02:57 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

You've seen the ads before... speed up your browsing by paying an extra $5/month to your ISP for web acceleration. It pre-fetches and compresses sites for you, as well as sending only incremental change data where possible.

Well, you can get it such a product (but in beta) for free now at http://webaccelerator.google.com/, except this one is unique in that it's not targeted at low bandwidth dialup internet connections. In fact they say you might not see much difference with a dialup connection. They specifically say it's "[size=-1]Designed for Broadband[/size][size=-1] – Web pages load even more quickly on DSL and cable connections[/size]."

No benefits for downloads like MP3s, or https:// pages for security reasons. But I think it's really interesting if it ever becomes available for mobile browsing and for low bandwidth connections. But everything is going broadband, so it might be a losing proposition to spend too much development money on that direction.

I really like Google, but don't know that I'm that comfortable with them handling all my data on their servers. On the other hand, they already know everything about my surfing because I search through Google.

07:05 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Believe it or not, but PDA sales are breaking records. At least if you follow Gartner's latest research report:

Worldwide personal digital assistant (PDA) shipments totaled 3.4 million units in the first quarter of 2005, a 25 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. This was the strongest first quarter the industry has experienced.

Of course I'd be more than happy to believe the story. Didn't we all talk about the imminent death of the PDA the other day? Now look at that. A 25% growth to a total of 3,419,112 PDAs shipped in 1Q05.

Look closer. And here is why this report is not worth a plugged nickel:

Notes: Totals do not include smartphones, such as the Treo 650 and BlackBerry 7100, but include wireless PDAs, such as the iPAQ 6315 and Nokia 9300.

Since when is Nokia a PDA vendor? If I remember correctly, Nokia has never referred to any of its products as a PDA. Smartphone! Nokia talks about smartphones. And adding the Nokia 9300 to the lists and leaving out the Treo 650? How absurd.

The cat is out, now tell me who is sponsoring Gartner's statistics?

05:58 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Mobile Sites

Reuters has a new mobile service offering 10 headline stories accompanied with full color photos (via PhoneMag and textually.org). The service requires you to download the Mediabricks Media Viewer, a customizable J2ME Java application that is compatible with various handsets.

I spent a few minutes looking at the Java midlet and found out that you can also access the news articles directly via your browser. I am sure with a small PHP or Perl script you could quickly write your own news engine. Rest assured, Reuters doesn't support it, or they would have made this information available first place (or even better: offer news articles in XML format). So it's up to you what you do with it. Here we go:

The general url is:
http://reutersnews.co.uk/mb/servlet/MorfServlet?service=TopNews&category=reuters-ad&spkey=Reuters.Ad.UK&country=us&dev=7650&object=

Before you can use it you must fill in the last parameter 'object'. See further below.

• service
  Currently only 'TopNews'
• category
  Always 'reuters-ad'.
• spkey
  The service provider key. Without the proper key ('Reuters.Ad.UK' or 'Reuters.Ad.US') the service won't work.
• country
  Either 'us' for Reuters US news or 'uk' for Reuters UK news
• dev
  One of the supported devices - output might differ depending on selected device
  e.g.
  7650
  6670
• object
  One of the following paramters:
  • Headlines
    shows list of latest 10 articles with article ids
    example
  • Article
    shows article (required article id in &aid=)
    e.g.
    example
  • ArticleWithBinaries (required article id in &aid=)
    serves article as application/vnd.wap.wmlc
    e.g.
    example
  • ArticleWithImage (required article id in &aid=)
    serves article and (if available) article images as application/vnd.wap.wmlc
    e.g.
    example
  • Image (required article id in &aid=)
    serves (if available) image of an article
    e.g.
    example
  • Ticker
    shows a pretty Reuters tagline
  • Structure
    shows list of article ids of latest articles
  • Startup
    serves certificate, structure and ticker as application/vnd.wap.wmlc

01:12 AM by hacker in E-Book Formats | Other formats

You can Free as in Freedom today in both high-resolution and low-resolution formats! (And don't forget to install those spiffy anti-alias fonts).

Screenshots below...

09:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Japan Airlines will expand its Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service to flights between Tokyo-New York (JL006/005) starting May 10, 2005. To commemorate the opening of the new service, JAL will offer a $10.00 discount that is valid up to July 15, 2005 (a flat rate for the entire trip would then cost $19.95). So next time you plan a trip to Japan, make sure to catch this route and save a few bucks when you are surfing the Net in the air.

09:26 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | iSilo/X

A few days have passed and it's time for another beta release of the forthcoming iSilo and iSiloX V4.26. Considering how few changes/bugfixes were needed since the last beta, it is likely that Darren is going to release a final version any time soon.

Highlights of version 4.26:

• Support for the Motorola A1000 and Motorola A925 in iSilo for Symbian UIQ.
• Added support for id attributes in all elements as link.
• Added support for displaying images of input elements.
• Addressing of miscellaneous issues.

If you are new to iSilo make sure to visit this thread for more information.

09:03 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Andre Dahan, President and CEO of Cingular's New Mobile Multimedia Services subsidiary has been named to the PalmSource board of directors. Dahan began his career as a database architect with the Israeli government and held various technical-oriented positions with IBM and S.E. Qual, an information technology-consulting firm.

"Andre's extensive experience in both the wireless and IT industries are a great fit for the Company as we continue to make progress in our plan to transform PalmSource into a broad-based software provider for all mobile devices," said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource.

More in the official press release.

08:24 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Thanks to jkOnTheRun for pointing out that Andy Kessler's newest (not yet released) book How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets is now available for free in Adobe PDF format.

How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. In the style of James Burke, it connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today. Presented with his trademark wit and smart-ass assessments, How We Got Here offers readers an original and refreshing look at history.