01:38 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Whether you're a tourist to New York or just a tech-savvy Yankee, with Rancontours you can now experience Manhattan through one of currently six available multimedia tours on your handheld, cell phone or even MP3 player. At $14.95 each, the tour is interactive and you're actually taking it, standing right there in the place that you're learning about.

Rancontours uses the J2ME-based software Voyager, which supports interactive maps, audio (MP3) and visual material and is compatible with a wide variety of operating systems.

[more at News8Austin]

07:11 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Mobile Sites

Technorati fans can now visit the mobile-optimized version of their service to search weblogs by keyword and for links.

For instance, to take Technorati with you wherever you go to check for the latest bloggers to link to MobileRead, simply bookmark this url on your handheld!

06:41 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

PC World has published a comparison chart of its current Top 10 PDAs. We applaud the fact that the magazine uses two different categories for Palm and Windows-mobile handheld devices. Let's leave it up to the fans to fight for which platform is the "better" one!

In the Windows Mobile category, the Dell Axim X50v top-ranked with its dedicated Intel 2700g graphics chip. Among Palm handhelds, the Palm Tungsten T5 hit the first spot even before the newer Palm LifeDrive, thanks to the lower price, its brilliant screen and the whopping 256MB of nonvolatile flash memory.

02:58 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Carrie Yu of DigiTimes Japan labored hard to compile a list (attached) of various Japanese companies currently working on e-Paper technology, which some industry observers expect to replace TFT LCD displays one day.

She also includes a photo (attached) of a prototype e-book reader by Sony that does look strikingly similar to the E-Ink-based Sony Librie, but uses PVI-technology instead.

11:54 PM by Chaos in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

As reported on 1src and Engadget, as of two days ago (!), Tapwave has discontinued the Zodiac. The Tapwave website doesn't have much. Only a small notice, and two links.

We are sorry to inform you that the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.

...

We thank you for your past interest and support and apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused. If you have an outstanding claim with the company, Ueker and Associates will be contacting you shortly.

That last sentence almost makes it seem like they went bankrupt. Two Palm OS vendors down, only one* left. Now that both Sony and Tapwave are gone, how much longer can Palm OS really last?

*As pointed out by several people replying to this, LG has a licence to use Palm OS, but they have yet to produce anything. So that's two down, two to go, counting LG...

10:23 PM by StuBear in E-Book General | News

While browsing over on Mobile Magazine, I came across this story about RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) - they flash one word at a time onto the screen for a very short time. Check out their web-demo to get the idea. Not sure I would like this for full-time reading but might be useful when all you have is you mobile phone and a long wait

BuddyBuzz, who offers RSVP, has a list of supported phones available (alas it doesn't seem to include any Japanese models).

07:01 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

eReader.com knows how to make e-book readers happy by offering more discount/promo codes this week good through August 3rd.

• 10% discount off each book that you purchase: CHILL
• 20% discount off any one item this week: 20

Note that the discounts aren't accumulative.

05:36 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Sammy reported that for the first time real hi-res photos of the HTC Wizard aka Qtek 9100 were sighted. Check them all out in their beauty on this Norwegian site. Don't worry, the photos look good enough, even if you don't speak their language