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June 3, 2008
Music
enoughalready


May 29, 2008
Music
bren - 1 -- [48:20]
bren - 2 -- [48:34]


May 26, 2008
Music
thousands of percent


May 22, 2008
Music
freeform jam with bren


May 18, 2008
Music
biderman - 1 -- [24:07]
biderman - 2 -- [17:56]


April 26, 2008
Music
spoorking


April 23, 2008
Music
actrudo


April 15, 2008
dear people who run mail servers

Can you please configure your mail servers to check the reverse-DNS on incoming mail? For example, if an email comes from "soandso@somedomain.com", please, for the love of God, check the MX record for "somedomain.com" and make sure it matches the server trying to deliver you mail?

For some reason people like to spam faking some of our addresses, so we get a bazillion "delivery error" messages. UGH.



11 Comments


April 6, 2008
Another one

Oh my god this one is so good:

Scrubs Theme Remix of Ode to ZB.

Laughing my ass off here.. awesome



1 Comment


April 4, 2008
a remix someone sent me!

Apparently someone remixed the vocals to the song "Ode To ZB" (which was an improv with me and Dave Biderman), and it appears it was played on some faraway radio station:

Kivonat Radio

The original track is here:

Ode to ZB

Woohoo!! So awesome!

2 Comments


April 3, 2008
wtf

Radiohead's Remix Thing looks neat a glance. But I think they missed the boat here and should've done it differently.

1) Don't make us use iTunes, for the love of God (sorry, Steve, but you know I'm right). 7digital or whoever else would've been forgivable.

2) Making people PAY for stems is dodgy. It would be one thing if we could buy stems for our own enjoyment of the whole album.. THAT would be worth buying... I understand they probably want to not be paying for the bandwidth--but seriously, use BitTorrent then or something. Nevermind that, if they didn't want to pay for bandwidth, why would they have all the remixes on their site? None of them seem to play for me, so maybe they didn't get enough...

3) The terms of the remix site are pretty terrible. I mean, giving them total ownership of everything that you upload just sucks. It's completely one-sided. Not only do I have to PAY them for stems, but anything I give back to them they get ALL rights to, and I get absolutely NONE? This is a tough sell.

Anyway, it's just disappointing. With just some slight changes this could feel like so much less of an marketing stunt and more like something legit and good.

2 Comments


April 2, 2008
Music
freeform jam with brenbiderman


March 30, 2008
two more songs

Here we go:

The Long Stretch and Not The One

(these are very preliminary, 2 hour mixes)

Recordings:

the last 99
the last 99 slow

2 Comments


March 29, 2008
Music
brendan - 1 -- [29:28]
brendan - 2 -- [31:22]
brendan - 3 -- [21:21]
brendan - 4 -- [16:18]
brendan - 5 -- [21:30]
not the one


March 28, 2008
Music
long stretch


March 17, 2008
Music
newmp


March 16, 2008
Bored during SNL

Mariah Carey is on.. ran out of record-ahead on the TiVo, so somehow I'm watching until the end, even though it's probably over after this anyway. The digital short this week was pretty funny, I thought...

Here's a song I made last night: Radon.

Umm, what else in the last month? OK so I'm boring..



7 Comments


March 14, 2008
Music
delay2
piratesex
radon


March 4, 2008
Music
brennewtfrancis - 1 -- [63:29]
brennewtfrancis - 2 -- [2:54]


March 1, 2008
Music
freeform jam with bren


February 18, 2008
Music
freeform jam with bren
chrbrenmeb - 1 -- [17:10]
chrbrenmeb - 2 -- [80:36]


February 15, 2008
lock-in

Was reading an article on Bruce Schneier's blog about software lock-in, and found this quote intruiging:

    Economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian even proved that the value of a software company is the total lock-in. Here's the logic: Assume, for example, that you have 100 people in a company using MS Office at a cost of $500 each. If it cost the company less than $50,000 to switch to Open Office, they would. If it cost the company more than $50,000, Microsoft would increase its prices.
I absolutely despise artificial or intentional lock-in and am attempting to make a software company that tries (actively) to do as little as possible to lock people in-- nothing, that is, except making the best software possible. Yikes, there is a long shallow road ahead of us...

6 Comments


February 14, 2008
to my love, OS X.

JUST KIDDING. Quite the opposite in fact. It's been really exhausting porting stuff to OS X. Here are some reasons why:

1) Poor (and often hard to find) documentation-- Yes, some of the newer APIs are decently documented, but dig in and try to use ATSU to render text, and it's a world of pain. Looking through header files that all seem to assume you know what to do. This is tolerable, though, with enough digging you can find what you want.

2) The AudioUnits SDK-- the API for AudioUnits is defined in a header, but not documented. So to use AU, you'd have to either just use the SDK (with EXTENSIVE amounts of code), or reverse engineer it to figure out what calls you need to do to control the plug-ins yourself. Someone obviously spent a lot of time defining an extensible plug-in API, why the fuck don't they document it?! I mean, really, just a "first, call this, then, call that, then, when you're ready to process X, do Y." If this info is somewhere, someone please let me know... (see the next point)

3) The previous two points might to be related to the fact that Apple seems to assume that as a Mac developer, I've been developing for macs continuously since 1984, and have religiously read the developer mailing list since whenever it was created. Apple: for the love of god find some way of getting those mailing list posts linked to/from the relevant documentation pages.

4) There are WAY too many ways to accomplish similar things. The classic example which I bitch about a lot is text rendering--last I checked, there is CoreText (apparently awesome, but 10.5 only), CoreGraphics text functions (seem nice, but lots of limitations including non-functioning text measuring), HITheme rendering (which is nice but doesnt give you much for font style selection), AppKit NSString/NSAttributedString drawing (great, but slow), ATSUI (seems to be the best all around but takes a bit to get to the point where you get what's going on). I understand that there are historical reasons for these APIs, but again, this can be fixed with proper documentation (perhaps a page describing all of the APIs and their benefits and drawbacks).

5) Addition of new APIs in new OS versions. I know Apple wants to sell new OS versions, but from a developers standpoint, it's really difficult to properly support multiple versions of OS X. I'd like to use new OS features if available, but fall back to old versions if not. If there's a clean way to do this, I'd love to hear about it -- on Windows we usually just load the appropriate DLLs if available..

6) Performance on OS X for basic graphics drawing seems terrible. Perhaps if you take advantage of the highly OS X specific stuff, you can get around some of this, but as an example I made two native projects, one for OS X and one for Win32, that create a 640x480 window and try to draw at about 30fps. They fill the background black and draw white lines. On Windows basic double buffering is used, on OS X the system buffers the drawing. The OS X version uses Cocoa and CoreGraphics to draw, and the view is opaque.

The source code which you can build is here (VC6/win and Xcode2.4+ for OS X required).

Results: on the same Core2 hardware: OS X: 11% CPU use. WinXP: 1% CPU use. In fairness to OS X, it was drawing pretty antialiased lines, however when I disabled AA on the OS X build, the CPU use went _UP_ to 20%. Go figure. It's not really the line drawing, either--make it draw just one line the numbers dont change much...

February 14, 2008
and Windows...


Well I don't have anything to really bitch about Windows right now, but I'm really disappointed with all of the VC++ builds after VC6. The issues are a plenty, but it makes it hard to upgrade. All dynamic linking uses msvcrt71.dll etc which even MS doesnt distribute anymore, so you end up having to static link. Bleh.

I guess most people don't care about the size of their software, but for us keeping the program size down is also part of keeping the development process fast and efficient. If I have to upload a 30mb installer and everybody has to download one to test...

14 Comments


February 13, 2008
Music
freeform jam with brennewt


February 11, 2008
Music
freeform jam with bren


January 27, 2008
Music
freeform jam with newtbider


January 26, 2008
Music
slow


January 24, 2008
no time prototype video

My old Canon XL1 finally gets some use.. I love putting it in full-manual mode, mmm.

Shot this in 45m, then spent an hour or so editing:

It's actually a lot better in high quality form (17MB XVID AVI).

Perhaps if I'd actually written a song ahead of time it would have been better...

2 Comments


January 9, 2008
Music
freeform jam with brennewtsteve


January 1, 2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR(S)

(this serves as a reply to those who texted me HNY and didn't get a response from me).

The Radiohead NYE special was (predictably?) good. Mmm. My tivo won't erase that for a while.

We migrated to SVN for version control a while back. Definitely liking it, and Tortoise SVN rules. No good free mac SVN clients I've found, though (anybody?). So for now the command line version isn't bad. I can't believed I'd used VSS and/or SourceOffSite for over 8 years. Eep.

I've set up an SVN server for use with audio and REAPER projects, to aide in some collaboration. It's sort of working, although I think most people aren't used to version control.

Someone REALLY needs to make a web site where you can upload projects with media, then other people can make derived versions, and upload them, and you can go through the whole tree of projects etc. Seriously. Either using something like SVN or whatever. Would be awesome to open up that sort of collaboration. I know there are sites out there doing half of this, but I haven't seen it done really well.

Oh and I never posted this link here, our show we played in November:

But now sadly Christophe has fled the country off to a beach somewhere, and we're lonely and drummerless.

What else? Well it'll have to wait til next time.



Recordings:

freeform jam with biderman

5 Comments


December 21, 2007
Music
freeform jam with bren


December 16, 2007
Music
biderman - 1 -- [42:54]
biderman - 2 -- [41:04]


December 14, 2007
Music
summer-novox
summer


December 6, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbren


December 5, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenshawn


December 1, 2007
Music
bla


November 30, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchrlast


November 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbiderman


November 20, 2007
wooo

We played a fun show last night, should have some video up soon.

Man this is funny shit though (which I first read on At Ease), Lily Allen complaining about Radiohead, "It's arrogant for them to give their music away for free - they've got millions of pounds. It sends a weird message to younger bands who haven't done as well.".

YEAH! THATS MESSED UP! And all those people making open source software shouldn't do that either, because it's unfair to all of the soon-to-be Microsoft's of the world as well!

(As a side note, sorry Craig, I know you like Lily Allen, but think how this could be directed at Prince, too)..

The comments on that At Ease article page are hilarious, though. Some great reading, especially if you are putting of write a tab control wrapper layer...



2 Comments


November 19, 2007
Music
freeform jam with biderman
freeform jam with brenchr


November 15, 2007
Music
dzbacoustic


November 8, 2007
blogness

OK I'm going to start using this more so REAPER users can see what's happening with development. The last bit of time has been spent on Mac porting. To do the mac port we are developing some software called SWELL, which is part of WDL.

SWELL allows you to easily adapt Windows code to target Quartz natively. It's not trying to be completely compatibility like WINE or WINELib, but rather is focusing on providing the minimal subset, with maximum efficiency and minimal overhead. I'm actually getting into it, too.

If you are a Windows developer considering porting stuff to OS X, you should check it out. Well, actually wait a few weeks cause we're in the process of making it a LOT better. :) Oh and don't forget to remap XCode's keys to make it behave more like MSVC!



1 Comment


November 7, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbren


November 6, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


November 4, 2007
Music
biderman - 1 -- [48:53]
biderman - 2 -- [27:43]


November 3, 2007
holy shit the daily show rules

Been watching some old Daily Shows (which I might add is fucking great that they put them ALL online! HOLY CRAP! AWESOME!).

Just watched election night coverage from 2000, and man, Stephen Colbert CALLED IT. Watch this video:

Now I know you could say he was just joking, but holy shit.



2 Comments


November 2, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


November 1, 2007
Music
excuses


October 31, 2007
Music
mayplay


October 30, 2007
Music
atthebottom-99
atthebottom
brenchr - 1 -- [72:07]
brenchr - 2 -- [85:33]


October 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 22, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 19, 2007
Music
bowedsoul
freeform jam with chr


October 16, 2007
Music
shawn - 1 -- [4:43]
shawn - 2 -- [19:29]


October 15, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 14, 2007
Music
bdayjambrenbidernewt - 1 -- [15:43]
bdayjambrenbidernewt - 2 -- [43:42]


October 10, 2007
Radiohead "In Rainbows"

I'm digging it. A lot. Not as huge to me as some past Radiohead albums were, but then again I probably ruined some of the impact for myself seeing them play these songs live a few times first, whereas before I heard Kid A the first time I had never heard any of it. Not that I'm complaining-- seeing Radiohead live is absurdly fantastic...

October 10, 2007
REAPER 2.0 woohoo


After over a month in beta, we finally released 2.0 final. Woohoo. Here's the changelog (condensed but shown here so I can reflect on the lengthh of it):

  • added elastique Pro, Efficient, and SOLOIST as pitch shifter/time stretcher options
  • action: new actions to toggle/clear/set individual lock modes
  • action: actions to set take by index (1-9) active
  • action: "Take/Paste as takes in selected items"
  • action: "render items to new take" (which is like apply fx but without fx)
  • action: action to toggle item "preserve pitch when changing playrate"
  • automation: added option prefs/editing/"Automatically add/arm envelopes when tweaking parameters in write modes"
  • automation: autoadding vol/pan/playspeed envelopes autoresets trims to unity
  • automation: mute envelopes for tracks/sends (no UI integration for automation recording yet)
  • automation: fixed vol/pan/playspeed tooltips when in automation modes
  • compatibility: perf meter: fixed incorrect ram usage on w2k
  • compatibility: fixed a win2k text drawing gdi corruption issue
  • compatibility: fixed a win2k media explorer refreshing bug
  • compatibility: vertical zooming now flickery in WINE (since WINEs WM_SETREDRAW breaks things -- WINE developers, contact us)
  • defaults: made Take Lane viewing on by default
  • display: fixed bug with changing screen resolutions
  • editing: fixed cutting items in ripple all mode
  • editing: split items at loop selection selects only items in selection (not unsplit previously selected items)
  • editing: apply fx to new take now works on empty items
  • editing: better zoom from scrollbar when zoom set to center on mouse cursor
  • editing: enabled zoom out to see more than a few hours
  • editing: better envelope behavior in item moving and ripple editing
  • editing: fixed bug with slip editing items fudging automation
  • editing: shifting/nudging loop selection works better with time signatures
  • editing: main track view sub-pixel accuracy improvements
  • editing: ctrl+dragging loop selections when item left/right locked now works
  • editing: force selection to beat lengths now supports multiple time signatures
  • editing: new item lock modes (item edges, controls)
  • editing: better drag and drop file positioning in certain instances
  • fx: comment window is now modeless
  • fx: added vertical scrollbar to comment window
  • fx: you can now rename instances of effects to better describe their application
  • fx: action to build multichannel routing for the output of multichannel VSTis
  • fx: action to build 16 channels of midi routing for the current track
  • fx: vsts that have latency and send MIDI now can send ahead of time
  • fx: updated VST samplerate change calls for buggy plug-ins
  • fx: special case code for simulanalog VST plugins (aggressive denormal prevention)
  • fx: fixed alt+drag fx moving bugs
  • fx: fixed plug-in config window close order on quit (good for EmuX)
  • fx: better denormalization prevention methods used throughout
  • fx: faster offlining of plug-ins with large state data
  • fx: startup project loading now initializes audio device before loading plug-ins
  • fx: modifiers when drag and drop adding fx (shift=dont bring up config, ctrl=toggle floating of config)
  • fx: floating fx windows remember their positions when closed
  • fx: less showing of fx chain when "auto-float new fx" is on
  • FX: added JS: utility/bufsave, which lets you route feedback in fx chains easily
  • FX: added JS: utility/time_adjustment which allows delay/predelaying signal
  • FX: added JS: autopeakfilter for fun autowah type effects
  • FX: added some new loser JS fx
  • FX: JS PDC support for effects (pdc_bot_ch, pdc_top_ch, pdc_midi and pdc_delay to specify sample delay)
  • FX: JS shared memory (gmem[]) is now shared across all JS instances in reaper
  • FX: added JS play_state, play_position, and beat_position variables
  • FX: safer window class registration/unregistration in many Rea* fx
  • FX: reacomp/reaxcomp performance improvements
  • FX: better offscreen window checking for ReaNINJAM
  • FX: ReaTune now uses REAPERs pitch shift algorithms (elastique soloist is great for this)
  • FX: ReaTune added "click reduction" mode for SoundTouch and possibly other modes
  • FX: ReaTune manual mode ruler, mousewheel support
  • FX: ReaTune subdivision mode (to update at higher frequencies with larger window sizes)
  • FX: ReaPitch, new multi voice pitch shifter
  • FX: ReaEQ and ReaXComp now update undo states on add/remove of bands
  • installer: now allows selection of pitch shifters to install
  • keyboard: better handling of keystrokes when mouse captured
  • master track: can now have more than 2 channels
  • master track: can now control source channels/phase/volume/pan/etc of each hardware output independently
  • master track: better RMS metering, lots of RMS display options
  • master track: better pdc with anticipative rendering
  • master track: master fx chain no longer defaults to bypassed
  • master track: made solo/mute click modifiers not affect master mute/solo
  • master track: right click marquee works in master track (for envelopes etc)
  • master track: fixed undo with no master hardware outs sometimes adding in a default output
  • media explorer: added "Insert as takes in selected items"
  • media item properties: "choose new file" automatically updates take names
  • meters: better event light for record output (midi) mode
  • meters: updated track metering rounding to better pass synthetic tests
  • meters: better track meter clip indicator hit testing
  • meters: better metering for record output (midi) mode
  • metronome: better metronome countin for tempo changes
  • midi: MID file import can now import tempo maps
  • midi: better looking and faster midi peak drawing
  • midi: midi items are now treated as ticks/Quarter Note, except for items in old projects (which are still ticks/beat)
  • midi: fixed open copy of items sometimes dropping notes
  • midi: better sorting of noteoffs and allnoteoff messages
  • midi: reduced excess sending off allnoteoff loop markers
  • midi: fixed splitting items on notes producing 0 length notes
  • midi: fixed bug in fadein for midi items
  • midi: fixed extraneous notes at end of some items
  • midi editor: can now reflect project time signature changes
  • midi editor: grid/quantize are now fractions of whole notes, not of beats
  • midi editor: separate colortheme settings in prefs (including for piano keys etc)
  • midi editor: fixed bugs with play cursor and looped midi items
  • midi editor: better vertical scrollbar
  • midi editor: better focusing when opening/activating and switching modes
  • midi editor: internal cleanups, improved ctrl+select behavior
  • midi editor: pass through to main window keyboard action
  • midi editor: updates to list editor play cursor, better list editor sorting
  • midi editor: list editor note properties sets focus depending on which column the mouse was on
  • midi editor: better focusing when opening/activating and switching modes
  • midi editor: moving notes now uses both absolute and relative snapping
  • mixer: optional FX and Send views (configurable via the mixer menu)
  • mixer: more settings are now stored in the project
  • mixer: options are now assignable actions
  • mixer: new FX/send views are themeable (mcp_fxlist_norm/byp/off/empty, mcp_master_fxlist_ too)
  • mixer: (theme images): mcp_sendlist_knob.png, mcp_sendlist_meter.png, mcp_*list_arrows.png
  • mixer: fixed incorrect minimum height on nonstandard display DPIs
  • Monkeys Audio: fix for Unicode files, fixes for offline support
  • Monkeys Audio: fixed mem leak, fixed 24 bit stereo mode, optimizations
  • Monkeys Audio: now uses asynchronous disk reads if set
  • option: options to not show peaks for muted tracks/items, or non-selected tracks
  • option: added working set configuration in prefs/general/advanced
  • performance: portions of REAPER are now compiled with the Intel C++ compiler
  • performance: faster zoomed-in peaks display
  • performance: fixed muted folder tracks still running fx
  • performance: updated on-stop behavior to keep audio thread locked for less time
  • performance: UAD synchronous fx multiprocessing support
  • performance: improved anticipative fx processing on looped playback
  • performance: renamed fx renderahead "anticipative FX processing"
  • performance: added new "Synchronous multiprocessing" option, which allows multiprocessing on input monitoring, better UAD multiprocessing, etc
  • performance: per-item pitch shifters are now freed when they are no longer needed or media set offline
  • performance: fixed silence-at-end-of-rendering issue with asynchronous writes enabled
  • performance: more robust asynchronous disk writes
  • performance: fixed SMP rendering glitches
  • performance: fixed cpu munch when stopping at end of project
  • performance: mono items pitch shifted are now processed in mono (big speedup)
  • performance: reduced cpu use of empty tracks
  • perf meter: graph shows cur/avg, range, action to reset graph
  • project directory cleanup: now defaults to sending items to recycle bin rather than deleting
  • reamote: possible fix for Nebula plugins
  • reamote: fixed crash when invalid data received on certain message types
  • reamote: fixed support for larger config packets
  • routing: fixed labelling on hardware outs after adding routing
  • routing: renamed send type "Post-FX" to "Post-FX (V1 deprecated)", added a new, better "Post-FX" mode
  • routing: fixed i/o windows open when adjusting/removing routing bugs
  • routing: better rearoute labelling all around when audio device closed
  • screensets: added keyboard shortcut column and button to edit shortcuts
  • screensets: autosave wont save anymore when switching to same screenset
  • screensets: added auto saving option
  • screensets: fixed docker issues
  • screensets: added mixer flags saving
  • screensets: added last focused window state saving
  • tempo map: overhaul: simple tempo changes no longer force a new measure
  • tempo map: improved tempo editing behavior when editing tempo changes and time sig changes
  • tempo map: lengths calculated across timesig markers now use the time signature at the start to determine measure length
  • tempo map: more accurate tempo envelope saving/restoring
  • tempo map: small fades are no longer adjusted by tempo changes
  • theming: faster drawing, faster mouseover updating
  • theming: background for faders, window backgrounds, name backgrounds, etc support pink line for unstretch areas
  • theming: docker is now independently colorthemeable
  • theming: new default colortheme (by WhiteTie!)
  • theming: support for when path to theme dir changes on diff systems
  • theming: advanced faders can have zero line set
  • theming: configurable fonts for track panels / volpan labels etc
  • theming: track_fxempty_h and track_fxempty_v
  • theming: window drawing improvements (less screen corruption issues)
  • theming: fixed stopped resize of transport drawing issues
  • theming: fixed some playspeed automation refresh issues
  • theming: fixed some dark custom color issues with advanced themes
  • theming: better background image edge scaling when compressed to small spaces
  • theming: classic theme color tweaks (for mcp send/fx list)
  • theming: bg tinting for track labels in advanced themes
  • ui: most modal dialog boxes now restore window focus on close
  • ui: added option for gap between items on adjacent tracks (defaults to 4px)
  • ui: fixed non-fancy peaks display on muted items/inactive takes
  • ui: better envelope spacing (small gap between envelopes)
  • ui: better item loop indicator drawing
  • ui: fixed edge loop indicators on some items
  • ui: fixed zero line drawing issue on items
  • ui: fixed peaks display at end of heavily looped items at certain zoom levels
  • ui: better record mode display for midi overdub modes
  • ui: fader ctrl+precision modes hide mouse cursor
  • ui: better spacing for transport status state
  • ui: better volume fader ganging at extremes
  • ui: grid/snap boxes will now correctly display smaller fractions
  • fixed some tiny PCM-floating point import/export precision issues
  • better external midi editor support (fixes, open copy in external editor creates .mid file)
  • faster dB unit conversion throughout
  • demo song: updated mix
  • new about screen



6 Comments


September 26, 2007
Music
bren - 1 -- [9:33]
bren - 2 -- [41:59]
bren - 3 -- [6:18]


September 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with bren and little and chr
brenchr - 1 -- [13:44]
brenchr - 2 -- [68:07]


September 22, 2007
hoofin..

Listening to an mp3 album and reading Deerhoof's diary (both here).. awesome. Those guys rule.

September 22, 2007
wow i just noticed...


Radiohead (my favorite band) is now selling all of their catalogue online in DRM-free MP3. WOW. This is awesome.

I might have to buy some of the B sides I don't have...

September 22, 2007
four paths to mediocrity


I've just started using my fourth mobile phone this year. They all are lacking, in mostly different ways...

The Motorola MPx 220

This phone I've had the longest. It's a great flip phone factor (which makes it very satisfying to hang up), and while it's technically a smart phone (running Windows CE of all OSes), it has good phone features (the dialing feels nice, and it's easy to look up names in the address book using the number pad). It was a pain to sync with the computer without having to use some shareware backup software, though. There was no pointing device, the data connection was a bit slow, the browser basic, but even though the screen was pretty small, you could play videos using TCPMP.. Also I like how easy it is to charge via the USB cable too.

The Palm Treo 650

I think I had the biggest complaints with the Treo (in fact, I think it's the one I'd be the least likely to go back to). From crashing silently and not answering calls, to the touch screen annoying my face, to it being the largest, the list can go on. The upsides are the huge software library (mmm the VNC client was very usable), and incredibly good battery life.

The Nokia E70

This phone (which isn't really offered by any carriers in the US) was great, and I think I may still use it. It's bluetooth support is by far the best (I used BT dial up networking + GPRS on a 3 hour train ride last month and it was outstanding), the phone has great features (WiFi, fast EDGE data, great keyboard that flips out, a good SSH client that you can leave running and come back to, even after making/receving calls or running other apps, etc). The screen is really high resolution, too, but it's a bit small (so you really have to get very close to read it). I really loved my old Nokia TDMA phones, but I think Nokia needs to reevaluate some decisions they made on the E70's firmware. For example, there's a button on the left side of the phone that opens the voice recorder and starts it recording. It's very easy to hit, and there's no way to override this function! Ack. Also there's no auto-lock after a certain amount of time, so you have to be sure to manually lock the keypad. Oh, and little things like looking up names in the contact list, with the keyboard closed, is much harder than it needs to be. The MPX220's method was far superior.

The Apple iPhone

I just got this yesterday (thanks DB), and there's definitely things to like. I dig the screen. It's about the same resolution of the E70, but oh it's so much bigger and easier to read. The web browser is fantastic. The phone is decent. The homebrew software is getting there (VNC client looked nice, but no keyboard yet? ack). Mmm, real headphone jack, too. Why couldn't they do that on the E70? And it autolocks too. Hello, Nokia? But alas, no BT DUN (sad). The touchscreen keyboard, while as good as I've seen for the type, makes me wish I had the E70's again... Oh well...

So maybe I'll start carrying the iPhone and take the E70 with me on trips (for when I need BT DUN)...

anyway

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