[mdlug] Droid report

[Ingles, Raymond]

 I've had my Droid phone for close to a week, and figured I'd give a
little report on it.

 Hardware-wise, it's awfully good. The screen is beautiful. The camera
takes decent pictures and good video. The speakers are entirely
competent and the sound is good through headphones. The keyboard isn't
quite as good as the rest of it, but it's perfectly serviceable, or will
be once I've messed with the software a little. The micro-USB hookup is
mildly annoying; I have a ton of mini-USB cables laying around, but only
the micro-USB cable that came with the Droid, for now. (Anyone know a
cheap source of micro-USB cables?)

 The software is pretty good. Definitely some rough edges, but workable.
The internet functions are solid: the browser's very usable, email works
fine, etc. Had no trouble hooking up to my 802.11g WAP, etc. I was able
to find SSH and VNC clients; haven't tried the VNC client yet, but the
SSH client did well.

 Downloaded a few games and toys, enjoyable enough. I've managed to move
over my contacts and secured passwords from my Treo with some conversion
tools. Still working on the calendar, but it looks doable - I found a
Perl script to convert a Palm calendar to iCal format, and that should
be importable once I remove some personal entries.

 Video plays very well on this device. With an 854x480 screen, there's
room for every single pixel on a DVD. I've put together some scripts
that convert DVDs and videos for viewing on the Droid (which doesn't
like the AVI or FLV formats but seems happy with MP4) and the results
are a joy to behold. Commuting on the bus is going to be even more
entertaining now. F/X blockbusters were a little anemic at 320x240 (to
fit on the Treo's 320x320 screen) but on the Droid they look beautiful.

 There are several programs that I need to write. First up, to my
surprise, is a decent text editor. I figured out how to cut and paste,
but none of the free text editors I've looked at support search or
replace, nor jumping to a particular point in a file. Fortunately,
development doesn't look too hard.

 The second thing up is a modification to keyboard input. On the Treo,
there was a utility called "KeyCaps" that sped up typing considerably.
Hold a key for a brief time (I had it set to 1/4 sec) and you'd get the
capital letter. Double-tap within a set time (again, 1/4 sec for me),
and you'd get the punctuation character. Not having to chord keys on a
small keyboard is very useful, and makes a surprising difference in
typing speed and ease.

 I want to make a client for my "Ostiary" program, of course, and an
encrypted, secure diary/journal program.

 After that, I figure it should be possible to port the old "Maelstrom"
game (Asteroids clone from the original color Macs) without too much
trouble. By the time I've got all the above under my belt, I should be
ready to port a BZflag client that uses the accelerometers for
steering...

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                    (313) 227-2317

   "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right;
        and if wrong, to be set right." - Carl Schurz

The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee or an authorized designee, you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify us immediately and then destroy it.