05:53 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Following several months of "technical preview," Opera Software announced today that its mobile Web browser officially supports Windows Mobile smartphones and is available for public download. Opera 8 for Windows Mobile claims to support all major Web standards, including CSS2, DOM 2 and Javascript. It also includes Opera's "Small Screen Rendering" (SSR) technology, which "intelligently reformats" web pages to fit within the tiny screens of handheld mobile devices. A Pocket PC version is in development, the company says. From the press release:

"Originally, we had not planned to make Opera available on the Windows Mobile platform, but users kept asking for it because they were disappointed with the far from satisfactory performance of the browser that came shipped on their devices," says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "We are very pleased to offer the speedy Opera Web experience to Windows Mobile Smartphone users, and we are certain that operators will enjoy added benefit as Opera on their subscribers' Smartphones will increase data traffic and offer compelling use-cases for these devices."

05:39 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Lyndsey Dyson, Deputy Editor over at Palm Addicts, has given quite an endorsement of Quicknews for PalmOS today. It's an RSS feed reader, and is on my list of promising software to try. It also has podcast support, which is a big bonus with all the interesting podcasts now available for our listening pleasure.

A program that we use frequently here at Palm Addict Towers is Quick News for Palm OS and it has to go down as one of my favorite software programs. "RSS newsfeeds are the newest way to download and read news stories on a variety of subjects, from all over the internet. Quick News for Palm OS allows you to download these news feeds either via a HotSync, or using a direct internet connection on your Palm Powered Handheld and read them later! Use it to keep updated with the latest news, sports and financial updates as well as read your favorite websites! " It is in my opinion, the best RSS newsfeed client available and there is a trial period for you to take advantage of.

I wonder if it also includes link rewrites along the lines of what Sunrise can do? That's a nice feature because it allows you to view the full articles from the print version of articles from the RSS feeds. (I get kind of frustrated when I read RSS feeds and the rest of the article is missing.) Either way, it sounds like a great program, and is also a 2005 Powered-Up Award winner.

05:31 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is the new incarnation of Betaplayer, one of the most popular open-source audio/video players for Windows Mobile. The most promising aspects of the latest test version 0.65y is the optional ffmpeg plugin, which consists of a smaller subset of the ffmpeg library. Thanks to this plugin, TCPMP now includes codec support for H.264 and MPEG-4 with GMC optimization.

Bad news first

The ffmpeg plugin hasn't been optimized and it's therefore slower and more CPU-intensive than TCPMP's native video decoders. Picard, the brain behind TCPMP, did not say yet whether he is planning to optimize the routines in the future.

Nevertheless, if you own a decent PDA such as the Dell Axim X50v, you can benefit from the new video support. H.264 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, is poised to become a major video standard because it can replace several popular formats (such as MPEG-2 or DivX, which is a MPEG-4 ASP codec) while offering better compression efficiency over them. An overview of various encoders and decoders working on the implementation of the H.264 format can be found here.

Testing environment

In all my tests with TCPMP I used Nero Recode to encode various video snippets. Nero Encode's H.264 AVC implementation is based on the Ateme Codec, which received best marks in several independent reviews. For the purpose of this review, I used a 120 seconds clip of the popular TV series "24", which includes some slow and some fast movement passages. I encoded the clip using various bitrate and video size settings, with the Nero "Portable AVC" profile and its default encoding settings (high-quality, 2 pass). The audio stream was always encoded in 32Kbps LC AAC. Afterwards I ran each clip with TCPMP V0.65y on my Dell Axim X50v and benchmarked the playback (using default TCPMP settings).

H.264 already usable, but with some restrictions

I was able to play H.264-encoded video clips on the Axim X50v without frame drops. The limiting factor here: video size. The bitrate, in which each clips was encoded with was, to my surprise, not decisive. The 624MHz CPU of the X50v could deal with H.264 video clips that didn't exceed a resolution of 384 x 208, no matter whether the clip was encoded with a bitrate of 125Kbps or even 500Kbps.

On the other hand, any higher resolution caused frames to drop and resulted in a benchmark below 100%. Even with the low bitrate of 125Kbps, if a clip had a larger video size (such as 624 x 352), TCPMP didn't score better than with an average speed of 60-70%.

Also, forget about CPU power savings. You'll need the full 624MHz of your CPU in order to avoid frame drops even at 384 x 208. In conclusion, if you use H.264 to encode your videos for TCPMP:

- don't use video sizes bigger than ~ 384 x 208
- use a decent bitrate such as 500Kbps.

TCPMP alternatives are in the works

TCPMP V0.65y is not the first player that adds support for H.264. The Nero ShowTime Mobile Teaser V1.0.0.2, available free to registered Nero users, added experimental support earlier this year. When I tested it on my Axim X50v, the encoded movies played extremely sluggish and sometimes the video didn't even appear. I know, however, that the programmers are working full-time to improve the performance. They are also working on supporting the Intel 2700G chip (used in the Axim X50v) as well as some other multimedia accelerator chips for the portable/mobile market.

H.264/AVC is a very complex video codec - and without hardware optimization it will be very hard to run 640x480 realtime clips even on 624 MHz handhelds.

08:34 AM by sys_miracle in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

(This looks very interesting as posted from sys_miracle. I cleaned it up just a bit and posted to front page as it's a pretty awesome looking app. Don't think ssy_miracle will mind. It's one more reason to long for an unlimited data plan. Seems to be available for Treo, PocketPC, Blackberry, and SmartPhone (which I suppose refers to Java/J2ME). If you try it, let us know what you think. BobR)

TrafficEdge with Hundreds of Traffic Camera Images and Traffic Maps Displays Critical Traffic Information Real-time.

Save time and frustration on the road by being informed. With TrafficEdge you will always know the right way home. It gives you easy to understand traffic maps and traffic camera images so you can steer clear of the trouble spots.

A fully functional demo of TrafficEdge can be downloaded over the air to your device. Point your device to traffic.EdgeQ.com and download a 15-day trial

To purchase your registration code, point your device to Buytraffic.EdgeQ.com
Features:
-Access to the updated traffic maps & cameras worldwide
-Server driven Service Oriented Architecture keeps maps updated
so you will always have the latest traffic camera images.
-Saves your scroll location so your most frequently used roads
are always just a click away
-Keypad shortcuts to resize images, reset view, and
jump to different areas of images

Major locations available now:
-London, UK
-Chicago and surrounding areas
-Greater Pittsburgh area
-Seattle and Puget Sound area
-New York City
-Connecticut
-New Jersey statewide
-Cincinnati, OH
-Portland and many areas in Oregon state
-Minneapolis, MN
-Atlanta, GA
-Denver, CO
-Toronto, Montreal and British Columbia
-San Francisco, Los Angeles and many locations in California
-Many more cities available worldwide.

We are constantly adding new cities and traffic maps. Please e-mail us if you know any cameras or traffic maps online that we have missed.

TrafficEdge is available in the following editions

-Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PC
-BlackBerry WAP and BES
-Palm TREO

06:31 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm Addicts is pointing us today to an interesting NY Times article about the Treo.

The New York Times talks about the Treo 650 being a great phone and how the smartphone has evolved recently. The article weigh's up the pro's and con's of this great device. "It turns out that Treo 650 succeeds because of something that doesn't, and can't, show up on any feature list: spit and polish. The thought and cleverness that have gone into this device's design put most other smartphones to shame...

And don't forget that you can skip the free registration by going to www.bugmenot.com for one that someone else has already set up for you.

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

GarishKernels' Egress, one of my favorite Pocket PC clients for handling RSS and ATOM feeds, now offers support for Bloglines and NewsGator synchronized channels. This is great because it means you won't be downloading the same items twice as unread on your desktop and your Pocket PC.

Other changes in V2.3.0 include better cache management, better e-mail support, and improved stability.

07:11 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmSource stock (symbol: PSRC) fell by more than 10% in after-hours trading today when the company reported fourth-fiscal quarter revenue that slipped from last year and issued a forecast for the current period that was well below analysts' expectations.

The company saw revenue slip nearly 2% for its fourth fiscal quarter, though earnings for the period got a boost from selling its rights to the "Palm" brand to PalmOne last month. The company reported earnings of $18.3 million, or $1.12 a share, compared to a loss of $2.9 million, or 23 cents a share, for the same period last year. Revenue declined to $17.3 million from $17.6 million last year.

PalmSource also announced that it would restructure by cutting 16 percent of its U.S. work force, with a majority of the cuts in "middle and senior management positions, including three senior vice presidents."

Read the full first quarter results here and to listen to the archived earnings call click here.

06:56 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Blackberry device maker Research In Motion reported after the closing bell today first-quarter net earnings of $132.5 million, or 67 cents a share, compared with $55 million, or 28 cents a share, a year ago (the increase was helped in part by a tax credit). Revenue was $453.9 million, compared with $269.6 million last year.

Nonetheless the company's stock (symbol: RIMM) dropped by nearly 6% in the after hours trades due to a worse-than-expected outlook for its current quarter while investors were expecting big increases in sales and earnings (RIM also didn't disclose how the failure of its recent settlement talks with NTP Inc. will affect its earnings).

Read the full first quarter results here.