05:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

In a press release Motricity, the parent company behind eReader, PalmGear, and PocketGear, announced today that it received an additional USD $30 million in venture funding, the company's second such funding after having received USD $27 million in October last year. Quotes from the release:

"This funding will accelerate our rapid global expansion as we continue to establish strength in Europe, Asia and other regions where market demand for wireless data services is exploding," explained Ryan Wuerch, chairman and chief executive officer at Motricity. "Consumer demand for personalized content on mobile devices is creating significant opportunities for Motricity to support the growth being experienced by wireless carriers, content providers, media companies, portals and other partners in the mobile ecosystem."

"The mobile industry is seeing demand for consumer-specific mobile content grow at a significant pace, driven by the increasing availability of quality content and reliable services. This has given traditionally non-mobile brands cause to quickly adopt mobile strategies," said Keith Daubenspeck, chairman of Advanced Equities. "Advanced Equities believes that Motricity has the right technology, the right approach, the right relationships and the right management team to address this emerging market and achieve exponential growth in coming years."

03:11 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

CBS News has just announced a cable bypass strategy with "plans for a major expansion of CBSNews.com, creating a 24-hour, multi-platform digital news network, bypassing cable television in favor of the nation's fastest-growing distribution system -- broadband."

They "will move from a primarily television and radio news-based operation to a 24-hour, on-demand news service, available across many platforms, drawing on the experienced, worldwide, award-winning resources of the network."

A "Public Eye" blog will be written by journalists to form "a candid and robust dialogue between CBS News journalists and the public." (Coming late this summer.)

Maybe a few major news scandals are just what they needed as a reason to make some radical changes and make a move toward shaping the future of mainstream news. It will be interesting to see how well it works.

04:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

1SRC features an interesting editorial by Jeff Kirvin called "The Once and Future Palm": There's been a lot of "Palm is dead" doom and gloom out there in the last week or so. Even sites focused on Windows Mobile have grabbed this meme and run with it. I have to admit to being partly at fault myself. I was too grim in last week's 1SRC podcast and declared Palm OS dead before I really broke down and analyzed the situation.

Good read and I agree in many points, except when Jeff says, "conventional wisdom is that the jump in clarity from 320x480 to 480x640 isn't worth the corresponding drop in battery life and the amount of software recoding that would need to be done; HVGA is "good enough" on a 3.7in screen." If you have ever seen in action a Pocket PC with VGA resolution and a 3.7" screen (such as the Axim X50v), you'll know that the addition of twice the amount of pixels (320x480->480x640) is a huge jump in screen clarity and it definitely makes it worthwhile if you consider using your PDA for anything else besides organizing your personal calendar.

Also, I am not sure if Jeff is right about what he says regarding Palm OS and multitasking capabilities. Seems like some people believe it does offer multitasking, or at least some kind of it (Jeff), while others believe the contrary. In a similar discussion here at Mobileread, Dianne Hackborn of PalmSource pointed out that multitasking is a required feature also for handhelds nowadays:

I think the key thing is that this isn't really an either/or question. For the kinds of things these devices are doing -- multimedia, all kinds of communications stuff, web browsing, etc -- multithreading and multiple running applications is required. That doesn't mean, however, that you should be forced to use it for things where it doesn't give any benefit, such as in your address book app.

03:16 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Rowling's sixth novel about the young wizard is not scheduled to be released until Saturday, but a Vancouver grocery store accidentally sold 15 copies of the book last week, reports CBC. Raincoast Books, who distributes the books in Canada, managed to win a court injunction barring the buyers of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from disclosing the plot and also ordering them to return all copies to Raincoast:

"It is not the intention of Raincoast to penalize the small group of fans who have innocently purchased a book in good faith. We look to them to ensure that the excitement and mystery of the story is preserved for fans around the world until July 16th by cooperating with us and observing the terms of the court injunction."

06:43 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The beta of the Odeo podcast service is now open to the public. It's a great place to browse and search for podcasts and sync them with your favorite audio player. From their website:

So...we've opened the doors. After months of hard work, we're proud to welcome you to Odeo. We're still very much in beta, so we appreciate your feedback (and patience). But please look around, listen to some stuff, subscribe...have fun.

06:30 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Good news for all e-book lovers. Matsushita demonstrated at the Digital Publishing Fair 2005 in Tokyo last week the next generation of its Sigma e-book reader.

According to eBookSpot, the new Sigma reader, which is sold under the Panasonic brand, will come with only one screen panel instead of two, and it will be powered with a color LCD display. Previous models used monochrome LCDs based on Kent Displays' Cholesteric Technology (chLCD). No information on price and date of availability yet.

04:39 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Creating mobile-specific top level domain names will soon be possible with ICANN's recent approval of the controversial .mobi domain. At PalmAddicts (via BBC News) we read: Soon it could be much easier to browse the net on a mobile phone. Approval for a .mobi domain has been given by the organisation that oversees the net's addressing system. Websites that use the .mobi domain will be created specifically for mobile devices such as handsets and handheld computers to make them easy to find and browse. The first websites using the new .mobi domain are expected to appear by late summer next year.

02:49 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

This is always a hot topic so we're always glad to pass on more info to those that are interested. The newest entry into the analysis is "eugenia" with a post at TuxTops. If you just can't get enough articles about advantages and disadvantages of each, this one is just for you!

(via Slashdot)