09:26 AM by Brian in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

2005 could go down as the year mobile video started to gain traction due to numerous product announcements and content distribution deals. The most notable of these announcements was in October, when Apple released the new video-capable iPod combined with the availability of popular TV shows at the iTunes Music Store. Since Apple's announcement, news of competing mobile video distribution deals has been coming fast and furious.

An article at iMedia Connection entitled Mobile Video: Present and Future takes a look at mobile video and mobile-TV, detailing many of the challenges that the mobile entertainment market will face both near and long term:

• Bandwidth issues
• Competing technologies
• Streaming vs downloadable content
• Control: Content providers vs wireless operators
• Apple vs everyone else
• Consumer ambivalence
• Pricing

Notably absent from this list was the mention of Digital Rights Management (DRM), which will inevitably play a major role as content providers attempt lock down and control how, when, and where consumers use their content.

Read the full article here.

[iMedia Connection via MocoNews]

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

Here are the highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

Current E-Books Trends
E Ink launches support portal and community forum
Google was not interested in Project Gutenberg

E-Book Readers
Cybook e-book reader with free WiFi card
iRex next-gen e-book reader based on e Ink

E-Book Webstores
Current eReader e-book discounts
eReader's Winter Promo RSS feed
More free eBooks at eReader (Starting Friday)

General Chat
Chuzzle game for PalmOS and Windows Mobile
Touch User Interface for paper
Vista (the next Windows OS) graphics moved out of kernel
Wikipedia may be more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica

Other Gadgets
cPC: handheld with both Windows Mobile and Windows XP
Nokia 770 Arstechnica review
OQO reviewed by PalmAddicts

Palm
Beware of the Treo thumb
FontSmoother 1.50 released (major revisions under the hood)
Letter from Access to PalmOS developers
Rumor: Palm to equip DirecTV technicians
Treonauts hands-on with the Treo 700w
WSJ says Palm is poised for a comeback

Pocket PC
BrickGenius - new game for Pocket PC
NetFront 3.3 Technical Preview 1.03 available
PPC Port of Wolfenstein 3D & Spear of Destiny released
TCPMP V0.71b adds native AVC decoder

Portable Audio/Video
"The Ricky Gervais Show" is top podcast

Sunrise
Sunrise XP alpha 1 released

05:18 PM by Brian in E-Book General | News

A company called Somatic Digital has announced a whole new graphical user interface called Touch User Interface (TUI). Unlike conventional graphical user interfaces, TUI is design so that the reader of a printed paper page can launch digital content and applications represented as an icon or link embedded in a printed page on a computer, DVD, CD or website. From the Somatic Digital website:

Touch User Interface – or TUI – technology ensures a revolution in printed books, supplements, workbooks, and texts. By pressing the surface of the printed page the reader immediately connects to digital content stored on the computer, websites, DVDs, and CDs. The TUI is to paper what the graphical user interface (GUI) is to computers.

You can read more about the technology behind Touch User Interface, try it in a demo, and see it in action here. TUI appears to be aimed primarily at education, allowing content publishers to create interactive workbooks for students, but it also has some serious implications and revolutionary applications for e-commerce and advertising in print publications.

While this technology promises to marry real printed paper pages and our ever expanding digital world, one has to wonder if recent advances in e-ink and e-paper will make this technology obsolete before it ever makes it to market. The eCommerce applications of this technology could also give the term "impulse buying" a whole new meaning!

[Podcasting News via TUAW]

09:19 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The acquisition of PalmSource by Access is now complete according to a letter to PalmOS developers from the founders of Access (Toru Arakawa and Tomihisa Kamada).

It also seems that they have fine tuned their public relations a bit, because this letter is much more reassuring than comments that made the news early after the purchase was announced.

The primary points seem to be:
1) The acquisition of PalmSource is complete
2) Access is committed to the "embedded software technology space"
3) Access is "committed to supporting PalmSource's ongoing development work on Palm OS for Linux"
4) Access is "committed to continuing to support all current offerings of Palm OS and its contracts with customers"
5) Access wants developers to feel they are valued and encourages them to continue developing PalmOS applications
6) Through Access, PalmOS developers will now be able to market for "an even wider market of PDAs, phones and other mobile devices"

I have been on the edge of my seat awaiting news from Access, so this is a welcome bit of news. But I suppose I may have to wait longer than I had expected for the new name. No word yet from Access about when that is coming, but when I looked back at the original news from the purchase of the Palm name by PalmOne, I was a bit sad to see that there is a 4 year transition period where PalmSource is allowed to use the Palm name. It's not clear to what extent they can use it, or how much advantage there would be to Access to make the name change more quickly, but I don't know of any near term deadline.

In related news, Palm Insider is reporting an interesting rumor: "It seems PalmSource is planning to come with something new in February and this may explain why Palm and Verizon will show Treo 700w at CES in January 2006."

Could this be the name change, or maybe even an updated timeline for PalmOS for Linux? The excitement surrounding PalmOS may grow considerably in the coming months!

(via PalmAddict and PalmInsider.)

09:18 AM by Laurens in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

CNET writes Start-up merges cell phone and PC into a handheld:

DualCor Technologies next month will unveil the cPC, a full-fledged handheld Windows XP computer that also comes with a built-in smart phone that runs Windows Mobile 5.0.

If you thought they somehow found a way to run both versions of Windows on a single hardware set, you'd be wrong. The cPC actually has two different chipsets and memory configurations:

The computer part of the equation consists of Windows XP Tablet operating system, a 1.5GHz C7-M processor from Via Technologies and 1GB of DDR 2 memory. The cell phone aspect of the device has Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC phone edition, a PXA communications processor from Intel, 128MB of DRAM and 1GB of flash memory.

The cPC can also be used as a regular desktop:

Users can also dock the cPC like a CPU, plugging it into an outlet and LCD screen and it will feel no different than using a regular desktop.

This marvel of engineering does have a $1500 price tag attached to it, so you better start saving your money for when it comes out in March.

05:13 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I haven't seen anyone talk about this yet, but I don't think you have to be an OS architectural genius to see that this could be a step toward support for mobile devices (and probably embedded devices also).

According to Slashdot, the GUI portion of the next generation operating system is not going to be in the kernel. In other words, it will be like a component add-on that is integrated into a version of the OS that is released. A mobile device could then run the same kernel, but a lightweight GUI layer.

Many people are still expecting or hoping for a version of desktop Windows flexible enough to effectively support small screens without a completely different Windows Mobile OS like we have today in Pocket PC devices. Windows may not look the same on all platforms, but would run on the same kernel and potentially have much better compatibility with desktop apps that are compatible with various device types. To be a realistic progression of the Windows OS, one would also need to see support from Microsoft developer tools as well as improvements in mobile cpu technology. But Bill Gates has always seen the future of mobile computing to be a device that runs a full OS. It's just a matter of when the hardware can do it (and when the OS supports it).

On the other hand, many consider that whole concept to be a pipe dream that is doomed, or at least not appropriate for the next decade or so. I guess time will tell what direction mobile computing will take, but it's pretty hard to rule out just about anything at this point!

01:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

A quick one from me today: Subscribe to this feed and don't miss any more freebies from eReader's Winter e-book promotion. Updated once a day.

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12:20 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Michael sent word that only during the holiday season you'll get a free WiFi card for every Cybook e-book reader you purchase from Bookeen's online store.

"The user will really enjoy the Cybook as a very easy tool to browse the Internet. The Cybook switches on instantaneously and Internet access is available in less than 20 seconds," explains Michael Dahan, co-founder of Bookeen. Laurent Picard, another co-founder of Bookeen, said, "The wireless feature is our gift to all our future customers for holidays. In fact, they will not browse the Internet, they will read it like a book!"

Note: The article description isn't clear about whether you buy the English or the French version of the Cybook. Better send them a quick e-mail before you go shopping!

Update: A Cybook "DeLuxe pack" is also available for $499 and it comes with an additional battery, charger, extra memory and the Wifi card - you save over $100).