Kinda cool to be able to blog onsite like this. My husband is in the middle of a tournament game, my son is painting a figure, my daughter (who has just completed her FOURTH painted figure) is now settling into a coloring contest.

The crowd is huge and…

… there are random, but regular whoops and hollering. The kids love it. My “Kid at heart” husband is having a blast, and I must admit that I even painted a figure myself. Of course, I’m slow and my end results aren’t so hot, but I’m participating :O)

The painting entries will be judged soon, and Wayne has been pacing a bit in anticipation. The competition this year, especially in his category, is particularly stiff. I overheard one entrant in another category comment “Gee, I’m glad I didn’t select THAT category this year, those are awesome!” And he’s right, they are.

People-watching, one of my favorite past times, is at a peak level here. All ages, all interest groups. A wide and varied… and may I say unusual crowd indeed.

I’ve seen some interesting t-shirt art here… like the one that said “Always a pallbearer, never a corpse.” and another which says… “It takes a Viking to Raze a Village.”

All said, a pretty good way to spend a relaxing Saturday with the family. Now, having proved that I can finally blog from anywhere, I’m going to look for more cool t-shirts, do a bit of shopping for Christmas presents, and maybe sneak out long enough for a hair cut while the rest of the family hangs out in the nether world of GamesDay 2005.

This week, while preparing for our trip, I asked my daughter (she’s seven) to jot down a few notes while I drove.

She laughed after carefully printing the first couple items on a scrap of paper…

“Look, Mommy, it’s like this is my stylus (holding out her pencil) and this is like my Treo (displaying the envelope I gave her for her list).”

Now, if that’s not odd, I don’t know what is. The palm is an electronic imitation of the old fashioned pencil and paper — a better organized, more powerful and expanded version, no doubt, but still…

It struck me as extremely odd that she reversed the comparison. She’s growing up in the digital age. My own little techno-baby. I know my own passion for such devices is only compounding her rate of absorption, but sometimes it still strikes me as odd when she wants to have a laptop and a PDA more than a doll or even a gameboy.

I’m blogging while hubby is driving up I-65 headed to the Windy City!

Although I couldn’t blog on the old version of www.WickedBlog.com, apparently the new version of Geeklog — or maybe it’s the new firmware updates or some other issue. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that with the latest software on my server for Geeklog and the latest updates on my Treo 650, I’m finally able to blog on the road.

Can you hear my “Yipee!!!” from where you are? You probably can.

And, a matter of moments before we left, the new Think Outside keyboard was delivered.

I preposted a blog on here for Monday about ways to write on the Treo, and I must say that this little keyboard exceeds expectations so far.

I downloaded the Treo 650 drivers from the manufacturer’s website and also downloaded a copy of the user’s manual here on my Treo, last night, hoping that the keyboard would arrive by the time I headed out west on Monday a.m. — and here it is. Great service from seller who rushed the delivery for me so I’d have it to travel.

The pairing on this device was a split-second affair, unlike the marathon battles with the others I’ve tried.

The keyboard is a good, full size and despite the competition’s claims of no numbers, it does have them — but they are function keys instead of a dedicated row. That may be a problem for someone who uses numbers a lot, but I’m not one of those people. I can type pretty fast, some say amazingly fast, but I’ve always had to “hunt and peck” numbers. So, I Don’t really object to the function keys for numbers, I far prefer that to having additional size added to this sweet little device.

By the time I’m finished with my back-to-back trips, I should know if I’ve found my solution. I hope I have.

I know it may sound odd to some, but I’m extremely excited about an easy-to-use, quick pairing BT keyboard that will make writing down my ideas and thoughts even quicker. That ability raises the value of the Treo to a whole new level for me.

Bye! I’m going to discover if I can work on an article with ease. *grin* Or maybe respond t a couple emails that require a longer response.

Today Wayne, Alex and I are headed to Games Day in Chicago. My hubby is an incredible artist, and he’s competing in a painting contest there this year.

I’ve never been to an event like this one, so I’m anxious to see what it’s like. Hubby has been playing WarHammer for years and this game (along the same lines/genera as D&D) is the focus for this Games Workshop sponsored event.

We will be picking up Derrick at O’Hare tonight. He was visiting his paternal grandparents in Florida and they are sending him up so he can join in the festivities.

It’s been a long time since we have had a weekend away. It should be quite enjoyable.

As soon as we return on Sunday, I’ll be helping my father pack up the 5th wheel and we will head out to Colorado first thing Monday a.m.

It’s nice to be able to blog on the road, the old version of GL didn’t allow me to log in from my Treo.

Of course, without a spell checker onboard, I may be humiliated by my mobile typos. :o)

More later.

Reading and writing on the Treo 650 are my primary concerns. Communicating using this little device is a breeze. All systems go there.

But the laptop replacement and the replacement for a stack of reading material… well that’s still an issue. So, I’ve done a bit of research, tested quite a few programs, and have discovered as much of what I don’t want as what I do.

Reading on the Treo 650:

I bought iSilo as my reader. I’ve seen some pretty amazing things with that program so far. I like the embedded images, the nice cover art on some of the books and the illustrations inside others. It makes it a little more like a book, a little less like a digital file. I also like the scrolling (adjustable speed) option.

Yeah, you must be pretty durn lazy to not even want to flip a page or “click” a button to progress through an e-book, eh? Truth is, the smoother “scrolling” function makes it much easier to read. Using the “click” button like I did in my previous reader program was frustrating because I’d spend a couple seconds with each page turn trying to figure out where I was. It got on my nerves.

As I explore some of the options on this program, I’ll share my findings.

Writing on the Treo 650:

I’m still looking into the best text entry program. I’m not thrilled with Documents to Go as my writing program. It’s a GREAT application package (suite) for standard business apps. But I don’t NEED a PowerPoint presentation on my Treo Screen. I don’t even use those for my own business applications anymore. There are much nicer ways to present information.

It’s also a memory hog. I’d like to find one that will launch from the SD card and that would offer an incredible BUILT IN dictionary, spellchecker and thesaurus.

I’d like a small footprint and a native format — so all the conversions and such aren’t necessary.

I don’t want fancy fonts; I don’t need anything other than basic bullets, bold, underlining and italics 99% of the time when I’m doing my creative work. I can do heavy-handed formatting when I return to the office and crank up a Word Document.

On a small screen, trying to format could only be described as a nightmare, anyway. What I need is a quick way to type it in and get it recorded.

If anyone out there has found the perfect program for the mobile writer, let me know. I’ve ordered a new keyboard, I’m not happy with either of the ones I have.

I’m heading to Chicago in a couple hours. This will be the first big test of my Treo 650 as the primary office tool, note taking device, writing tool, and … yep… entertainment.

The day I return from Chicago, I’m headed to Colorado. Not even 12 hours in between the road trips! It’s going to be interesting to determine what the most difficult aspects might be of traveling without a laptop — and using only the Treo 650.

I’ve made a few interesting little purchases in preparation for the trip.

When I return, I’ll review these and let you know what worked and what didn’t work.

I will say that some of the things I bought are simply entertainment. Nothing more. Some reading was included in the purchases and there were some serious communication and business apps as well.

Now, if only I could get a plug in that would permit me to securely log into my geeklog so I could blog direct on the road… I HATE leaving without having a way to continue to blog.

Perhaps I’ll come up with a creative solution. Or, perhaps, I’ll just enjoy the time away.

Until later…

A new product, recently announced, makes the VOIP IP protocol phones as convenient as a typical wireless handset. Now, you can walk, pace, and go check on something in another part of your office, or your home… all while talking over VOIP.

The company to pioneer this technology is Zultys Technologies.

This is the first time I’ve seriously considered VOIP. I hate wires. HATE THEM. And the thought of adding yet another one to my desk area… well, that’s why I don’t “do” VOIP yet.

But, once this platform is out for a couple months, I may consider it.

Lagging behind the other updates, but finally arriving on the scene is the firmware update for Cingular Treo 650 phones — the “official” 1.15 updater.

Whooo Hooo! More memory shall be reclaimed! Or so they say. I’ll be keeping tabs on that one, in particular, as I download the new firmware.

You can download your very own copy from Palm at www.Palm.com. Here’s hoping it’s all they say it is and that there are no crashes during your upgrade!

I’m off to do mine now.

(Glad I got my freebie SD card when I did!)

So you are away from home, and you have downloaded something online that your Treo 650 didn’t like or for some UNKNOWN reason, your Treo 650 has started doing an auto-reset loop.

EEEEEKKKKK!

If you are near your User’s Guide, you can look up how to break out of the loop, but if you are remote, or looking on someone else’s computer, you need the following information. (I’m also including a couple tips on how to access programs that you need NOW, before doing a full system reset):

Soft Reset

Try this first (course, it never really works for a looping reset)

Remove the back panel and find the reset button beside the battery carriage area. Press the black button with the tip of your stylus.

System Reset (sometimes works, sometimes won’t)

Try this before going to the “desperation move” of a hard reset. At the very least, it will permit you to use the Treo as a phone while the rest of the Palm portion is having a reset fit.

Hold down the “up” arrow on your 5-way navigation button while pushing the reset button on the back (you probably still have the battery cover off from a vain attempt at a soft reset). When the “Palm Powered” black and white screen appears, release the button.

This shoots you into the basic phone set up.

A hint here — if you need access to a particular program or application, and hitting the menu “home” button starts the reset loop again, you may be able to access it by using the quick launch buttons here by the phone.

First, use the down button to scroll down past the “contacts” and other buttons. Find a blank button. Click on it and that will send you to a setup screen where you can specify a particular application to launch from that button. I have mine set go to “SuperUtility” and “Backup” (Backup Buddy) in case of such emergencies.

With SuperUtility, you may be able to delete the offending program without doing a hard reset. With Backup, you may be able to recover an accidentally deleted application or essential utility without doing a hard reset.

Even if this doesn’t correct the problem, you can access essential information in this manner immediately, and deal with the hard reset and sync issues when you return to the office.

Hard Reset (Oh it works…. MAN does it work!)

Although a hardware issue may mean that this won’t fix your Treo, any software (non-firmware) issue is WIPED clean with this… along with all information you have, all programs and everything else. Once done, you will be holding a “factory direct” model of the Treo 650. Brace yourself for it. Hard reset is a last resort to fix software issues.

To Hard Reset: Hold down the red “phone” button (the one you use to end calls) and press the reset button on the back of the Treo. Once the “Palm Powered” black and white screen appears, release the button.

You now have the option to erase everything on your handheld. This won’t affect your expansion card, but if you say “yes” everything else is gone. GONE, I say! Take a deep breath and push “yes” to hard reset.

So, if you haven’t taken my advice on doing backups yet, I’ll bet you will after this happens to you the first time, eh?

If you HAVE the SD card backup (and you have a recent version) you will feel very little pain from this process. If you don’t have a backup, you have an extremely OLD backup, or you are away from your computer, you will experience a bit of discomfort. You now have a very basic phone in your hands, without even a phone book (unless you have stored the essential numbers on your SIM card).

Now, if you are reading this, you should really do the following: Once things are back to normal and you reinstall all your information on the Treo — GET A SD CARD AND GET A BACKUP ON IT! I usually try to keep a direct link to the better SD card deals on this site under the “Essential Storage” header — look for it.

Be sure you have SuperUtility (or a similar program) for troubleshooting in the field.

Use CardExport to backup your SD card once a month (I back mine up once a week when I do my full system computer backups and my website backups).

The Treo 650 is wonderful, you know I adore mine, but there is seldom a time you will feel more let down by something than when you are holding a blank version of what WAS your all-in-one machine. I call mine my “brain” and if I were ever left with a blank version, well… you get the picture.

And I don’t even try to keep the reset information in my head… (See the photo below). I used my flat label maker to attach this information to the inside of the battery cover. When I get all stressed out (like in situations when my brain resets over and over again) I don’t remember some essential details. This is one of my work-arounds ;O)

Best wishes for a happy restore process from a recent backup!

For those “MAC” folks among us, Palm has dedicated a page just to you. And a user has been kind enough to post a “step-by-step” for those who wish to sync a Treo to a Mac via bluetooth.

For information on how to overcome the difficulties of the Bluetooth sync between a Treo 650 and your Mac, visit J.B. Zimmerman’s blog post. He’s not much of a Treo fan, but he’s managed to overcome this hurdle and others have offered additional information on this particular issue on his blog.

If you want additional “Palm approved” information on using the Treo with a Mac, you may want to visit their dedicated page to learn more.

PalmOne, errr… Palm… (whatever they are calling themselves now) has released a significant number of firmware upgrades for the 650.

If you plan to upgrade, please PLEASE be sure to get a good full system backup of your palm. I’d recommend doing a “to the card” backup for those who have an SD card) as well as a full backup (I use BackupBuddy) on your PC.

For instructions on how to download the firmware updates -

Visit the Palm site and download if you have the following phones:

For Sprint

Unlocked GSM

Verizon Wireless

Voicemailer Update for Cingular (Palm is promising a fuller-featured update for Cingular phones later this year)

Go HERE to see all the updates and downloads for your particular phone from palm

Be sure you download the CORRECT firmware update for your model. Pulling down the wrong one will cause enormous headaches.

While cruising the US Trademark Office site this a.m., I found some new information (or at least ‘new to me’ information) on protecting the intellectual property rights of small businesses…

If you would like to see this information yourself, visit www.uspto.gov/smallbusiness.

If you aren’t using your email sig line to market your business and promote your interests, you are missing a huge opportunity.

How many emails do you send out a day? How many in a month? THAT is how many opportunities you are losing to promote! (more…)

I just bought my first BlueTooth “dongle” for my PC. The only reason I got it was to start learning to use it with the Treo (and so I can attempt to be on my network while I’m strolling around the cabin).

My husband swears that the only reason I needed to go to Best Buy to pick one up this weekend, was so I could SAY the word “dongle” — which, btw, is a word that one seldom gets to say in polite conversation.

Although I’ve started the process of doing the setup, client projects have put it on hold.

So, even though I haven’t had the chance to finish up mine, I thought I’d share some resources for those of you as new to BT technology as I am:

I found the following article on setting up Dial Up Networking on the Treo 650:

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/howto_legal_dun.html

Which lead me to another great resource on BT Technology in general:

http://www.jonsguides.com/bluetooth/driver.html

Hopefully I’ll catch a bit of time next week to finish setting mine up, but until then — I hope those Treo Techies among us can use these guides.

I wrote several political folks about the angst I felt on the Supreme Court’s Decision on Kelo Vs. New London recently. I got a letter last week from 1st District Kentucky Congressman, Ed Whitfield. I must say, I was impressed.

As usual, I expected a typical form letter that said “thanks for writing” — but the response I received not only addressed my concerns, it also educated me on another issue — one of which I was not yet aware.

The issue was an amendment to the FY06 Transportation/Treasury Appropriations bill which would prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to enforce the Kelo decision. Whitfield, thankfully, voted against that as well. It’s now headed to the Senate.

Can you imagine? Not only can the government (by this Kelo decision) take your land to improve the tax base, they can also use the taxes you do pay to enforce their ability to do so. Geeze!

If you would like to see the whole letter, I’ve created a PDF for you to see for yourself. Now, this may be an extremely well-done form letter, but I’m pleased with it. It’s so much better and more valuable to me as a citizen than the ones I usually see when I write.

Thanks to this response and information from Ed Whitfield, I now feel that my interests ARE being represented on the Hill, even if the Supreme Court isn’t protecting me or my rights.

The Treo 650 is hitting the world-wide markets. A number of countries have unveiled service plans to support the Treo.

Latest news states that countries including China, Switzerland, Australia and New Zeland.

Jodi Diehl of SunFrogServices.com and Angela Parker of WickedWordCraft.com, saw a growing need for a high-caliber network of remote professionals. With over 11 years as independent offsite professionals and over five years in leadership roles in a non-profit virtual assistant organization, these partners knew first-hand the difficulty of locating highly specialized professional outsourcing providers.

Yesterday, the two solved this problem with the launch of RemoteProfessionals.com. This membership-only expert network is the first of its kind for independent providers in the outsourcing community.

The primary goal of the network is to provide highly specialized service providers direct access to a qualified network of peers.

The first small group of RemoteProfessionals.com members was hand-selected by the partners for their professionalism, business experience in providing offsite services, the quality of prior work and the depth of knowledge in their specialized fields. All RemoteProfessionals.com members have defined niche services, have been in business for over two years, and run their businesses as a full-time career. Members of this elite network benefit from peer interaction, project collaboration and access to additional specialized skills via their professional peers. RemoteProfessionals.com offers members the tools to help serve their clients on a broader scale without sacrificing the depth of knowlege that specialization offers and clients require.

Clients will also benefit from this virtual network, having finger-tip access to the most specialized group of virtual service providers availalble for their project. Utilizing member directories or intuitive online search tools, clients can locate a qualified outsourcing professional quickly and easily. RemoteProfessionals.com also offers a project submission form where clients can submit large projects to the network for a collective response.

As a specialist group, these members understand that working together on a multi-service project benefits not only the client, but the provider as well. Utilizing each provider’s specialty skills in a collaborative fashion provides the client with a complete solution to their project. Members’ clients no longer need to spend precious time researching, interviewing and training multiple service providers - RemoteProfessionals.com is the one-stop source for expert outsourcing services.

I’m going to share a post here I made on RemoteProfessionals.com on the topic of virtual vs. brick and mortar businesses. I know that many people are interested in working in this manner — especially those who have just learned about the concept. A couple years ago, I was president of an international organization for these virtual workers and even now people interested in virtual assistance still contact me.

So, I thought I’d share my own take on the topic of outsourcing, virtual assistance, offsite specialists and remote professionals. You pick the phrase you prefer. I like Remote Professional and Offsite Specialist myself. ;o)

Now on to the topic :

Is it easier to run remote business than it is to run a traditional, brick and mortar one? (more…)

This week, Wicked Blog logged over 100,000 hits!!! (I’m so proud!) And I’ve also been picked up on a couple friendly blogger channels. Now, if only I could find a visitor-friendly solution to better managing the drive-by blog spamming!

I’ve posted a new section over on Wicked Treo which features interviews with real estate agents using a Treo and Miguel Berger of www.TechValleyHomes.com is my first interview. He’s as impressed with the tool he’s found in his Treo 650 as I am in mine!

Jodi Diehl of SunfrogServices.com has proposed a PHP page program method which may allow me to bypass the login issues between GeekLog and the Treo, so I can blog while I’m on my trip to Colorado next month. This is the one thing I don’t like about having the WickedTreo.com site and Wicked Blog on the GeekLog system. I’ll post over on the Wicked Treo site if it works, for anyone else trying to blog on GeekLog from a Treo device.

I tripped across an interesting quote that, I just have to share after my post on fingernail data storage research –

The quote from one of my favorite writers:

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” — Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

And to think, I’ve been all distressed by the fact that I want both “high tech” and “simple” in my life. It never occurred to me that back in the 1800’s Thoreau would have a quote to forecast the solution to my “rub” on this topic. Now, if only I can manage to reduce the number of things I juggle to what will fit on my Palm, if not on my thumbnail — perhaps I’ll have arrived! I’m almost there now!

Also, in the name of simplicity (and easier navigation) I’ve added new blocks to the Life in the Woods section of the Wicked Blog so the Farm Story, Farm Chronicles, and additional personal stories can be seen from that section, without cluttering up the top of every page or meshing messily with the business entries. So, if you were reading the chapters and suddenly they disappeared, you now know where to find them again!

Until next time!

PalmOne has made what was old new again, by reverting to the original brand of Palm, Inc. as of today. The only noticeable change — to the casual eye — is a new, incredibly ugly orange logo.

Personally, I liked the super-shiny metallic logo. It was good “at a glance” branding for the company and the current logo looks, well, “amateurish” in comparison. But, that’s just my opinion.

Enfora has announced the release of the long awaited WiFi sled for the Treo 600 and Treo 650 and preorders are to be made available on two sites.

The announcement on the Enfora site www.Enfora.com, lists MobilePlanet and TreoCentral as the lucky sites authorized to accept preorders. The little device runs $140-145 as a preorder item.

So if you are a “gotta have it now” type — you should head on over to order.