In the What-Were-They-Thinking Department, Palm chose yesterday as the day to release their new handheld, the Palm TX. You didn’t hear about it? Neither did anybody else, because we were all paying attention to some other product announcements happening at the same time. Too bad that Palm buried the launch like that, because I really want them to do well and it’s a very nice little device. Cheaper than previous high-end models ($299 – the Tungsten T debuted at $499), with built-in WiFi. For specs, see Palm.com.

All the keyboarding I do, on top of motorcycle commuting, means that my wrists work very hard. For the past couple weeks I’ve been experimenting with a program called AntiRSI which tries to keep you out of trouble by recommending short “micro pauses” and longer “work breaks” – based on how much continuous keyboard/mouse work you have actually been doing, not just on the clock.

If your rhythm is such that you are naturally taking breaks from the keyboard, AntiRSI stays out of your way. But when the pace increases, it will pop up with a reminder. It’s the ten-second “micro pauses” that I think are saving me. One nice design detail is that these notifications aren’t modal and don’t get in the way of your typing. So if you want to spend a minute or two deferring that “micro pause” while you finish a thought, go right ahead – AntiRSI waits patiently, but doesn’t remove the notification until you actually take that ten-second pause. When I get there, I take the opportunity to do some Bob Anderson style wrist stretches.

Last week I taught a class (eight times, in fact) which kicked off with a short presentation modeled after Dick Hardt’s OSCON talk on “identity 2.0”; I told my students that I had stolen the idea from one person (Hardt) who had stolen it from another (Lessig) and that they in turn should feel free to steal it should the need arise. The style is rapid, visually rich, and fun; watch Dick’s performance to get a feel for it.

Here’s an odd bug in OS X’s Mail.app: if the cursor is either at the beginning or the end of a message you’re composing, and you press the keyboard shortcut for “Transpose characters” (ctrl-T) the application spontaneously quits.

Bummer!

Caution – don’t idly test this out right now if you have an unsaved message open. I know it’s tempting.

MacFixit has a suggested workaround – use ~/Library/DefaultKeyBindings.dict to disable the key – but it’s not ideal since ctrl-T has valid uses in other applications, like invoking spellcheck in Pico or Nano. Unless you tend to hit ctrl-T accidentally, I’d just leave it alone and wait for the inevitable patch from Apple.

In case you missed it, the Opera web browser is now free, with nary an ad banner or licensing fee. This is great news, because Opera is a terrific browser and it deserves wider renown. Its ability to save and recover browsing sessions (including ones that you inadvertently ended by closing the window) should be widely envied and emulated by other browser developers.

If you really feel like throwing money at them, buy “Premium Support.”