Our iPaqs were getting a bit old and scratched anyway, and we’ve had them for ages – and these new accessories make a Palm even more interesting.
The first accessory that caught our interest was the foldable infrared keyboard. People have been getting excited about Palm foldable keyboards for a couple of years, but being able to use the device without connecting the keyboard to it definitely has advantages. We wonder if a Bluetooth one will be next, though.
Somewhat cheesy, but we’re sure someone will love it, is the multifunction stylus: it’s a stylus and a pen. And a laser pointer. And a torch. The first three functions we can kind of see the point off, but the torch has us baffled. Definitely an “Executive Gift”.
Palm have also announced a 1.3 mega pixel camera card that will take 1280×1024 24-bit colour photographs and store them on a Palm in JPEG format. The camera is fully functional and isn’t just a pin hole lens with a CCD: it has a digital zoom and adjustable lens for close ups.
Palm Store
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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