New Podcast Coming Soon!

Yes, it's been quite a while since I made one, and I plan on being more regular, though I think weekly was a bit too much. So as soon as I pick up my mic (likely Blue Snowball) and update my iLife, I will once again take to the Green Light Go podcast. So stay tuned, I figure May will be my first one.

2006 Worldwide Newton Conference

The 2006 Worldwide Newton Conference will be held in San Francisco, California at the Warwick Regis Hotel, immediately following Macworld Expo, January 13 - 15, 2006. The conference program will include presentations by Walter Smith, James Joaquin, Paul Guyot, Larry Yaeger, Ronnie Simon, Adam Tow, Grant Hutchinson and others. Expert panel discussions, informal ‘how-to’ sessions, and demonstrations of the latest software developments for the Newton platform are also planned.

For the latest info and to register, visit http://wwnc.newtontalk.net/

Summary of 05-24-05

• The Stanford Newton Users Group still meets at 8:00 PM on the 4th Tuesday of each month except December, at Printer's, Inc. Cafe, 310 N. California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA. More info on the group's web site


• Grant opened a Newton flickr.com group for posting Newt-themed pics


• The Newton Wiki is available to everyone for posting, plus there's lots of newbie info there as well. Go forth and contribute!


• Adriano put out yet another gadget for the Newt, this time for connecting your GPS unit to the Newt. Check out NewtNav photos and movie.


• NewtVNC is available for remote control of your Mac or PC.


• A new game, Poker Square has been released. Thanks, Matthew.


• TONS of new e-books have been released lately, and are available in the Newton eBook Library. Thanks to Matt, DJ, Martin and other contributors.


• If you'd like a headphone or microphone jack for your 2000 or 2100, check out Hand Media's web site. Jeffrey offers the hardware and installation instructions, or will install the upgrade for you.


• John Royston has had success writing Newton data to memory cards using his PC, which could potentially rid us of the bootstrap problem, and offer another more modern way of backing up your crucial data. Nice work, John.


• The U.S. Army Field Manual: Map Reading and Land Navigation is available for beta testing as an eBook. Very nice, Ron!


• The Newton Connectivity Mini-CD project lives at the Wiki.Thanks, DJ.

Summary of 04-15-05

• Adriano Angelillis is selling NewtLight and NewtEye. NewtLight is "an adapter which connects to the Interconnect port of a MP2k or directly to the serial port of an eMate. It draws the current from the internal battery, and it can light a paper or the keyboard exactly the same as you do with your laptop usb port."


• DJ Volkasko says two more eBooks are available for free on the web, Blind Shrike and Democratizing Innovation, and wants someone to take the reins and convert these into Newton Books.


• Gary Moody announces that Bernie Bernstone's Newtopoly for the Newton (Monopoly game) has been reduced in price to $15. If you'd like to get your copy, head on over to Bernie's Website.


• For those who've had trouble connecting their Newton to Earthlink, here is one possible solution from Earthlink's support site.


• Sonny Hung is offering a Turbo Upgrade for $75 plus shipping. Contact him if you're interested.


• Matt Kowalcyk announces the Michigan Newton Gathering, this Sunday, April 17th, from 1:00 PM to whenever. It will be held at the Macomb County Library at 16480 Hall Road (M-59), Clinton Township, Michigan, 48038-1132. Paul Curtis will be there to demonstrate a number of different Newtons as well as IR drivers, and will have some sets of loaner cards for which he has become well known.


Directions

• From I-75, take M-59 East Exit. Follow M-59 east for approximately ten miles (rough guess on distance). The Library is on the right-hand side (south side of the road), between Schoenher Road and Garfield Road (just before you get to Garfield).


• From the west, follow I-94 east into Detroit. Look for I-75 North Exit. Take I-75 north to M-59 East Exit. If you're coming from Canada, e-mail me directly for excellent directions.





• The temporary Newton eBook Library is here.

Summary of 03-18-05

• Makoto Nukui released NEWT/0 0.0.9, an open source NewtonScript compiler and interpreter for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.


• The LANUG will meet this Saturday March 19, 2005, at 7:30 PM at the AppleStore in The Grove.


• Paul Guyot says we need a replacement for Newton Toolkit (NTK), and who can argue with that? He adds, "We are currently getting all the pieces of the puzzle done.
  
  
  
  
  • the DCL can generate packages.
  
  
  • NEWT/0 by Makoto Nukui can execute and compile NewtonScript code.
  
  
  
  I've been working on Objective-C/Cocoa bindings for NEWT/0 called protoOBJC and I will be soon able to have a Cocoa delegate written in NewtonScript (i.e. a complete application written in NewtonScript with a Cocoa interface designed with Interface Builder).
  
  Consequently, I think a great project for both novice and experimented programmers would be to write a NTK replacement,
  designing the interface with Interface Builder and writing the code in NewtonScript.
  
  Coders do not need any experience in NewtonScript as the language is easy to learn, and most of the complexities of NewtonScript on the Newton (like storage) are not required here. All one needs to know is the syntax of NewtonScript. Cocoa knowledge is not required either, but one will have to browse Cocoa documentation on Apple's website.
  
  Although I am busy with other projects, I would gladly provide advice for the project direction and enhance NEWT/0 with Makoto, the DCL and protoOBJC to follow the requirements of the project.
  
  Such a project could be open source or closed source as the various pieces are released in very liberal licenses. The program probably could even run on Unix with GNUStep."

If you're interested, get in touch with Paul - this is a very cool project idea

Summary of 03-08-05

• Paul Guyot announced Einstein Emulator User Preview 1. A number of enhancements and bug fixes are included:




• Added a Cocoa screen manager and a whole Cocoa application around it.


• Added keyboard support.


• Improved the way events are transmitted from the host to the Newton.


• X11 screen manager can now cope with most (any?) visual (using XAllocColor). Please note that 8 bits TrueColor cannot represent either the 16 shades of gray or the 16 shades of green.


• Fixed a bug in the cli application code.


• Fixed a bug in the way breakpoints are parsed.


• Improved the package installation by reporting progress on the installation itself (in addition to progress of the transfer).


• Allowed several packages to be installed in a row.


• Added a watch command to watch parameters and log the result.


• Improved screen interface by making it endianness-agnostic.


• Improved flash by making it endianness-agnostic.


• Fixed bugs in the X11 interface, including better multi-threaded code.


• X11 display now is endianness-agnostic and works with both 24 and 15 bits depth (millions and thousands of colors).


• Flash now uses mmap(2) and associated calls.


• RTC delta is now initialized so that the Newton is set to host time at boot.


• Fixed a bug that prevented the Newton to be powered off more than once.


• Memory and ROM are now swapped on little-endian machines, thus avoiding unnecessary conversions during each access.


• Many optimizations.




• Matt Kowalcyk added The Dawn of Canadian History, and Naval Pioneers of Australia to the collection of Newton eBooks available online.

Summary of 03-03-05

• The following Newton eBooks have been added to the library:




1. Best Russian Fiction' (anthology of short stories)


2. Radio Amateur's Handbook' (based on the first edition)


3. Aboriginal American Authors


4. Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru




• Matthew Hudson announces the release of Poker Square, a new game for the Newton