RadioTime

RadioTime was my first venture into streaming music apps. At the time it was more about more variety in my music - without having to go to internet cafe to download more mp3's. Plus, I hardly ever got to listen to my favourite radio stations any more. I used to have a phone with a fm tuner, so I thought I would look and see if there was an app for that. And there is!

RadioTime streams the online audio streams from thousands of radiostations from all over the world.
This app has never really grown on me. I think there are two main reasons for this. The first is the stations themselves. By this I mean the nature of commercial radio and the quality of their streams. One thing I have come to learn (and love) about life in the twenty-first century - the Information Age - is that I can have a say in how much advertising I have to put up with. Especially the full-on in-your-face kind found in traditional radio and TV Ads. Combine two or three minute blocks of continuous advertising with low quality streams, and you end up with a less-than-satisfying listening experience.

The app itself has problems of it's own, although it has been steadily getting better. A couple months ago it seemed buggier. It would often sit forever trying to find my local stations. That hasn't happened as often in the last month (or two?). It still can take a long time to load my local stations. Which is made more annoying by it's inability to remember my presets. On top of this the local stations list is never the same. It usually misses at least a couple - which are of course the ones I want to listen to. And it includes lots of stations that are definitely not local.

The bugs bother me less than the fact that even when I do manage to actually connect to my stations of choice, they sound pretty crappy. My radio sounds better, and it doesn't take any time at all to activate. But then my radio plugs into the wall in my bedroom, where it sits permanently. It doesn't sit in my pocket or otherwise on my person 24/7 like my Pre does. So my search for the ideal music solution for my Pre did not end with this app.

Find out for yourself: RadioTime

http://ferenczypre.blogspot.com

-- Sent from my palm Pre

Playlist Light

For myself, one of the most significant short-comings with the Pre's music player is the inability to create song playlists. This is an even bigger problem for me since I don't have my own computer. With hundreds of songs on my phone, some playlists would be nice. Playlist-Lite is the Trial version of the Playlist app. It is fully featured, except that you can only make 1 playlist at a time. The full version is only 99 cents.

It is a decent app I guess, and last time I looked it was the only show in town doing what it does. It can be a pain in the arse if you want to build a list with lots of songs. I imagine even more so for building lots of lists. Every single song needs to be added individually, and uses the same processes that I used to change my ring tones. After each song it starts at the beginning, so that when you go to pick your song you always start at the beginning of the list. Which really sucks if your song starts with the letter Y. It does the trick though. Just not that easily or quickly. I guess if you want quick and easy, go to the desktop.

I have two other minor complaints. Both have to do with the controls. When it is running in full-card the controls can be hard to hit. The progress bar gets in the way, making it hard for me to skip or pause. It would be nice also if it had a background icon for accessing the controls while it is in the background like the default music player does. I rarely use this app any more, especially since I started streaming. But it is nice to be able to create a playlist on the fly, when the mood hits you, out of your stored library.

Playlist-Lite

http://ferenczymu.blogspot.com/ - my mashup blog

http://ferenczypre.blogspot.com/ - my webos blog

Youtube Mobile

 My first source of music outside of the mp3's stored on my phone was YouTube. It was one of the included apps and probably the one that was the most "advanced" (from a smartphone perspective) and that I had the most awareness and familiarity with. Which is funny because it is widely believed to be one of the weakest of the default apps.

At first there was just the basic app, with no way to log into your acount, or do a decent search. There were a few apps available that helped you organize and keep track of previously viewed videos. But complaints regarding account features and the poor search abilities were common.

A couple of months ago Gogle revamped their mobile site and it is now pretty sweet. It gives you full access to your acount, allowing you to save and organize all your favourites, playlists and subscriptions. You can read and make coments, a sorely missed feature for many users until now. And it finally has proper search and predictive playlist functions. By this I refer to predictive playlists based on past choices. The search in the player is terrible. The only feature not accessible is your inbox.

http://m.youtube.com/

It is also worth noting that YouTube's owner Google has also updated it's mobile site. It is definitely allot better. I had tried using my google acount on the web browser before, but other than the page fired up from the Universal Search, it was pretty frustrating trying to login to your account. Not anymore. I get a stripped down version of my iGoogle homepage. I can also directly access Google docs and the Google reader. Which has led to my decreased use of a few apps I used to use or was thinking about using, especially RSS readers.

Overall, Google has done a pretty good job making their empire more mobile friendly. Which only helps make my Pre even more useful to me in my daily life. Especially since it is my primary communcation, entertainment, and research / knowledge device.

http://ferenczypre.blogspot.com

-- Sent from my palm Pre

Listening to Music

Probably the biggest reason I decided upon a Palm Pre was becsuse it came with 8 gigs of memory. I wanted my phone to play music - mp3's, and I wanted to be able to listen to a decent amount of songs. The Pre was free through bell, and no other free phone had even half the memory, never mind all the other features (most of which I was completely ignorant of at the time). The value of the Pre is definitely not appreciated at Bell. The sales rep I dealt with was in an independent phone store that sold all brands and represented all the carriers. She tried fairly hard to get me on a different carrier, and she was not at all enthusiastic about the Pre.

Nearly four months later, and I am still learning how to get more out of my Pre, how it can continue to further enhance my life and my standard of living. I am also pretty much out of available storage space, and I need to start deleting stuff.

With nearly 800 songs taking up well over half my storage, this would be a good place to start. I am lucky if I even listen to a quarter of them. But I do like having variety. I usually have my player on random. Some songs I will skip, but not always. As I get down to my last half gig, memory space get's more valuable, and I have to be more descriminating in what I keep.

I do not own my own computer, never mind a home connexion. Just my phone. This can make downloading music is a real hassle. Which means anything I remove I either have to upload to the cloud if I want to keep it, or just lose it altogether. All of this means that music streaming begins to appear more attractive.

In the past I hadn't really been that impressed with streaming audio. In hindsight it sems a rather idiotic prejudice to have. But then I guess that is true for all prejudices. I have been enjoying music off of YouTube for awhile now. And it sounds quite good - with video! The problem with YouTube is you can't put it in the background, or even lock the phone and and put it in my pocket.

So I finally realized that maybe I should give streaming audio another chance. I am very glad that I did. It turns out that there are numerous apps for streaming audio to your WebOS phone. Pandora seems to be the most highly regarded, but it is unavailable in Canada, so I wouldn't know.

Over the next few days I plan to review a few of the apps I use for filling my earphones with sound. Both some streaming apps, as well as some others.

http://ferenczypre.blogspot.com

-- Sent from my palm Pre

Reading novels on my Pre

One of my favourite apps is pReader. It allows me to read ebooks., and it's free. I hadn't been paying attention to the whole ebook trend. A couple months ago was reading a book by John Ringo - Dance With the Devil, when I found myself getting a little confused. I had picked it up as a quick read, thinking it was a complete story - it made no mention of other books - but I quickly realized I was missing a lot of backstory. I punched "John Ringo" into (the universal search on) my phone and tapped the wikipedia symbol and quickly brought up his bibliography. And found out it was book three. All three book listings had links to free online versions, which I clicked and downloaded from the Baen Free Library. They had palm-specific (webOS) formats. From there a quick search on the Free Apps App and I had a reader. Haven't turned a page since. It's also pretty cool that I can sit on a bench at night in a park (when it is still too hot to be inside) and not need a light, and have music on.

Outline Tracker

I am still waiting for an app or patch that will finally make my smartphone smart. I would be so awesome to be able to have my calendar, tasks, todo, and contacts all synced together. The closest I have found is Outline Tracker (full). But at $20 it's not cheap. I tried the trial first, which is full featured. However you can only have 50 records. At which point I was hooked and had to upgrade. It syncs tasks, to do (with categories) and contacts, but only the name. Not a major problem thanks to the more than adequate universal search, but still a pain.

What I like best about it is the way it allows me to group and organize my activities, goals, tasks and appointments, before during and after the fact. It's all branching, and I have yet to find and end to how deep I can add subsections to my groups. If only the syncing with contacts and calendar was dynamic and two-way, it would be perfect. So close.

It would be greatly improved if the contact name was linked to the actual contact, the location linked to google maps (like it does in the normal location of standard cal entries). Events from OT appear purple in the pre calendar, but do not appear at all in in the desktop google calendar, and you have to manually open up OT to edit the calendar event. Despite all that it has become an essential app for me and I have no regrets on the price. It is the best solution I have yet found and does the most for making my phone "smarter" even if it is still slightly dumb.

WebOS Gaming

- What Is Your Favorite WebOS Game? Gameloft's N.O.V.A.
- Why Do You Like This Game? It's a decent shooter, very nice graphics. Never fails to impress. Fairly responsive controls & UI. I love how I can customize them and move their positions on the screen. Redefined (for me) what a phone game can be - HNL (hole 'notha level) when compared to texas hold 'em, which was what I used to think of in a phone game.
- What Is The Worst WebOS Game That You Have Played? Any of the m games (mZonbies, etc.) or any of the celluphun games.
- Why Do You Dislike This Game? Pointless, mindless repetition with no thinking or sttrategy. Just log in a few times a day and click the same shit over and over. Fun? I think not.
- Which Game Would You Like To See Come To The WebOS?
A good turn-based strategy game. Anything by Sid Meir (civilization or colonization) or perhaps Heroes of Might & Magic. Hell, I'd even settle for hasbro's Axis & Allies. Ogre Battles (from the PS1) or the Shining Force games (from the old Sega) would be sweet.
- Why Would You Want This Game? Settlers has shown me how tough it would be to do RTS on such small screens. I've always preferred turn-based anyways, and transformers is decent, but I need a bit more to really get my fix.
- Which Game Is The Most Difficult To Play, While Still Remaining Fun? Gameloft's The Settlers.
- What Makes This Game So Difficult? The armies become to huge for the game to handle. I am on a level where I need to defeat two different nations, and I just cannot make enough troops to defeat them both since when I attack one, the other attacks me. Having no tactical control doesn't help. I am not sure of the exact numbers, but at most you can control no more than 100 at a time. Which is not nearly enough. I have to say that the kingdom building aspects are considerably more enjoyable than the fighting.

Palmela Handerson

Back in high school my mother worried that the relationship I had with my palm was a little strange. Fast forward twenty years and she has more reason to be concerned. I don't currently own a PC of any kind. Other than a few hours here and there at work, all my writing, surfing and playing is now done with the Palm (Pre) IN my hand.

I've got most of the best 3D games (mostly Gameloft, and a couple from Glu) for when I am feeling bored and uninspired. To stay in touch with the rest of humanity I have my google account, Facebook (mobile site and the App - I use the site more), and for a laugh or just to supplement the 800 songs stored on the phone there is always YouTube.

To keep my life on Track there is of course Google Calendar, which I have found to be much more useful by supplementing it with the paid version of Outline Tracker, (at $20 by far my most expensive app). What I love most about OT is how it integrates with Calendar as a To-Do/Tasks app. I got hooked on the free version and when I hit the 50 item limit I found myself with no choice but to buy it (or erase all my old tasks which sort of defeats the purpose for which I use it. For my daily to-do / agenda I use shoplist (not it's intended role but it does it so well for my purposes).

For my cloud document storage I rely upon Evernote at the moment, but I recently read some reviews on a new app (notes) that may take it's place. I may try it out this weekend. For now though Evernote meets my needs adequately enough. To actually produce the docs that i store (before eventually posting in my blog) I use scratch. I also use Scratch to compose any comments I wish to post on facebook, or in various forums or other sites that offer the ability to make posts. I have found it too difficult (especially when editing or correcting) to just type into the entry box from the little screen on my pre, copy and paste from Scratch is so much easier.

In the Gym I am still determining which app I like better, workout tracker or Istayfit. IstayFit has a slight lead. Interval Gym (and Pulse - a metronome app I have put to use for rhythm training) though has become essential in my Wing Chun Kung Fu training.

Snippets has become essential in all sorts of little ways, especially logins and passwords (I've always been a fan of clipboard apps long before mobile was a concept). Photo effects (pro) has saved me having to go to the library to tweak my photos. Track My work helps me to log my time, not just at work but in all I do (writing, training, playing).

Apps from P/C, WOR, GameCenter and Engadget keep me up to date on the latest news in the world of Smart phones and Gaming. But most important of all, by far my favourite and most used app would be pReader. Thanks to the free library at Baen Books (David Weber, John Ringo, Elizabeth Moon, and many other great writers) I no longer have to carry around big clunky books (which btw are much more difficult to read in the dark than my phone). With the most perfect summer ever (23 deg C for last 6 weeks here in Vancouver) it's nice to sit on the beach with a good book, not to mention the ability to take some of the scenery home with me. Life has been good. My Palm only leaves my palm when the juice runs out.

Now that I was able to fix my broken power/lock button (thank you so much WebOS Roundup!!) on my own without having to bring my pre in under warranty - and having to plunk a big chunk of change down as a deposit for a replacement (non-Palm) smart-phone, and because of how simple their fix was, I think I am going to try out some homebrew next. The tweaks to my Cards and the Music player sound particularly appealing. I will write about and share my experience with homebrew. Once I am done - next week some time.