[ale] Cell phones

[Chris Ricker]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:

> I was really impressed with a friends hip-top.  It has a built-in claendar, 
> and about 2 seconds after you use it it is syncronized to a web-server and 
> you can see it on the web, too.  All your contacts are synced, also.

I have a Sidekick, which is T-Mobile's branded Danger Hip-Top. The ssh
client ("Terminal Monkey") on it is the main reason I use it. It's a more
usable keyboard / ssh combo than ssh on the Treo, at least to me.

Other than that, the phone side of it's fairly bad. The built-in email's
usable, and the web browser's mostly functional (as long as you don't need
java / javascript -- ironic, since I'm told it's running a java-based OS).

> It does mean, however, that your can't use your native linux tools.  I have no 
> idea if there is any sort of programming API (e.g. web services) for the web 
> side of things which would allow you to interact with it in other ways.

There's not much of a development community, probably because (a) Danger
makes little / no effort to get development kits out to programmers (or at
least they've happily ignored my requests for about 9 months now) and (b)  
Danger controls all distribution (if you write CoolNewApp for it, you have
to contract with Danger to get them to agree to push it to the client
phones)

All in all, I like my Sidekick but that's solely because having ssh anywhere 
I have cell is important to me, and the Sidekick's the best phonish device 
on the market right now that offers that. If that weren't important to me, 
I'd use something else.

later,
chris