It’s an unseasonably warm and rainy January here in Warren, where warm actually means daytime highs of about 30 degrees and ’seasonable weather’ would be closer to zero. The point is that it’s the worst possible winter weather: the rain ruins the regular winter activities, and it’s still too cold to take up summer activities. Perhaps that’s why I take such comfort in this video of Ashton, even if it is the video that killed my Clie.

Context: August/September 2005, Atlanta.

Facts: My Clie shoots video. Kids were meant for video. Pools were meant for kids.

Plan: Put Clie in Zip-Lock bag, shoot video underwater.

Problem: Zip-Lock bags aren’t as waterproof as one might expect.

Result: great video of Ashton in the pool, a soggy Clie. Eventually: replaced with a Treo 650 (the Clie, not the kid).

The great thing about lo-fi video like this is that it gives kids of today the opportunity in 30 or 50 years to look back at images that are as strangely colored, grainy, and jumpy as the home movies our parents had. Videos of our youth are just filled with VHS smear.

Music by Bonobo, also at Amazon.

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My Treo rocks. Part of my love for the new gadget is how I can now AIM on the run without SMS. Sure, I risk frostbitten fingers as I walk across campus and I’d probably be a lot better off if I just called the person, but…but…

Anyway, Everything Treo was near the top of my Google query with a roundup of three commercial IM apps for Palm. But none of the reviewed apps seemed all that great, and I sort of expected to find a free client. The Treonauts review wasn’t much help either, and I was about to give up when I found Atomig Cog’s Toccer, a completely free, still-in-beta AIM client. It’s plenty capable and seems to be in active development (five releases since mid-August).

A couple features I didn’t think about before I started looking include directly connecting to AOL (some clients use a proxy), background receiving (because fully-synchronus IMing is frustrating), and support for the five-way nav clicker.

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I’ve been talking up the Pepper Pad and Nokia 770 a lot, and I’ve mentioned a moment of lust for the LifeDrive (despite my complaints against PDAs), but today I bought a Treo 650 (even though I had doubts).

My decision surprised me, but the following factors all weighed in its favor:

• My cell phone contract expired. Verizon was dangling their standard $100 discount (on top of other discounts) on a new phone if I renewed. That, and Palm dropped the price on the 650 a lot recently.
   
• My Clie TH-55 is kaput. Yeah, I had complaints, but it turned out that I missed the damn thing.
   
• With the Clie out of commission, I was also in need of a small camera/video camera. I was thinking of getting a refurbished Stylus Verve for about $150 (when you can find them). The Treo’s camera can’t match the Stylus, but it’s better than the Clie’s and will do the job.

Well, that’s how I justified explained it to Sandee anyway.

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Geolocation by GPS my be the most straightforward approach, but we mustn’t forget the other ways to get lat/lon coordinates.

All current cell phones support aGPS positioning to comply with federal E-911 mandates, but not all phones make it easy for the user to get that information out of them. Still, some do and GPS-enabled moblogging is becoming common in Asia and Europe, and there’s at least a public proof of concept going in the US.

Then there’s ethernet/WiFi. Plazes is a kind of social networking application that allows users identify their location based on their network fingerprint. Using the assumption that networks are typically stationary, Plazes then associates lat/lon coordinates to that network based on information submitted by user who ‘discovered’ the network. Plazes’ real trick, however, is to show me who else is online nearby. Problem is, I live and work in New Hampshire where I appear to be the only user online north of Virginia.

But the Plazes folks didn’t invent the concept of using network information to identify location. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d find the story I read a couple of years ago that mentioned it, but this June 2004 article in New Scientist tells the story of one such effort: PlaceLab (extra coverage at Engadget and ExtremeGPS). A Google search turned up Herecast and now Engadget is reporting on AllwaysOnGPS, a replacement GPS driver (for Windows PCs) that mixes GPS and WiFi derived location data to provide the most accurate info despite changing coverage.

Finally, one of my favorite solutions is to use Earthcomber in manual mode. The Palm application allows you to scroll around a map and mark locations as though they were waypoints in a GPS. And though that’s neat, it’s the mapping features that make it a winner. It’s far better than those lousy tourist guides in cities. I used to go to AAA for maps and guides in preparation for a trip, but now I check Earthcomber for area maps and updates.

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