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).

12:09 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

iRex is not some kind of meat-eating dinosaur with sharp seven-inch long teeth, but the presumed name of a next-gen e-book reading device based on E Ink technology. Henrycat digged out some mouth-watering details for us:

• Reflective 8.1-inch XGA (1024x768 => 160dpi!) E Ink screen
• 16 grey scales (versus 4 grey scales of the Sony Librie)
• Rechargable battery (lasts for one week when reading 3hrs/day)
• Wifi + USB connectivity
• Distributed by iRex Technologies bv, a Philips spinoff
• Release date set for 2006

Update:

• Touch-screen display
• SD and CF card support

Thanks henrycat!

Related: E Ink launches support portal and community forum

03:42 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Nature magazine has done a study on 42 "science-related" entries to compare Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, and finds that the subject matter experts found one less error per article on average in the Wikipedia articles (an average of three errors per article instead of four).

That would be bad enough publicity for Britannica, but now the results are piling on. It seems that further analysis (Item #64 if the link doesn't locate it completely for you) shows that Wikipedia articles are more than twice as long as Britannica articles. That means that the error rate for a given length of text compares even more favorably for Wikipedia.

(via Slashdot)

03:02 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

According to news.com, "Ricky Gervais, creator and star of the hit BBC comedy 'The Office,' has topped the charts in the United States and Britain with his podcast..."

He has a weekly half-hour show that's been downloaded over 180,000 times. If you want to give it a listen, you can find it here.