05:00 PM by Chaos in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

As of today iTunes 4.9 was released!

With iTunes 4.9, you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes Music Store. Podcasts are frequently updated radio-style shows downloadable over the Internet. You can also transfer podcasts to iPod, for listening on the go.

It seem the only major update is the podcasting component.

Also there is apparently (according to my software update on 10.4) a new iPod software updater, only for the "iPod with color display, iPod mini and iPod with Click Wheel" apparently... Seems older iPod users are being a bit left out.

I'll test and see if the podcasting component works with a 3G iPod though.

04:53 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

A very interesting (software) item mentioned over at PDA24/7 today...

Plug Forward Express 1.1 is showing as new at PalmGear- "Save your minutes! Now you can have your calls automatically forwarded to a land line while your Trēo™ smartphone is plugged in."

Most carriers allow free unlimited call forwarding. Please check with your carrier regarding possible call forwarding fees.

04:44 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Got a note today from our friend Justine over at Creative Algorithms about a deal on two of their more popular software titles.

Just wanted to let you know that I just set up a bundle offer on my
site. If you buy Trip Boss and Date Wheel together, you get both titles
for 25% off. There's a special button on our website to get this offer,
which is located here: http://www.creativealgorithms.com/register.html

Trip Boss is a sophisticated trip planning and tracking program with excellent reviews, and which continues to get updated.

Date Wheel is a long time favorite of many, which helps you to easily calculate days between dates, or easily figure out questions like "If I need to allocate 137 working days for this task, what date can I tell my boss I'll be done?" (Don't worry, you are still free to add a fudge factor!)

If you've had your eye on this software for a while, this is a good time to buy.

03:12 PM by macrotor in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

An excellent thread about multi-tasking brought up an old debate that is due for review: how powerful & complex should a Palm be in order to be successful?

A while back, there was a pretty solid division between PocketPCs and Palms. Palms were a powerful organizer, and PocketPCs were a weak PC. Please don't take that the wrong way. There were high-power things that only PocketPCs could do, but the Palm seemed to be a much more useful useful and speedy device for staying organized. Each had a market.

But the rules have changed. Cellphones now do what the old PalmOS4 devices did, and PalmOne is now putting some serious hardware in their devices. The lines have blurred. Cellphones are primarily a PDA, PPCs are primarily a Palmtop computer, and Palms are spread across between the two.

I've heard both arguments that PalmOne should concentrate on affordability or dominant power. So far, it seems PalmOne is trying to do both.

I am rather impressed at how well the Zire 21/31 did when it arrived, but I wonder how its doing now? Honestly, I can get a cellphone that is nearly as capable for half the cost with activation. A stand-alone low-end organizer doesn't make much sense to me anymore. Frankly, I think the touch-screen is what is keeping the stand-alone PDA in business. In a few months, I predict touch-screens will become more common in cellphones as well.

As for the high-end "Palmtop Computer," the market is getting pretty rough between the PPC and Palm.

So, where is the market that Palm should go for? We've asked this before, but the market is a moving target, so I'm curious what people think now. Palm has devices in all regions available. They range from the Zire31, to Zire72, to Treo650, to Tungsten|C, Tungsten|T5, and finally the LifeDrive. Talk about having all your bases covered! I wonder where they are making the money? Do people see the prices being fair on each device?

Personally, I think the Treo650 is a winner for feature/price. It is bar-none, the most powerful and easy-to-use cellphone there is (yes, I looked at the MS Smartphones...they failed), and the price is justified. The other golden-boy is that price-reduced Tungsten|C, but the lack of bluetooth is a killer. Between the cellphones and Palmtops, it seems it's the middle-priced "powerful enough" Palms with connectivity that look the best to me.

However, once that Linux system is out, they might just overtake the PPCs as a Palmtop. The question is wether this is where the money is.

- Jim

07:24 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Not sure if I ever wanted to do that on a precious Sony Librie screen, but someone did it and he seemed quite excited about it, too: turn your e-book into a virtual game board and scratch along the screen while playing traditional games on it like Chess, Checkers, and Ludo.

05:35 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Although Mobipocket Reader V4.9 was only released last week, there's already a beta of the forthcoming V5.0 available for download. New features include library management, various new book display options, new toolbar icon customization, enhanced annotations, hardware button mapping, and most importantly better VGA support.

What worries me a bit is that according to their changelog, the Hardware PID is now supposed to be resistant to hard resets. How does that work? Are they changing some part of the underlying ROM? I'd be happy if someone could answer this.

Palm users can also download the new beta from here and there's even an alpha version available for Blackberry devices.

Thanks to gmc for the tip!

09:02 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Just when you wonder if people are only in business just for the quick buck, you are reminded about great customer service.

Two customer service heroes with eBay stores are Canoka Electronics and Dan's Cellular. Here's my story...

I ordered a wireless keyboard from Canoka Electronics. It came with a piece busted off. So in a rush, I looked up the email on my "My eBay" page to arrange for a return. But in the hurry, I mistakingly picked out the wrong seller. I had lost on my bidding to Dan's Cellular, but that item was still on my ebay page and I got confused.

So I emailed Dan's Cellular (in error, of course) and got the return address. I sent it back to the wrong seller. The return process was taking a while so I checked in with him. He was a little behind so he decided to take care of it personally for me. He must have been in a good mood because he even volunteered to throw in a free tidbit for my trouble. But when he got ready to send it out he discovered that I hadn't bought it from him!

Not only was he nice about it (instead of calling me an idiot like I deserved), he voluntarily sent the returned keyboard at his expense to Canoka Electronics on my behalf. I had pretty much given up because I didn't want to pay back and forth shipping, plus restocking fees, or even deal with the hassles I expected would be awaiting me. So I had told him he could keep it to resell or throw away as he liked. But instead, like I said, he sent it on to the real seller at his expense even though he really had nothing to do with the whole mixup! What a kind thing to do!

And, over at Canoka Electronics, I let them know what had happened, and that basically I just decided to write off the whole thing. I didn't ask for anything, and I explained that even though the first keyboard was damaged, I wasn't going to give any bad feedback. I figured it wouldn't be fair anyway, because both these sellers have really excellent ratings, so I was confident that Canoka would have made things right if I had made the proper return.

Well, without knowing that the return was going to be done via Dan's kind move, Canoka said that he felt bad about what had happened, and offered me a free replacement keyboard anyway! All he asked for was a very reasonable shipping and handling cost. He had no obligation to me, and I had already let him off the hook, so the only reason he had for doing that was that he cared about me as a customer. And, as he put it, he was glad for a customer that took responsibility for themselves instead of blaming the seller for everything. So sure enough, I just got the package in the mail today. Can't wait to set aside some time and give it a try!

So if you're looking for an accessory (including some other types of accessories also, like a stereo plug adapter for the Treo) be sure to check out these great sellers. If you do, be sure to tell them you heard about their eBay store from BobR at MobileRead, and that you appreciate their style of customer service!

01:34 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Slashdot is reporting that the Supreme Court has ruled...

"One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses." The promotion is the key part of that statement.

What this means is practical terms is not obvious to me as I need someone more knowledgable to interpret. But as a novice podering the topic, it seems clear that any information relating to activities not clearly legal will not come from any source associated with a P2P service!

Also of interest would be what consequences this would have on software like Fair Use Wizard or DVD Decrypter (already hit by legal issues) or DVD Shrink, etc. In fact, even signal enhancement devices used to stabalize a signal from a VHS tape might be dependent on a ruling.

I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about the fallout over the next few days.

For now, here are a couple of early articles that I plan to read myself as soon as I get a few minutes...
San Francisco Chronicle Article
EFF Article

If you have any good links or discussions about this case and the fallout (especially those with nice summaries and easy to read for the lay person) please post them as replies here so we can continue to learn what this all means.