Newton Poetry

Forrest Buffenmyer created his new site, Newton Phoenix, as a way to contribute to the Newton community.

“I created Newton Phoenix because I wanted to give back some of the support I’ve received on the NewtonTalk list and various websites in the past,” he says. “Or – perhaps I should say – continue or pass along that support.”

Buffenmyer’s post on overclocking your Newton, say, helps him add to the sum of Newton knowledge.

“The only rule as to content that I’ll be following is not to completely duplicate material found at other websites, but try to incorporate my own experiences,” he says.

Newton Phoenix joins a small cadre of MessagePad-devoted sites that keep the thing alive. What I like about Buffenmyer’s site is that he’s undertaking fun projects to keep his Newton going strong. These days he’s using an upgraded MP2000 (modded to an MP2100 by Apple) as his every day Newton for scheduling, contact management, and note taking.

“If I had a way to better sync the Newt with my Mac then I’d use it even more,” Buffenmyer says. “NCX doesn’t offer ‘true’ synchronization, and NewtSync gives me an error when it tries to sync my calendar.”

(These are problems I’ve seen myself.)

Buffenmyer is a gadget geek in general:

I have a Data General One (early laptop), two Data General One Model 2Ts (one with working 30 MB hard drive!–rare for the early 80s), which are both early PC architecture. I have several older PC laptops (Packard Bell, Toshiba, HP OmniBook and IBM ThinkPad), and a newer Dell Inspiron 8600 that I use when I need XP…but I am definitely a Mac guy–or, maybe I should say, Apple in general. A short list: Apple IIgs, Apple IIc…Macs: a Classic, a couple 7600s (one was my first Mac!), a couple Beige G3s, an iMac Indigo, a PowerBook 3400c, a Titanium PowerBook G4 (15″ 500MHz)…and my main Mac, an Aluminum PowerBook G4 (15″ 1.67GHz). I also have an Apple QuickTake 250 digital camera, an HP iPAQ rx3715 PDA and a Sharp Zaurus ZR-5800 (very similar to the Newton).

A stellar list, to be sure, and he cut his teeth on a Timex-Sinclair 1000 writing BASIC and Star Trek games.

I wish Buffenmyer a lot of luck with Newton Phoenix, and I hope he keeps the Newton DIY projects coming.

Something fun to try on your iPhone or iPod Touch: a Newton site from Sam Speake.

Called NewtonResourc, the site has basic info about Newtons, a tutorial (with more to come), a photo gallery, and links to Newton-specific sites.

[Via NewtonTalk.]

When the news broke that Yahoo! was shutting down its free Geocities web-hosting service, Newton fans wondered: what about those MessagePad fan and software sites?

Tony Kan put out the call: save those web pages!

Morgan Aldridge offered to host any that could be saved on the United Newton Network Archives (UNNA) mirror site – and, one by one, the Newton community is doing just that.

Sites like Newtonium-62 and Newton Ressurection are all being saved from the Interweb trash heap. Without this effort, a lot of Newton history, stories, and knowledge would be lost forever.

A few of the sites I have up on my own Newton Sites page will have to be re-routed to the new, UNNA-hosted URL. But it’s so worth it.

If you find a Geocities Newton site out there, lost at sea, be sure to contact Morgan.

I’ve read Low End Mac as long as I’ve been a Mac user. Their Mac Profiles section just can’t be beat to look up old hardware specs (especially when I grab something out of the blue), and they post tons of helpful how-tos if you’re a classic Mac user.

So a big, hearty “thanks” to them for featuring our “11 ways Newton is still better than iPhone” post. The Newton officially qualifies as a low-end Apple product, even if the site mainly caters to Macintosh PCs.

Macenstein is hosting a great down-memory-lane look back at Apple.com – like here, where in 1997 you could still grab an eMate 300 that was “mobile, affordable, & smart.” No kidding?

Macenstein also put together a great video, featuring all the Apple.com homepages over the past decade, all from Kernal Panic’s Flickr photos. Now that’s sharing.

I love stuff like this; a rare glimpse into Apple’s past. And I really dig the old marketing messages (“iBook: black tie optional”) and photos of all my favorite Macs.