Palm Treo 650 vs 700 Phones

PC World has a rundown on the differences between the Palm Treo 650 and 700 phones, which are PDA/Phone hybrids from Palm. The 650 runs Palm OS, and the 700 runs Windows Mobile 5.0. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that the 700 is a stripped down Windows Mobile device – i.e. like many of the Smartphones that can’t run all Windows Mobile software (including genealogy software). It definitely looks like the 700 is a full Windows Mobile 5.0 device that looks like it can run genealogy software, but I’m not 100% sure just yet. The 650 can run Palm OS genealogy software (not sure of any limitations).

One important difference, the 650 has a 360×360 screen, whereas the 700 has a 240×240 screen. On the other hand, the 700 has 128MB of built-in memory, while the 650 has 32MB, and the 700 is faster. The 700 also has a 1.3MP digital camera, while the 650 is a much lower resolution.

Treo Mobile has extensive coverage of both of these phones.

The Treos could be a good compromise for genealogists who want a mobile device, but are afraid they won’t use it much, or that it will be “just one more thing” to carry along – using them as both phones and PDAs can be handy.

LAPTOP Magazine Reviews the Palm T|X

If you are leaning towards the PalmOS platform, LAPTOP Magazine has a new review of the Palm T|X, and they gave it 4 out of 5 stars: Multimedia is really a value-add in this reasonably priced PDA. Nevertheless, Palm has succeeded in giving us a powerful yet very portable handheld that won’t break the bank.

Pocket Genealogist Pre-Release 2.96.14 & 2.96.15

Northern Hills Software has updated the 2.96.x series (Pre-Release) of Pocket Genealogist to version 2.96.15. Pocket Genealogist is a PocketPC/Windows Mobile based genealogy application. This is a minor update.

Version 2.96.15
* Change to FTM GenBridge import to fix an issue of incorrectly generating individual citations. (Which don’t exist with FTM and were not viewable on the device) (MG Note – FTM = Family Tree Maker)

Version 2.96.14
* Misc fixes

Pocket Genealogist Public Beta 3.00A50

Northern Hills Software has updated the public beta of Pocket Genealogist 3.0 to version 3.00A50. Pocket Genealogist is a PocketPC/Windows Mobile based genealogy application. This is considered a major update and the developer states that itRequires re-import of database in order for these changes to work.

Additions/Updates:
* Added “Last Edit Date” to Individual and Family screens (“Main” tab)… only displayed if databases is “Locked (View Only)” and the import supports this type of date.
* Spanish translation update
* Better support for controlling if multiple sets of parents are allowed for an individual
* Relationship calculator changed to try and determine the biological parents when doing relationship calculation.

Fixes:
* Fix to GenBridge FTM import to remove duplicated Citations. (Which were not viewable on the device anyway, but did create more data to be transferred than it should have)
* Miscellaneous fixes.

It can be downloaded from this page.

scanR – scanning/copying/OCR with your cell phone

Engadget has short article up about scanR. scanR is an interesting product service – here’s their description:

Scan documents or whiteboards, anywhere, anytime, using only your camera phone.

scanR is simple to use:
• Take a picture of a document or whiteboard with your 1 megapixel or better camera phone.
• Send the picture to scanR
• Receive the scanned image in email or fax.

I have used OCR (optical character recognition) software in the past with scans I made using my scanner, but had never thought to try it with my camera phone (which I will do this weekend). With camera phones getting cheaper and better, this could a fairly big deal for genealogists who need to copy some information but don’t have the time or means to do it on the spot properly.

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