03:46 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Next time you're browsing with your cell phone and it slows to a crawl, don't immediately blame the connection. Avertisers and marketing firms are currently drooling over mobile electronics including cell phones and audio players and it'll be only a matter of time before you find sporty cars go racing across your screen while you're trying to push the dial button. BusinessWeek says:

The terrain is wide open, unlike with TV, where branded entertainment advocates contend with long-established business models. Mobile-minded executives harbor hopes that they may be allowed to write some rules of engagement for this platform -- which will grow up without the public service demands placed on TV in its early days. "Unlike television, where [networks] funded the content, and owned and exploited it, here the distributors aren't funding the content," says Ben Silverman, founder of independent production company Reveille LLC and executive producer of NBC's The Office. In mobile, there may be no middleman between programmer and advertiser.

Though I am not wildly enthusiastic about mobile marketing, some form of unobstrusive, well-placed advertisement on mobile handsets could become acceptable. For instance, ads could subsidize the cost of premium content such as directory assistance, ringtones and news services. Well, even if you don't believe it now, ads could also subsidize the time you spend babbling into your cellphone one day.

Related: AdMob delivers pay-per-click mobile advertising

03:20 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Dell has provided some very nice Windows Mobile PDAs to the market in recent years, including those coveted VGA models. But it seems that there are some rumblings that Dell may not be selling these devices for very much longer. The competition in the non-smartphone PDA market is definitely slimming down.

According to a post at PDA Live there are no more PDAs coming to market from Dell. "I was watching DL.TV today. The episode from April 11, 2006 and Patick Norton said he hear from someone at Dell that said that Dell will not be making any more new PDA's. You can still purchase the existing PDA's that they have made, but they will not be developing or releasing any new pda's."

These rumors are fun and often informative, but remember as always that until there is an announcement, it is all just speculation.

Via JKOnTheRun

01:13 PM by cervezas in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The analyst I know spoke with Palm management this week and shared with me that Palm expects to release a new "antenna-less" Treo in July on Vodaphone's network. This matches the description we'd previously been given of the Treo product codenamed "Hollywood." This is expected to run Windows Mobile and (my best guess) will have a 3G (HSDPA) radio. My informant says it will be released with a big media fanfare in five markets.

PalmInfocenter has leaked pictures of what might be the Treo in question.

Palm is on track for the announced four 2006 Treo releases, but it sounds like Treo #4, previously thought to be a lower cost Treo codenamed "Low Rider" may be something different now. My confidential source said that his contact at Palm spoke of a Treo that (in my interpretation) matched the description we had for Low Rider, but said it would be released in 2007.

More details, as usual, can be found on my blog: http://www.pikesoft.com/blog/index.php?itemid=67

09:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Coming on the heels of rumors that Palm is about to launch the Sprint Treo 700p device any time soon, Jimmie Geddes sent us word that apparently there is also already a Treo 700p for Verizon Wireless customers in the works. The source, yet again a user from TreoCentral, uploaded some extremely blurry photos depicting the Verizon logo on what appears to be the Treo 700p. What we don't know is whether it will be launched at the same time as the Sprint model or sometime later this year.

The Treo 700p is rumored to have a 312MHz CPU, Palm OS 5.4.9, EV-DO, 1.3 megapixels camera, a 320 x 320 pixel display, and Bluetooth.

04:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

We're almost stifling a yawn this time around, but reports have reached us of yet another company striving towards the commercial application of e-paper technology. Hitachi has formed a joined parternship with the Japanese tyre giant Bridgestone Corp to manufacture e-paper displays and to pursue future commercialization opportunities. Bridgestone will supply the e-paper technology which has already been in use known as "Electro Liquid Powder" to display electronic price tags in Japanese retail stores.

Business will be focused primarily in transportation, electricity and urban development engineering. The aim is to provide total solutions by way of integrated display management, contents database management and remote transmission, for instance. Going forward, both companies will work in tandem to cultivate the electronic paper display market.

Compared to a E Ink display which has a response time of around 100ms, Bridgestone claims that its technology only requires 0.2ms to respond to a screen update. You find comparisons of other display properties in the attached file.

[press release]

04:49 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

According to CommanderROR who has been in contact with Mr. Wrobel from German eBook Media, who himself apparently knows some guys from iRex has been in close contact with iRex, the delayed launch of the iLiad reader has been caused by some technical glitches involving the web store's shopping basket feature (and not by a shortage in E Ink material as rumored earlier). Nevertheless iRex remains optimistic that the reader will launch in April.

As an interesting side note, Mr. Wrobel also mentions that he feels bitter about not receiving any information from iRex regarding the proprietary e-book format they are going to use.

11:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

David Branko (sorry dudes, you both rock!) over at Teleread received a little info tidbit which claims that the iRex iLiad e-book reader is currently being mass-produced in the Phillipines. What's more, Adobe is said to be working on a plugin allowing "to make on-screen corrections" on the iLiad. And best of all, and this is certainly the reason for all the delays, meant to convince the few still in doubt to shell out those 700 bucks, is the rumored implementation of the game Sudoku.

05:22 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Palm Addict sends word that you can take advantage of a 10 percent discount on any e-book you purchase from eReader's e-book store through April 26, 2006, by using the following promo code: 1RE9APRAD.