Treo 650 Stuff.

Thought this might be a good time to post some things I find useful for using the Treo 650. (My brother just got one too - and despite my previous hesitation about the 650, I encouraged him to do it. He's well pleased with it so far).

1) First of all, I would agree with Mitch that it’s essential to have a KeyCaps utility on there. I don’t know about KeyCapsHack, but I use KeyCaps600, which may be the same thing. It’s free. See my earlier comment on this as well.

2) Two programs suggested to me by Mitch which are handy: FileZ (free file manager) and SofTick Card Export II (Use the SD on the treo like flash memory).

3) You can stream music from your home computer to the treo using the free service at Gloonet and Pocket Tunes Deluxe (not free). I did this once and it was pretty cool, though I don’t listen to much music this way.

4) VeriChat – an IM client for the Treo, runs AIM, Yahoo, and the other stuff. Useful if you use IM. Not free, if you're honest.

5) The Treo doesn’t come with a digital voice recorder, which is a shame. I haven’t found a good one, though I just obtained the “Audacity” program and haven’t tried it yet.

6) mEncryptor is a 256bit security encryptor for data on there. I use it to protect passwords and the like. Well worth the price, even for me.

7) I try to use the phone app “speed dial tabs” as my main launcher. These are the tabs that say “contacts”, “Call log”, “Voicemail,” etc. on the bottom of the main phone screen. You can set these to run web bookmarks and applications in addition to phone numbers. So, I get to most of my frequently used bookmarks (Google Local, Amazon (to check prices), CNN, etc) straight from here, as well as HotSync, VeriChat, etc.

8) From the phone speed tabs you can assign different ringers to different people. Useful for screening your calls. You can also record someone saying “it’s me, don’t bother picking up the phone” and have that be their ringer.

9) I disable the touch screen during calls. Prevents accidental mishaps and whatnot. Just be aware that when you press a button to get back to the screen, that first press does nothing. You’ll see what I mean.,

10) I haven’t used Jot before, but recently I tried using Graffiti Anywhere, and did not find it very useful. First of all the Treo 650 uses “Graffiti 2,” which requires different keystrokes than the Graffiti I’m used to (the one that came with the Pilot 1000). Why did they have to change it? It’s not any better with the new keystrokes. Seems worse actually. Whatever. But it’s free and worth a try if you’re interested. Anyhow, once I figured out how to set KeyCaps600 properly, the keyboard is working better for me.

11) Here’s something that took me forever to figure out (actually Mitch showed me how to do this): all those “graffiti” shortcut keys, i.e. where you make a forward slash with the stylus, followed by the key (Forward slash-C gives you “Copy” for example), are replicated by using the “Menu” button that’s at the upper right of the 4-way toggle button. So Menu button-C gives you “Copy.”

12) Oh, and I map the camera to the “calendar” button. I never use the calendar, and you never know when, um, a ‘tasteful’ picture might need to be captured. With the shutter sound off, of course. Ha.