06:52 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

A very interesting post in the PocketPC Thoughts forums purports to do just that -- stream tv content from your tuner-equipped desktop PC to your Pocket PC.

The author's own comment is

Use at your own risk, it works but it is not pretty.

but if you're interested in doing something like this it might be a good place to start. Let us know if you give it a try!

02:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I added the promised screenshots to my original thread on my first experience using Boeing's Connexion WLAN service.

11:19 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to a very nice and thoughtful article at Brighthand article, sales have fallen off because the killer PDA app is PIM apps. The idea is that the masses of people that wanted a PDA for that purpose are pretty much happy with their devices, so the market is falling off. What is needed is another killer app to create sales.

Ed Hardy tells us that he believes wireless e-mail is just that new killer app. I agree. It's definitely a killer app, but... I'm not so sure that it's going to help PDA sales very much. Unless Palm and PPC get ahead of the curve for both the app and the service contracts that support it, I just see it as another reason for the portable pseudo-PDA devices to leapfrog PDAs. For example smartphones and RIM devices which are already exploding in sales.

At my place of work it's an amazing transformation that has taken place. From a few trial RIM devices, it has grown into a cultural thing. Management as well as staff that needs to be in touch all make use of those devices. And I think all they do is use it for their email and calendar. But it's synched with Lotus Notes, and it pushes email with a vibrate notification, and it is now also a phone.

People have adopted it with a gusto I never would have expected. At every meeting I'm at, you hear those things vibrating and people are sending emails back and forth, and business gets done faster. Jokes and funny observations even go flying around the conference room sometimes at long boring meetings!

So yes, I agree wireless email is the next killer app. But no, unfortunately I don't think it's going to do much to help PDA sales. PDAs are too far behind on the technology, especially in terms of the wireless service providers behind it.

11:07 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There are rumors of a Pocket PC version of the game Myst. For those of you not familiar with it, it's one of the modern versions of the old "adventure" games. You move from location to location doing things like reading a book or using a key to get in somewhere, etc.

In my mind, the best thing about such games is that it's fun to move around and look at all the cool pictures, and sometimes it's fun to think about the puzzles you have to solve to continue.

What I don't like about these games is that I inevitably find myself wandering around in the same areas I've already covered. A hard-core gamer probably can't relate to this sort of situation. They know what sort of tricks to look for. Like I used to know how to do with games like Defender or Joust that were popular when I was in high school and you couldn't play those sorts of games at home yet!

Fancy new action games are uninteresting to me because of the steep learning curve and time required, and the adventure games get boring because I can't figure out what to do next. Yes, I know there are web sites with walk-thrus and hints, but I guess that requires a little more preparation than I'm ready to do.

It's a shame because games like the Myst series look nice, as well as PocketScumm , which is out for PPC and looks like it would be awesome to play if I wasn't always stuck!

So as someone looking in from the outside of the gaming world, I gotta wonder why nobody creates one of these kinds of games with built-in hint systems. I tried Myst on PS1 once, and gave up. I would probably have loved it if I could have hit a help button and had the computer do the next important thing for me, either in the current location, or moving me to a new location.

Isn't player assistance functionality the key to making a lot of money on these games from a wider audience? If someone would make existing games user-friendly for the average person on the street, I bet sales would explode. Just add a simple cheat button that moves you through pretty scenery (either instantly or scene by scene depending on preferences) to the next important location. Then choose a button again to show you what you have to do at that location. It could also have a walkthrough mode that allows you to interact whenever it looks interesting to you.

Surely someone has noticed this is needed? Is it that hard to code? Is that a market no one cares about? Even better, isn't there someone with an open source mentality will could create something like that for the good of all?! Heck, I'd even love some PPC versions of walkthrough guides that's aren't tied directly into the software. I could use those guides while playing on my PS1. I might even upgrade to a PS2!

And if this kind of gaming gets more popular and easier, it will be one more of the many reasons that portable devices sell.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Here are the highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

Current E-Books Trends
E-books - do YOU read them?

General Chat
Alex speaking from Flight LH 432
Beware of generic batteries
Editorial: Do You Need "Zippiness" in Your PDA?
First Scandinavian newspaper (1749) digitalized for download
Gadget makers ignoring elderly people
Mobile users don't keep backups of important numbers
What in the world is 'Awasu'?

iSilo/X
iSilo 4.25 and iSiloX/C 4.25 enter beta2

New Links
Announcing RSS-to-Memo
Wapedia - Wikipedia for mobile access

Other Gadgets
Paris Hilton's Sidekick hacked yet again
S101/S101K Remote Office Access Device

Palm
News on first Cobalt SmartPhone
Palm May Bundle WiFi Cards With Some PDAs
PalmOne Treo 650 in Europe not before Q2 2005
PalmOne with Steve Jobs mentality?
PalmSource abandoning HotSync
Sony to end Clie production despite all hope
Treo 650 arrives in Mexico in first week of April

Pocket PC
Mini-Mozilla available for Pocket PCs in Summer'05
NewsBreak 1.01 released
Pocket Informant 2005 in public beta soon
Tillanosoft's SmallMenu 3.15 released
WebIS Mail 2.06 out

Portable Audio/Video
Apple boosts storage capacity of iPods

Smartphones
Embedded Linux soon in every mobile device?

Sunrise
Sunrise 0.41f released
Sunrise Viewer - first details

WiFi / Bluetooth Technologies
US is a ready market for aerial Internet

03:01 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

[edit: I posted some of the technical findings further down this thread]

Hello fellow Mobilereaders!
This is Alex speaking from Lufthansa flight LH 432 on his way from Frankfurt to Chicago! I am so very excited because this is my first airborne Internet experience using my Dell Axim to surf through the clouds in high-speed.

On this Airbus 340-300 I'm accessing Connexion's broadband Wifi LAN (Lufthansa calls it FlyNet) for a flat rate of $29.95 - yes, I'll stay online for the remaining 8-1/2 hours of my flight, given my extended battery will last that long (I kinda doubt it, the Axim X50v isn't exactly famous for its battery lifetime).

Interestingly, Lufthansa's news portal I could access for free, which alone can be a good time killer on this flight (with around 1000 updated news pages both in English and in German). Of course I couldn't resist and signed up for the full flat rate Internet access. Alas, this proved to be a hassle because Connexion's secure web page popped up a server error when I tried to create a user account. A few more attempts and I was finally able to choose a payment method. Beside payment through credit card, I could have also paid through one of the major Internet proviers (1and1 is one example) or through frequent traveller miles.

Now let me post some of the more technical findings using Connexion's broadband with my notebook (Thinkpad R50):

- e-mail access (secure POP3, IMAP, SMTP) worked fine.
- browsing the Web was smooth, albeit sometimes loading images seemed to lag for half a second or so.
- downloading of a larger file (80MB) file from Mobileread resulted in a data throughput of around 180-220Kb/s.
- VPN access to my home PC immediately worked.
- no ports seemed to be blocked (including P2P).

What else can I say? Surfing 10'000 meters up in the sky is a lot of fun and it is a true asset for every mobile business man, or for every mobile gadget fan like myself

I'll supply you with some screenshots when I am back on Earth!

04:58 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Internationally best-selling novelist, William J. Lambert III, who has written over one-hundred books, in the complete gamut of existing genres, comments on a few of his William Maltese and Willa Lambert books released in electronic (and Audio) formats.

I found doing it, while staring at a computer screen, too downright trying, exhausting, eye-straining, and uncomfortable, especially compared to my curling up with the tactile pleasures of a bound book, seated before a warm fireplace, complete with crackling logs, comforter across my knees, an ice-bucket of cool white wine (and appropriate wine glass) within easy reach.

Mr Lambert, I assume you were reading your e-books on a PC's computer screen. My advice: buy a PalmOne T5 or a Dell Axim X50v of which either one makes a perfect addition to a warm fireplace and cool white wine. I am sure many readers of Mobileread agree with me that reading e-books can also be a comfortable experience IF you do it right!

01:40 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Laurens today released an updated version of Sunrise. Version 0.41f allows you to control the memory usage for Sunrise Desktop and its HotSync conduit. The update also contains two minor fixes for parsing RSS feeds. Download from Palmgear.

More interesting is the fact that Laurens is now fully concentrating on the development of his Sunrise viewer:

Barring any serious, show-stopping issues, this will be the last Sunrise release for a while. I apologize in advance for not being able to address some of the outstanding issues. Also, I will not be able to give much user support. Getting my product's v1.0 out the door takes priority over everything else.

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