10:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

While we're fervently waiting for the next major version of the multimedia player TCPMP, Picard keeps on adding new features and bugfixes in the current test version. Changelog for version V0.71j:

• asf parser fix
• PalmOS: T|T,T2 48khz samplerate crash fix
• PalmOS: keylock window fix with LCD tweak modes
• WinCE: title scroll fix
• WinCE: WM5 (O2 Atom) memory mapping fix (with XScale driver)
• WinCE: Treo700w keyboard backlight disabled in fullscreen
• WinCE: special hotkeys just warning
• Win32: administrator rights not needed anymore

Download the test version from here.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for our weekly roundup of what's new and interesting in the world of mobile gadgets.

Current E-Books Trends
Adobe blogger on Sony's BBeB format
As E Ink approaches the performance of newspaper
Is RSS feed reading on a handheld worthless?
Libraries express DRM concerns

General Chat
Happy Birthday PDA247!

iSilo/X
iSilo V4.31 beta 1 released

Palm
Exclusive: Radical changes ahead at Palm Addict
Major Palm investor urges sale of the company
More Treo 700p/800p rumors - The excitement builds!
Palm stock surges after takeover chatter
Palm Treo 800p to be out in March?
Sprint Treo 700w expected to arrive earlier
Will we ever consider any handheld to be "great"?

Pocket PC
NetFront 3.3 Technical Preview 1.04 released

Sunrise
Send to Sunrise for Firefox 1.5.0.1
Sunrise XP alpha 4 released

WiFi / Bluetooth Technologies
Boeing Connexion receives patent for airborne WiFi
Verizon may be cutting off Treo dial up networking tool

08:16 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Sun reporter Frank D. Roylance confirms what we knew all along, namely that E Ink technology is ready for take-off. In his article Spreading the e-word he mentions three upcoming products based on this much hyped technology:

• The Sony Portable Reader PRS-500, a paperback-sized dedicated e-book reader that has a 170 pixels per inch resolution and four levels of greyscale. Available for USD $349.99 (check Teleread on vanishing prices) this spring.
• The 4-inch square Weather Wizard station by Ambient Devices, a wireless weather station that displays a five day forecast. Available for about USD $100 this spring.
• The Lexar JumpDrive Mercury USB stick that features a unique on-board storage capacity meter.

I stumbled upon one interesting comment made by Ben Bederson, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, who argues that the Sony Reader display is narrower and shorter than the ideals for easy reading, "which means the viewer will be navigating too much with the eye from line to line, and with the machine from page to page." It's obvious Mr Bederson has never tried to read a full-length e-book on a PDA.

Meanwhile, The Times sounds a lot more enthusiastic:

Because each virtual page of the display contains slightly fewer words than a normal page, the speed of each "turn" must be fast or the flow of reading is broken too easily. A turn that took a second made an earlier version [the Sony Librie] unusable.

The "killer application" of the Reader is probably more on the software side. The latest device has none of the restrictions that dragged down earlier versions. It is more open in what files it will handle and can store indefinitely about 100 books on a £30 memory chip.

Related links: Sony's new e-book reader officially announced, Sony Reader vs. iRex Iliad e-book reader, Poll: Which e-reader would you choose?

08:12 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | iSilo/X

Darren released the first beta of iSilo V4.31. The beta seems to be a minor update which corrects some problems of previous versions. iSiloX V4.31b1 now supports handling HTTP responses with multiple Content-Type headers.

The beta of iSilo can be downloaded from here and of iSiloX from here. You don't know iSilo? Check out this thread for more information.

08:06 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Libraries may become an unexpected ally in the fight against oppressive DRM. The same problems faced by consumers that have DRM schemes imposed on them are also problems for libraries, but on a bigger scale. A BBC news article says "Libraries fear digital lockdown."

Here are some of their concerns:
* When technology changes, the material may become unavailable to people in the future
* Restrictions from DRM may last much longer than the period of time that the material is protected by copyright law, effectively extending copyright terms in a de facto manner. There is no automatic expiration of DRM to match copyright periods.
* Even when copyrights expire, there would probably be no key for libraries to use to unlock the DRM

The British Library writes that "excessive control on access to information [using DRM technologies]"... "will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege and undermine, or even prevent, legitimate public good access."

(via Slashdot )

07:15 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

More news is developing via Palm Addicts about possible information on a new PalmOS Treo with information apparently coming originally from a post at the TreoCentral forums.

There are some pictures that clearly show a Sprint phone this time. Could it be that this one is being released first by Sprint, who just finished a prime advertising product placement in the tv show 24? If their data plan stays reasonably priced (based on customer comments, it's currently a bargain at about $15/month unlimited data for the Treo 650), this is great news for people hoping to stay connected for web browsing, email and messaging without breaking the bank.

Rumored [700p] specs include:

* EVDO (high speed data connectivity)
* Pocket Tunes (as opposed to Real Player on the 650)
* Sprint TV
* Documents to Go version 8
* Blazer 4.5 in ROM
* 62.8M of free space for programs
* 320x320 display
* PalmOS Garnet 5.4.9
* Camera with 1280x1024 resolution
* A much faster user interface than on the Treo 650

Check out these sites for more information:
Gadgets On The Go
TreoCentral Thread

Now those are some specs that will get you excited, even if they are just rumors for now!

(Thanks Sammy at Palm Addict for the hot tip!)

Update: Be sure not to miss Justin's post on this topic (like I did!)
Update2: You can scratch the 800p rumors now. It is admitted to be a fake. But the 700p rumors continue strong thus far.

12:58 PM by Laurens in Archive | Sunrise

Usually, I'm pleased to announce a new Sunrise XP alpha, but in this case I'm not.

This release removes support for non-Western language encodings. There were several problems with the encoding library I was using for alpha 3 that I could not resolve due to technical and legal issues. I will reimplement encoding support in a future, post-v2.0 release. Don't expect anything for the next few months, though. I'm too far ahead in v2.0 development to retrofit this functionality at this stage.

On a brighter note, this release fixes some bugs and adds some minor features. I will post more info later.

• New: Option to output only new feed items.
• New: Ability to specify link rewriting filters in the interface. See "Links" tab on the Document Properties dialog.
• Fixed: Crash when opening the HotSync Conduit configuration dialog.
• Fixed: Text links containing line breaks now use the correct link colour. (Regression bug, due to change in alpha 3b.)
• Fixed: RSS feeds with CDATA sections containing raw HTML are now parsed correctly.
• Fixed: Publication dates in Atom 0.3 feeds were not handled correctly.
• Fixed: Date stamp was not used for the PDB filename.

See the full change log for more information. This also includes a roadmap for future releases.

Download page

12:14 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

This is a fun time... it's rumor season again for upcoming Palm product releases! The latest rumors are centered around a possible Treo 800p, but I'm sure more will surface.

Now the most common response to the rumors is that the specs are too good to be true. But the days of wonderful spec rumors are great because until something is released, there is always hope that we'll get the perfect Palm device! I've been through this cycle a bunch of times now, and it never fails to excite me. It never fails to get me hoping for something that's probably not possible, and it puts me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what will really become available.

But one thing I'd say is that when a good device is released, I'm delighted about it. Recently, the PalmOS world has seen what are some of the the best devices ever. But is anyone celebrating? Not many. Mostly just complaints are what we hear.

The last time a device released with "everything we want" was probably the T|X. I was delighted at the time, and I still think it's spectacular. I don't have one, but I would like to have one.

True the lifedrive wasn't as spectacular a success as we hoped, and it did have a few issues, but it was pretty neat also, and you can't just dismiss any device with a screen that nice and so much built-in storage.

But I really never felt that any of the recent devices got the big buzz of praise they deserved. Especially after a long run of what I felt were so-so devices. True, some liked the T3 pretty well, but it had some reliability issues and battery life issues that were pretty severe limitations to its success.

So I wonder. If a Treo anything like recent rumors is released this year or in three years or in five years, will there be anyone saying "wow this is great"?

The fact is, we have a way of being disappointed with almost any realistic product rollout.

Even the Treo650, which has turned out to be a pretty spectacular device, got a little positive hobby press, but never really seemed to get the overwhelming buzz you might expect. All the focus seems to be on weaknesses that really weren't as significant as we all made them out to be. Is it really all that tough to live with a smaller memory footprint or a slightly big form factor? Are the keys really too small, or maybe just right after all? Personally, while no device is completely perfect, I do think the Treo 650 falls square into the "great device" category.

So I guess I wonder if there will ever be joy among Palm fanatics, no matter what the next Treo looks like. Or will we just continue to complain away any good features? It seems that if it's not that infamous "monster" device (you know, the one referred to in the forums with the defibulator and hidef projection tv and other stuff built in), it doesn't really stand a chance of being called a great device.

Maybe it's time we realize that the Palm world is living some glory days. The future? I don't know. And there is a heck of a lot of uncertainty for the years to come. But let's not be so critical that we miss the fun and greatness of the current time.

It doesn't seem anyone else out there is expressing this perspective, so maybe I'm the only one that sees things like this.

Tell us how you feel. Do you agree that these are the glory days for Palm, or do you feel like Palm just always keeps falling short?