc. That’s good enough for me, although you cannot move the focus to buttons in Mozilla and Netscape, unlike IE 5.1 for Mac.

So now, if I want to access my gmail on my Revision A iMac, I can fire up Mozilla 1.2.1, using those convenient j, k, p, n, u keys to move around and chat around. That’s neat.

Someone invited me to the much talked about google mail, or gmail. I tried it out, and found I like it. The feature I most fond of is the keyboard shortcuts.

Although Yahoo mail also has some shortcuts, like Ctrl-Shift-C (Check mail), Ctrl-Shift-P (Compose mail), Ctrl-Shift-S (Search mail), and Ctrl-Shift-F (Folders), as far as I can tell, they are the only shortcuts. In GMail, actually, you have those one key shortcuts, like j, k, p, n to move around, u to go back, y to archive, and s to mark with a star. If you are familiar with UNIX, you will like those keyboard commands.

GMail also organizes the email messages into “conversations", much alike those threads in newsreaders. It is rather neat, makes every single email message in context. It is a better way to organize your email, much superior than the Yahoo Mail.

The only problem I can think of GMail is the higher requirement of browsers. Essentially, if you are still using Mac OS 9, you are out of luck, you have no ways to use the 1 GB mail box. They declare that GMail is compatible with Safari, which I haven’t tested out. I will try that to see if I can still use those keyboard shortcuts in Safari.

Dr. John Dee(1527-1608) is a quite interesting figure. If he was born a hundred years later, he may be as great as Sir Isaac Newton, or Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz. He is a great genius, living in an age too murky even for him to dispel the darkness. He’s dealing with Edward Kelley is intriguing and fateful.

On T610, you can have up to:

10 notes, 254 characters each;

80 tasks, 100 characters each;

and 300 appointments, 100 characters each, and 50 characters for the location field of each appointment.

Connectivity of Sony Ericsson T610

According to the manual of T610, it can sync with desktop computers and PDA with cable, Bluetooth, and IR. Of course, I am not interested in synchronizing with cable since I already get two wireless options. Since I am a Mac fan, I don’t care much about sync T610 with Windows, my main interest is sync the phone with my PowerBook G4 and Tungsten T2. T610 comes with a CD, with Windows software to synchronize the phone with Windows PC.

For syncing with my PowerBook G4, it is straightforward: you don’t need any other software, the iSync, iCal, and Address Book of the Mac OS X are all the programs you need. Bluetooth is built-in on PowerBook, and the support for T610 of Mac OS X is excellent. You just need to set up Bluetooth, activate Bluetooth on both devices, and the iSync will automatically recognize the T610 and sync calender, to-do list, and contact information with T610.

iSync can easily handle multiple devices, such as my Tungsten T2, iPod (yes, you can use iPod as a PDA, although you cannot input text into it, but you can read your contacts, your to-do lists on it), and my desktop calender and contact information. So the PowerBook G4 acts as the digital hub, manages all the PDA data for my Palm, iPod, and mobile phone. With iSync, I can make sure all my gadgets are synchronized, without data redundancy and inconsistency, as long as I keep the digital hub nice and clean. That’s so easy and trouble-free! I heard some horror stories involving Windows machines, so it is really a bless with a PowerBook G4, and all those wonderful Bluetooth gadgets!

I used to provide technical support for Windows XP and Linux. The Windows can easily overwhelm users, never easy for user, especially novice users. The only thing I appreciate of Windows is the ability to control almost everything with keyboard. If I am not working with Photoshop or other imaging manipulating software, I can do without a mouse on a Windows PC. Although Mac OS X has the keyboard-only accessibility option, it is not as fast as Windows’s keyboard shortcuts and Alt key combinations. However, the Alt key combinations actually come from IBM, but I digress.

Technically, T610 cannot sync with Tungsten T2, but I can send a bunch of contacts between them with either Bluetooth and IR. I can also send to-do lists, but not notes. That’s almost as good as syncing, so I cannot complain.

However, I do find some problem when I send a bunch of contact information from my Tungsten T2 to T610: say I have a contact have a home phone number, a work phone number, an email address, and a mobile number. Sometimes the mobile number does not show up on the T610. Several hours later, I figured out what is wrong: T610 is sensitive to the order how those fields are arranged: if I use the following order on the Palm:

Work
Home
Email
Mobile

All fields will show up on T610. However, if I change the Email and Mobile field order, one of them will be missing on the T610.

Solution: standardize the field order on my Palm. Since I don’t have a hell lot of contacts, so it is relatively easy for me. I can do it on the PowerBook, do it with mouse and keyboard instead of the tiny keypad. Easy enough.

Another problem is that I cannot send notes between my Palm and T610. I can send date book entry, to-do list entry, and contacts, but not notes. I suppose that can be attribute to the vCard formats used by both devices. I am not very familiar with the technical details of the vCard. I will do some research on it later.

I suppose I can send T610 notes to PowerBook, but I haven’t tried yet. Maybe I can do it tomorrow, but it is not very important.

BTW, now I get a hang of the T9 input method of the T610, I can type reasonably fast on the phone, with the help of custom dictionary and predictive typing.

Read the Wireless FAQ, which explained some basic terms and concepts concerning cell phones and wireless communications.

With Pluck for Palm OS and JPluck, I can easily load any web page to my Palm Tungsten T2.

To make Google the default search engine in Internet Explorer for Windows, or check out what google says.

For Mac OS 9 and IE 5, use this tip to set google as the default search engine.

Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcut

A history of Apple operating systems

T9 and iTAP

This page is from Kodak, about Color Theory

True Colors