Great, great post on the InformationWeek blog by Boing Boing founder, author, and deep thinker Cory Doctorow on how to deal with trolls. It turns out that nuclear science is a great metaphor for managing community and the secret lies in "twiddling the rods" in just the right fashion. Just go read it… you won't be sorry.

H/T to Seth Godin for pointing this one out – it's a keeper. 

FlipStart, the handheld PC released a couple of months ago, is now available from Dynamism, a reseller of high-performance mobile gear. Previously, the tiny PC was only available directly from the company. A number of accessories including batteries and a port replicator for use on the desktop are also available. Interestingly, the FlipStart can be ordered with either Windows XP Pro or Vista Business installed at the same price of $1999.00. Based on my recent evaluations of mobile devices running Windows, battery life is likely to be better with the XP option – an important concern with a device promising 1-3 hours of battery life with the slimline battery to begin with.

The FlipStart measures 5.9" x 4.5" x 1.35"/1.6" (standard/enhanced battery), and weighs 1.5/1.75 pounds. It utilizes a 1.1 GHz Intel Pentium M CPU, 30 GB shock mounted HDD, and 512 MB of RAM. Connectivity options include WiFi, Bluetooth, and an integrated Sprint EVDO module (requires monthly subscription from Sprint).

Its 5.6 inch wide SVGA TFT (1024 x 600) can be navigated using either a small trackpad or a pointing stick above the keyboard to the right, with mouse click buttons above the keyboard to the left.  These options allow the FlipStart to be used on a flat surface or while standing. Based on my very brief chance to try this unit out, it's an interesting form factor if you're looking for a highly portable device that can be used to perform standard PC tasks while on the go.

Just got back from a trip to New York City and catching up on RSS feeds I see that a newWordPress cleint for the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has been released. WordPy is a pretty full-featured client for the Maemo Linux OS and runs on both the Nokia 770 and 800 tablets. WordPy requires Python. I'll get this set up this week and give it a try. Looks like the N800 just got another great use added to its bag of tricks.

H/T to Jonathan Greene. 

I'm off to New York City for a few days and just finished packing my gadget bag for this outing. Given the duration of the flight (about 6 hours with ime zone changes), the brevity of the layover (less than an hour), and the fact that I'm traveling with the family, I have configured my kit with power, entertainment, and flexibility in mind. Here's what I'm bringing along:

• MacBook: Normally I would take the Lenovo X60t Tablet PC on a flight of this duration because of its significantly better battery life and flexibility but I don't have my iTunes library on this machine and my son and I want to catch up on the last few episodes of Heroes during the flight. I also have a few issues of magazines waiting to be read in my Zinio Reader library which is also currently on the Mac. Entertainment is the order of the day as I said.
• Spare battery: because the MacBook is only good for about 2.5 hours when playing video in iTunes.
• Palm Treo 700p: My business phone and EVDO modem.
• Nokia N95: My camera (5 MP) and Jaiku/Twitter/TruPhone/Skype (via Fring) connection
• Nokia N800: For my "waiting to take off" e-mail fix and to show off digital photos to the relatives at the family event we're traveling to attend.
• Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard: With the N800, N95, and Plantronics headset, this is my "new mobile office" that I can set up in seconds and get a bit of work done just about anywhere.
• iPod 30 GB: Tunes, video, and games to keep me and the kids occupied.
• Palm and Plantronics Bluetooth headsets: One for each phone and to assuage my need to have a backup for hands-free telephony.
• Ultimate Ears Super.fi Pro 5 earbuds: the rockingest sound ever in a pair of ear buds I can slip into my pocket.
• Able Planet Clear Harmony noise canceling headphones: I just received these for an evaluation. I'm really looking forward to testing their ability to eliminate the drone of the flight. I'll be passing these around to the entire family to try with their iPods and laptops during the flights.
• Griffin SmartShare headphone jack splitter: vital to the aforementioned video watching with my son. I like this unit because it has independent volume controls for each of us.
• Monster Power Outlets-to-Go four outlet travel strip: Because outlets in airports are still all too rare (except in my home airport in Albuquerque where work tables, power strips, and task chairs are in abundance along with free WiFi). Hotels aren't much better.
• David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous: I've been saving this for the trip when I hope to finally have the quiet time to dive into one of my favorite writer's look at tagging, taxonomies, and the changing landscape of human manipulation and organization of information.
• 1GB green iPod Shuffle: tucked away in the bottom of the bag, this is one of my wife's Mother's Day presents (along with a bouquet of fresh irises being delivered to our hotel and some confectionary goodness). This new unit will replace her current 512MB version one Shuffle which goes to my son. Sshh… it's a surprise so don't tell her. ;^)

That's the kit, all stuffed into my Oakley AP Sandbag. A bit more of a load than I usually carry but I'm confident we'll be well entertained during our travels.

I've been evaluating the Nokia N95 (review coming shortly on this power-packed device and its perfect companion, the N800 Internet Tablet) for about a week now and have been fighting with Nokia's PC Suite on the Lenovo X60t Tablet PC trying to get a just-released firmware update performed. No dice. In a fit of pique, I decided to load PC Suite on my Vista machine on the MacBook and… you can probably guess the moral of this story, right?

That's correct… the update was performed flawlessly in Parallels-Vista.

I'm inclined to blame it on the Symantec "protection" installed on the Lenovo (which I've been running through its trial period out of some sort of perverse fascination with pegging the Core Duo processor for no good reason I suppose). It's about the only significant delta between my setup on the Tablet PC and in my Parallels-Vista machine (where I'm running Microsoft OneCare). Frankly Scarlett… I don't give a damn. Just glad the update has been applied and I can get on with the much more enjoyable task of playing with this new bauble. But, knowing how much some of you enjoy these small ironies, I couldn't resist sharing. 

Just received word from Grahl Software Design that they have released version 1.5 of their PDF Annotator application that is one of my must-have applications on my Tablet PC. From their announcement:

With the help of lots of users test driving our beta releases (thank you!), we have now finished PDF Annotator 1.5. The new release finally includes long awaited features, like text boxes (enter annotations using the keyboard), insert images into PDFs, customizable pens, clipboard support for text and images, pen scaling when zooming and more. And yes, this is a FREE UPDATE for existing users!

About PDF Annotator: PDF Annotator lets the user open any PDF file and add annotations, using the mouse or a Tablet PC pen, directly on the PDF file's pages. The annotated documents can then be saved directly back to PDF format.

The question I'm most asked about this tool is "can anyone open the annotated PDF file?" and the answer is yes. 

As usual, my friend Andrew Carton at Treonauts is the first with breaking Treo news. Today the news is that Palm and Sprint have officially announced the availability of the new Treo 755p. I'm looking forward to seeing this device - it addresses the few concerns I have with my current 700p and the 650 I previously used (now being enjoyed by my son). It's slimmer, has an improved finish, lacks the antenna stub, and adds a few welcome additions to the already great bundled software.

The new Treo 755p brings quick, wireless access to web, email, business, multimedia applications and instant messaging (IM for AIM, Yahoo! and MSN) for Sprint customers nationwide (standard text and Vision charges apply where applicable).  The Treo 755p runs on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network, delivering speeds of 300–600kbps across more than 11,000 US cities and 1,000 airports.

Check out the complete post at Treonauts for all the details. 

Warner Crocker at GottaBeMobile.com points to a press release from Samsung announcing the official launch of the company's latets Ultra Mobile PC offering, the Q1 Ultra. This device is the first offering from Samsung, an early leader in the UMPC market, to feature an integrated thumb board split across both sides of the display. Here's a link to the press release. Two items that make this announcement particularly interesting are the price point – starting at $799 – and the large number of retailers who will be carrying the device. According to the release, this list includes:

• Best Buy
• Circuit City
• CDW
• CompUSA
• Amazon
• NewEgg
• Buy.com
• Costco
• And a host of other retail outlets

That's welcome news. Like the Tablet PC, it's important that people be able to see and touch one of these devices before purchasing. Hopefully they'll get decent shelf placement in the brick and mortar shops and good page position and promotion from the e-tailers.

I must admit I was more than a bit surprised to read this post by Nik Cubrilovic of OmniDrive this morning. Seems his Mac OS partition vanished but the NTFS partition he had set up for Boot Camp on his Mac survived the gremlin attack. Nik installed Vista and describes his delight at the experience– one so positive he says that he's now planning on switching back.

Overall, Vista is very fast and offers many new features. What used to cost $300-400 on XP in additional applications (Nero, ScreenGrabber, SpyBot etc.) I now have out of the box with a slick operating system and interface (the interface, oh the interface). In the past 15 years I have gone from DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Linux, OpenBSD, Windows 98, Windows 2000 (a nice OS for the time), XP, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and now Vista and working with Vista this weekend reminds me of the first time I ran an early preview of Mac OS X and spent an hour running my mouse across the dock (back in 2000). The job of building an operating system isn’t an easy one, and Microsoft have managed to take a good leap forward with Vista which they should get some credit for (although it probably is at least 2 years late). To all my Mac OS X and UNIX using friends, I haven’t left you - but feel free to argue in the comments, but only after you have installed bootcamp.

I've been relying on Parallels to provide my Vista on the Mac experience and, by and large, I'm very happy with the experience. The two issues I've got are the battery drain and always-on fan that accompany my Parallels sessions, making it a less than ideal solution when I'm on the run since the MacBook isn't winning any prizes from me for battery life to begin with. I've been holding out on doing the full partition-the-drive thing until Leopard is released but with the recently announced delay in the new version of the OS and stories like Nik's, I'm thinking it might be time to just go for it and set up a Boot Camp partition to get the full native Windows-on-Intel experience on the MacBook.

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James Kendrick and I hit the ground running in show #37 and device reviews are the order of the day as we discuss the HP tx1000 Entertainment PC and the Lenovo ThinkPad x60 with the multi-touch screen. Both devices are touchscreen convertibles and we have a rousing discussion of the merits of a convertible notebook with a touchscreen. Does James think the tx1000 makes a good Tablet PC? Has my opinion of the Lenovo X60t changed now that I've been using it for a while? Listen and find out.

As I reported earlier in the week, Mindjet has announced the release of the next version of one of our favorite Tablet PC applications. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and you'll find out all about the next version of MindManager Pro 7 as we delve into the new features. You'll even hear about the new features in the Mac version of MindManager.

Enjoy the show!

Special thanks to Tiedye Keith for the great song "Vulnerable" with vocals by Tony Lindsay of Santana.