Palm Kills Foleo

Palm FoleoI missed this last week when it came out, so I’m sorry for being late to the party, but I just realized that Palm has killed the Foleo before it made it to market. I think that’s too bad — it seems to me that the media panned the Foleo unfairly just because it didn’t understand what value this sort of tweener device could bring to the market — if done right. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking this could be a nice product, but then again, I’m a little weird — I tend to focus on tethering abilities in phones, broadband over mobile and so on, as I think that’s the way to go.

In either case, it won’t have a change to prove itself at this point.
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Disk Doctors Re-animated

A guy named Ryan, who describes himself as a fan of the KnowledgeTV show Disk Doctors (of which I was co-host) wrote today to let me know that he’d uploaded some old episodes to YouTube. This is awesome! I haven’t seen the show in years. (Yes, I’ve got a few tapes on my shelves, but it’s not like I bust them out often.) It’s funny to (a.) see how little gray hair I had (b.) listen to the computing topics of 1997-2000. Wow. Ancient stuff. And the running gag about me being a Mac guy even when the Mac was “dead.” Har de har.

Thanks, Ryan. Now that I no longer get recognized in airports (actually, I don’t know that I was ever recognized in an airport if I wasn’t standing next to Steven Sashen, who was recognized all the time) it’s nice to know those episodes will have a second life toiling in obscurity on YouTube. ;-)

iPhone Tether for Net Access

I haven’t jumped on the iPhone bandwagon as of yet (mostly because I don’t want to move to AT&T service, given my company already has two mobile providers), but were I to get an iPhone, the ability to tether and use the Internet away from WiFi spots would be key. Just in the past six months I’ve done quite a bit of traveling and too often I’m either out of range of WiFi or the WiFi in a coffeeshop or hotel doesn’t work as advertised.

Check out the instruction here: Tether Your iPhone

Now that I’m running again with a MacBook (after the HP zt3000 died, I went on a quest to buy a new MacBook I’ll blog about later), WiFi reception seems excellent. But I know I’m going to end up in a deadzone here soon, and my Blackberry may not save me. (I’ve not yet tested switching over to Windows via Boot Camp to see if I can get the Blackberry tether to work. I should.)

I’m considering a Treo 700p for its Mac tethering capability (plus, via Alltel, the full data plan is $5 cheaper than the Blackberry for some reason) but will first need to justify the $250 for a used Treo 700p. If, in the interim, I decide instead to make the jump to iPhone (I’m already thinking about an iPhone more than I should, particularly considering the $299 4GB version or $349 for the 8GB Apple Refurb), it’s good to know there’s a tethered iPhone solution.