Archive for October 3rd, 2003

He Should Call It 3650 Hints

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

Rael is on a 3650 posting frenzy
today:

Down on N-Gage

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

(via gizmodo) Mike
Langberg
: “Mobile online games will succeed only if I can use my
Motorola phone on the Verizon Wireless network to play against friends
without having to know in advance what network or brand of phone they’re
using. Life’s too short for anything else.”

I agree, and it’s not clear what’s keeping this from happening right now,
or if it’s all that much of a problem (N-Gage aside). For example,
Macrospace makes Cannons
Tournament
, a tournament game which is not tied to a specific
provider, but only runs on a select set of Nokia phones. It’s not the
carriers or the handset manufacturers who made this decision, though. The
Cannons
Tournament instructions
suggest to me that mutiplayer games are
brokered between a central server, so there’s nothing (except demand)
keeping Macrospace from porting this to other phones. And there’s nothing
to keep any game developer from writing a game that runs on a whole mess
of different phones (I’m sure there are some good examples of this
already, but nothing springs to mind right now).

AS220 Gets Mention in NY Times

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

Welcome
to AS220
: “AS220 was mentioned as a stop on the New York
Times’Walking Tour of Providence.” If you are going to be in or near
Providence, which applies to accordion
players
traveling to Boston
(it’s a $5 train ride from Boston, Joey), you owe it to yourself to show up at
AS220 and demand that someone show you what it’s all about. Don’t leave
until you’ve seen at least all 4 (or is it 5?) galleries, the cafe, working
artists’ studios, the darkroom, and that shite old Pentium Pro 180 that
I donated which is doing service as a public access Linux box. And make
sure someone gives you the scoop on Broad
Street
, since it’s the molten core that gives heat to everything
else.

A Gritty Collection

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

New
York Times
: “…head down to AS220 (115 Empire Street,
401-831-9327), a gritty collection of low-cost studios, a nonjuried
exhibition gallery, a performance space and a cafe.” (Here’s AS220′s
calendar for the
next couple of days
)

Everything Must Talk to Everything Else

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

I’ve been on a connectivity bender lately–I’ve been trying to get
everything in my house to talk to one another. Here’s the scorecard:

Handheld Computer Cable Software Results
T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP USB Sync & Charge Cable XDA ActiveSync 3.7 No problems
T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Virtual PC Mac/Windows 2000 USB Sync & Charge Cable XDA ActiveSync 3.4 No problems
Audiovox Maestro (Toshiba e570) Pocket PC 2002 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP USB
Sync & Charge Cable Toshiba e570
ActiveSync 3.7 Works some of the time; ActiveSync frequently fails to recognize
the pocket pc, so I need to unplug and plug a lot
Audiovox Maestro (Toshiba e570) Pocket PC 2002 Virtual PC Mac/Windows 2000 USB
Sync & Charge Cable Toshiba e570
ActiveSync 3.4 Works some of the time; ActiveSync frequently fails to recognize
the pocket pc, so I need to unplug and plug a lot
Nokia 3650 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP

Built-in IrDA (infrared) PC Suite for Nokia 3650 Works intermittently; mRouter will often say the phone is
connected, but the PC Suite doesn’t see it; a reboot of Windows
usually helps
Nokia 3650 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP

Belkin
Bluetooth PC Card
(refurb)
PC Suite for Nokia 3650 Works with these
instructions
; more reliable than IrDA
Nokia 3650 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP

Belkin
Bluetooth PC Card
(refurb)
Dialup Networking No problems so far
Nokia 3650 867mhz 12″ PowerBook/Mac OS X 10.2

Built-in bluetooth Internet Connect So-so. GPRS connections occasionally drop or hang.
Nokia 3650 867mhz 12″ PowerBook/Mac OS X 10.2

Built-in bluetooth ISync Address book only.
Nokia 6200 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP

Built-in IrDA (infrared) Nokia PC Suite 5 So far, so good.
Nokia 6200 Thinkpad A20m/Windows XP

Built-in IrDA (infrared) Dialup networking Slightly faster than 3650 on Mac or PC (haven’t tested 6200 on an EDGE
network yet, though).
Nokia 6200 867mhz 12″ PowerBook/Mac OS X 10.2

MadsonLine IrDA (infrared)
adapter

Internet Connect Just plain awful. I can make the connection OK, but it hangs
(no downstream packets) after about 30 seconds. When I try to
disconnect, Internet Connect says “disconnecting” and never stops.
Unplugging the adapter results in a kernel panic.

I’ll keep this updated over time, so come back and check it from time to
time. I’ll probably be testing the 6200 with the DKU-5 cable soon.