Nokia 3650 Update

I had a few problems with my phone recently, which took me far too long to figure out, so here are a couple of pointers.

iSync - I still haven't been able to get the iCal integration hack to work successfully. I hope an update to iSync or iCal will address this. I also had iSync contacts synchronization stop working, for no apparent reason. I wondered if it could have been new software I had installed, either on the phone or the Mac, or a failed Bluetooth or iSync upgrade. I tried deleting my prefs files, clearing the contacts on my phone, recreating my phone in the Bluetooth control panel. You name it, I tried it. Except for, well, reading the manual. Apple has a very useful iSync support page that gave me the answer as soon as I looked there. Turns out I had turned on my personal firewall on the miniBook and it conflicts with iSync (although I'm not entirely sure why).

Romeo - One of my biggest (heck, only) regrets about the 3650 was that it didn't support Salling Software's Salling Clicker, which lets you use your phone as a remote control and personal proxy (your computer uses the presence of your phone to determine your presence or absence). I assumed that the popularity of the 3650 and the positive reviews of Salling Clicker would address the problem soon enough. Arboreal Software did just that, releasing a new version of Romeo, which, in conjunction with Veta Universal running on your phone, fully supports the 3650. There's a growing list of plug-ins for Romeo, and it's all driven by AppleScript, so it shouldn't be too hard to scratch your own itch, if you have one. Veta Universal is $8, and Romeo is free.

mReader - Browsing on the phone is still a bit of a pain. It sure would be nice to be able to review my favorite RSS files without the graphical overhead of a browser. You got it! Mark Allanson's mReader is a Symbian-native newsreader. It's a minimal implementation (you can't open links in a browser, for instance), but jeez, it's running on a PHONE, for pete's sake. Here are a few screen shots:

Update (Monday 9:10 a.m.) -- I changed the pictures to reflect the new release of mReader, which among other improvements, is starting to grow an interface. Very nice.

It also directly imported my subscriptions in OPML format as exported from NetNewsWire without a hitch. It only handles 50 feeds, so I need to prune some inactive subscriptions and reload. mReader is free.

Case - I picked up a custom Krusell case from Razzy.com. (The phone requires a custom case so it will have a hole in the back for the camera). It shipped quickly, seems like a nice case, and they included a shorter belt clip than standard so that the clip doesn't block the camera lens. My only complaint is that the size of the display pretty much forces the clear cover to stick to it. I may look at putting another clear layer in there, something like a WriteRight screen cover cut to fit, to keep the case window from sticking to the display.