04:42 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

So much news sounds gloomy for Palm, such as the most recent news we see posted about PalmOne's predicted troubles. In fact, it almost feels like mainstream "experts" on the mobile computing market can sell nothing but gloom and doom with a dab of hysteria! Everyone gives Palm a long shot at a smart phone niche market, but thinks all depends on that success. I say that's very short sighted. Why not a successful niche market in traditional PDAs, or something that the traditional PDA evolves into? I, for one, am not ready to count PalmOne out. And I don't think I'm alone because developers are not jumping ship as if they think it's sinking either. If anyone should be able to recognize a sinking ship it's them. But they see a future, and so do I. There's every reason to continue to think PalmOne will survive.

As much as people like to proclaim the PDA market dead and gone, it's not gone. It just may not keep growing like it had been. What about the toaster market? How much is that growing? They've even had to deal with the ubiquitous microwave that slowed down sales of the toaster oven. But did the toaster disappear? What about the market for analog watches? Everyone thought that was going to be gone forever when LED and then LCD display watches came out with all kinds of fancy features. But isn't there plenty of money to be made by lots of analog watch manufacturers? I wear one myself. And one of these days I'll replace it. Those markets may not expand exponentially, but there's enough there to be successful, and keep putting out good products.

If you think about it, it's not so much that it looks like Palm is going under (assuming PalmSource can provide a decent next-generation of it's PalmOS). It's mostly frustration because we think they are missing golden opportunities, and because they're just not giving us any decent PDAs on the market in this dry season.

The T5 was close. I even had one reserved at a PalmOne store when it came out. It would be an awesome PDA if done right. I think it was a great concept. But all you hear about is that it's a great PDA with some problems. Even some of the recent years have hurt Palm because of bad battery life or production quality problems combined with weak customer service. The T5 problems, Sony withdrawal, lack of product news, and all the worries about Cobalt caused me to join the Pocket PC crowd for now. But I would love to see Palm develop some devices that make it worth my while to go back to PalmOS.

I think there's still a lot of market to keep Palm going as long as they can keep the developers from jumping ship. I don't really believe that people are so happy with their current PDAs that they don't want to upgrade or replace. If nothing else, they'll want to buy a new one when the old battery won't hold a charge. A lot of the doom and gloom is just reaction to all the Clies not being sold. And without many new products that are delivering value and capability, I think a lot of people are just waiting.

Some people are happy enough with their PDA to wait on a purchase, but not to the point they will never purchase a PDA again. And there's a lot of hobbyists that are like me. We've jumped ship because we felt forced to make the leap, but really prefer deep down to be on the Palm side of things. I'm not a Microsoft hater, despite having my complaints. I actually appreciate a lot of what they've done for personal computing and PDAs. I want them to succeed. (Sorry folks... I know that's not a popular position on tech sites around the web.) But I just like the Palm approach because it feels good.

I believe PalmOne will get past this bump in the road and be able to find some core competencies that they can use to make great products. They may lose much of the smart phone market, but that doesn't mean they lose the core PIM market. The sales may be falling for PalmOS, but most of that is due to Clie gone and no sign of the basic products people can rely on.

Think about Palm fanatics... we prize the simplicity of the Zen of Palm, and want a product that works well with minimum fuss and a great UI. I don't see that with Treo or T5, but I am convinced PalmOne can get back there. And I if you don't think so, let me prescribe my favorite tonic for the depressed Palm fan... one or more daily readings of Palm Addict. It will be sure to renew your hope!

PalmOne is working on production quality and supplier issues and I'm sure they'll get that right. If they don't, we'll see new leadership that will. PalmSource will eventually have a Cobalt OS that PalmOne will be willing to adopt. I admit that's a bit of a question mark right now, but they might already have reached that point... PalmOne takes so long to produce a product that something might be well on the way already.

So, bottom line, I think Palm will come back. Not like the spectacular hopes we had for it with domination of the portable device market, or a huge piece of the smartphone pie, but with solid basic PDAs. Devices with lots of capacity, and well-executed with the best UI in the market. Eventually, they will move into SmartPhones, but I don't see them dominating there unless they get lucky. The market is too tough, and they don't seem to be taking advantage of opportunities. I just hope they do all this before something else takes over the market. There are certainly enough threats... Windows or Linux-based handheld computers with PIM features. Smartphone alternatives which will become better and better at integrating large screens and more powerful computing capabilities. And even the possibility of a new Palm-like OS to ride on top of another OS (like Windows or Linux.)

Show us proud Palm, and don't let this critical time slip away completely. Some of that momentum is gone, but there's still time. We're gonna have to see something eventually that makes the Palm platform worthwhile. A reason to buy. You don't get a free pass just because you're the sentimental favorite. When desktop OS and hardware become available in a handheld computer at a great price and with good battery life, I'm afraid it's going to be too late.

12:45 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Troy Wolverton from TheStreet.com wrote an in-depth analysis of palmOne's current market position and the continuous difficulties in keeping its momentum in the growing smartphone market.

12:16 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Our friend Brian from Tapland is submitting the following news:

Zodiacs Around The World is giving you a chance to win some free software courtesy of the fine folks at Class Action, GPS Pilot, and Resco. If you're a Zodiac enthusiast and you have a digital camera, take your Zodiac out for a photo shoot around your hometown, at a famous landmark, or far away at an exotic location. The three contestants who send in the most interesting, unique and high quality photos will win some software for their Zodiac with "around the world" and photo themes.

Contest rules and prizes can be seen here. Since starting the site at the beginning of February, the submissions have been coming in at a steady pace with some great photos from Mexico, Germany, and the USA.The USA Map, World Map and Group Photo Pool are starting to get well populated. Please feel free to use any photos from the site in a news item.

Alex: Sounds to me like this contest is going to be a lot of fun. Make sure that you don't miss the deadline, which is Saturday March 12, 2005 11:59PM EST!

08:53 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Have you ever wished you could just buy all the good Pocket PC programs at once instead of buying them one at a time? My guess is probably not, but you might be tempted now if you have lots of extra cash laying around.

Pocket PC Magazine is offering a CD with (almost) all their award winning software titles, which you can register for the full versions for about a year if you buy the whole set for about $429. A boatload of cash, but you get a boatload of software.

I'm thinking that IT departments, software reviewers and rich hobbyists must be the target audience. But it does get me wishing I had it, even if I don't need it or even know exactly how it all works.

Hey, wouldn't you folks at Pocket PC Magazine love to throw me a free copy so I can review it for you?!

But, on a more serious note, they have a great site over there at www.PocketPCMagazine.com, and the list of award winning software has been a constant reference for me. They have had such good stuff, I just signed up for a paper subscription. And with subscriptions, they offer a download with all the info on the software evaluations. You can find summary info for free (which is what hooked me on Pocket PC Magazine in the first place) at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/awards/nominees_2004.asp

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.