Bernie’s Ramblings

Went away last weekend to Bali. Surprisingly, I felt that there wasn’t enough time for this photo trip, due to the many popular photography sites such as Uluwatu, Tanah Lot, the trip to Mount Batur and also Kuta beach itself. Wished I had more time there. Brought along all my lenses - 30mm f1.4, 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 and 10-20mm f4-5.6, resulting in a variety of shots from ultra-wides to telephotos.

Having used sharper lenses like the 30mm, I’m starting to find the 18-200 a bit of a disappointment at times (usually mid range, wide open) where it’s down right too soft. I’m no pixel peeper but this is just too much. Lucky that at 200mm, it’s sharpens up a bit. Even the 10-20 renders sharper images most of the time (though definitely not as good as the 30mm).

Here’s to hoping I can somehow afford a 70-200 or 50-150. Btw, this is the Inna Grand Bali Resort where I stayed my first night in Bali.

Don’t believe me? Check out the sessions - BarCamp wiki / BarCampMalaysiaScheduleSessions. If that’s not enough to entice you to join, check out these sponsors:

Convinced? Register here for free. I’m going.

Funny video of Bill Gate’s last day in Microsoft. Found it @Engadget which declared June 27th as a Bill Gates day (whatever that means). I reckon they’re pretty big fans of the Big G.

Big Box of Blox from Astraware might be worth checking out; it is free for the month of July. Astraware has churned out pretty good games for as long as I can remember. That’s pretty long considering the first Bejewelled I played were in monochrome (that’s black and white by the way, well technically they’re just black pixels on a greenish LCD). There’s also a fireworks program that… ehm, displays fireworks. Really, it does nothing else; aka eye-candy. If that’s your thing, get it here.

Hot on the heals of free software for the Palm Centro and Treo platforms (who says Palm is dead?), here’s another one - Gizmo 5 is a long time player of VoIP and IM for mobile devices and they just released a native Palm client (yes, native PRCs, not midlets/MIDP) that, among other things, allows interoperable IM between the major IM networks - Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Jabber). It does VoIP through SIP as well so if that’s your thing, it’s a damn good reason to get this installed. Since this thing hooks to Jabber, you get all the IM networks Jabber supports. Until Skype (if ever) comes out with a client for Palm OS, this is a viable alternative to VoIP-enable your Palm device. And just in case you’re wondering, yes, this thing does run in the background (this also means you should remember to disconnect it manually to avoid running up a small fortune on your data bill). Get Gizmo5 - here.

Gizmo5 isn’t the only player in the IM space. Long time software developer Geodisic (formerly Causserie IIANM) also has a client available called MunduIM. It supports MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber and AIM (among others). MunduIM is shareware though but it is cheap at $11 for lifetime use (but only throughout the same version). Geodisic has been known to release major version updates which requires a new license with no upgrade options. I understand that development costs has to be recouped in a way and being so cheap, I guess it’s unavoidable. But I thought any potential customer should know about this before hand. With free software coming out all the time, MunduIM has to add more value or risk being rendered irrelevant by the competition (much like the subcription-based Verichat and expensive IM+).

Now if you still want choices (that’s the good thing about using a Palm, you’re never short of them), there’s yet another IM client to choose from. And this one is free too. Webmessenger Mobile for Palm is relatively new as I’ve only heard a Palm OS client recently. Other than being slightly sluggish, it’s pretty solid and stable in my limited testing. Again, major networks such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk is supported, but this one has a extra network support - Skype! So if you’ve got a host of Skype contacts, this is the one to get.

So with 3 choices of great IM software, Palm OS users need not fret about being left of in the cold in the IM-space. The way I look at it, why let the excellent Treo/Centro keyboards go to waste ? Now if only I have an unlimited data plan…

Here’s an interesting software for the Palm Centro and Treo devices - a mobile blogging application that allows posting of pictures, text and - get this - video. Supported sites include popular social sites such as Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, twitter and myspace.com (for a more complete list, see here). Palm OS along with other popular smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Symbian are also supported. Hint to cellspin - please allow downloading of the program to a PC instead of forcing subscribers to download from a link from a cellphone. Not everyone has an unlimited data plan.

Here’s what’s not so hot (yes, I’m nitpicking) - you gotta sign up for yet another service. Instead of just working transparently, there’s yet another portal to check and all your content actually goes to cellspin’s own portal. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty happy with Wordpress as my core blog, flickr as my photo site and Facebook as my social site. It’s cool if I just get mobile clients to post directly to these sites. Not too hot that I have to sign-up for another one, just to track these three. But hey, that’s just me.

Check out the free CellSpin beta. As an alternative, Palm has a Facebook client as well.