So back in 2004 or something, a rumour was going around that there would finally be a PalmOS version of Skype. Well, alas it was not true and even though there are lots of people asking for it, no word of any development on this front has come up.

BUT, FINALLY, there is a solution for all us PalmOS users! EQO has created a program which is installed on both your PC and PalmOS phone which will allow you to connect to Skype!

I haven’t tested it yet, but here’s the main idea.

There are a number of parts that are required to make this all work. There’s a PC client which connects to your installation of Skype (so yes, your main Skype PC has to be running to have this work). Then there is the PalmOS program (which requires an installation of Java) and of course there’s Skype.

The way this works is, when you use the client on the PalmOS device, it connects to the EQO network which connects to your PC and checks out who’s online. You get your contact list and everything, pretty cool. You can then choose to make a call to anyone on the list.

Here’s where I’m not totally clear on yet. From what I understand, calls you make/receive get applied to your SkypeOut minutes. Essentially, what EQO is doing is forwarding your Skype calls to your cellphone.

The advantage here is that you’re not paying long distance through your cell provider. Disadvantage, would be that you can’t just call another Skype user for free.

I’ll update this later when I’ve had a chance to try it out.

I was at the Rob Thomas concert this past Friday and near the end of the concert, I was asked by the security guards there to delete all my photos because I had a “professional camera” and that was not allowed…

Even though I was reluctant to do so, I formatted the CF card knowing that all was not lost. Experience with computers tells me that formatting dose nothing but reset the File Allocation Tables and data is not actually deleted. That’s why there are programs out there which will actually securely format a drive by writing ones and zeros over the drive, overwriting previous data.

There’s a program out there which came highly recommended by digital photographers called ZAR Digital Image Recovery. This program when used specifically for image recovery is freeware but if you decide to take it and recover other files from your hard drive, you are limited to up to 4 folders until you purchase the full program.

Once you start the program, you are asked to select which drive to scan for images and it’s off to the races. A volume map shows how much of the drive it’s scanned and what tidbits of data it was able to find. I actually wasn’t paying attention when it scanned my 1GB CF card but I’m pretty sure it didn’t take much longer than maybe 5-10 minutes. After the scan is complete, it lists the files it was able to find and recover and you just tell it where to save the files!

Now, being that I shot all my photos in RAW format, ZAR recognized them as TIF files. I was amazed to find that it found photos from 2 formats ago which basically supports the fact that format is non-destructive.

To confirm that all was well, I used Photoshop CS2 with the v3.3 RAW File Update (3.1 would have done the trick as well, but hey, might was well get the latest), and loaded up the files. The reason for using Photoshop is that it won’t care what extension is specified, but attempt to match the file format itself.

SUCCESS! I had my photos and all I needed to do now was to rename them from TIF to CR2 and now I can edit them in my Canon software as if nothing happened at all!