08:34 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Whoever came up with that name should have their head examined. For $99 you can now fetch the Dell DJ Ditty, a tiny MP3 player with 512MB flash memory. No whistles or bells, but it comes with an integrated FM tuner and a minuscule screen.

[via Engadget]

08:19 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the first Public Working Draft of Scope of Mobile Web Best Practices. This document outlines guidelines for content delivery and display on mobile and small-screen devices, sets out requirements for the "mobileOK" trustmark, and identifies the goal of one Web.

08:16 PM by Brian in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

FreeTechBooks.com is a directory of free computer science books and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available for download (free as in beer). From the site:

What's the Catch?

These authors publish their books for free to give you a chance to review their books, to get as much good information distributed as possible. So, if you like what you read online, you can always support the authors by buying the paperback at your local or online bookstores.

A quick check of the site revealed that several free books are offered in Adobe PDF, PostScript, and HTML formats. If you're looking for some free technical reference material in electronic format, give FreeTechBooks.com a look.

[via Lifehacker]

01:21 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

After years of promises about long lasting portable devices with fuel cell technology, maybe it's almost here with this fuel cell powered Toshiba MP3 player that has a luxurious 60hrs reported play time.

Probably not. It will still likely take some time before it's on the market. In fact, haven't we been hearing this from Toshiba for more than a year? We also heard recently that Toshiba's fuel cells for laptops is being delayed until at least 2007.

It does appear to be refillable without expensive gadgets, if you can believe the picture. Just don't spill it on your brand new device! And I realize this is not very important when you are talking about a fuel cell device, but I wonder if the sound quality is any good.

Anyone else out there tired of waiting for all these promising battery and display technologies to show up in our pockets instead of remote secret labs and press releases?

12:15 PM by Brian in E-Book General | News

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx

In an interesting article about e-books by Joshua Fruhlinger on the IBM developerWorks website, he uses this quote to start a discussion about how e-books are currently being accepted only by the early adopters, compares paper books with their digital equivalents, and raises several common criticisms of e-books:

• E-books can be physically uncomfortable to read (whether you're sitting at a desk looking at a monitor or squinting at a tiny PDA screen).
• They're not portable if you have to read them on a desktop computer; if you read them on a laptop or PDA, you can't read if you run out of power.
• There's a number of often incompatible formats that the files come in.
• And the user's ability to access the book's content is often restricted by various digital rights management technologies. (It's notable that the Baen Free Library, one of the more successful e-book outfits, gives away books that are DRM-free -- and, for that matter, free as in beer. I guess it's easy to be successful when you don't expect anyone to pay you!)

You can read the full article here.

While I agree with many of his points, I would argue that as people become more accustomed to consuming digital content online, a trend that is leading to declining newspaper and magazine circulation, e-books and digital magazines are on the verge of going mainstream.

10:57 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Grassnet hosts a comprehensive list of Palm-related podcasts for those of you that are looking for them. Something for everybody.

(via PalmAddicts)

09:53 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Wonderful news. It's rumor season again for new Palm Inc devices. The next Tungsten device sounds very likely, and there is even the possibility of a 6gig LifeDrive Mobile Manager already, thanks to the following slip reported by Brighthand "In June, the Spanish branch of Hitachi, the maker of the 4 GB microdrive in the LifeDrive, let slip that a future Palm device would have a 6 GB microdrive in it."

The prevailing theory is that the odds of a new LifeDrive soon is greatly decreased by the fact that higher capacity drives coming out from Hitachi very soon.

I believe the exact opposite... the higher capacity drives arriving soon are another reason the think that Palm will want to deliver the 6gig drive units.

Here's the reasoning. Palm has always been cautious and a bit slow in adopting new technologies, especially when they are expensive. They like to get bargains, both to reduce product costs for the consumer, but also so they can keep their profit margins high. The difference between 6 and 8-10gig is probably not going to make that great a difference in demand, so I think they would rather get bargain prices on older technology. It's the Palm way, and I happen to agree with it. I'd make the same choice.

As to whether a LifeDrive is coming in the Fall, I don't know. But if you buy my logic, then you don't have to let the 6gig drive leak dash your hopes.

10:22 PM by Brian in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Engadget is running a story about Apple filing to trademark the term "iPodcast". You can read the filings at the US Patent and Trademark Office here and here.

Is this, as some people have suggested, a bold attempt by Apple to assimilate the very popular term "podcasting" as well as associated technologies, or rather an indication that a next-gen iPod device or iTunes phone with audio recording capabilities is on the way, as well as an iTunes update to make the creation and syndication of podcasts a much more simple and streamlined process?

My bet is on something along the lines of the latter, maybe with some iChat AV and GarageBand integration thrown in on the desktop.