04:36 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Did you know that storage cards are frequently lost? Have you ever meant to insert a card only to find it flung on the ground by the internal spring mechanism of your handheld? Or have you ever put it down on a table, but forgotten to pick it back up?

Well, if you lose a card and it's found, you might be very thankful if it's returned. Here's a great idea to help out the good samaritan that (hopefully) finds your memory card... Put all the relevant owner information in a top level text file to make is easy to find you.

Of course, it won't do you much good if this person finds your card, but there are still a lot of nice people out there in the world.

Via LifeHacker

04:25 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

The average consumer wrestles with DRM, and the average man on the street probably doesn't know what DRM is all about. But Dave Goldberg is not the average person. He's the head of Yahoo Music, and he told the record industry that they should sell their music online without copy protection.

"Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players."

It's a lonely voice out there, but a view that consumer advocates are hoping will prove to be the most successful and long lasting.

via Slashdot

04:17 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Wondering what phones stand out from the crowd? There's an interesting set of articles from infoSync World with lists of favorite phones that includes a top five from multiple categories:

• Our five most favourite Cingular phones
• Our five favourite Verizon phones
• Our five most favourite Vodafone phones
• Our five most favourite LG phones
• Our five most favourite Sony Ericsson phones

I'm pretty sure that if I was looking for a phone, there would be something interesting there, even if the Treo 650 is absent. My own top 5 would definitely include these phones.

03:19 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Well, that's really the problem. Microsoft's marketing machine has jumped into gear. Not quite with the buzz of an Apple teaser, but just as lacking in information. We're all still just guessing, but some rumors have come out. Don't know if it's true, but here's what we think we know: It's probably some kind of portable Windows-based handheld computer with connectivity and likely to allow sophisticated computing in a very portable platform. We reported on this topic before , but there's no confirmation yet that they are the same.

An announcement is coming March 2. That according to the cool little video. It looks like the video will be updated weekly. It also hints that it will be portable, and will help you to do things. The www.origamiproject.com domain is apparently registered to Microsoft, and I suppose origami is likely registered also. Maybe someone can confirm that for us.

Robert Scoble from Microsoft simply says "I do know that Origami is the code-name for a new kind of device. Oh, heck, here come the NDA police, gotta go! …"

Pretty intriguing, huh? Want more? If you follow all the leads from Engadget and a few more besides, here's what else you end up learning...

Paul McNamara says "Fortunately, we know someone who knows for certain. According to an industry source who has seen the thing and calls it "very cool," Origami is one and the same with this ultraportable 'lifestyle PC' we were talking about here earlier today. This source is under NDA, an honest fellow and unwilling to share more than his help connecting the dots."

He also points back to an earlier Engadget post saying "According to at least one report, Bill Mitchell, Corporate Vice President of the Mobile Platform Division, showed a slide that outlined specs for the new PC category, including that it be wearable, always on, no larger than 10-inches, connected through 3G networks, pen-based, and have a suggested retail price of $500 or less. … One notable spec that could differentiate this one: Microsoft is apparently insisting that this run the full version of Windows."

Unfortunately for me, now that I'm filling in the last parts of this post, I find that Paul has the same title I came up. Of course I was feeling quite proud and smug about how incredibly clever and unique I had been. Well, my apologies to Paul, because I'm not changing it now. But I gladly give him credit for coming up with it first.

Back to Origami, we find that it has quite a few people looking back to a device announced at the 2001 Comdex show. Look at this this description from PC Magazine, "Taking convergence to an extreme was National Semiconductor, which was promoting its Geode system on a chip. The chip is showing up in numerous wild products, and the company is encouraging that process by testing the water with high-concept devices. The weirdest device was the National Semiconductor Geode Origami Mobile Communicator. The prototypes have got to be as collectible as those 1950s bullet-nosed GM concept cars. I'd be shocked if anyone manufacturers the Origami—as cool and interesting as it is. Essentially, it's a Transformers toy for adults. The device, which acts as a phone, camera, camcorder, MP3 player, PDA, Internet picture frame, laptop, workpad, and weapon, twists around every which way to morph. Of all things, it may have been the rage of the show."

And an interesting writeup from AMD also from back in the day. "Highlighting this year's Comdex is National's new Geode™ Origami™ Mobile Communicator, a multifunction conceptual device that combines a digital camera, streaming online digital camcorder, videoconferencing, Internet surfing, PDA and email. When docked, the device also functions as an Internet picture frame that displays photos and videos. Origami uses many products from National's unique product portfolio including power management, audio, display, graphics, wireless connectivity and the Geode integrated processor.

'The Origami Mobile Communicator is an exciting conceptual device that showcases the broad range and depth of National's analog, digital and mixed-signal technologies,' said Brian Halla, CEO, National Semiconductor. 'From audio and video to displays and wireless, we have all the key technologies that are enabling tomorrow's digital lifestyle.' "

CNN.com also had a writeup about the gadget in 2001. ""

You can keep up with the Origami Project with this RSS feed.

And I can't leave you without mentioning maybe the nicest concise writeup about the original Origami device with some pics at WindowsForDevices.

As the rumors develop, feel free to add your own thought and scoops in this thread. I have a feeling that if you can get over the fact it's coming from Microsoft, it's going to be an exciting development in the world of mobile computing!

Via hardware.slashdot.org.

02:30 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Short text messages from a mobile device are all the rage these days. But the folks from 160 Characters are saying that it's really just an extension of a much earlier idea from the 1800s - the postcard!

Not convinced? Listen to this description of the arrival of the postcard...

"Once upon a time, major service providers around the world introduced a short message service allowing people to send multiple messages to each other for a nominal fixed fee. Typically the message space was small, and as a result people invented methods to deal with this by cramming in as much information as possible using shorthand, acronyms and restricted grammar. It became very popular, creating upgrades to services infrastructure, and employing additional people, all despite the fact that people were already using the same service provider to communicate with each other using similar services. Sounds familiar?"

But while there are some very interestesting similarities, it sounds a little like saying the computer was really invented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes when he patented the first modern typewriter.

Via TechDirt.

01:03 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Once a handheld device like the Treo 650 is released and it gets used every day, we find things we wish it could do, and looks like it should do, but can't. We want decent handling of playlists for audio players, or features like louder Treo call volume as provided by VolumeCare. Or we would like to text message the caller as with SharkMsg when not answering a call.

Well, we can now add one more feature to the list of 3rd party solutions. Bluetooth stereo. Until recently, you could not listen to stereo or mono music on a headset via a bluetooth connection on your Treo due to the Bluetooth version implemented. But with Softick Audio Gateway it appears that limitation has been lifted.

From the product web site: "Softick Audio Gateway is the first Bluetooth audio streaming solution for Palm OS handhelds which allows to connect Palm OS handheld to the Bluetooth stereo headphones and listen to digital audio played by Palm OS applications:

* MP3 Players,
* Audio book readers,
* Games.

Softick Audio Gateway can operate with any Bluetooth audio device which supports Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) designed to transfer a high-quality stereo audio stream wirelessly."

It would be interesting to see if this also works with bluetooth cell phone headsets to play mono audio in a single ear, or if it only works with stereo headphones. If it does work with the typical bluetooth phone headset, this could be quite a hit.

So what else can be added to the Treo functionality? Voice command (such as giving commands to dial a contact) from a bluetooth earpiece would sure be nice. On the Windows Mobile side of things, the existing voice control software needs a higher bitrate than what current bluetooth headsets provide. That may also be the issue with the 650.

It will come someday, with some smartphone. And can you imagine how nice it would be to have an earpiece with caller id or verbal caller id, and the ability to anwer or intitiate a call all from the earpiece? That would be pretty impressive, because the actual smartphone could then stay in a purse or pocket the whole time.

Via PDA 24/7

09:15 PM by Chaos in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Not quite sure how this one was missed (I read it over a week ago, and thought I remembered seeing it on MR - but I was mistaken), but the Nintendo DS will be getting a web browser, based on Opera.

Particularly of interest is the note, made by Masaru Shimomura (Deputy General Manager of Nintendo's R&D department - long title to put on business cards), that the DS is fully operational "within just five seconds of turning on the system", making it "the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the internet, wherever they are". Quite an interesting idea, with plenty of potential, as I see it, considering Opera does have some of the best mobile web rendering, and a very good page re-flowing system, to make regular pages suitable on handhelds.

I can see this being very successful, or a complete failure, depending on one major potential problem. The wifi range. Nintendo claims 30 to 100 feet - less than most other devices. Could you stand having to be 100 or less feet away from an access point to browse the web? It may work in some circumstances, but potentially not in others. And considering the minumum range is 30 feet 'depending on circumstances', one may find themselves almost tethered near an access point.

Overall it's an interesting idea with potential, considering Opera's solid mobile browser, but some possible flaws, such as the wifi range. Can anyone else see other upsides or downsides to this?

Also reported at the same time as the web browser, is a DS TV tuner. Bad news (if that sort of thing appeals to you) is that it's unlikely to be seen outside of Japan, because of the format of signal required, so I'll stick to reporting on the web browser.

From IGN, Engadget, Slashdot and Joystiq.

(And on the note of having missed this earlier - I'll do better next time, I promise. )

07:46 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There's been a lot of press recently about people who are less than thrilled with the Windows Mobile 700w version of the Treo. It has its fans, but it is a disappointment to some. It's the first Windows Mobile device from Palm, so I'd have to say they did rather well, and we will be seeing improvements on that platform just as much as we have seen improvements on the PalmOS side of things.

But when you talk with Treo 650 users, it's remarkable how devoted they get to that little smartphone! I didn't understand it at all until I got one for myself. I just wanted to have a single device with a phone and pda. I thought I was making a big sacrifice in usability. Boy was I wrong! Sure, there are some sacrifices like a smaller screen and less memory. But in return you get a combo device with a great battery life, bright and easy to read screen, one-handed operation and a keyboard, and if you don't mess it up with a particularly unstable program it's also incredibly stable.

Well it turns out that people aren't just addicted to Treo's. They are addicted to all kinds of PalmOS devices. So Palm Addicts is asking the question in their forums, "Are you addicted to your Palm?" It should lead to some interesting discussion. Take a look and share your comments here.

via Palm Addicts