Kinoma Notes » Palm OS

The future of Kinoma’s Palm OS and desktop products

Charles — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:00:21 +0000

Since the launch of the original Kinoma Player in 2002, Kinoma has led the way in mobile media technology. The platform first established in Kinoma Player lives on not only in Kinoma’s flagship product — Kinoma Play — but also in products from companies including Sony and Sling Media.

As Palm OS fades into the sunset, we’ve had a lot of folks ask what our plans are. Today we’re announcing that we’ll be ending sales and support for Palm OS products in order to focus completely on current phone OSs.

If you’re a Palm OS user, here’s what you need to know: Kinoma will be ending sales of Kinoma Player 4 EX on 8/1/2010. We’ll continue to offer support, including any necessary security and critical fixes, until 10/1/2010. Effective 10/1/2010, Kinoma will offer only community-based support Kinoma Player 4 EX via our forum at forum.kinoma.com.

We’re also ending sales and support for Kinoma Producer for Windows and Mac OS on the same schedule.

We’d like to thank everyone who’s supported these products, and helped pioneer the now-common sight of people enjoying music, movies, podcasts and audiobooks on phones. You were ahead of your time, and when you upgrade your phone we hope you’ll choose Kinoma Play.

Fix for Orb + Kinoma Player 4 EX issue now available

Charles — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:00:04 +0000

Do you use Orb with Kinoma Player 4 EX? If so, grab the hot-off-the-presses version 2.55.0091 update of Orb at http://orb.com/en/download_orb.

This release fixes a video incompatibility issue with Kinoma Player 4 EX. We recommend this update for everyone who uses Orb with Kinoma products.

New! Stay on top of tech with 650+ videos from O’Reilly TV

Charles — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:00:31 +0000

If you hang around technical people, you’ve probably seen those computer books with the funny-looking animals on front.

They’re from O’Reilly Media, best known for great books on everything from super-technical topics like programming, to their “Missing Manual” series for the rest of us.

What you might not know is that O’Reilly creates lots of really interesting video content as well. Today, you can watch hundreds of O’Reilly videos on your phone with Kinoma Play!

Here are the new categories now available in Kinoma Guide > Providers > O’Reilly TV:

Gov 2.0 Summit 2009 and Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase 2009 — Want to see what happens when you bring together government and technology thought leaders to reshape government for the better? Here are 84 videos from O’Reilly’s 2009 Gov 2.0 conference.
O’Reilly Conferences — 200 “best of” videos from various O’Reilly conferences and events, including ETech, OSCON, RailsConf, Foo Camp, Sci Foo, Ignite, Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0 Summit, MySQL Conference & Expo and Expo Where 2.0.
O’Reilly Interviews — 50+ interviews with notable authors, editors, and innovators, including Tim O’Reilly, Sarah Millstein, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Larry Wall, Pia Waugh, Nat Torkington, and more.
O’Reilly Webcasts — 140+ webcasts that put you in touch with experts from every area of technology: programmers, web designers, digital photographers, social media gurus, iPhone hackers, open source mavensand more. Each webcast is a recording of a live, online event including Q&As from the audience.
Tim O’Reilly — 34 talks and interviews with the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, who “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is an activist for open source and open standards, and an opponent of software patents and other incursions of new intellectual property laws into the public domain.
Web 2.0 Summit 2009 — 40+ videos featuring the intelligence, innovation, and leadership of the Internet industry, gathered together in one place at one time. Watch incisive plenary sessions, frank onstage conversations, rapid-fire “high order bits”, and Launch Pad, where visionaries and executives from Internet businesses present their unique perspective on the Web’s future-in-flux.
All O’Reilly TV Videos — Browse through all O’Reilly Media videos, including those that don’t fall into one of the above categories.

Enjoy!

As usual this new Kinoma Guide content is free for all Kinoma Play customers. It’s available right now at Kinoma Guide > Providers > O’Reilly TV.

If you have favorite podcasts, radio stations, video streams or other media, send a URL and short description to content@kinoma.com and we’ll add them to Kinoma Guide for everyone to discover and enjoy.

Listen to SKY.fm + Digitally Imported with Kinoma Play: 60+ stations, aacPlus

Charles — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:00:32 +0000

Kinoma Guide’s SKY.fm category is a great collection of streaming radio stations. There’s lots of genres, and yet the refined selection makes it easy to find the kind of music you’re in the mood for.

We’ve just released a new Kinoma Guide update that adds all currently-available SKY.fm and DI.fm (Digitally Imported) stations in all available stream formats — including aacPlus.

aacPlus?

AAC is the standards-based successor to MP3. It offers far higher-quality than MP3 at similar bitrates.

Kinoma Play is the only mobile player that supports not just AAC, but also the even more-advanced aacPlus and aacPlus v2 (a.k.a. HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2) formats.

The SKY.fm streams are available in both MP3 and aacPlus formats. Even though the aacPlus streams are 75% smaller (!) than the 96 kbps MP3 streams, they still sound great. Such a low-bitrate stream makes for great reliability, even in very poor network conditions.

Wow, great! Where do I find it?

You can find SKY.fm in Kinoma Guide > Radio.

Got favorite podcasts? Radio stations? Video streams?

Send a URL and short description to content@kinoma.com and we’ll add them to Kinoma Guide for everyone to enjoy!

Halloween treats from Kinoma (Spooky radio, podcasts and more!)

Charles — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:00:09 +0000

Good eeevening, boo-s and ghouls!

Your timing is perfect — we’re handing out treats a night early this year. You’ll find them in Kinoma Guide > Featured > Halloween Treats.

Big R Radio Halloween Channel — A streaming radio station featuring songs like Ghostbusters, Elvis singing (You’re The) Devil in Disguise, Neil Sedaka’s Little Devil…you get the idea.
Coverville Annual Halloween Shows — Spooky cover versions of songs from some of the podcast’s annual Halloween shows, including Dead Man’s Party, Ghostbusters, The Theme From “The Munsters”, Monster Mash, Thriller, and selections from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Halloween Atmosphere — Play this streaming radio station for a spine-curdling soundtrack to your Halloween activities. (Dare you to listen to it in the dark!)
Halloween Radio and Halloween Oldies — More streaming spook-tastic Halloween radio.
Thriller — Not only do you get the great cover version above, but you also get the entire official Michael Jackson video opus. This scared the candy corn out of my sister and me when we were kids, and it’s still frighteningly fun.
War of the Worlds — This is the entire 1938 radio dramatization that shocked the world and created nationwide panic among confused listeners, many who missed the warning that it was a dramatization since they tuned in after listening to Charlie McCarthy on another station. For those people, it felt like the beginning of the end.

Have a happy, safe Halloween!

The LifeDrive, the T|X, and modern Wi-Fi routers

Charles — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:00:22 +0000

The Palm LifeDrive and Palm T|X were introduced in 2005 — ancient history by device standards.

You’d think both devices be hopelessly out of date by now, but they’re still very useful and (with Kinoma Player 4 EX) still make great media players. The LifeDrive’s chubby chassis is pretty dated, but the ahead-of-its-time Palm T|X was clearly the pinnacle of Palm OS device design. The hardware still looks and feels like it could’ve been released this year.

They both have built-in Wi-Fi, which was still pretty unique back in 2005. Sadly, their Wi-Fi support is showing its age, and the LifeDrive and T|X are unable to connect with more and more modern Wi-Fi routers and access points in their out-of-the-box configurations.

The solution

For my D-Link DIR-825, the solution was to go to Setup > Wireless Settings > Manual Wireless Network Setup and choose “Mixed 802.11g and 802.11b” as the 802.11 Mode for the 2.4 GHz band. (You don’t have to worry about the 5 GHz band if your router supports it, since the devices don’t.)

Also, remember that the LifeDrive and T|X only support older WEP and WPA-PSK wireless security modes. I recommend temporarily turning off wireless security altogether, and then turning it back on once you’ve figured out how to get your device to connect to your Wi-Fi network.

Other routers

If you’d like to share specific instructions for configuring other routers, you can email us at content@ our domain and I’ll gladly add the details to this post.

Kinoma wins the 2008 PalmAddict Reader Awards

Charles — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:00:27 +0000

Palm Addicts recently announced the winners of its 2008 PalmAddict Reader Awards.

We’re excited to announce that Kinoma Player 4 EX won both of the categories it was nominated for!

Best Palm OS Software
Best Multimedia Program for Palm OS

Over 80,000 votes were cast in PalmAddicts’ year-long reader survey, and the other nominees we were up against were the best-of-the-best.

Many thanks to everybody that voted for us!

New! Kinoma Player 4 for Palm OS

Charles — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:00:22 +0000

Today we’re introducing a new Palm OS product — Kinoma Player 4 for Palm OS.

The amazing part? It’s absolutely free.

Read on for details, or cut to the chase and get it now. (You can also download it directly to your phone by going to kinoma.com with your phone’s browser.)

What is Kinoma Player 4?

Kinoma Player 4 is the free edition of our flagship Palm OS product, Kinoma Player 4 EX.

It may be all you ever need to play YouTube, music, podcasts, and pictures. It even includes the great new Orb support we just introduced for Kinoma Player 4 EX.

YouTube

Kinoma was the first in the world to support YouTube on mobile devices. Kinoma Player 4 includes the same great YouTube support as Kinoma Player 4 EX, so you can play your favorites (and find new favorites!) anytime.

Music

Bring your music with you, or use Kinoma Guide to find and play thousands of streaming radio stations, hundreds of great albums, a huge variety of music podcasts, and over 1,000 classic audiobooks.

It even includes a free, 15-day trial of AAC audio so you can see how it works with your iTunes music library and high-quality AAC internet radio streams.

Podcasts

The built-in Kinoma Guide provides on-demand access to thousands of the world’s best podcasts. And like Kinoma Player 4 EX, Kinoma Player 4 supports true podcast streaming.

Pictures

With Kinoma Player 4, your phone is a great, portable digital photo album. Browse, search and play photos and photostreams from Flickr, SmugMug, .Mac and other popular sites.

Free? Really?

It’s true! For some people, Kinoma Player 4 will be all they need. But we know that once people try Kinoma Player 4, many will upgrade to Kinoma Player 4 EX to get it all.

Whether you upgrade or not, we think everybody should be able to enjoy a great media experience on their Palm Centro or Palm Treo smartphone.

Your own personal Comic-Con

Charles — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:00:48 +0000

The famed Comic-Con International — the annual mecca for comic, videogame and movie geeks — just opened their doors to a record-breaking attendance.

The only problem? You’re not there! The show sold out before it started.

Happily, with Kinoma Player 4 EX you’ve got your own personal Comic-Con:

Entertainment > Comics & Graphic Novels has been loaded with more great podcasts, including the official DC Comics podcast.
The new Entertainment > Video Games category is all about PC and console video gaming, and features several podcasts each from 1UP and IGN.

You can even get a daily Comic-Con International fix — Entertainment > Comics & Graphic Novels > ComicMix is doing daily podcasts from Comic-Con.

Got a Treo 755p on Verizon? Get your v1.08 update

Charles — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:00:34 +0000

Palm has just released an update for Treo 755p smartphones on Verizon.

No specific improvements are mentioned, but Palm says it “improves the phone application, stability and device usability”. Sounds good to us!

The firmware update will take a good part of an hour. Once it’s complete, follow steps 5-7 of my “grade-and-pave” article to ensure the fastest and most-stable Palm OS experience possible.