01:07 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to researchers at Canalys, smartphone worldwide shipments are still growing apace. In their latest report they found that during the second quarter of this year volumes grew 105 per cent year-on-year with over 12 million smart phones sold. Other key points:

• Overall global shipments of smart mobile devices up 105% year on year in Q2 2005
• Converged devices up 186%, handhelds down 14%
• Nokia's share grew to 55%, with it shipping 6.7 million smart phones
• Palm retains second place as its smart phones grew more than 200%, but handhelds fell 32%
• RIM, in third, ships almost 900,000 converged devices, on target for its first million-unit quarter

Like in the first quarter of this year, Palm's further drop in handheld shipments was counterbalanced by the continued success of the company's Treo smartphones in both North America and EMEA. One reason for the success of smartphones and converged devices is because their are subsidized by mobile operators, which makes them relatively less expensive then handheld computers.

Symbian still rules among smartphone operating systems with two-third of the market. Market research firm IDC also affirms Symbian's dominance in another study released this week which states that Symbian's market share was roughly 56 percent worldwide in 2004.

12:42 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Mobile Sites

Uninterrupted mobile shopping is now possible thanks to a newly renovated mobile-optimized version of Amazon.com. And as an hidden extra goodie, they have a link to Movie Showtimes to find theatres and showtimes near you for currently playing movies.

Thanks to Paul who made the discovery first via Treonauts.

12:19 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Jimmie of PalmAddicts has an interesting post describing how to allow a Palm Treo 650 to use your PC's Bluetooth connection to connect to the Internet. Basically all you have to do, well, if you're running MS Windows, is to enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). For more details visit PalmAddicts.

12:03 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Update: Read Alex's post below for his initial findings. Looks like there is still some way to go for the release of the final version.

Loss of data is the source of constant angst to many handheld users. Blue Nomad is now offering a beta version of BackupBuddy for Windows Mobile. The company has been around the Palm scene for some time, and I remember well that BackupBuddy for Palm has saved my butt on a couple of occasions. If you would like to join the free beta test, send an email to beta [at] bluenomad [dot] com to receive all required information.

If you don't want to wait for the end of the beta period and need a good backup solution for Windows Mobile, I recommend you try out Sprite Backup Premium.

08:22 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Computer book publisher O'Reilly will be releasing Palm and Treo Hacks on October 1, 2005. Amazon already lists the book with a 34% discount for $16.47 for pre-order. Author Scott MacHaffie promises that Palm and Treo Hacks is full of practical, ingenious tips and tricks you can apply immediately, no matter whether you are a beginning or an experienced Palm user.

07:34 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Mini-Mozilla aka Minimo is a front-runner of forthcoming Web browsers for the Pocket PC handheld. The latest build (ARM binary) adds rudimentary support for tabbed browsing. Or so it should. Either I am doing something wrong or this version compiled by Doug Turner isn't compatible with my Axim X50 - I click on the executable installed on my SD Card, but the browser wouldn't start. I do have enough free RAM (20+ Mb). A glimpse in the bug list and the forums was of no help either. Any tips?

08:54 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I am glad to announce BlogPulse2RSS, a free BlogPulse-to-RSS interface. Enter your Blog URL and you'll receive a custom RSS 2.0 feed with the results from BlogPulse Profiles.

BlogPulse Profiles is a new tool introduced last week that allows users to obtain data about individual blogs including popularity, posting frequency and incoming links. Check out their FAQ for more. And here are some other blogs talking about BlogPulse Profiles.

If you have any comments regarding BlogPulse2RSS feel free to post them here!

03:38 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

JKOnTheRun points to a TeleRead article about reading ebooks on a Tablet PC using a two column format. They are said to describe how to do it with the yBook and Bookshelf ebook readers. Might be useful so some, but I kind of enjoy on a full screen reading in one single page so I'm not sure what I think. The difference, I suppose, is that on a Tablet PC you are probably up closer to the screen, so it would be more like the paper book reading experience. Worth checking out if you read ebooks on a Tablet PC.