07:23 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It was only the beginning of a new series of Bluetooth hacks when cryptographers reported a new pairing hack to seize control over Bluetooth devices. Spanish hackers have now discovered that with a simple ping flood using the Linux tool l2ping one can inhibit Bluetooth on many devices:

The attack works by flooding the device with pings, taking up all available requests in the stack. The target device will then stop trying to make connections and may need to be rebooted in order to work properly.

07:07 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It must be a wonderful feeling to be connected with broadband Internet on commercial flights. I haven't had the chance yet, but it is becoming more likely that I'll soon sit on one of these planes equipped with Connexion by Boeing. WiFi Net News has a quick write up of how Connexion is quickly expanding its alliances with new carriers (from Austria and UAE) and Internet services providers.

06:57 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

An interesting ongoing discussion at PDA247 contemplates the question of whether the Palm emulator StyleTap is attracting software pirates with a new feature that allows you to switch the Palm Hotsync ID on the fly.

Plenty of Palm application use the Hotsync ID to derive registration keys from it; being able to emulate any Hotsync ID would allow you to share registration keys with others. Only hypothetically, of course, since no one here would really do that!

06:46 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Jeff Kirvin and the team of 1SRC posted the 28th 1SRC Podcast in which they cover the question why PalmOne is apparently ignoring the user community.

Don't confuse PalmOne with PalmSource here! If you read Bob's recent interview with PalmSource management (latest part), you'll notice how important it is for the latter to communicate at all levels:

Another problem that we have is that we need to work with a broader range of sites. There are a couple of PalmOS sites, one in particular, that are unmoderated and have been taken over by a small group of people who get their jollies by just being critical of everything. I'm not a big fan of completely unmoderated sites because it allows some people to intimidate everyone else into silence, and I don't think it's doing a service to the community. And having talked with a bunch of people here, I know I'm not alone. So one of the things we want to do is reach out to some different sites that are managed professionally and try to work with them.

06:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It was whispered to me that ACCESS is going to release the next English version of its embedded web-browser for Pocket PC sometime around next week. Version 3.2 will include some nifty new features including Flash support, Rapid-Render (renders Web page content while downloading it) and Outlook Web Access support.

Meanwhile you can already download the trial of the Japanese release.

06:40 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MobileRead.com is very pleased to continue presentation of this exclusive interview with two of the key leaders at PalmSource… the Chief Competitive Officer, Michael Mace, and the Director of Product Marketing, John Cook, who were kind enough to sit down with me at the recent PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon 2005 in San Jose, CA to share their views on the direction and future of PalmOS.

The interview is being presented on MobileRead this week as a five-part series, and it continues today with the fourth installment, covering communicating the PalmSource vision through the web community, the recent Nokia 770 Linux device, and a bit more on PalmOS for Linux.

MobileRead: As a first time visitor to PalmSource DevCon, I'm very impressed by the roadmap and strategy, and the way it's been communicated at all levels. It has been surprising to me. I've been surprised because there's been such a lack of information, even to developers and users and hobbyists and Palm fans all over. There are so many reasons to be optimistic here, and yet there is so much skepticism where people don't really hear this information. Are you trying to share that information a bit more, and do you see sites like MobileRead.com being a part of that communication?

Michael Mace: Sure. Here we are talking to you. And the idea is to get the word out. And the other thing I should add is not to be too sensitive to the concerns people have online.

There are two things going on. One is that a lot of this stuff is cyclical. I've been with Palm and PalmSource now for six years. And it seems like about every 18mos, people write us off. "These guys are dead. Forget about it. Never going to make it." Etc., etc. I could show you quotes I saved from 1999 from ZDnet Anchordesk saying "This Christmas is the end. Palm-sized PCs are adding color screens, Palm doesn't have it yet. They're going to be completely crushed. It's over, it's finished, this is it." So I'm kind of used to some of this stuff going on. I do think we could do a better job of communicating what we're up to. I'd like to see it.

Another problem that we have is that we need to work with a broader range of sites. There are a couple of PalmOS sites, one in particular, that are unmoderated and have been taken over by a small group of people who get their jollies by just being critical of everything. I'm not a big fan of completely unmoderated sites because it allows some people to intimidate everyone else into silence, and I don't think it's doing a service to the community. And having talked with a bunch of people here, I know I'm not alone. So one of the things we want to do is reach out to some different sites that are managed professionally and try to work with them.

MR: Nokia just recently announced a new Linux device.

MM: Yeah! I can't wait to play with that thing.

MR: It has a full desktop distribution of Linux, a large screen, wi-fi, bluetooth and is going to be about $350. How do you view that in terms of competition relative to what PalmSource is providing, and what are the PalmOS advantages against that sort of a device?

MM: Well, I want to go check it out. Unfortunately it was announced during our conference, so I didn't have any time to go look at it. But my first take is it looks like more like it's a browser pad, than a Palm sort of device. In other words it's only geared toward browsing. And that's an interesting field that puts them up against Tablet PC, although at a more attractive price. And frankly, I'd argue it may be something more for Microsoft to worry about than us. But I need to check it out more.

John Cook: It could be another one of those Nokia pad sort of things. The mobile TV device, too. Remember that they brought it out but then said "We're just kidding."

[Note: Following this interview there have appeared indications of problematic sluggishness on a prototype version of the device. But it's too early to tell if that is a typcial pre-production wrinkle or a product problem that could derail a product release.]

MR: They do have a developer community already enabled, and they are talking about a line of devices, but of course until it's on the market you don't really know.

MM: I'm really looking forward to it. I love innovation. I want to see a range of different types of devices. I think that's cool.

MR: Do you see, on the PalmSource platforms, devices that are running desktop distributions as well as the PalmOS platform to get the best of both worlds?

MM: Well, the way we're going to work it is to architect it on top of a pretty full Linux kernel. So is it a full Linux distribution, meaning it is exactly the same as what you get on desktop Linux? Of course not. You don't need that.

JC: A big part of our effort is to pull out what you don't need to make it more efficient, especially for battery efficient and memory efficient devices.

MM: But, we do expect that the Linux that's in our devices will be able to run standard off-the-shelf Linux software if you're a Linux hacker and want to do that. You'll get your command line and Linux app and be able to execute it if you want to, but that’s not the preferred way for a normal human being to interact with it as an average customer… just because they are going to want to work through this graphical interface. But if a Linux power user wants to get into that, we'll let them do that.

JC: And it might even be interesting for some enterprise party to maybe use the PalmOS environment 90% of the time, but 10% of the time [provide different access to a] SQL database. You can appreciate that with your company. [This last reference was to FedEx, a technology leader in the transportation industry, and profitable user of mobile computing.]

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This interview will continue with the remaining installments…
..Part One
..Part Two
..Part Three
<Part Four>
..Part Five

Special Note: Please note that while we encourage a lively discussion of these topics, we require that the discussion remain polite and on-topic so the discussion can remain profitable for all. We will moderate heavily if necessary. Thank you!

01:14 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

All kinds of information is now available about Google's page ranking algorithm. All made public via the US Patent system. In fact, Google has filed a US Patent (Application #20050071741 on March 31, 2005 if you want to go look it up) that exposes all their secrets.

Well, sort of exposes their secrets. It's hard to determine exactly which of these techniques are actually being used, and how specifically they are applied. Furthermore, there are likely to be additional techniques that Google hasn't chosen to make public in the patent application.

Slashdot is pointing to a Buzzle article about the application, where you can read all about it in a more friendly format than in the formal document.

Might be worth checking out if you want to optimize your own site for search engines, or are just curious how it all works.

06:57 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MobileRead.com is very pleased to continue presentation of this exclusive interview with two of the key leaders at PalmSource… the Chief Competitive Officer, Michael Mace, and the Director of Product Marketing, John Cook, who were kind enough to sit down with me at the recent PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon 2005 in San Jose, CA to share their views on the direction and future of PalmOS.

MobileRead: Competition is heating up, of course, in the mobile space. It's a hot topic. And Microsoft just came out with Windows Mobile 5. They are continuing to upgrade their platform. But the PalmOS ecosystem remains strong. What do you see as the key advantages to building and buying devices with the PalmOS?

Michael Mace: Well, there are probably four...

I think first of all, flexibility, which goes in a couple of ways. We are much less restrictive than most other companies in terms of what we let licensees do. Things that we let them change in terms of form factors, screen sizes, stuff like that. To give you an example, Magneto nails support for square screens. However, it only supports 240x240 or 480x480, which is a little frustrating to the hardware companies because all the volume is in 320x320 and that's where the glass is inexpensive. Whereas, what we say is, "We need a screen." We kind of require a screen, and we don't require a lot more. We really don't care.

The devices need to pass a compatibility test in terms of running the apps and in terms of being able to exchange data. As long as they can do those two things, almost everything else is open to being altered. So we give a lot more flexibility which results in more diversity, more freedom of choice for customers, and makes the licensees more comfortable because it gives them more scope for innovating and not being commoditized, which they don't really like.

Flexibility also extends to the number of applications available. We have the largest base of third party apps and they virtually all run on all PalmOS devices. So there's none of this confusion of trying to figure out "do I have a Windows Mobile 2005 Smartphone edition, or do I have a Windows Mobile 2005 Pocket PC Phone edition?" which changes utterly the range of software applications that are available for the device. So users on PalmOS have a much easier time finding the software they need and customizing it for their particular needs.

Secondly, ease of use and user interface. Number of taps and things like that. I think we just do a better job of that than the other folks.

The third piece is data protection. In particular, every time we do a sync, we do a full backup of the internal memory of the device. We do that because we built this really nice database architecture where we can track what changed. So we can go and back up everything that has been altered. That isn't how synchronization works on the other platforms. Sync is something that coordinates the data files across certain selected applications. Backup is a separate function. Have you tried to do a backup? It's not the sort of thing you are going to do every time you put it in the cradle. In fact, most users are not even aware that they're not backing up when they do a sync. So what happens is they assume they are getting a full backup when they synchronize. And then the device goes dead, or they lose it or it breaks. And they find out that a bunch of their data hasn't been preserved and it's a very big deal.

And then fourth is compatibility. We work really, really hard to be standard agnostic and support all of these standards. So for instance, in email... we're working with RIM. Our licensees work with Exchange. We work with Exchange, we work with Good. We're not trying to force any particular email solution down everybody's throats, which makes the operators a lot more comfortable because different ones are pushing different types of email. We work with Office and Microsoft products. We work with Oracle, we work with SAP, we work with IBM. We are neutral in all of those things, so we are not viewed as someone who is trying to come in and force a particular agenda. So as a result we do a really good job on compatibility.

I'm really looking forward to getting a Magneto [Windows Mobile 5] device. I want to test the improvements that they've made to Pocket Word and Pocket Excel and see how that measures up against the PalmOS solution. Our early results look like there are still some pretty significant problems.

MR: How do licensing costs compare between, for example, Windows Mobile and PalmOS?

MM: Our license fees are negotiated individually with each licensee based on what they're asking us to do and what they're bringing to the table in terms of innovation. So we don't release that information. Microsoft doesn't release its fee schedule either. I know what Symbian's is. I have a feeling most of us are roughly in the same ballpark. What's going to be interesting is in the phone space (when we're starting to do more voice-oriented phones) we can get down to significantly lower price points. Especially, since we're doing a lot of that development in China. And that's an area where phone vendors are not comfortable paying $10 a copy, which is what you have to pay for Symbian, for a phone that they're going to be selling to 20 million users. They really don't like that idea, so I think with our Chinese operation, we can profitably get down to price points that are going to be very hard for a company that does its development in Sweden and London to match. But we'll see.

MR: Are device manufacturers and licensees generally price shoppers?

MM: Price matters to them a lot, but they also want to see the features and business relationship and flexibility that they need. They also are very anxious not to be caught in anybody's proprietary trap, which is why Linux is very attractive to many of the licensees.

----

This interview will continue with the remaining installments…
..Part One
..Part Two
<Part Three>
..Part Four
..Part Five

Special Note: Please note that while we encourage a lively discussion of these topics, we require that the discussion remain polite and on-topic so the discussion can remain profitable for all. We will moderate heavily if necessary. Thank you!