02:22 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Gartner consulting has published a report called UMPC Has Promise but Is Far From Mature in which they say that it is "unlikely to succeed without key changes, including a lower price and longer battery life."

Gartner is one of the top and most respected IT consulting firms used by businesses. Their opinions, while not perfect, are well researched by experts and have the weight of authority behind them. So it is no small thing to see them come out and give expert opinion supporting our suspicions. Origami is a great idea and some of us will find it useful. But until the price goes down, and the battery life goes up, it's not really going to be a mainstream hit. Three hours battery life is worlds apart from a full day, and prices less than $400 is a whole different market than near $1,000.

Gartner concludes simply that "while the UMPC concept has promise, today's hardware cannot deliver on it." They say we're at least two years away from the sub-$400 devices with 8-hr battery life. Some of the things needed to bring success are: better content bundles, a better interface such as what Vista should bring, better text input options, simpler synchronization, and of course all the benefits that come with mass production in a strong market.

According to Gartner, with today's hardware, what we're really seeing is just the "proof of concept." But I can't help wonder if there might be a significant early market with early adopters, even for these inadequate machines.

Via GottaBeMobile

11:19 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Slate has announced "a new serial novel, The Unbinding, by award-winning novelist Walter Kirn, exclusively on Slate. Installments of the novel will appear in Slate roughly twice a week from March through June." You can find the novel online here , including chapter downloads in .pdf format. You may need Macromedia's free Flash player to view the site. It is written in real time. Sort of like the tv show 24, except I assume they mean that, for example, when an installment comes in 5 days from now, it will represent things that happened 5 days later in the story.

From the original project announcement, "The Unbinding, a dark comedy set in the near future, is a compilation of 'found documents'—online diary entries, e-mails, surveillance reports, etc. It will make use of the Internet's unique capacity to respond to events as they happen, linking to documents and other Web sites. In other words, The Unbinding is conceived for the Web, rather than adapted to it.

Its publication also marks the debut of Slate's fiction section. Over the past decade, there has been much discussion of the lack of literature being written on the Web. When Stephen King experimented with the medium in the year 2000, publishing a novel online called The Plant, readers were hampered by dial-up access. But the prevalence of broadband and increasing comfort with online reading makes the publication of a novel like The Unbinding possible."

The author is no amateur. "Walter Kirn is a highly regarded novelist and magazine writer. He has written four previous books, including Thumbsucker, which became a 2005 film starring Vince Vaughn and Keanu Reeves, and Mission to America, published last year to great acclaim. He is a contributing editor to Time and GQ and a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review. Portions of his previous novels have been excerpted in The New Yorker, GQ, and Esquire."

Time to get started!

Via TeleRead

09:35 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Our jaws dropped when we saw the Eurotech WWPC, a wrist computer which boasts a "daylight-readable" 2.8 x 2.2-inch LCD, 32MB Flash and 64MB SDRAM, an SD-Card slot, WiFi 802.11b, Bluetooth 1.1, IrDa, an USB host, built-in speakers, and a headphone jack.

No information on price or availability, but more pictures to admire over at Linux Devices.

If you ever consider buying this toy, we suggest you start working out your arms now.

[via Slashdot]

08:18 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm stock investors be forewarned: Palm did not drop 50% today - there was simply a 2:1 stock split before the market is going to open today. What's the rationale behind a stock split? From Wikipedia:

It is often claimed that stock splits in-of-themselves lead to higher stock prices, however, research does not bear this out. What is true is that stock splits are usually initiated after a large run up in share price. Momentum investing would suggest that such a trend would continue regardless of the stock split.

Other effects could be psychological. If many investors think that a stock split will result in an increased share price and therefore purchase the stock, the share price will tend to increase. Others contend that the management of a company, by initiating a stock split, is implicitly conveying its confidence in the future prospects of the company.

06:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Nick Hampshire of AFAICS Research is one of the few lucky ones who already had a sneak peek at the iRex iLiad reader. I just finished up reading his preview, and from what I could gather, my short answer is: Yes, it lives up to the hype - almost. A high introductory price (649€) and little availability of published content seem to be its biggest cons yet - offset, however, by the excellent screen quality and the available option to import your own content.

Nick offered to answer any device-specific question you may have. Simply post your question in this thread, and make sure to use our search function first to check if your question hasn't been answered before.

10:19 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Dustin, from the Microsoft Origami project team answers some questions about the Origami ultra mobile PC platform.

Some exerpts (I've edited the questions for clarity):

Q: Does the origami have instant on?
A: Since these devices are XP based, there is nothing special that increases the boot sequence speed for them, but the resume from standby is quite good and fast. Most of us have begun setting our untis up to default into standby mode which allows you to save battery life when not in use without having to go through the entire XP boot sequence everytime...

Q: Does Origami have Voice Recognition?
A: The XP Tablet PC Edition does have speech recognition built in and the Samsung I know has an array microphone that should work pretty well, honestly I haven't tried it on the Samsung devices yet.

Q: No one will look twice at a device that has a life of 3 hours.
A: Battery life has a long way to go before it meets the holly grail of lasting all day, but I think you'll find you have power available enough places, enough times of the day to find the product really fun and functional even with 3 hours of battery life. Using it at home you'll have power near by if you need a charge and the car solutions like Samsung showed at CeBIT have a power cord built into it. I'm not saying all day battery life isn't ideal, but the units are still super useful and most people will use it on and off throughout the day not all day long, nonstop.

Q: Where is the good old keyboard?
A: A lot of interesting work continues to be been done to offer multiple text input methods. While a traditional keyboard is ideal when sitting down typing it's a pretty lously solution when standing up, or using one hand. This is where our explorations in things such as Dialkeys, handwriting recognition and others come into play. Companies such as T9 have proven that there is more than one way to skin the text input cat, thumb based qwerty keyboards like those on Smartphones are another example. The real question is what is the best text input alternative for the UMPC form factor when you're most mobile. I love Dialkeys, so I think it has a lot of possibilities but we'll continue to look into many other alternatives as well. Also, partners wil be offering a range of keyboard for those on the go such as the Eleksen fabric keyboard prototype that was shown at CeBIT to Bluetooth keyboards that fold up.

Q: Will Vista run well on the UPMC?
A: The Vista requirements aren't out yet, but realistically if the units have the hardware specifications that Vista requires they should be able to run it. My group will be doing a fair amount of testing to see how Vista runs on the various devices over the upcoming months.

Be sure to check out the rest of the article for the full Q&A, and check previous posts for a history of Origami (including how it started from a concept called "Haiku.")

06:26 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I wonder, is the name changing because the functionality is new, or because people are so frustrated with synching problems with ActiveSync?

Either way, when you move from Windows XP to Windows Vista, be prepared to start using Vista Mobile Device Center.

Here's the Microsoft summary... "Windows Mobile Device Center is the new name for ActiveSync in Microsoft® Windows Vista™, and provides overall device management features for your Windows Mobile-based devices in Windows Vista, including smartphones and pocket PCs. All of the features previously available in ActiveSync are available in Windows Vista, including synchronization and setting up your partnership. However, most of the user interface has changed in an effort to enhance your ability to easily and intuitively find device-related tasks and improve the overall usability of those tasks."

I wouldn't depend on this new name to mean all problems are fixed - the current release has the following "minor" issue: "Disconnecting the device from while the Connection Settings dialog box is open may hang the dialog box and become unresponsive."

But to be fair, Vista has not even been released, and Mobile Device Center has only partially been implemented. Microsoft also has a pretty good track record of improvements over time with Windows Mobile, despite some expected bumps in the road with the introduction of WM5.0.

Via Mobility Site.

05:36 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The trophy is still up for grabs. On the one hand you have sites like Digg.com using the masses to socially engineer a news feed with the best stories. On the other hand you have (almost) completely computer created lists of news stories for your betterment. Which will end up better? Or will it be some kind of hybrid solution?

It's another of the many questions that will be answered over time, but for now you can get all the scoop from this Wired article.

Warning: If you follow the link, you may have to fight with one of those nasty floater ads that makes you scroll to find the "skip this ad" button. Personally, I think it might be a mistake to sponsor such an ad. If possible, I'd avoid your company if it appeared on such an ad. Don't want to deal with companies that annoy their customers and don't mind being intrusive. How can you trust them? Shame on you for using them, Wired!