There definitely was one in Indiana around 20 years ago... I was living in Fort Wayne at the time, probably about 1986-88 or so, and felt it while taking a shower. I remember thinking a big truck was pulling up in the parking lot outside, or something...

Unlike the stick-on "signal boosters", something like this could actually work in theory. The builtin antenna and the electrode in the case form a capacitor with the iPhone housing as the dielectric. Through-glass antennas work this way, as do some of the FM modulator adapters that come with satellite radios these days.

The big problem with this approach, though, is that capacitive coupling is lossy. Thus, whatever you attach to it must have enough gain to be able to make up for this loss just to break even. And in an application like this, it doesn't just have to break even, it has to offer some overall improvement otherwise there is no point in using it.

It's not as if that sort of little nub is actually any better than the one inside the phone, so the only real advantage here is, most likely, moving it to what may be a better location. I'm not surprised to find out it doesn't actually help, especially when taking into account the loss from the coupler and extra feedline (all three inches of it)...

So far this seems to be the only metal stylus out there for the Centro: click here

No clue whether it's any good, but it has to be better than the plastic sliver that comes with the Centro.

I'm really liking my Centro too... I thought the screen and keyboard would be problematic, but they're really not. It's so nice to get back to the Palm platform again -- familiar applications, more solid syncing with Missing Sync for OSX, etc. For a device with an "ancient" OS, it's a lot less cumbersome in many ways than Windows Mobile. I love the size too.

As for peripherals... the Centro works perfectly with my Jabra BT8040 headset and the Palm infrared universal keyboard (with the latest driver from palm.com).

I've also noticed that Bluetooth file transfers from my Mac seem to be about twice as fast with the Centro as with the 650. Another pleasant surprise is that unlike the 650, the Centro can charge from USB without using a cable that plugs into the power port as well.

All in all I'm quite happy, and I think the Centro will hold me until Palm's new OS and/or Android arrive...

Slacker isn't quite like a normal streaming service, however. Since it actually plays pre-downloaded tracks, you can skip ahead instantly, and the player remembers that to adjust the playlist. You can also ban a song completely, or mark a song as loved so that it (and its artist) plays more often.

You also aren't limited to the genres they supply; you can define your own stations by selecting artists. You can choose one artist (whether or not they have it in their catalog) and simply let it play what it considers to be similar, or you can select from the catalog of artists to make a custom station. This isn't quite like making a playlist on your iPod though -- since the Slacker is supposed to be "radio", it will still insert tracks from related artists, the amount depending on how many artists you picked for your custom station. (Apparently this is a rather important distinction for licensing -- if you could create a station which only played one or two artists, it would be download-on-demand, not streaming radio.)

The web player is ad-supported as well, so you can try it for free, and it will sync your stations to the portable over wifi. I quite like the web service, though I've held off on buying the portable... I'm waiting to see what happens with it in the future before i start carrying yet another device in my pocket. (The iPod is non-negotiable, and i have XM in the car. Most of the time I'm sitting at my desk in my home office so I don't really need a portable anyway.)