09:05 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Most Palm OS users probably know: their handheld is still lacking a powerful web browser. A few people now had the initiative to start an online petition asking every Palm OS user to sign in hope that the company Opera Software might listen. Opera Software is responsible for the excellent web-browser Opera (a lot of people consider it a better alternative to Firefox), which is currently not offered for the Palm OS platform.

Please sign this petition if you have the wish that Opera will become available for Palm OS.

Alas, I remember an interview (German) with Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner, where he said that his company was currently not considering Palm OS as a potentially lucrative market for mobile web browsers.

08:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Brighthand reports the top news of the day that Palm OS users may soon enjoy the hefty internal storage of 2Gb. Engadget reports that AOL is now also surfing the mobile wave. Adobe has plans to improve PDF support for smartphones. And Intel gives us an outlook what speed improvements we can expect from upcoming mobile XScale CPUs.

• 2 GB of Internal Storage Coming to Palm OS Devices [brighthand.com]
• AOL adds mobile services [engadget.com]
• Sony PSP Delayed for Europe until June [i4u.com]
• NTT DoCoMo Adopts Adobe Reader LE for Its 3G Mobile Platform [japancorp.net]
• New Linux cameraphone supports Wi-Fi via SDIO [linuxdevices.com]
• Cell phone survey shows love-hate relationship [physorg.com]
• Intel extends Wireless MMX [theregister.co.uk]
• Nokia sued over 'exploding phone' [go.theregister.com]
• Windows Mobile smartphones get updated third-party browser [windowsfordevices.com]
• Blackberry Takes a Message (at Motley Fool) [us.rd.yahoo.com]
• AOL: We're Not Spying on AIM Users [yro.slashdot.org]

06:56 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Cory Doctorow has written a paper on how DRM will affect the developing world. Cory: "It's called "Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world," and it was written for an International Telecommunications Union report on DRM that is aimed at telecoms regulators in national governments around the world who are trying to figure out which DRM to adopt. [...] The "DRM hypothesis" is that the public is dishonest, and will do dishonest things with cultural material if given the chance. DRM is deployed in order to force dishonest customers to behave honestly and buy media and to limit their activities to those that are authorized by rightsholders."

You can access the full paper here.

11:03 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Want to watch video in a pair of glasses, but get a large screen effect? This technology has been around for a while now, but hasn't really gained much traction with portable video fans. You can get a pair with just $500 from multiple vendors.

I wonder -- has anyone tried or owned one of these things? Isn't there a video output on the Dell x50v PPC?? What a neat combination that would be for portable video. Well, as long as no one else needs to see the screen!

Here's a few sites with related products...
http://www.eyetop.net/products/centra/
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/ (and http://iglasses.weirdoz.org/)
I-glasses advertises an 800x600 resolution which looks like a virtual Image size of 70" at 13' away.
http://www.4hiddenspycameras.com/eyeglmo.html
"Virtual Vision" seems to make glasses for even a bit less, and are popular with dentists, but I couldn't track down a web site. Maybe they have a new name?
Olympus used to have a model (http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Olympus...6-6780564.html), but it doesn't seem to be around anymore and may not have worked too well.

02:12 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Unlike its competitor Nvidia, ATI is doing it right: the video chip producer is clearly big-time riding the mobile wave. With the launch of two new media processors, the Imageon 2282 and the Imageon 2182, the company is offering two new solutions to boost audio and video performance multimedia capabilities on mobile phones. The higher performance Imageon 2282 is targeted at the high mid-tier mobile phone segment while the Imageon 2182 targets the mainstream, low mid-tier segment. Features:

Audio: The new programmable audio engine in the two processors enable new features such as CD-quality, 3D ring-tones along with high-quality stereo recording and playback (in AMR, AAC, MP3, Real Audio, WMA and MIDI).

Video: The video engine enables a mobile digital video recorder/player and a 3 mega-pixel digital still camera. In addition, the Imageon 2282 provides video streaming and video conferencing functionality with picture-in-picture support.

There are also PDAs powered with ATI's Imageon chips. HP's iPaq hx4700 for instance features a Imageon 3220 video chip, which used to be the top of the league for quite some time. Only recently, Dell knocked off HP with the introduction of its Axim X50v, which uses the superior Intel 2700G multimedia accelerator.

12:27 PM by Chaos in E-Book General | News

The New York Times has an article on if online newspapers can stay free (somewhat ironically, free registration required). It's an interesting read, especially how free online papers has caused a loss of actual paper subscriptions.

The New York Times on the Web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans. In January, The Times's Web site had 1.4 million unique daily visitors. Its daily print circulation averaged 1,124,000 in 2004, down from its peak daily circulation of 1,176,000 in 1993.

So, how much would you be willing to pay for reading the news online? And I wonder if this will include the mobile version, which currently doesn't even require registration (which is nice if you want to avoid that registration )?

11:10 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Peter Balogh from PDAmill, the company responsible for bringing out excellent games such as Arvale, sent us word today that they've just released a new Pocket PC title: SPOT! ($14.95) takes your usual "spot the difference" game to a brand new level featuring hundreds of puzzles and more as free downloads, three challenging game modes, and multiple profiles.

10:51 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The New Scientist runs an interesting story which basically warns us not to overlook (lack of) security in Voice-over IP (VoIP) technologies. While most users implementing VoIP these days are primarily concerned about voice quality, latency and interoperability, they are often unaware of the additional security baggage that voice brings along with it. New Scientist:

Security experts are warning that a rush to adopt the exciting new technology could be a mistake. VOIP makes phones vulnerable to viruses, denial of service (DOS) attacks, malicious re-routing of calls, toll fraud, ID spoofing and eavesdropping, according to reports published over the past year. "Security concerns are being left behind because of the speed at which VOIP is being adopted," says Dipak Ghosal, a computer security researcher at the University of California in Davis, US. "We are getting powerful new systems but hackers are getting powerful new tools."

Who would have thought that one day I might have to enable my firewall before making a phone call