01:59 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Losing a phone is bad enough, but losing your phone contacts could turn into a real nightmare. Mossberg shares some advises and he recommends the Spark Technology CellStik, a USB stick that comes with a special software designed to easily transfer entire phonebooks to your desktop within minutes. Currently supported handsets include LG, Samsung and Motorola.

Overall, CellStik is a fast and simple solution that could save users from the frustrating ordeal of losing a cellphone and every name and number on it. Its independence from phone carriers and from your PC -- if you so choose -- make it a smart buy, but check first to be sure it's available for your phone. And keep a lookout for photos that might be mismatched with incoming calls.

04:32 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

With NetFront and Opera Mobile gaining ground, it's easy to forget that a bunch of smart guys are actively working on the Minimo project, a Mozilla fork for Windows Mobile devices. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over Pocket IE, such as tabs and spatial navigation.

The latest version 0.13 includes a new UI, inital download support, better Windows Mobile SP 5.0 support, and lots of bug fixes. You can download the first release candidate from here.

05:54 PM by Laurens in Archive | Sunrise

As always, I'm pleased to announce a new Sunrise XP release.

Only some minor new things in this release:

• New: Convert Sunrise SDLs to Sunrise XP SXLs.
• New: Import/export document settings to/from OPML files.

To convert your existing Sunrise SDLs, select "File -> Open" from the main menu, choose "Sunrise SDL" as the file type and pick your SDL.

Some SDL settings cannot be converted. Scripting, for instance, has been replaced by link rewriting rules based on regular expressions. I will post updated document settings for sites like BBC News, ESPN and Reuters on the sunrisexp.com site over the next few days.

I think the product is stable enough to be labelled as beta. I'll attempt to fix any bugs that show up, but I won't be able to address every issue. The only feature that will be added during the beta phase is Help documentation.

Download page

02:35 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There's some good information on the next incarnation of PalmOS, called Access Linux Platform (ALP), available from a PC Magazine article. The information so far is a bit reassuring, but leaves many questions about the platform. Many of the unanswered questions will linger as we continue to wonder about how well it will be impemented, how soon, and how widely it will used by actual devices. But for the PalmOS fan, so far so good.

Here are a few highlights:
* ALP will be built on the Linux 2.6.12 kernel
* Many existing PalmOS apps will run in an emulation layer (PACE-like)
* The GTK+ Linux interface will be available to be used by programs
* There is a "new native MAX [graphic interface] API, which offers the most complete access to system services"
* ALP will support Java applications (The mobile subset of Java?)
* ALP will include Access' NetFront Web browser
* ALP will include the Palm desktop

The approach is compared to Apple's OSX approach, which also supported multiple APIs, and went to a Linux core.

The new MAX API has "a lot of user experience guidelines and libraries so developers can create easy-to-use software," according to Albert Chu, Vice President, Business Development at PalmSource.

Chu also says that there are a lot of reasons to believe this will be adopted by device makers and much more successful than the failed Cobalt. "Unlike Cobalt, ALP was 'designed in response to market needs' and 'is the result of many people talking to the development managers as to what was needed; it's socialized in the industry ecosystem, because ACCESS has relations with handset people, manufacturers and operators.' " One would certainly expect that after the Cobalt experience, ACCESS and PalmSource would be especially careful to avoid another similar failure on a Linux-based platform.

The only real negative was an astute observation by the PC Magazine writer, who noted that "Chu pointed to ALP endorsements from Freescale, Intel and NEC, but a notable absentee was PalmSource's number-one licensee, Palm." Hmmm. Maybe Palm, Inc. is too busy with that secret third business line that we heard about, but haven't yet seen. Or they may be waiting to see the product, and whether or not they can negotiate favorable licensing terms with Access before they stick their neck out and talk about endorsements.

The extended wait until devices appear in 2007 at the earliest can feel like forever, and one might think that PalmSource will be so far behind that it can't catch up. However, despite cries of an ancient PalmOS Garnet (OS5), the devices built on it are still quite powerful and solid. Another year is not going to be what makes or breaks the future of PalmOS/ALP. There may be the inevitable drift of some PalmOS developers away to other platforms. And the wait may seem competitively damaging. But no company has the mobile device platform all figured out yet. What will determine the success or failure has much more to do with whether Access can produce a platform that is solid and capable, and whether it's popular with device makers.

Regardless of what you may think about these short term delays, the mobile future is coming fast. Hold on tight because we're in for an exciting ride!

12:56 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

UPM-Kymmene's New Ventures, the high-tech division of the Finnish forestry company, is going to invest in a large-scale research project on the commercial use of paper-like electronic displays. While there's a lot of hype around e-paper technologies, companies are still pretty much clueless about how to deliver digital content both so that it's profitable for the provider and suitable for the consumer (DRM is the keyword).

According to Jukka Kivinen, head of UPM's New Ventures unit, a larger pilot project on the commercial use of paper-like electronic displays will start in spring 2006. The company will not produce the basic technology of the displays, but will further develop the technology application. According to Kivinen and Jukka Enarvi, who is in charge of the project, electronic price displays in retail outlets are one of e-paper's first applications. The time for e-books will come later.

UPM has previously demonstrated electronic paper at a Kesko Food's outlet in Helsinki (see attached images).

[via eFinland]

06:07 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I am not sure this is going to deliver everything they've promised, but Access, the Japanese company who bought PalmSource last year, has just announced their ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP).

"We believe that ALP combines best-in-class open source Linux components with proven mobile technologies developed by PalmSource and ACCESS' Linux expertise," said Toru Arakawa, president and CEO of ACCESS, Co., Ltd. "As a commercial-grade, flexible, open, robust and standards-based mobile Linux based platform, ALP is designed to provide handset manufacturers with faster time-to-market while supporting the goal of operators to offer revenue-generating services, applications and content."

Details:

• ALP will include proven software solutions from both companies, including the NetFront browser and former Palm OS applications related to PIM, multimedia, messaging, HotSync and desktop components.
• Application framework MAX designed to standardize (one-, two- and five-handed) navigation control and to support concurrent operations.
• Support for the "existing Palm Powered Economy, the J2ME developer community and the open source community" - properly written Palm OS 68K applications will run unchanged.
• Collaboration with leading mobile operators to integrate their feedback and requirements into ALP.
• ALP SDK expected to be released by the end of 2006 (thanks Laurens!).

[via Palm Addict]

05:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

So you've a bunch of old-fashioned p-books and want to put them somehow on your PDA, Tablet PCs or e Ink device? Welcome to unpaper, an open-source post-processing tool for scanned sheets of paper, especially for book pages that have been scanned from previously created photocopies.

Unpaper tries to clean scanned images by removing dark edges that appeared through scanning or copying on areas outside the actual page content (e.g. dark areas between the left-hand-side and the right-hand-side of a double- sided book-page scan). The program also tries to detect disaligned centering and rotation of pages and will automatically straighten each page by rotating it to the correct angle. This process is called "deskewing".

Sources can be downloaded from here.

03:36 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm Addict Sammy recalls in his latest editorial his first love affair with the Treo 650, why to him it's still the best, genre-defining handheld device, and how this newborn passion made it easier for him to stay in contact with friends and keep on top of things.

I think in the future we will all be using a Palm / PDA / Phone combination device I have no doubt. Ask me a year ago and I would have said no I will never use a Treo. The one lesson Sammy has been taught is that never say never if that makes sense I am happy with my Treo. So there you go my 7 week Treo report simply put the Treo brings us together and can apply to whatever Palm you use but in my case its the Treo 650 and to make the point this whole post was written on my 650 whilst listening to Hung Up, Madonna and Speed of Sound by Coldplay.

Related: PalmAddict's Sammy reviews the Palm Treo 650