Perooz Some Free Treo Content

I absolutely love all the digital entertainment capabilities that my Treo offers – such as music, videos, photos, games, ebooks and audiobooks – but I nonetheless keep being amazed at just how difficult it is to find some good free as well as paying content to enjoy while on the go.

I recently came across a website called Perooz.com which offers some fun “light” free content such as mobizines (mobile magazines) from the likes of GQ, FHM and Maxim as well as comics and movie trailers – as a bonus many of the images of the mobizines can be used as wallpaper for your Treo as well.

Mobizines
All the mobizines offered average some 70 high resolution jpeg images (about 5MB).  Simply dowload the ZIP file to your PC, unzip and copy to the DCIM folder on your SD card.  You’ll then be able to read/view the mobizine on your Treo using the Pics&Videos application (images below).

Because the jpeg images are numbered from 01 to 70+ you’ll just need to ensure that you select View > Sort by Name in the top menu.  Here below, some of the articles from FHM and GQ which all seem to alternate between the ‘babes’ and the ‘stars’ but as I said it’s meant as light entertainment.

Some people have argued that offering a mobizine as jpeg’s is not exactly ‘advanced’ but the immediate benefit is that it’s extremely easy to view on your Treo and does not require you to install a separate eBook reader.

Wallpaper
Because all mobizine images are in widescreen format I also inadvertently found them to make ideal wallpapers.  Here below I quickly changed (Options > Phone Display Options) the standard Treonauts wallpaper on my Treo 680 to the somewhat more exotic presence of Amanda Beard…

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I am disappointed that no PalmOS developer has yet come up with a better wallpaper management solution that would allow me to ‘shuffle’ images from a file (eg: “My Family” pictures) so as to for example have a different image appear everytime I turn my Treo on.  In the case of the Treo 680 where the main Phone tab displays the wallpaper I could easily use the up/center/down 5Way buttons to navigate through more images for example.  I certainly see many opportunities to further enhance the ‘Home’ screen.

Comics
Another interesting download for me proved to be a comic titled ‘Hitless’ (also viewed using the Pics&Video app).  It wasn’t so much about this particular story but because it was the first time that I experienced reading a comic on my Treo.  I have to admit that I rather liked it and actually wish that a lot more ‘digital comics’ titles could become available.

Movie Trailers
Finally, Perooz also offers movie trailer downloads in MPEG4 format (about 23MB) which can be viewed with either the free TCPMP player or the new CorePlayer (both by far my preferred Treo video players).  Here I was able to discover and watch previews of movies I wasn’t even aware were coming out such as Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard, Rise of the Silver Surfer and Ocean’s 13.

Conclusion
Both Perooz’ site navigation as well as the download/install methods are far from perfect but since all the content is free there’s only so much that I will complain about. 

However, what I would naturally very much like to see is a “Digital Entertainment Portal” dedicated to our Treo offering music, videos, photos, games, mobizines, eBooks, audiobooks, software, wallpapers and ringtones with both free and paid content that could easily be downloaded over-the-air or via a periodic HotSync conduit…  Nothing of the sort exists at the moment but stay tuned for developments on this front during the coming year as I know of a few people that are working on something along these lines.