While touring the world of Treo this week, it definitely crossed my mind that after all the excitement of CTIA and the craziness the week before, when all the rumors about Palm had whipped things into a frenzy, people were ready to kick back a bit and have some fun as they head (er, hop?) into the Easter holiday.

No doubt, this will be one of my more eclectic columns. So without further ado, Let’s Talk Treo!

Palm News

What’s up Doc?: AT&T, McKesson and Palm Team to Give Physicians Critical Tools to Make Clinical Decisions at Point of Care

This week it was announced that Jupiter Medical Center, a leader of quality health care and clinical innovation, is using a joint wireless solution from AT&T Inc. and Palm, along with McKesson's Horizon MobileCare Rounding software, to improve physician effectiveness and clinical care.

"With the Treo 680 smart device, my time is used more efficiently at the hospital. I can look up patient information before performing surgery, and if there is a discrepancy, have it addressed immediately,” said Barry Miskin, M.D., general surgeon. “The Treo 680 has met and exceeded all my expectations. I was a skeptic at first, but now I can't imagine performing my day-to-day tasks without it. I find that I work more efficiently because I can view all of my patients' data even before I arrive at the hospital."

Taking Over the World…

Palm issued one global expansion press release this week.

Treo 680 in Brazil

Palm and Claro, the Brazilian mobile carrier owned by America Movil Group, announced the availability of the Palm Treo 680 in Brazil. Claro is one of the main mobile phone operators in Brazil. Founded in September 2003, it acts throughout the country in 21 States and the Federal District, is present in over 2,300 cities and services approximately 24 million clients.

Palm to Host Analyst and Investor Day

Palm is hosting a live webcast from its Analyst and Investor Day, which is being held next Tuesday, April 10, 2007 from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET. The live webcast and a replay will be available on Palm's Investor Relations website at investor.palm.com.

Thoughts on the Future of Palm Gibu Thomas, in a piece posted on the VentureBeat website, provided his thoughts on what Palm should do:

"As someone who spent four years on the frontlines at Handspring and Palm helping incubate and manage their carrier distribution channel, I have a keen appreciation for the challenges that the company is faced with today. And my perspective is this: Palm should sell to a corporate strategic investor who has the scale and resources needed to survive in a carrier dominated world and not a private equity buyer. Palm should do this in spite of how appealing the prospect of continuing to be an independent company is and how sexy it is to believe it could be the next Apple."

No doubt, the future of Palm will be a hot topic next Tuesday. From "hot" let’s move to something totally cool. In PC Magazine’s list of The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time, the Palm Pilot 1000 came in at #18. Great showing!

Recent TreoCentral Guides, Reviews & More

Review: Seidio 2400mAh Extended Battery for Treo 680 - By Jay Gross

Jay checked out the Seidio 2400mAh Extended Battery for the Treo 680 and found much to his liking:

"In short, I’m impressed. This compares to the one-day depletion I had, with the factory battery, to less than 20 percent. There’s so wide a difference, I’m tempted to think there’s something wrong with the original battery…"

"Work around, or with, the cradle and case problems, and if you do not mind a little extra weight and the added size, the Seidio 2400mAh Extended Battery ($49.95) brings plentiful power to the Treo 680, and you can keep Palm’s battery charged up as a spare."

Review: Jabra C820s Stereo Headphones with Active Noise Cancellation: Bose on a budget? - By Harv Laser

Here’s some sound advice from Audio Master, Harv on the new Jabra C820 stereo headphones. He has been buying, selling and upgrading HiFi equipment since the mid 1960s, and has owned more headphones than he can even remember – so listen up:

"If you can't hack the $300.00 to $400.00 price of the Bose Quiet Comforts, but you desire an almost identical look and feel, and want a decent-sounding pair of "mid-priced" headphones with Active Noise Cancellation, I can conditionally recommend The Jabra C820s ($119.95)."

Review: Palm Sync and Charge Cradle - By Douglas Morse

Douglas provides his thoughts on the Palm Cradle Kit which works with the Treo 650 on up to the Treo 750.

"The Palm Cradle charging combo ($39.95) is awesome. It does everything it is meant to do: charge, sync, and store and charge an extra battery, and it does it all with aplomb. It’s an accessory I didn’t know I needed, and now that I have it, never want to give up. But wait, there’s more."

Talkin’ TreoCast

In this episode, along with the usual news and reviews, hosts discuss the best of the CTIA conference, including a run down of what they learned during their interview with Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner.

Elsewhere in the World of Treo…

Review: Treo 700wx vs. Treo 750

This is an excellent side-by-side comparison of these two Windows Mobile Treos. You’ll find this helpful for answering the "what’s the difference" question.

Review: Cellet Stingray Treo 680/750 Case Review

Andrew from Treonauts checked out the Cellet Stringray rubberized case. He writes:

"Overall I really like the Cellet Stingray case – at only $12.95 it is extremely good value, it has a superb build and I personally find the rubber construction very appealing. In fact this case is the closest to my ideal sports case and the only thing that I wish now is to see a future model released which has the option to attach an arm band instead of the current belt clip…."

Review: Mercora M Service

PC Magazine took a look at Mercora M, a service that lets you use your Treo 700w|wx and other Windows Mobile smartphone to listen to music streamed from the MP3 collection on your computer. Per the story, you can also connect to a friend’s computer (with permission, of course) to stream audio. And if that’s not enough music for you, Mercora will also let you can stream audio whenever you want from their database of over 3.5 million tracks and 200,000 artists. Rock on!

Review: SplashNotes for Palm OS

Tam Hanna checked out SplashNotes, a powerful note taker, list manager, outliner and information organizer for Palm handhelds and smartphones. He writes:

"Overall, SplashData succeeded in creating an affordable Palm OS outliner that does well what it must. The program does not contain any of the advanced features that make advanced Palm outliners difficult to use for beginners – simplicity beats functionality here."

For another take on SplashNotes, check out Jennifer Chappell’s article which appeared on TreoCentral last month.

Now let’s shift gears and catch up on some CTIA News that didn’t make our deadline last week. First of all, for those looking for a recap, there’s a nice roundup story over at eWeek. And now the news…

CTIA News: StuffIt Wireless Compression Technology Delivers Solution for Sharing and Storing Images on Windows Mobile Devices

At CTIA, Smith Micro Software, a leading provider of a wide range of software and services for the wireless market, announced its new StuffIt Wireless Windows Mobile Edition, an essential compression utility for all Windows Mobile 5.0 powered SmartPhones and PDA's. The highly anticipated new version is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2007.

CTIA News: Handmark Turns Pocket Express into Mobile Travel Companion

At CTIA Wireless 2007 last week, mobile software developer Handmark demonstrated the fourth edition of Pocket Express, its wireless news and information service for a wide variety of mobile devices and platforms, including Windows Mobile, and Palm OS, among others.

PDA Street’s James Alan Miller sat down with the company's co-founder Douglas Edwards and was walked through the new travel features, which include: Flight Status, Flight Schedules, Hotel Search, Currency Conversion, Travel Phone Numbers, all in a new travel channel.

CTIA News: Comprehensive Wireless Industry Survey Results Released

During the show, CTIA - The Wireless Association unveiled some interesting statistics about the wireless industry:

Wireless data service revenues for 2006 rose to $15.2 billion. This represents a 77% increase over 2005, when data revenue was $8.6 billion. Data revenue represents money that wireless carriers earn on services other than voice. Wireless data revenues now total roughly 13% of all wireless service revenues.

"Wireless broadband is providing mobile subscribers with the ability to access content like never before," said CTIA - The Wireless Association(R) President and CEO Steve Largent. "Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission reported that 59% of all new high-speed lines were wireless. Wireless broadband is growing faster than cable and DSL combined and because of that fact subscribers are accessing new and exciting types of content on their mobile devices."

As Treo owners, we are in a great position with an awesome device for accessing this new and exciting content.

CTIA News: Bango empowers social networking phenomenon FunkySexyCool to capture the global market

It was announced that FunkySexyCool, the successful mobile social networking community, is using Bango’s global mobile web platform to capture the global market as it expands to go direct-to-consumer on any network, anywhere in the world.

At FunkySexyCool members create profiles as well as vote and message each other. Unlike other large social networks FunkySexyCool has unique inbuilt features and functionality that monetizes each and every subscriber. It will debut in the U.S. next week.

News: DataViz's Documents To Go Empowers Palm OS Users to Open and View Word & Excel 2007 Files

DataViz, Inc., the leading provider of Office compatibility solutions for over 23 years announced the release of Documents To Go Premium Edition 10. The latest version of the #1 Office editing suite for Palm OS® devices is now the first and only mobile solution to enable users to open and view new Microsoft Word and Excel Office 2007 files in their native format on their Palm OS device.

News: iambic releases Agendus Smartphone Edition

Matthew Miller, the Mobile Gadgeteer, posted a story about the new Smartphone Edition of Agendus for Windows Mobile, a breakthrough solution for managing personal information and communications.

News: Opera 9 Coming to the Treo

Palm signed an agreement with Opera in which it will include the Opera browser in its upcoming Palm products. The browser will be based on the Opera 9 rendering engine.

News: 2007 Baseball Schedules for Palm OS

Toysoft has released mySchedule MLB, their 2007 Major League Baseball schedule and guide for Palm OS. It includes all 30 MLB team's regular schedules, all team rosters, player salaries, coaches and staff listings. In addition, mySchedule includes a graphical view of player positions and game day games. You can also export any team's schedule to the DateBook or Calendar application with an alarm reminder so you never miss the first pitch.

Trend: Mini Web Sites Target Mobile Phone Users

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story on Thursday that talked about how companies are launching special mobile versions of their Web sites. And it isn’t just the big media brands like MTV and ESPN and news sites like USA Today and The Weather Channel. The story focused on the efforts of bed-and-breakfast owner, Johannes Tromp. He created a mini-site for his business using a self-starter kit from a company called Roundpoint Ltd. The Site he built, www.kilburnie.mobi ("dot-mobi" being the newly available suffix), has gotten him "a surprisingly good response, with 30 to 40 new calls per month from interested travelers." That’s pretty impressive. Watch for more "dot-mobi" sites cropping up.

TT Watch List: PDA Homepage – The PDA-Friendly Portal

Note: I invented a new category this week. – AL

Related to the previous story, there is an online PDA friendly portal, called PDA Homepage, that links to almost a thousand PDA-friendly websites on the Internet. The website has evolved very much and has achieved recognition from such websites as Pocket PC Magazine as a "great innovation". You can reach it at pdahomepage.com.

Endnotes & Ponderables:

Tiger in your Treo

This weekend, many will be turning their attention to Augusta, Georgia where The Masters will be taking place. The big question during major PGA events like this is usually, "How’s Tiger doing?" There was an announcement this week that makes this question easier to answer.

MLB Advanced Media Named TigerWoods.com Exclusive Wireless Partner

TigerWoods.com, the golfer's official website announced an exclusive agreement with MLB Advanced Media (the interactive media and Internet arm of Major League Baseball) to create and distribute Tiger Woods-themed mobile content. Per terms of the deal, MLBAM will develop, host and operate the new Tiger Woods mobile WAP site as well as create related ringtones, wallpapers, photos, video clips and messages, trivia and fantasy games. The WAP site will also offer live scoring updates, leaderboards and news, schedules and pro tips. Sports and entertainment firm IMG Media, which hosts and operates the TigerWoods.com website, will administrate the WAP site's advertising and sponsorships. You can access it from your Treo: wap.TigerWoods.com.

Free Egg Game for Your Windows Mobile Treo

Don’t want to spend time coloring (or hunting for) eggs? Here’s a great alternative. There’s a free egg game for Windows Mobile Treos where you can help the Eggs "fight the power." All Eggs, black, white, small, big, dotted and even slightly cracked unite to combat the equivalent of Lord Vader. One thing’s for sure, the game has to be better than my description of it.

That’s a wrap!

---