Pros
Easy, central location, full-featured ringtone manager.

Cons
Plays Windows default tones simultaneously with Ringo selected tones with large Contacts database.

The Bottom Line
Ringo brings out the smart in your smartphone by making easy to configure ringtones for friends, colleagues, and family. With its ability to attach a custom tone to categories as well as its SMS custom tone makes Ringo a powerful ringtone manager.

• Overall: 4/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Usefulness: 5/5
• Solidness: 3/5
• Price: 3.5/5

Recommended
Yes

Full Review
The one thing that has always cracked me up about these “smartphones” is their inability to easily customize ringtones. Heck, at first, they didn’t even have custom ringtones! Sure, Windows Mobile 5 and its smartphone counterpart has seamless integration with Outlook for photos of your contact, but nothing for the ringtone. Maybe the next full version in two years. Sorry, it’s a Microsoft thing.

Fortunately, the aptly named Ringo will drum up the right beat for your contact. Ringo makes it easy from one central spot to pick and choose your ringtones for your different contacts. You can also at a single tone to a group of people via your categories. As an added bonus, you can assign ringtones to people and groups for SMS messages as well.

Configuring the ringtone is a piece of cake. Simply open Ringo, and the Default screen appears. Here’s where you select your tone for anyone without a custom tone associated to their number. On the Windows Mobile version, click the Friends tab (selectable in the menu for the smartphone edition) and then click NEW and up comes your Contacts. Select the contact you desire to make a custom tone for and your next screen will be a tone selector for both the ring and SMS tones. In the Windows Mobile version, you can listen to your selection after choosing it by hitting the play button and the selection automatically plays itself in the smartphone edition after selection is completed.

In my use of Ringo, I did find one odd problem that occurred with my large database. I have over 300 contacts and when someone calls, there will be a hesitation and then the custom ring will perform. But, nearly immediately after the custom ring plays, so does the default! Together. Kevin Vernon of Electric Pocket explained the problem to me as it’s in the way Microsoft initiates the playing of the tone via Windows Media player. In short, it’s not quick and smart enough to figure out another ringtone is already playing. Apparently, the large contact database adds a strain to the processor and thus doesn’t allow for both Windows Media player and Ringo to communicate to each other that one is taking caring of the job.

Overall
Ringo brings all the power and more of custom ringtones to your Windows Mobile and smartphone with absolute ease. With no need to open tens of contacts to customize how they notify you audibly who’s calling, Ringo makes life much easier. Adding the ability to give each category its own tone makes Ringo a one-up over Windows Mobile default customization. If you’re one like me with a large contact database, however, this probably won’t do you much good unless you like hearing two different songs at the same time. Hopefully Ringo can find a workaround for this problem. Finally, $20 seems a bit steep for this application where $15 would make more sense with $10 being the perfect sweet spot for price.

Price
$19.95

Platform
Windows Mobile, Windows Smartphone, Pocket PC 2003

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A second Sidekick III case came in yesterday. It doesn’t work well. The first one had a leather-like cover and interfered with my interactions with the Sidekick. This one fits too loosely and gets in the way of using the device.

I spent too much time searching the Internet for case reviews and suggestions. With so many devices on the market and almost all of them having unique shapes and sizes - it adds up to a whole lot of cases. The same goes for screen protectors.

I can recommend two screen protectors and one case. Just not for the Sidekick III. For the Palm Tungsten III, I use the PA72 classic Vaja Case (didn’t pay that much) and mine is completely black.

For the same device, I use . I’ve had it for three years and it still works. It has a couple of bubbles, but they appear on the sides. This happened after I removed the screen once ages ago and couldn’t get the bubbles out. The first time I put it on, it had little or no bubbles. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t sell any for the Sidekick III.

The Dell Axim x51v has WriteShield Crystal Clear protecting its face. No bubbles at all and it works great.

If you have a case for a mobile phone, handheld or other mobile device and a case or screen protector that you like - what device you have along with the brand / model of the case or screen protector. It’d give people a resource for when they’re in need of a good quality case or screen protector.

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We here at SvenOnTech love, love, our Sonos. We can listen to our vast music library and change tracks, volume, and so forth, from anywhere in the house. But there’s one thing the Sonos can’t do and that’s play Apple FairPlay music, or, music downloaded from the iTunes Store. But that problem is about to be amended.

Today announced its a unique dock that connects to any stereo or to powered speakers via a line-out connector. It also will bring the video of the iPod to a TV through an S-Video jack. Charging and syncing to iTunes is handled through the high-speed USB connector. And oh yes, don’t forget the two-way RF remote with an LCD screen.

“TuneView is unique. It’s unlike any iPod remote that you’ve used before,” explained Keyspan president Mike Ridenhour. “TuneView features a color LCD screen that lets you remotely view the contents of your iPod and control playback - allowing you to manage the iPod as if it were in your hands.”

The TuneView will be equipped for the future with the ability to update itself via upgradeable firmware. “Both the TuneView dock and TuneView remote are USB devices that can be updated via a firmware download, just like an iPod,” noted Ridenhour. “Over time, Keyspan will release firmware updates that will add new capabilities to TuneView.”

So like the Sonos, the Keyspan TuneView will let you rule your music collection, only limited by the size of your iPod, from a little hand-held remote that will never leave your side. From the kitchen or from the backyard, it really won’t matter where you are, you will be able to control your iPod from just about anywhere. And, you’ll be able to finally enjoy your iTunes Store music without being chained to your computer or iPod.

You can grab your own TuneView for an MSRP of $179. The Keyspan store has it all ready for you to snap up in addition to being able to find it at Amazon.com, PC Connection, TigerDirect, Buy.com, MicroCenter and other leading computer products resellers. Those outside the US will be able to enjoy the TuneView for purchase in January 2007.

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Cingular Wireless and Palm, Inc. today introduced the new , whose brand-new look, broad range of features and economical price will appeal to both consumers and business customers - just in time for the holidays. The Treo 680 quad-band world phone on the Palm OS platform - which is available beginning Friday, Nov. 24, for as low as $199.99 - boasts Palm’s hallmark ease of use to keep any user productive, all with a slim and compact feel.

Cingular business and consumer customers will be able to better balance their personal and business lives, as the all-in-one Treo 680 seamlessly combines a compact, full-featured mobile phone with so much more, all at a competitive price. Users can do even more with their phone, from accessing email and editing documents at the airport to organizing photos and music while waiting for a friend at the coffee shop.

Market research firm In-Stat estimates that 25 percent of all wireless handsets worldwide will be PDAs and smartphones by 2011, which makes the Treo 680 the ideal phone both for feature-phone upgraders and new users.

The Palm Treo 680 is easy to use and affordable because of the multiple innovations it encompasses:

• A new internal antenna enables a sleeker design
• An improved phone application on the Treo 680 smart device allows users to dial faster
• The ability to ignore calls with a quick text message lets users tell a caller “I’m in a meeting” or “Can’t talk now”
• The large, bright color screen is perfect for viewing email, documents or spreadsheets via DataViz Documents To Go, and even photos and movies
• The highly regarded built-in QWERTY keyboard has improved buttons, making it even easier to type emails or SMS messages
• The messaging application displays text-messaging conversations as “threaded chats,” similar to IM, so users can see their entire conversation with a particular person
• The Treo 680 smart device also can be used as an MP3 player and has an integrated digital camera, camcorder and video player, with simpler organization for photos and photo slideshows

“The Palm Treo 680 will open up the popular Palm experience to a much wider audience of Cingular customers,” said Jeff Bradley, vice president, business data services, for Cingular Wireless. “This next-generation Treo comes with all of the outstanding business features that Palm devotees have come to expect plus rich entertainment capabilities, and all at a very attractive price that will appeal both to businesses and individual users.”

The Palm Treo 680 operates on Cingular’s nationwide EDGE network, the largest national high-speed wireless data network in the United States with availability in more than 13,000 cities and towns, and along some 40,000 miles of major highways. Treo 680 users also can take their device with them abroad to make calls on six continents and over 190 countries, with wireless data roaming in more than 115 countries.

EDGE’s widespread coverage makes the Treo 680 an ideal platform for business customers and consumers who want an easy-to-use way to check their email, send SMS, browse the Web and more.

“Palm remains focused on introducing Treo smartphones that are user-friendly and affordable for any audience - from single users to wide-scale business deployments,” said Tara Griffin, Palm vice president and general manager. “The Treo 680 from Cingular Wireless is an excellent proof point. We have a tremendous opportunity to serve customers the world over by helping them stay more connected to important people and information, whether it’s through contacts and calendar, email, messaging, documents, Web browsing, photos or music. This mobile phone enhances work and leisure time.”

Business Customer-focused Solution

While Palm’s ease of use and affordability are beneficial for new or upgrading consumers, business users also can take advantage of the Treo 680 smart device, because of the following:

• Flexibility: The all-in-one Treo 680 smart device is ideal for deployment across any business, small or large, and offers the security and flexibility needed by IT departments for easy integration;
• High return on investment: Because of its attractive price and ease of use, the Treo 680 brings increased mobile productivity to help businesses realize a quick return on investment, all in a budget-friendly smart device;
• Staying productive: Phone, Web, add-on business applications and more help customers stay in touch and on top of their work; and
• Staying connected: Customers can access such Cingular-enabled wireless email solutions as Cingular Xpress Mail, Microsoft Exchange Active Sync, and Good Mobile Messaging from Good Technology, as well as POP3 and IMAP accounts.

“The Palm Treo 680 smartphone is a natural and affordable choice for our business,” said Robert DeLille, chief executive officer of Creative Office Environments. “With more on-device memory and the availability of intuitive applications, such as Google Maps for Mobile, on the Cingular Wireless network, our workforce can be more productive and stay in touch with customers and colleagues.”

Pricing and Availability

The Treo 680 is available beginning Friday, Nov. 24, for as low as $199.99 to consumers and businesses nationwide at Cingular Wireless retail stores, www.cingular.com, select national retailers, through Cingular’s B2B sales organization and . A variety of monthly data plans are available, including an unlimited Cingular PDA Connect plan for $44.99 per month.

For a limited time, the Treo 680 will come with a music bundle from Yahoo!, which includes a 30-day free trial to its Yahoo! Music Unlimited To Go service and Yahoo! Music For Mobile. Users have the ability to access the Yahoo! Music Unlimited music library from the phone and to send tracks remotely to a PC.

The Palm Treo 680 from Cingular Wireless also supports a wide variety of third-party, Cingular Wireless certified applications, such as the TeleNav GPS Navigator solution. With TeleNav GPS Navigator, Treo 680 users now can get turn-by-turn voice and on-screen GPS directions directly on their device for use when driving or walking.

I know, I know, I know, it ain’t even Thanksgiving yet and I’m already talking about cool software for Christmas. Well guess what? This will also work for your Turkey Day shopping list. Ya, it’s that good!

Longtime readers will know that I’m a fan of SplashData products and one of my absolute favorite list programs anywhere is . In its current form, it only plays on Palm OS devices in the PDA realm (but my inside source tells SvenOnTech a Windows Mobile version is on the way)! It also will sync with both the Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows desktop versions.

SplashShopper will allow you to “Manage your lists of groceries, gifts, to dos, wines, music, movies, and more! Track prices and locations.” What better way to shop for your loved ones this Christmas? With its powerful organization, easy to read screen, and swift synchronization with your desktop computer, how will you not be a head of the crowd this season? With over a dozen from users at Handango and PalmGear (yes, we chuckled at the lack of lesser star reviews ourselves), you can guess that this really is a great list keeper for your Palm. Again, we love it and we know you will, too.

Merry Christmas, er, Happy Thanksgiving!

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So, how are you going to stuff that Compact Flash (CF) card of yours from your DSLR into your MacBook Pro or new-fangled PC laptop with its ExpressCard 34 (34 for 34mm in width)? Since your CF card is a bit wider than the ExpressCard slot, you have to either use a USB or FireWire reader to grab your contents off the card. But not anymore thanks to Delkin.

The Delkin eFilm ExpressCard 34 CompactFlash Card Adapter () will allow you to plug your CF card into your MacBook Pro or PC ExpressCard slot. With a slight amount of the card sticking out from the slot, this bulge is what helps you get a larger fit into a smaller slot. All the electronics fit into the 34mm slot and the card into the mouth of the adapter. This, of course, means that your CF card will also stick out, but what small price to pay for an ExpressCard CF reader.

The adapter card will smoke the files off the CF card at 20 MB per second and it requires no drivers for either platform. Plug-and-play and it is hot swappable. Nice. And since you probably already have those SD-to-CF card adapters (and then all those other flash to SD adapters, too), you’ll be set with just one card! While a bit pricey at $50, this adapter is still worth it for its size and performance.

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The wonderful key fob. Yes, fob. So many in my family crack up when I tell them the correct name of that black thing attached to their key that locks and unlocks their door as well as creates the all-ignored “panic” alert.

Reports are, GM will be bringing an even better fob in April to rappers and gangbangers around our great nation with the next model of the Cadillac Escalade. The new fob will notify G-Kill-C3P-Oh when his tires need some air and his tank some fuel. Homie will be able to start his car from inside the crib as well as lock it from six times the distance he can today on his bunk ‘07 Caddy. If he’s interested in how many miles his ride has, he’ll be able to get the 411 on dat as well as change XM to all from the new fob. Now homie ain’t trippin’ that this will cost him $150 more since that’s only a few more dimebags and not a whole rock to sell. GM is also saying that if our beloved capitalist loses his fob, it’ll cost less than $100 to replace.

For all us real world folks and law abiding citizens, you’ll be able to pick this up in one of the other great GM SUV offerings as well as other models soon after the release in April, 2008. Until then, keep cool.

[Via ]

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Earthcomber offers location-aware Where to Wear shopping guides for Palm OS and Windows Mobile. You tell it the kind of merchandise you’re after, and as you move about the city (there are versions for New York City, Florida, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), it will ping you with the locations of stores that match your wish list.

You can pull up details on any of the stores that are listed and determine whether or not it’s worth the trip, and if you decide to go for it, Earthcomber will give you directions on how to get there. The businesses that are listed in the Where to Wear guides have been reviewed by the professional shoppers of Fairchild & Gallager, publishers of the print editions of Where to Wear.

To learn more about Earthcomber, be sure to .

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Tam Hanna of TamsPalm :

Experienced coders get experienced by repeating two things: looking at the code of others and by coding, themselves. There is a lot of good sample code available in Open Source products, however, getting concepts presented in a structured and commented fashion can be very comfortable.

Ted Faison’s does just that - it is a book that looks at event based programming. For all those new to the matter, event based programming is an object-oriented form of system design (you need classes) that is geared at maximum reusability and easy maintenance by removing direct calls between objects. Instead, objects call one another via function pointers initialized by builders and binders.

The book starts off by looking at coupling - what coupling is, what kinds of coupling there are and how coupling affects the system. The treatment is a bit mathematical sometimes, but very interesting nonetheless.

After that, the book moves on to event mechanics: How do I deliver events, what kinds of payloads can I use, how do I send and receive events best? The treatment is very interesting and helpful. The last chapter of this part of the book contains a look at various commercial systems - good reference material, though the reading value is rather low.

The remaining two parts about event diagramming and functional roles and patterns were excellent. Nothing to say here except very well done.

Three working examples accompany the book, though I skipped over them as my C#and VB.NET skills are not good enough to decipher them.

The example code in the chapters was understandable for me (C#), my prior VB 6 experience also was helpful for deciphering the VB.NET stuff. However, you don’t need to understand all the example code to benefit from this book - every concept is also explained textually and graphically!

is easy to read - it makes a good book for reading in-flight or in bed.

Overall, this book was a great read. While the concepts learned here can’t be directly applied to my C programs (as in cut and paste), the process of going over them mentally has made me a better programmer and system designer. Last, but not least, I enjoyed thinking through the various “edges” - if you like interesting system architectures, get this book by all means.

is a great source for reviews, exclusive screenshots, and updates on all the new, 21st Century mobile technology as soon as it’s news to us!

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Tam Hanna of TamsPalm :

There are a lot of leather cases from several distributors on the market. Today, I looked at Proporta’s Alu-Leather case on my Palm TX. It is said to work with the Tungsten T5, too!

The case is padded all around, and the flipping part is strengthened with an aluminum piece, and it has a belt clip on the back.

If the case is open, you see the rail, the dual SD card holder, and the headphone cutout. In the flipping part, there are two pockets for credit cards, money, etc.

Inserting the TX into the case is a bit hard, but it’s no big problem. When you look at the top, you see a cutout for the headphone jack.

On the bottom, the multiconnector is covered by the case lock.

This case looks quite noble. No matter what you want to do with your Palm, you have to open the case - including when you charge or sync it. Opening it is easy and handy with the magnetic lock. It has no cutout for the speaker, and this affects the sound quality a lot! The part that protects the display is strengthened with aluminum so that it bears the daily pressure easily. Overall I like this case.

is a great source for reviews, exclusive screenshots, and updates on all the new, 21st Century mobile technology as soon as it’s news to us!

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