I’m pleased to announce a new member of our family. That’s right, I finally got a Treo.
The big motivation was its time-saving potential. Forget the miraculous possibility of checking e-mail while in transit; I’m excited about all the time that will be liberated now that I can stop my relentless comparison of the Treo, Sidekick, and Mythical Perfect Device (mythical perfect device is not unlike the Treo but with a better camera and maybe a better phone).
Of course, whatever time I gain by ending my obsessive research into cell/pdas will (in the short run) be obscured by the time lost to Treoifying my life. I can see this could be the gateway to a veritable herd of shaved yaks: after all, if I’m about to move my life to the Treo, isn’t this the moment to actually delete or file the 2000 already-read emails in my inbox? And the moment for me to reorganize my Entourage categories? Or the moment to dump Entourage for Mail/iCal? Or Basecamp? Or some killer tag-based, rss-enabled all-in-one contact/calendar/task manager?
I’m going to have to start by poking around to see how other rss & tag-obessessed Mac users have chosen to organize their Treo use. And I would be delighted to hear use stories and suggestions.
Suggestion #1
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Configure your mail server to route all incoming mail to a GMail account. That will result in Google scrubbing most spam from your incoming, which is really important when dealing with email on a Treo.
You can theoretically stop there, and just use GMail’s POP access to fetch the scrubbed messages, but I recommend against it. In my experience, Versamail+GMail is not a winning combo… I’ve had tons of trouble trying to make it work.
So your best bet is to add an extra step. Go into your GMail settings, and tell it to forward to a new treo (at) alexandrasamuels mailbox on your server. Then tell the Treo to fetch email from *there*… you still get the spam-killing without the headaches.
Suggestion #2
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Track down and install an applet called TreoShutter, which allows you to assign the camera’s shutter release to any button you like. (free)
Suggestion #3
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Track down and install TCPMP, which is the best video player I’ve found. It’ll play just about anything, including DivX and Xvid videos. (free)
Suggestion #4
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Find something to convert DVDs and other video sources to Treo-sized files that can be stuffed on to a 1GB SD card. I can’t make any Mac recommendations, but I use Pocket-DVD Studio for XP. (not free) I’ve got episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Lost, and Sealab 2021 on my Treo at all times, with tons of room left for more.
Suggestion #5
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Give Handmark Express a try. It’s $6/month or $60/year, and gives you really easy access to news, yellow pages, and direction/mapping services. Yeah, you can get all of it for free with an RSS reader and the web browser, but Express does a great job of minimizing the excess button presses and screen taps, so it’s worth it to me.
Suggestion #1
————-
Configure your mail server to route all incoming mail to a GMail account. That will result in Google scrubbing most spam from your incoming, which is really important when dealing with email on a Treo.
You can theoretically stop there, and just use GMail’s POP access to fetch the scrubbed messages, but I recommend against it. In my experience, Versamail+GMail is not a winning combo… I’ve had tons of trouble trying to make it work.
So your best bet is to add an extra step. Go into your GMail settings, and tell it to forward to a new treo (at) alexandrasamuels mailbox on your server. Then tell the Treo to fetch email from *there*… you still get the spam-killing without the headaches.
Suggestion #2
————-
Track down and install an applet called TreoShutter, which allows you to assign the camera’s shutter release to any button you like. (free)
Suggestion #3
————-
Track down and install TCPMP, which is the best video player I’ve found. It’ll play just about anything, including DivX and Xvid videos. (free)
Suggestion #4
————-
Find something to convert DVDs and other video sources to Treo-sized files that can be stuffed on to a 1GB SD card. I can’t make any Mac recommendations, but I use Pocket-DVD Studio for XP. (not free) I’ve got episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Lost, and Sealab 2021 on my Treo at all times, with tons of room left for more.
Suggestion #5
————-
Give Handmark Express a try. It’s $6/month or $60/year, and gives you really easy access to news, yellow pages, and direction/mapping services. Yeah, you can get all of it for free with an RSS reader and the web browser, but Express does a great job of minimizing the excess button presses and screen taps, so it’s worth it to me.
Oh, and a tip, just in case you’re as obtuse and documentation-averse as I am.
When you’re in the web browser, the backspace key on the keypad functions as a “back” button for the browser. Took me a few days to figure that out, unfortunately.
Oh, and a tip, just in case you’re as obtuse and documentation-averse as I am.
When you’re in the web browser, the backspace key on the keypad functions as a “back” button for the browser. Took me a few days to figure that out, unfortunately.