Calligrapher

PhatWare, developer of Windows Mobile applications PhatPad and PhatNotes, is running a special via their newsletter through the end of June to commemorate the upcoming release of Windows Mobile 6.5.  If you purchase either PhatPad 4.7 or PhatNotes 5.4 between now and the end of June, you get Calligrapher for FREE!

Read all about it,  here.

Do you enjoy reading to help pass the time or to keep you up to date? Are you an Android or Palm Pre owner that would like to take your reading with you? Well, according to TeleRead Google Android handset owners can expect eReader availability in mid to late summer. The company is also working on a native eReader for the Palm Pre that work on the PalmOS so Palm Pre owners will not have to spend $30 for the Classic emulator.

I truly enjoy the mobile world myself and always like to stay connected and up to date with information and reading, but will need to wait and see if the Google Android and Palm Pre screens will be big enough to enjoy reading ebooks.

You can also find more information about eReader by visiting jkOnTheRun.

Recent news items show that Verizon Wireless may be shedding some skin and start being a little more friendly towards us smartphone users.

As reported on SlashGear, the Palm Pre may be coming to Verizon in January of next year. This potentially exciting news is in addition to a recent picture of a Verizon branded HTC Touch Pro 2, andVerizon’s long promised act of finally unlocking the GPS for the original HTC Touch Pro. They may even release an iPhone next year as well (or so we hope)!

Does all this mean a shinier, brighter new Verizon is finally emerging?

The weak point on most phones and devices these days is the battery, which is hardly capable of keeping up with the advanced features a lot of devices offer.  Heck, take the Palm Pre and its limited (2 hour??) battery life.

On top of that, keeping your battery charged involves handcuffing you to your desk while it is connected to the outlet your computer, more or less defeating the purpose of a mobile device.  Not to mention the mess of cables and chargers this can create.

Well, Nokia and their Nokia Research Center in Cambridge, England, thinks it may have a solution to these and other battery related problems.  Apparently, researchers at Nokia have been experimenting with harnessing energy from ambient radio waves (such as those emitted by the TV).

Now, I have been saying for some time that devices should incorporate solar panels into the design,which could charge the battery while you use it, but this research from Nokia is something completely different.

The real question is whether ambient radio waves can produce enough energy to keep a device (or multiple devices) charged while in use.  So far, the answer is a resounding not really.  While the 5 milliwatts researches have been able to generate may extend the life of your battery a bit, it would generally take about 10 times that (50 milliwatts) in order to maintain a charge while the phone is in use.  Better start watching more TV.

While this concept may not be quite ready for prime time, I am thrilled to see actual time being spent on issues like this.  Who knows, in five years, you might charge your phone by setting it on top of the TV while watching.  By then, I am sure we will scoff at the concept of having to drop everything and plug the phone into the wall.  And then we will all give the robot maids the night off and head out in our flying cars.  Ah…the future.

[via Geek.com]

My online task manager of choice has been Toodledo for at least the last year or so.  I love it because it has a nice clean interface, which is extremely user friendly and accessible.  Well, last night, I tried to access my Toodledo account, only to find this message:

So, here’s the story. A big storm went through the city where our datacenter is located. The datacenter decided to proactively switch to generators. During the switch, something got screwed up, and the power went off for a few minutes. As (bad) luck would have it, this caused our database to get corrupted. We are currently working to bring it back online and restored from the live backup. The crack team at Rackspace is on the job. Thanks Rackspace! Unfortunately, the database is so large, that it will take some time to transfer and verify all the data. Hopefuly not more than a few hours. We know that this is very bad, and we apologize for any inconvience that this will cause. Please check the forums when we are back online for a full report.

Uh-oh.  Storms and servers obviously do not mix.  An update this morning indicated that things were taking longer to fix than expected.

This is a real problem for me as I use Toodledo extensively to keep track of numerous pending tasks at JAMM, as well as in my personal life.  And I think this lends itself to a reminder of the importance of having offline access to your data. 

Offline access has been one of my big complaints about Toodledo from the beginning.  With the exception of the iphone app, there is no opportunity to access your data offline from your desktop, netbook, mobile device, or any other platform.  I know from their forums that this has been a growing source of frustration for other users as well. 

Hopefully this will be an area Toodledo can address in the near future.  I suspect many users will become increasingly irritated by their inability to access important data.  As my friend, Dan, pointed out, if you have offline access and your server crashes, users will only lose the data they entered since their last sync.  Without offline access, however, users will lose all of their data, which is a great way to lose customers when something like a server crash occurs. 

So, hurry back, Toodledo.  I will still be waiting when your servers are repaired.  But when you return, I hope you will take a closer look at offline applications and syncing so that this kind of occurrence will be made less painful for your users in the future.