Wow… Its been a while since I updated here. Iv been busy with school, life,
family, friends, love and such. The start of this semester was something of a
rollercoaster but that’s all behind me now. Speaking of family, shouts out to my
brother Darren, its his birthday today!

I promised Sean a full review of my Nokia 3650. The short version is "I like
it!". Not much bad to say about the phone, the battery last all of 2-3 days for
me even with the Bluetooth receiver off. Its mad to play games on it in class.
I’m only slightly missing the MP3 player in some of the other Nokia models. The
PC Sync stuff is quirky but it gets the job done.

Work on the Thesis is going slower than I had planned. It turns out that
distributed synchronization without a server of any sort is a very difficult
problem with no perfect solution. I think that I have something worked out now
that everyone will like but its going to take a while to get it up and running.

Tonight is Halloween of course and we are throwing the usual party at the
usual place ;-). This year we had to give out tickets to keep the size of the
thing down. No admittance without a costume, no exceptions!

I solved the creeping/drifting text problem with the menus under IE6. I had to recode my templates a bit but was able to maintain the visual effect I wanted. The gory details of the bug and a demonstration can be seen here. Much appreciation and thanks to Big John for maintaining “Position Is Everything” where that bug page is hosted.

Menus should now display correctly in IE 6 which is the only browser to manifest this bug.

Update: the bug also manifested itself in a more subtle fashion in the body of entries, this is also fixed now.

Want a fast Compact Flash card for not too much money? Would you know where to ask for such a thing? After all, how
do you tell how fast one of those cards are anyway, arn’t they all the same?

Well, as it turns out, no they aren’t. What’s more I can probably guarantee that you paid too much for yours and that
yours is slower than mine. The best people to ask about flash cards aren’t MP3 junkies but high end digital camera
users. They need fast flash memory to save large (5-7MB) RAW format images from the cameras onboard memory before they
can take another shot. You just want fast memory so it doesn’t take all day to upload your photos or music.

One of the best sites for digicam reviews is Digital Picture Review (dpreview.com). Always see what they have to say
before purchasing your next digital camera. They also keep a databank of Compact Flash cards they have tested here:
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/. The card from RiData is blazing fast and it can be found online for not
too much money.

All this came to mind this evening because I was looking at the cost of MMC cards to go with the Nokia 3650. I had
seen some 128MB models in the $70 range but RiData makes a card of that capacity for $20 less. A big memory card will
probably encourage me to take pictures with the built in camera. I’m also toying with the idea of using it as a big
floppy disk to sooth my desire for portable mass storage. You can plug the card in anywhere that has USB (with the right
adapter of course) and that just about everywhere these
days. No more carrying around CD’s and floppies with little files on them. Now I just wish the card wasn’t
hidden under the battery in the
phone.

And now for fun lets have a rundown of 3650 reviews:

• Howard Chui
• Mobile Burn
• infoSync World

My Venerable Nokia 8260 has served me well. Its getting up to 3 years old now, its been dropped a few times but its still ticking. The screen cracked and I lovingly disassembled it and put on a new one, in fact i’v taken it apart a few (6) times to clean the dust out of it. But now it has to go, its old tech and its time for an upgrade.

I bought the 8620 because at the time it was the smallest phone out there with an internal antenna. Size is still important but now I have a whole host of other requirements for my next phone. Here are the must have requirements:

• Must have a visible clock display. I’v stopped wearing a watch since I bought my phone. Flip phones without the external clock display are useless in this reguard.
• Must fit in my pocket comfortably.
• Must connect to my PC so that I can edit phone numbers, e-mail addresses etc on the PC. I hate typing on my cell phone and I don’t want to loose the information if my phone dies.
• Must be a GSM phone. Cayman is switching to GSM, even though its old technology it’s still better than TDMA.
• I don’t have more than $150 to spend on this.

Now that list isn’t very long but surprisingly it narrows
down the number of phones quite a bit. Here is the list of thinks that heavily
swayed my decision:

• Java capable with the ability for me to load my own apps without the cell network being involved. (it’s my PDA after all)
• Bluetooth connectivity to a PC and Headset
• Web browser that renders HTML or at least XHTML. WAP is useless.
• E-mail.
• Instant messaging with support for AOL

Things that would be icing on the cake:

• Should Play MP3′s. I don’t have a portable music device yet so this would be a bonus.
• Removable memory of some kind to store MP3′s and photos on.
• A built in camera and all that MMS stuff that goes with it. Camera attachments are useless because I would never carry them with me.
• A color screen.
• Polyphonic ring tones

All in all the Nokia 3650 best fits the bill. Of all the currently available phones it has the largest future set. Its Java enabled and a large developer community has sprung up around it, much like the early days of Palm. It doesn’t ship with an MP3 player but one has been written for it. The removable storage and Bluetooth support make it an attractive package. It’s just a lot bigger than my current phone, but I think ill have to give up 1 inch of pocket space to get the features that I need.

Not perfect but close. Nokia: shrink it down and you’ve got a winner. Ill post my review here after I get the thing.