08:05 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Treonauts got their hands on the Treo 700w and they celebrate the event with a couple of juicy photos. They also confirm that Treo 650 users who'd like to switch can stick to their existing accessories, since fortunately Palm decided not to change the proprietary dock connector port.

07:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Gosh we've talked a lot this week. Here's your weekly round up of MobileRead's events.

Current E-Books Trends
The Holy Bible on USB stick

FBReader
FBReader 0.7.1b is released

General Chat
Blockbuster vs NetFlix: A comparison and review
In Tokyo e-paper is already so everyday
Odeo brings podcasting to the masses
US Government stumbles over PDF document

iSilo/X
iSilo and iSiloX V4.3 Beta 1 released

Link Swap
Mobile Ministry Magazine site is back up

Other Gadgets
RIM invents drop-resistant LCD display

Other Readers
Bloaty Adobe Acrobat to integrate bloaty Flash

Palm
1src Podcast #53 available
Boxwave ClearTouch Crystal hands-on review
New York Times interviews Palm CEO
On Pocket PC fans' anti-Palm smear
PalmAddicts Podcast #25 available
Palm Treo 700w manual and photos on FCC website
PDA247 podcast on Palm-to-Pocket PC conversion
Technology Review examines Palm's timeline
Treo 700w available on the greymarket?

Pocket PC
Engadget had a sneek peek at "Photon"
HP to outrace Palm with a debut in China
Microsoft targets low-cost PDA phones
Turn your Pocket PC into an iPod
WM 5.0 Direct Push Email is out but probably not for you

Portable Audio/Video
Custom podcasts from RSS text feeds

Smartphones
BlackBerry-like Nokia E61 previewed

10:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

New York Times scored an extended interview (reg req.) with Palm CEO Ed Colligan. The highlights:

• Ed doesn't believe BlackBerry service will be discontinued
• Though he believes RIM-NTP battle could benefit his company to grab more market share
• Palm's competitive advantage over RIM is the wide range of available applications
• Ed confuses "open platforms" with "well-supported industry standard platforms"
• He avoids to directly answer whether his company has looked into open-source
• He implies that the current status quo of mobile open-source suffers from bad user experience
• Apple iPod is a competitor in the sense that people often weigh their purchases of handhelds against MP3 players
• Music applications won't necessarily converge with phone and organizers
• Phone-capable handhelds is a bigger growth area than dedicated organizers
• "When you see our next-gen product, it has a high-speed radio in it, literally bringing kind of broadband connection speeds to the device. It totally changes the dynamic of how accessible the Internet is as an information access point wherever you are and whenever you want to get access to it."

03:16 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

DigiTimes has published a report stating that Microsoft plans to team up with Taiwan ODM handset makers to optimize its Windows Mobile OS and to manufactore low-cost PDA phones.

Microsoft has already exchanged ideas about the potential project with its major partners in Taiwan, including High Tech Computer (HTC), Quanta Computer, Asustek Computer, Acer, Mitac International, and BenQ, the sources noted.

Some producers are less optimistic in their ability to produce PDA phones under US$300 and they say it'd take two more years for to become economically feasable.

02:54 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Have you ever wanted to listen to your RSS text feeds instead of having to read them? Here's a solution that you might be interested in.

From Jon Aquino's Mental Garden, "Audiolicious is a Windows program that lets you turn any RSS feed into a podcast. It uses text-to-speech to convert the feed's webpages into MP3 files."

He goes on to describe the procedure to convert (on your Windows desktop) from RSS feeds to your very own mp3 podcasts from computer generated speech.

Apparently, after pondering the less than spectacular podcast content and reflecting on the great text content, it didn't take too much to spur the idea. It turns out that Audiolicious was the result of the simple question "What if I used text-to-speech to convert these textual webpages to podcasts that I could listen to during my daily commute?"

Personally, I'm not sure if I could endure the computer voices void of proper emphasis and inflection, but it is an intriguing idea. Especially for mobile devices.

04:42 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Grab the latest PDA247 podcast by David Eaton for a detailed step-by-step instruction on how to archieve data from a Palm handheld, convert it on your PC, and use it then with a Pocket PC device.

05:20 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Nexxtech is going to sell a King James translation of the Holy Bible in form of a, uh, let's say curious-looking USB stick. From the official description:

This Plug and Play USB device has a retracting USB plug and includes all sixty-six books of the King James Bible in text format. Powerful search tools make it easy to quickly find any topic of interest. Features a highly detailed leather cover with gold lettering and a sturdy key ring. The ultra-compact size makes it easy to study the good book anywhere you go. Compatible with Windows based PCs only - not compatible with Mac or Windows 98. English text only.

Available in January 06 for USD $30.

[via BIOS]

04:36 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Photon is the codename of the next-generation Windows Mobile Microsoft is working on. Ryan and Peter, these crazy guys from Engadget, were among the few invited to have a sneek peak at the current development version of Photon.

The new OS is still "years" away, but the one thing they would confirm is that they're finally going to unify the Smartphone and Pocket PC platforms, something they were supposedly going to do with Windows Mobile 5.0.

Sure a screenshot or two would have been nice, but for now we are content with the news that Microsoft hasn't given up improving its mobile operation system.

Related: Windows Mobile 2005 supports e-mail push technology / "Photon"