09:56 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Skype released a new beta of its Skype client for Pocket PC today. Version 1.2 emphasizes voice quality as well as new languages (English, German, French, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian and Spanish). Other new features include:

• Incoming voicemails
• Leave voicemail to users who are not voicemail subscribers
• SkypeIn and Voicemail status icons on start tab
• Windows Mobile 5.0 compatibility

Unfortunately, there's still no support for VGA and landscape mode. While voice quality has improved it still lacks compared to the desktop version. Overall an improvement to the previous beta.

09:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Imagine getting sued by a company over comments other people have made on your website. Scary? It just happened to SEO Book author Aaron Wall: If you boil it down to its essence, the plaintiff is claiming damages of $10,000 and irreparable harm due to comments that other people left on Aaron's blog.

Although I think Mobileread is doing a good job moderating inappropriate content, however this case may turn out, it's not clear what liability we're exposing ourselves to.

11:24 PM by Brian in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In technology pundit Robert X. Cringely's latest column, Bob throws out a pretty wild but plausible Apple strategy to disrupt Microsoft's domination of the desktop OS: Use the iPod as a bootable device to run OS X on PCs.

"Every one of those iPods is a bootable drive. What if Apple introduces OS 10.5, its next super-duper operating system release, and at the same time starts loading FOR FREE the current operating system version -- OS 10.4 -- on every new iPod in a version that runs on generic Intel boxes? What if they also make 10.4 a free download through the iTunes Music Store?"

While iPods are bootable drives for Macs thanks to Open Firmware, things are a bit different for PCs. The "host" computer would need a BIOS that supports booting from a USB device, or Apple would have to furnish a Knoppix-like bootable CD or DVD that would then run OS X from the iPod. Similar to IBM's SoulPad research project, your entire computing environment including your OS, applications, files, and so on would be available anywhere using your iPod and a suitable "host" computer.

Apple has stated that they are a hardware company, not a software company. This strategy wouldn't undermine their hardware sales as it would drive iPod sales and give the "iPod Halo Effect" a whole new meaning.

04:19 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

FilePoint Exchange integrates with Google Desktop and lets you remotely search for files on your computer from your Pocket PC handheld or smartphone.

To search for files on your remote computer, simply enter one or more keywords that you know are related to the file's content, or the filename, or both. For example if you know you have a spreadsheet somewhere on your computer with your March Sales Leads, just enter March Sales Leads in the search box and tap Search. Google Desktop Search will automatically search your remote computer and FilePoint Exchange will deliver a listing of matching files back to you!

Once you've found your files, you can browse them and also download them from desktop to handheld. Since the tool is a plug-in and not made by Google, you actually have to pay for it ($39.99 for a limited time).

04:18 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

In this electronic age, there's a growing number of collections of audio, video, ebooks, and other personal content on electronic media. It's stored in various compressed formats, often without concern for whether or not that format will be of any use in future years.

Some formats like text, mp3, pdf, etc are very likely to be useful even in a decade. Others like DRM'd proprietary ebook formats are much less likely to be useful. But how about something like DivX? And even our beloved iSilo format leaves us wondering about longevity of content availability. (But that wouldn't stop me from using it, because it's such a great program.)

If you have eReader or MobiPocket books, for example, how convinced are you that you'll be able to use them when you move to a linux handheld like the Nokia 770, for example? How confident are you if companies supporting the formats don't survive that long? Or will you be able to buy music players for your collection of ogg audio files in 20 years?

Fortunately, there are some mitigating factors. For example, in many cases there are already some practical ways to do batch conversions between formats. Also, if you have your content in some kind of very popular format, there are likely to be more readers/players in the future and ongoing support on future platforms, as well as new conversion help. If your content is DRM'd and in a less popular format, you might not really care if it's a book you intend to read once like a novel and throw away. That's what I do with most of my paperback reading, and I rarely visit the typical paperback more than once unless it's a reference work or a classic.

I'm interested to hear what formats you think will survive for another decade. I've listed a sampling of the most common formats, but feel free to reply with your thoughts and speculations on other formats not listed.

10:59 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

I just installed Google Talk and my first contact is Sammy of PalmAddicts. If you also like to chat with one of MobileRead, feel free to add me to your contact list. Other MobileRead editors who have Google Talk installed will soon be added to the list below:

Alexander: turcic@gmail.com
Sunshine: geeklet at gmail dot com
Chaos: jsnelgrove at gmail dot com

You can download Google Talk from here and also check out these hacks.

10:34 AM by Laurens in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm Ramping Up for Linux-Based Devices: (Brighthand)

Although the company hasn't made any statements committing itself to doing this, there's strong evidence on its own web site that it is already preparing to do so.

A search for the term "Linux" on the page listing job openings at Palm turns up no less than ten hits.

Perhaps PalmOS/Linux will arrive earlier than we're all expecting.

04:27 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If there's one lucky guy today it's Peter from Engadget who got his hands on the HTC Universal. And he is willing to answer the questions you may have about this device. I would love to know a) how its VGA screen compares to the Axim X50v, and b) how usable the QWERTY keyboard really is.

appendum: Meanwhile msmobiles.com is reporting that German phone magazine "connect" brings the first in-depth review.