08:48 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Shaun from PDA247 has shared with me the touching story of a little girl, Lu’wen Monahan. It is titled appropriately as "The most remarkable 12 weeks of our lives."

They have set up a web site for donations, and in order to give it proper place, I'll simply include some of the text from the web site here. I don't normally post about this sort of thing because there is a lot of fraud on the web and you rarely know enough to be comfortable giving. But in this case, it's not just another web story. It's real story that Shaun's has been associated with personally, so it becomes personal to all of us in the online mobile community. I hope that if the story touches you, and you have a desire to help support this hospital, that you will consider giving something in honor of this girl.

From the site...
"This simple web site has been set up to raise money for the Royal Brompton Hospital in London who cared for Lu-wen during her short life. The people involved in the PDA247 sites will be working hard to ensure that we achieve this permanent reminder to Lu-wen and it's humbling to be given the opportunity to help continue the memory of this brave little girl.

Personally I was astonished at the dignity shown by John and Zoey throughout the pregnancy, birth and onwards and this was my inspiration for getting involved. I met Lu'wen a week before she died and even though she was attached to various machines and tubes they soon dissapeared when she opened her eyes- she was a beautiful little girl and seeing the love and care for her from Zoey and John alongside the nursing staff made me want to use the web sites for a greater purpose than just posting PDA and technical news every day.

With your help we can assist children with difficulties for many years to come and this will keep the memory of Lu'wen fresh even to those who did not know her. All donations are welcome, anything from $1 and items to put up for auction- all donators will be listed in the completed donations page. Thanks for reading this and your support is greatly appreciated.

Shaun McGill
Founder: PDA247."

07:45 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The first details of the Acer n300 Pocket PC series have shown up on a Chinese board:

• Windows Mobile 5.0
• Samsung S3C2440 400MHz
• 64MB of RAM, 128MB of ROM
• 3.7-inch, VGA LCD touch screen
• SD/MMC expansion slot with SDIO feature
• Bluetooth 1.2
• 802.11b wireless LAN
• USB Host 1.1
• Rechargeable and removable 1200 mAh Li-ion battery

The 3.7 inch screen looks wider than that of other VGA-capable Pocket PCs which is probably why Gizmodo dubbed it the Acer Widescreen.

Update: InfoSync picked up the news.

05:29 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

SoloPalmari posted the first part of their review of the JasJar i-mate, also better known as the HTC Universal.

It's difficult to properly place the JasJar, alias HTC Universal, in the PDA scene: it's more than a simple PDA Phone, partly down to its larger than normal dimensions, but mainly because it comes with a UMTS data transmission module, Videocall and Voice Over IP capabilities. It's less than a sub-notebook (i-Mate refers to it as a 'mini laptop') both in size and because it can't run common desktop-based applications - yet it can still easily cope with all the typical functions that you would expect from a notebook.

Click here to read the review.

05:21 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Lisa of MobileTechReview managed to get her hands on the Dell Axim X51v and has posted a first review along with a benchmark test comparing Windows Mobile 5.0 to 2003SE. As we expected, the Axim X51v is basically a blueprint of the X50v, except that it has double the flash memory (256MB) and comes lead-free to comply with European regulations. File access has become considerably slower due to WM 5.0 saving applications in Persistant Storage (ROM).

Some updates:

• Preliminary shipping date: 9/28/2005
• BargainPDA review
• Pocketnow review
• Owner manuals

03:29 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Looking for James Bond info on your mobile device?

Look no further than http://pda.mi6.co.uk/
which is the pda version of http://www.mi6.co.uk/mi6.php3

It's good to see more and more mobile versions of sites. Maybe one of these days all sites will be mobile-friendly.

06:51 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Looking for a new gadget but as usual tight on cash? PalmAddicts comes to the rescue with yet another great contest: Win a PDA or iPod of your choice!

Random drawing and closing date is Monday 7th November, so don't miss it. For more info check out Sammy's post.

06:29 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Following recent rumors of the new RIM smartphone BlackBerry 8700 aka "Electron", a user at HowardForums leaked a couple of live photos which look like the real deal. The device is supposed to be faster than its predecessor and some dudes claim it has GPS built-in.

Thanks Marcy.

06:15 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Steve from Furrygoat posted instruction how to load Windows Mobile 5 on a regular USB stick using the ARM-based Windows Device Emulator. Dubbed Portable CE 2.0, you'll be able to run native Pocket PC apps from a virtual Windows CE environment on any Windows machine.

Pocket CE 2.0 with WM 2003SE
Pocket CE 2.0 with WM 5.0

[via Pocket PC Hints and Tips]