06:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Ars Technica has done it again and posted an in-depth round-up of the latest high-speed USB Flash sticks. USB flash drives have become more common, due both to their utility and decreasing prices. They are a great tool for transporting files around, especially when the network is down. They are supported on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux right out of the box. And best of all, prices have come down considerably since Ars Technica's review last year.

The fastest stick in the test: The Lexar JumpDrive Lightning.

[via Gizmodo]

06:09 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Lucy Orbach from LISNews.com discovered a cool free online service: BooksPrice is a free innovative service of finding the best price on a purchase of several books together. This service is more useful than the standard services which perform one book comparison at a time, and can save more money when buying several books together. Another unique thing in BooksPrice is the comparison of the prices of books in Amazon Wish Lists. One can search for his (or his friends) wish list and compare the prices of the books in the list.

[via LISNews.com]

05:45 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Yesterday Motricity released eReader 2.61 for Pocket PC; today it's time for the Palm OS version. Unfortunately there is no changelog available yet For a changelog see the first reply to this post by Jeremie.

04:28 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Mark Cuban has written a very nice piece in his blog about how desktop PCs are now becoming boring. It's a mature industry now and the excitement is gone. But everything that was so fun and wonderful has now moved to the portible device world where all the action is. Here are a couple samples to whet your appetite...

Could the PC desktop be any more boring these days ? Could it be any more emblematic of a mature product ?

We are entering a golden age of features in portable devices that will far exceed the fun we had with desktop PCs. The quick rate of change in these products and how they are sold, will completelty alter both how the products are sold, and how we expect to buy them.

Mark is not only co-founder of broadcast.com, which started the whole internet broadcasting groundswell, but is currently the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and involved in many other ventures including HD television content. He is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge technologies and continues to be a sought-after speaker. And he has consistently stood up for technology against the recording and motion picture industries. A content provider that stands up for the little guy and the best future for all. He has even come out strong in support of P2P in the recent Grokster case. While he doesn't support theft, he does support freedom of technology. He's definitely a voice worth paying attention to, and one of the "good guys!"

05:22 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Laurens released Sunrise 0.41j yesterday, with two minor updates since 0.41i:

• Changed: SSL server certificate. Sunrise now accepts self-signed and/or expired server certificates for SSL connections. The less restrictive handling is primarily useful for grabbing content from intranets, which often use self-signed certificates to save money. (A signed certificate from VeriSign or Thawte costs hundreds of dollars and is usually valid for only one
• Updated: HttpClient library. Integrated the latest version of the HttpClient library. See the release notes for a list of issues that were addressed.

Download from Palmgear.

If you are new to Sunrise, click here to find out more about its top-notch features for website offline conversion.

05:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

A small update of my post from last week: MyUAE 0.5 has been released with various new features including:

* Save state support (2 states per game possible, name is given from the current diskname in df0)
* Landscape support (left and right hand mode), mouse and joystick are handled correctly but menu and keyboard is still wrong (doesn't effect Zodiac)
* kind of sound support (it's too slow, needs rework)
* memory access beyond 24bit-range better handled
* reset and quit moved to a on-screen menu
* palette adjusted (much brighter screen)
* left + right mouse button can be pressed together

MyUAE is a working Commodore Amiga emulator based on UAE specifically written for the Palm OS 5 platform. A Commodore Amiga, for those who don't know, is a 16/32 bit computer system based on the Motorola 680x0 CPU and a few specially designed custom chips that provide very good graphics and sound capabilities. Its first incarnation, the A1000, appeared in 1985, followed by the highly successful A500 and A2000 models.

Download MyUAE Binaries.
Download MyUAE Sources.

03:32 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Last but not least the Tungsten E2 is official - and it certainly doesn't knock my socks off. It still runs Palm OS Garnet (v5.4), is powered with a Intel 200MHz Xscale processor, has a 320x320 display, 32MB RAM (26MB actual storage capacity), and Bluetooth support. Price: $249 USD ESP.

BargainPDA is probably the first who has already written a review about this new palmOne device.

[via PalmAddicts]

12:50 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Last month when I reported on Firefly, a cell phone specially designed for small children, I told you that I wasn't quite convinced that parents would or should jump after this product without considering the potential health risks. Well, here is the news appearing on CNN (via AP) today, a news that the company Firefly Mobile is certainly not happy to see:

In Britain, the chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board advised in January that parents should not give mobile phones to children age 8 or younger as a precaution against the potential harm of radiation from the devices. When you use a cell phone, 70 to 80 percent of the energy emitted from the antenna is absorbed by the head, Lai said. Last week, a federal appeals court in Maryland reinstated five class-action lawsuits claiming that the cell phone industry has failed to protect consumers from unsafe levels of radiation.

Because young skulls are thinner and the growing brain may be more susceptible to radiation, cell phone use could have a worse effect on kids than on adults. What's making the current discussion difficult to comprehend is the fact that a brain tumor takes about 30-40 years to develop, so even if your cell-addicted child is quite happy and healthy right now, noone can tell you what direct damage it could suffer in a couple of years. As a parent would you take the chance?