On The Net is a regular Internet column for handheld computing magazine Palmtop User. The column is put together by the FileSaveAs team, and we’d like to thank Palmtop User for allowing us to include back issues on our site.
Be honest, how many of your family and friends think you’re a gadget fiend? Drawers full of old CF cards, mains adaptors and little silver backup batteries, plus a loft full of empty PDA boxes? You probably qualify as a Gadgeteer. Chances are though, you have nothing on these two…
Back in 1997, Julie Strietelmeier created The-Gadgeteer, and with the help of Judy Hughes, they now run one of the largest gadget review sites around. This site contains more hardware reviews than you can possibly imagine – just about every PDA under the sun, many weird and wacky gadgets, and over 50 reviews of different PDA styli! A look at their homepage gives a feel for the items they’ve come into contact with recently, including a ring-pen for typists and an underwater MP3 player for swimmers.
There’s also a rather lengthy online diary, with entries highlighting the gadgeteering nature of the sites owners, such as:
"I bought the Nintendo DS on the way home from work. It’s charging as I type this. Whoo Hoo…"
"It was about all I could do, to crawl on the couch and read an eBook this evening without falling asleep"
"Speaking of the basement, I will be starting the remodelling of my computer room in 2 weeks. I’ve been thinking of cool geeky ways to decorate it, and one idea is to make a collage of PDAs to hang on the wall."
We took a trip back in time (courtesy of www.archive.org) to see what was hot on The-Gadgeteer back in 1998. The look of their site actually hasn’t changed much over the last seven years, but the review items certainly have: Libretto, Newton, Palm III, Psion Series 3c, and a couple of early Windows CE machines putting in an appearance.
If you’ve got a few hours to kill, this site is recommended as an entertaining read. Best of all, they have a PDA-friendly version, newsletter updates on the latest gadgets, and an RSS feed for catching up with the latest snippets.
Watch out for evil twins
In the last issue, we made mention of the large number of public wireless (Wi-Fi) hotspots out there that allow PDA users to connect and surf at key locations. In January, news broke of a new kind of threat to users of such hotspots. It seems that rogue hotspots are cropping up in locations close to legitimate hotspots, fooling users into logging onto their service instead of the authentic access point. When you try to connect, they’ll prompt you for credit card and password details, which are a valuable commodity. A word of warning to the wireless warriors out there – ensure you’re using a secure connection, and double-check the your browser’s address field to make sure you’ve not been directed to a rogue site.
eBay addict?
Scared of leaving the house in case you’re outbid on eBay.co.uk? Then eBay Anywhere could hold the solution. This service allows mobile phone users to be kept up-to-date with their auction items. You’ll be sent a text message if you’re outbid, when the auction’s over, and when you’ve won the item you’re after. If you’re outbid, you have the option to up your bid as the outbid notice contains a URL to allow a GPRS-enabled mobile or PDA to get fast access to the auction. There’s a small charge for each text that eBay sends your way, and the ebay site tantalising states that a full mobile portal is coming soon.
pages.ebay.co.uk/ebay_anywhere/
On the subject of eBay… use your favourite music download site to get Weird Al Yankovic’s "eBay" parody onto your MP3 player – Lyrics at weirdal.metzae.net
Over the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen the huge amount of promotion that Microsoft has been giving to its revamped search service MSN. After many months of beta trials, the new Microsoft search engine finally went live in February, aiming to give search giant Google a run for its money. Reactions have been mixed, although the ability to search encyclopaedia Encarta and to filter pages by age, could well be a winner with many searchers.
Of greater concern to us though, was how well MSN was tailored for use on the move… we tried a standard search using a Microsoft PDA, and found that Google’s search not only returned more results, but offered a palmtop-friendly results page – MSN’s could do with a little work in this area.
Article from Palmtop User Issue 10. Click here for Issue 11’s article
Other links
- On The Net: Our main On The Net page with links to all features
- Pocket PC: Information | Getting online | Wifi | ActiveSync
- Psion: You’ll find help on our Psion FAQ
- Palm OS: See our information page , or our Get connected page
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