10:10 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.

09:51 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

05:08 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Did you ever ask yourself what would be the perfect form factor of your favorite mobile device? Russ did some nice drawings depicting how form factor varies among popular mobile devices today.

We've converged just about everything we can converge into a single device (computers, gameboy, audio, video, GPS, etc.). Now they're just going to get better and more usable and "more converged."

Having read Russ's insightful thoughts, I came to one conclusion: there will never be a converged device that could offer all the benefits of mobility such as currently offered by individual dedicated devices.

04:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

In a NYTimes rant headlined How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman, historian Randall Stross analyzes how Sony, the electronics giant that more or less created the modern portable music market with the successful Walkman cassette-tape player in the 1970s, failed to prepare for the digital audio player.

Sony introduced several new Walkman MP3 players this week, causing Apple's share to down more than 7%. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if Apple has anything to worry. According to Phil Leigh, analyst with Inside Digital Media, "if these new entrants come in and accelerate the growth of the market, there will be no adverse consequence to Apple, even if its market share slips." Leigh forecasts 100% growth rates up to the next four years in digital music sales and in digital music players. Apple commands between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the digital music player market, having sold about 10 million iPods to date. Piper Jaffray forecasts Apple will sell nearly 22 million iPods in 2005, and about 27 million in 2006.

04:19 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

I am not sure if this "hack" defeats the purpose of the iPod. Because really, what could be more wonderful than carrying a 3.5" hard drive in your pocket?

Quote from hackaday.com:

flamingballofwreckage sent us a link to instructions for using a standard 3.5” hard disk withyour ipod. after making the adapter, there is another howto for formatting the drive so that it will be correctly recognized by the device.

‘but j,’ you say, ‘that 3.5” drive would make my ipod simply ginormous!’

yes. yes it would. but with a proper case, a small power supply, and an rca plug adapter, the ‘ipod super’ could be a really cool 300gb audio station that isn’t much bigger than a portable cd player. that’s an awful lotof music and data storage in a tight package.

think car audio. think brick sized dance party. think media pc case mod. or think different — and tell us about it.

04:14 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Globe and Mail reports that software for AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Instant Messenger will be pre-installed on new RIM BlackBerrys in the coming months.

Another neat feature beside the "always-on" e-mail. When I am in need of a new mobile phone again, I might as well consider a BlackBerry.

06:17 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Dawn Murphy posted her thoughts on e-books at palmaddict.typepad.com:

6th March was the start of e-book week. I often wonder why I don't see more about e-books on PDA sites, productivity, gaming, etc but nothing about books. Is it because statistically most readers are women and most people with PDAs are male? I'll assume so, though I haven't personally researched it, but it seems likely on the basis of anecdotal evidence.

Dawn, you should definitely join Mobileread, which is a place that talks a lot about e-books! Anyways, read the rest of her thoughts especially if you are a newbie to e-books.

PS: Interesting thought on gender statistics. So fellow Mobilereaders... are we predominantly male or female?

06:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Egress 2.1.0 is one of the better RSS readers for Pocket PC and can be downloaded from pocketgear.com. The latest version adds support for Bloglines synchronized channels.