Kinoma Notes

The battery that comes with the Centro is pretty good, especially if you use your Centro mainly as a phone. The amount of charge that a battery can hold is measured in “mAh” (“milliampere-hours”), and the stock battery offers 1150mAh.

If you use Kinoma Player on your Centro as your main media player, you’ll be happy to know that Palm just introduced an extended battery for the Centro. This new battery offers 1850mAh — a 60% improvement!

Since the new battery extends a few millimeters beyond the back of your Centro, it comes with a new battery door that keeps your Centro looking sleek (if a little pregnant). A Treonaut reviewer found that his Centro with the new door was still “well designed” and “very comfortable”.

The Palm Centro Extended Battery is available with a white battery door now, with other Centro colors following shortly.

• Palm Centro Extended Battery [Treonauts]
• Centro Extended Battery Review [Treonauts]

The Amazon Unbox video store is a great place to buy and rent DVD-quality movies and videos. I’ve used it more than once when I needed something new to watch.

The only downside was that I couldn’t take purchases with me, at least without buying another device that I really didn’t need. Also, I didn’t want to have to remember to convert and transfer purchases every time I went anywhere.

Here’s some excellent news — you can use Kinoma Player, along with Orb, to play your Amazon Unbox videos right on your phone. Here’s how:

• Download and install Orb on a PC authorized to play your Amazon Unbox videos. (Since AOL’s Winamp Remote is a re-branded version of Orb, it should work too.)
• Use Web (Blazer) on your device to go to my.orb.com, and confirm that you can play other video and audio from your PC with Kinoma Player.
• Make sure Orb is configured to look for video in your Amazon Unbox video folder. It’s at C:UsersPublicVideosAmazon Unbox on Vista by default, and you’re all set if Orb is already configured to look in that folder’s parent folder (C:UsersPublicVideos).
• Enjoy Amazon Unbox video everywhere!

If you run into any problems, remember that our forum is a great place to get help from the Kinoma community.

Toysoft’s Picture Link is a Palm OS utility that lets you create your own Launcher shortcuts, complete with custom icons.

Recently, Toysoft added support a new shortcut type — Kinoma — that lets you create Launcher shortcuts for Kinoma Player 4 EX.

Creating a Kinoma Player link is as easy as clicking Kinoma and entering the shortcut name and URL.

If there’s a Kinoma shortcut you find yourself using all the time, you can even assign it to a hard key for even quicker access.

• Toysoft Picture Link

Softick recently released a version 1.2 update for Softick Audio Gateway (SAG), which lets you use Kinoma Player and other Palm OS applications with Bluetooth headphones.

The update fixes issues that are important for Kinoma Player customers, including fixes for mono audio (popular for podcasts).

This update also works better with Kinoma Media Embedded, which is the Kinoma-built streaming player built into all Centro and Treo smartphones.

• Softick Audio Gateway

You’ve got several choices — more than you might think — when it comes to controlling your audio volume while using Kinoma Player.

With a stylus

The most intuitive way to adjust volume is with your stylus (or if you’ve got the nails for it, your finger).

Simply drag the stylus over the volume control to adjust your volume.

With your Centro or Treo’s volume buttons

Hold the buttons down until the volume is close to where you want it, then use individual button presses to fine-tune.

Tip: Using the dedicated volume buttons gives you finer-grained volume control than using the stylus.

With the 5-way control

To adjust your volume with the 5-way control:

• Highlight the volume control by using the 5-way
• Press the 5-way’s center key to select it
• Use up/down or left/right to adjust your volume
• Press the center key again when you’re done

Tip: Using the 5-way controller gives you finer-grained volume control than using the stylus.

With headphones

Many headphones include an inline volume control. If you have headphones you already like, you can even buy a separate inline volume control for them.

You can set Kinoma Player’s volume to the highest volume you’d like to use, and from there use your headphones’ inline volume control to adjust your volume.