Egg Freckles

That didn’t last long. Impleme…

Thomas Brand — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:34:08 +0000

That didn’t last long. Implementing a sharp looking background that spans the entire width of the page, and the height of my Newton is hard.

I like Palm’s MooTools powered…

Thomas Brand — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:47:01 +0000

I like Palm’s MooTools powered Pre splash page http://palm.com/us/ so much I tried to implement it myself on Egg Freckles with Prototype.js.

The Pre is for Me

Thomas Brand — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:11:36 +0000

By choosing the Palm Pre, and not the iPhone 3GS I choose a different phone from the one I had already been using for the last two years. With the iPhone I had the very best mobile phone money could buy. With the Pre I am wagering on something new. The iPhone has stronger features and more applications, but the Pre has all of the functionality I use most. With the Pre I am partnered with Sprint, and not imprisoned by AT&T. Sprint offers their business customers a $69 a month Everything Plan without a contract, while AT&T just costs much more. Because of Sprint my Pre can roam free on Verizon, and make calls from my office. Can’t say the same for AT&T.

20K in the Face of Greatness

Thomas Brand — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:06 +0000

Screw it! I just doubled the size of Egg Freckles’ MessagePad background image by rendering it as an antialiased PNG-24 instead of a raggedy 64 color PNG-8. Now when you zoom in with your browser the graphic’s edges stay silky smooth longer, and the color banding is less noticeable. What’s another 20,000 bytes in the face of greatness? While I was at it, I removed the Apple logo from the bottom of the image so no Cupertino leashed lawyer can give me grief over this non-affiliated Newton fan site. What do you think of the new Egg Freckles logo? Does it work? I know it looks like a dinosaur egg, but I don’t have any better ideas for something original.

I just doubled the size of Egg…

Thomas Brand — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:59:02 +0000

I just doubled the size of Egg Freckles’ Newton background image by posting it as an antialiased PNG-24 instead of a raggedy 64 color PNG-8.

A Tale of Two Cameras

Thomas Brand — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:37:33 +0000

Today I sold my Olympus E-420 to a patron of Craigslist for a mere $445. My decision did not come lightly, the Olympus E-420 is a fantastic compact SLR that takes appealing undersaturated 4:3 photos. Unfortunately my E-420 was the second camera in a two camera house, and had a hard time measuring up to my Nikon D300. Not small enough for a pants pocket while lacking low-light performance I often choose the equally inconcealable, but more capable D300 over my E-420 when quality mattered. As my lens collection for the D300 grew my reliance on the E-420 fell until I rarely shot it anymore. The Olympus E-420 is a good camera, just one too many for me.

Snow Leopard Build 10A380

Thomas Brand — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:41:54 +0000

Snow Leopard the upcoming release of Mac OS X is scheduled to be unleashed September 22nd, but thanks to some generous developers I am experiencing the latest development build today. After installing it on my MacBook Air I am delighted to report Snow Leopard is what the Mac faithful have been waiting for. Everything has been optimized. Applications launch faster, startup times are quicker. My machine wakes from sleep, and shuts down in seconds. For the First time under Mac OS X the Finder feels solid. File copies are speedy, and disks ejects when they are told. Snow Leopard has the features and stability of OS X, but the speed of OS 9.

Contacts Cuffufle

Thomas Brand — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:28:39 +0000

The question of centralized contact management has never been difficult for me, the answer has always been Apple’s MobileMe. Since adopting the Palm Pre as my primary mobile phone MobileMe’s limited compatibility across non-Apple devices has become an obstacle. The Pre, although incapable of syncing MobileMe contacts, can handle Google’s GMail, and Microsoft Exchange. Google’s Sync services made syncing my Mac OS X Address Book with GMail easy, but resulted in duplicates, and poor performance. Reformatting my contacts for Exchange may be my only choice as more and more platforms, including Apple’s Snow Leopard, adopt the Microsoft standard.

Palm Touchstone

Thomas Brand — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:47:24 +0000

Touchstone is a wireless electromagnetic induction charger for the Palm Pre. It resembles a hockey puck with a severely sloping front surface. Simply placing a Pre fitted with the included matte back cover upon the Touchstone begins the charging process. The Touchstone is powered by the Pre’s included Micro USB AC adapter. It sticks to any surface using a nonadhesive suction material. The Pre sticks to the Touchstone using magnetics, and remains lit while charging. Incoming calls are automatically answered when the Pre is lifted from the Touchstone. For $69.99 the Palm Touchstone is a first-world answer to the problem of laborious conventional charging.

Palm Pre

Thomas Brand — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:47:05 +0000

For the past ten days I have been a Palm Pre user. Setting my trusty iPhone aside I have forced myself to accept a device that is both similar to the iPhone and yet unfamiliar. Holding a Palm Pre feels good like an iPhone, but less solid. The gestures involved for unlocking the Pre, scrolling through menus, deleting list-itmes, and navigating web pages are uncannily similar. The touch sensitive portion of the Pre’s face extends past the display and is used control gestures that come naturally once learned. Text input on the Pre is conducted through a tiny keyboard that is better tucked away then used. I like the Pre because it is different in the same way the iPhone once was.