All posts by Peter Ridge

Peter is a product development and management professional whose career has spanned from computer hardware and software engineering to product packaging, print advertising and user experience design. He is a published author and has applied his skills to a variety of businesses from start up ventures to top-10 media companies.
Software

Syncing Palm and Blackberry Contacts: Solution Update

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A year ago, I posted a step-by-step solution to sync contact data from the Palm Treo to the Blackberry Curve. It should also work well from the Palm Treo 650, 700, 755 and new Centro to a Blackberry Pearl, Curve and other varieties of RIM cell phones.

Since then, that article became and has remained the most frequently read post on my blog. What amazes me is how so many people are trying to transfer their Palm smartphone contact info to or from a Blackberry and unable to get help from the manufacturers and wireless carriers after hours on the phone. The worst “solution” I’ve heard was from an anonymous commenter who said, “[I] just spent 2 hrs with T-mobile/BBerry support. They gave up and told me to transfer contact[s] manually.” Ouch!

Have a look through the original comments about syncing these smartphones. Some are quite entertaining.

The comments have also surfaced other related problems that needed solving. I’ll reprint some of them here since the comment history is getting rather long. But feel free to check out the original list for other goodies.

Transferring data from Blackberry to Palm
Some visitors wanted to actually go the other way, converting their Blackberry info to a new Palm Treo (or perhaps a Palm Centro). That’s pretty easy to do as well:

  1. Sync your Blackberry with Outlook.
  2. Export the data to a CSV file (e.g. Contacts.csv).
  3. Using the Palm Desktop software, import the CSV file from step #2 into the Palm Contacts database.
  4. If all the contacts look good after step #3 (make any correction in Palm Desktop), then HotSync the Treo.

Transferring data from Blackberry to Palm without Outlook

  1. Sync the Blackberry.
  2. Open the Blackberry Desktop Manager.
  3. Go to Intellisync.
  4. Click on Configure PIM.
  5. Select the Address book item.
  6. Click on Choose and select ASCII Import/Export as the type of address book.
  7. Select Export under Operation.
  8. In the file name field, enter Contacts.csv
  9. Click the OK button, then click on Synchronize Now.
  10. When the sync is complete, import the file into Contacts in Palm Desktop
  11. Sync the Palm Treo/Centro, etc.

Syncing from Palm to Blackberry without Outlook

The least expensive shareware/commercial tool to convert from Palm DBA format to CSV is datebookCSV. I haven’t tried it but it looks like it’ll do the job. If you use this tool, post a comment with your experience.

Well, that’s it for now. If you have more tips for Palm or Blackberry users, be sure to post it here.

Software

Firefox 3 Beta Downloads Always Open in the Same Application

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As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been using Firefox 3 Beta 5 quite a bit lately. When I used the Downloads dialog to Open Containing Folder for a document I had downloaded, Firefox asked me what program to use to open file links. Naturally, I selected the application for opening documents, oowriter. Bzzzt! Wrong answer.

Now, it wants to use oowriter to open every file and folder. Firefox wasn’t really asking for which application it should use to open a file, but a file link. So, I should’ve picked a file manager such as Konqueror, Dolphin, Thunar, etc. To fix this, go to Preferences (in the Edit menu on Linux), then Applications and scroll down to file in the Content Type column. In the Action column, select Use other… from the drop down list and choose your favorite file manager. Since I’m using Kubuntu, I chose Dolphin since it’s lighter and loads more quickly.

Is your Applications list empty? You can fix that problem by reading my previous post, “Firefox 3 Beta Applications Preference Empty on Kubuntu / Xubuntu“.

Software

Firefox 3 Beta Applications Preference Empty on Kubuntu / Xubuntu

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I’ve been checking out Firefox 3 Beta 5 since it’s the default browser in Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. When I went to Preferences and looked in the Applications section to fix the action for the file content type, it was empty. That’s not good.

If you’re running into the same problem, there’s a very easy fix for it. Open your favorite package manager (Adept is the default one for Kubuntu) and install the firefox-gnome-support package. A few other support packages will be installed to resolve dependencies. Then, restart Firefox and all will be well.

Software

OpenOffice.org Doesn’t See New Fonts on Ubuntu Linux

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On one PC, I’m running Kubuntu Linux Feisty (haven’t upgraded it to Gutsy yet). It already had the Bitstream Vera (ttf-bitstream-vera) and DejaVu (ttf-dejavu) font packages installed but not the MS fonts that Windows users are familiar with. So, I installed the msttcorefonts package to add Times New Roman, Arial, Trebuchet, etc., to OpenOffice.org.

After installing the new font package, the font drop down list in OpenOffice.org’s toolbar showed all the new fonts. However, when modifying a style, very few fonts appeared in the Font tab. Even the Vera and DejaVu fonts were missing despite the fact that they had already existed in the system prior to my adding the MS fonts.

After much digging online, I found a quick and easy fix on the Ubuntu Forums. Simply run the following on the command line:

sudo fc-cache -fv

I couldn’t find a man page for fc-cache but it essentially refreshes the central font cache so applications can use the fonts.

Bingo! All the fonts suddenly appeared in the OpenOffice.org style editor without even having to restart the editor.

Hardware

Dell Latitude X1 Runs Slowly: Cure

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Do you have a Dell Latitude X1 ultra-portable notebook computer and find that it seems to run slower than usual at times? I encountered the same performance problem and found a cure for the mysterious sluggishness a few months ago.

The Latitude X1 is passively cooled. In other words, it has no fan to blow away the heat generated by the CPU the way mainstream laptops do. Instead the heat is distributed through the bottom of the case. You may have noticed how hot the bottom of the laptop can get.

Without a CPU fan, what happens when the processor gets too hot? It slows down. As a survival mechanism, the CPU’s clock rate will decrease in order to reduce the amount of heat being generated. Usually, the clock rate will be cut in half. As a result, everything will run more slowly. The X1 will do this even if it’s set up to always run at maximum clock rate and is plugged into a power outlet.

The solution to this slow down is quite simple: Cool the bottom of the laptop. This can be done in any of a number of ways including buying a laptop cooler (the rectangular-shaped plate with fans in it) or, if you have an external keyboard and monitor connected to it, flipping the computer over so that heat more quickly dissipates into the air. Leaving the laptop on your lap, desktop or blankets (for those who like to compute in bed) will just exacerbate the heat build up and keep the CPU running at less than full speed during moderate to heavy workloads.