Comments on: More Details On Foleo Video Support

"To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos. Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall."

Actually tcpmp cannot play h264 videos. Maybe the core player can.

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Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

*smacking my head*

That's right. Someone mentioned that to me a while back. The reason why I forgot it is that WiFi on my LifeDrive turned out to be such a rotten experience for *basic* websites, that I dropped all interest in even attempting YouTube. (I don't do WiFi on the LD at all now.)

Thanks.

abosco, I know *CLIEs* had Flash for quite some time. I even tried putting that Flash player on my LD. No joy. I wasn't able to find the folder to put FLVs in so the player could find them. Right now, I have no interest in FLV on the LD. I just plop AVIs in and use TCPMP just fine. And I can quickly convert FLVs to AVIs on the PC; another incentive for me to skip FLV on the LD.

I use a commercial software program that does it.

I also have used this:

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

-- which is free, but only (oddly!) to convert WMV to AVI (which the commercial software can't). The website says it can do FLV, but I think the one time I tried it, it was just too slow for me.

As a fellow N800 user, I'd really take issue with your use of thw word smoothly. It does work, but can be pretty choppy. The N800 also has major issues with local divx and mp4 videos, that aren't specifically encoded for it.

I do have hope for the Foleo video.... If TCPMP could run smoothly and handle mostly anything on a Treo 600 (144 MHz omap), I don't see why the foleo would have much trouble with basic non-hd video.

Flash is supported on WindowsMobile, Symbian... etc etc.

...many artists love Flash for things like cartoons and demos that are graphics.

First of all, it's not a problem with Flash in general. The cartoons and stuff (games, I suppose, although I haven't tried) run fine in the browser just like they do in your desktop browser. It's only video that's a problem, and apparently it's only video that's *embedded* in the browser (see Ben's explanation for why that's the case). Note that Windows Mobile can't do embedded YouTube video either: it has to launch a media player to play the content outside of the browser. Since (per Ben) Foleo has the horsepower to deliver video, supporting the YouTube experience sounds like it's probably a matter of getting the browser to work with a native player the way Windows Media Player does with IE. At least maybe that's the simplest way.

I bet it won't be too awfully long before this is fixed, but I agree that it'll be a disappointment for a good number of users until it is.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Yeah, where is Combee to explain this?

He seems to hide in the background over at Treocentral nowadays, surfacing every few dozen posts to give up little technical tidbits like the one used for the article. you can see his posting history here:

http://discussion.treocentral.com/search.php?searchid=7122858

there's quite a few interesting nuggets. Like this one, about how OpenOffice on the Foleo is probably unlikely:

OpenOffice would require a lot of work to port to the device. You would have to rework the whole graphical interface to use the Foleo's system libraries, and you'd have to install a CF card just to hold the program, since a OO installation requires a considerable amount of room. The program would also need logic changes to work well in the "instant-on" application model. The application is also quite heavyweight, so I would expect that it would perform very poorly.

Sorry. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I just don't think you'll see a port of this to the Foleo anytime in the near future.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

>>>I bet it won't be too awfully long before this is fixed, but I agree that it'll be a disappointment for a good number of users until it is.

What do you mean by "fixed?" By Palm or one of the 3rd parties that will be blamed when the Foleo crashes -- just like 3rd-party software is seemingly now criminal in the eyes of Palm PDA/Treo Support?

I don't understand how *any* hardware can be in development over the past year during the rise and conquest of YouTube and other such sites -- yet all that was, what?, ignored?, never thought of?, dismissed as a fad? I mean, hell, even someone in a cave would've heard what Google paid to buy YouTube. (Wasn't that, in fact, more than the value of Palm, Inc?)

> ...Well, that's one of the key points about Linux: unlike Palm OS
> Garnet, every application runs in it's own process with it's own
> protected memory, so if some buggy application crashes it doesn't
> take down the system or the other running applications...

We can hope that WindRiver's implementation of Linux is more robust than, say, other implementations that are "out there". I've noted the less-than-robust Ubuntu I have running on a 600MHz P-III that regularly goes catatonic - including inability to telnet into it (in an attempt to avoid the GUI). The cause of these crashes may vary, BTW, but for sure can be purposefully caused by simply visiting Flash-heavy websites such as Engadget.

That 770 has clearly been a big source of pain for you, Mike, so why don't you donate it to the Salvation Army and get on with your life? If you'd done that back in January and got yourself a nice N800 you'd probably have saved us *all* a lot of grief. Seriously, I've never seen anything like you are describing happen on my N800. I think I had to soft reset it once back in March of this year, and that's just about the only time I even had to boot the OS after I first turned it on back in January. As for the Opera browser, it crashes two or three times a month in daily use with 3-5 windows open, but you just launch it again and in a few seconds you're back in business.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

> ...Or until Nokia dies dies dies...

You may not want to read today's Engadget (http://www.engadget.com)- chock full of new Nokia smartphones.

Nokia traditionally has released a new phone on average every 9 days; it appears they are going for that rate with smartphones, too.

So tell me, how many times has the Foleo froze up?

No freezes or crashes to report. But I'm not really supposed to be reporting publicly one way or the other, so excuse me if I put the brakes on answering lots of questions for now. I'm at less liberty to talk than the folks who got to use the product at one of the Palm events. :-(

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_1501?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

> ...How many BUSINESSES now use FLVs on their sites?...

I can quickly think of a couple off the top of my head that might use Flash. Here's one:

-- http://www.palmthing.com

> ...How many BUSINESSES now use FLVs on their sites?...

I can quickly think of a couple off the top of my head that might use Flash. Here's one:

-- http://www.palmthing.com

That site ain't FLV, just a standard (and crap, to boot) Flash app/animation. FLV (Flash Video) is stuff like Youtube.

I detect a certain amount of irony in watching Foleo videos on YouTube.

Ah! What every serious business person needs.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100

It all depends on your work. I work with Web sites and have to embed video which is flash video. Intranets (which are accessed from on the road users) use video for a variety of things.

It's tough... keep it light, but give me the power to deal with multimedia ;-), it's hard to see Ipods and other small devices with the ability to play video as well as they do and then not be able to put it in a system the size of the Foleo. Seems like some odd-ball corners being cut that are not only important to "business" users, but which also go straight to Palm's. perception/image 'bottom line.' Do we really think Palm can just deliver a pure 'business' cell "phone companion...?" GZ

If you do, post here about your experiences so we can compare it what Foleo owners say.