Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Qtopia for Mac OS X
Qtopia 1.7 is out and it finally has support for OS X. I haven't been able to sync my zaurus contacts etc since I ditched my linux desktop a year ago. Its nice to see that Trolltech is paying attention to the mac crowd. They still don't help you much with usb ethernet which is required to sync via the cradle. A quick google search turns up a driver that has been working pretty well for me. Of course, the easiest/fastest way is to just use a wireless cf card. I've been uploading mp3's to my zuarus via ssh.
So whats a Zaurus you ask? The coolest little pda you ever did see. Well actually it kinda sucks as a pda in the traditional sense. Its standard PIM functions (contacts,calendar, todo,etc) are kinda weak. But the Zaurus is so much more. It runs Linux and is amazingly flexible. Imagine having a fullblown webserver, sporting PHP and a MySQL backend sitting in the palm of your hand? Well thats exactly what you can do with the Zaurus. You can mount nfs and windows network drives. You can watch smooth video, listen to mp3s, surf the web with a real web browser, stream internet radio stations, instant message, and the list goes on. At the height of my Z usage I would be hacking code in a text editor, surfing the web, instant messaging, listening to music and messing around in the terminal with a ssh connection to a remote server all at the same time. Sadly I haven't used my Z much recently (cept as a mp3 player). Maybe now that it just got a little easier to sync it with the mac I will start using it again.
So whats a Zaurus you ask? The coolest little pda you ever did see. Well actually it kinda sucks as a pda in the traditional sense. Its standard PIM functions (contacts,calendar, todo,etc) are kinda weak. But the Zaurus is so much more. It runs Linux and is amazingly flexible. Imagine having a fullblown webserver, sporting PHP and a MySQL backend sitting in the palm of your hand? Well thats exactly what you can do with the Zaurus. You can mount nfs and windows network drives. You can watch smooth video, listen to mp3s, surf the web with a real web browser, stream internet radio stations, instant message, and the list goes on. At the height of my Z usage I would be hacking code in a text editor, surfing the web, instant messaging, listening to music and messing around in the terminal with a ssh connection to a remote server all at the same time. Sadly I haven't used my Z much recently (cept as a mp3 player). Maybe now that it just got a little easier to sync it with the mac I will start using it again.
