02:26 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Recent rumors of new iPod devices to hit the market soon were confirmed by Apple today. Regarding the iPod mini, the company lowered the price on the 4Gb model and introduced a new 6Gb version. It also launched updated versions of its color-screen iPod photo device with new slim 30Gb and 60Gb models. The new models should be immediately available at Apple stores.

For a 4Gb iPod mini you will now pay $199 (before $249), while the 6Gb model will sell for $249. For the 30Gb and 60Gb iPod photos you have to shell out $349 and $449, respectively.

05:52 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

From Brighthand this morning: PalmSource is going to switch to SyncML, a widely used, open standard for information synchronization, according to a report in Computing. PalmSource didn't give a timetable for when the switch to SyncML is going to be made, but it's most likely going to happen with Palm OS for Linux, which isn't expected to be released for some time.

PalmSource is doing it right by embracing open standards. If you've ever had the chance to mess around with MS ActiveSync, you know what I mean: ActiveSync = slow, buggy, and incompatible on non-Windows systems.

12:28 AM by hacker in Miscellaneous | Lounge

During my walkabouts across the Web this week doing research for a client, I stumbled upon a tool called Awasu, that just happened to link to us..

I don't run Windows, so this isn't useful to me, but its list of features and plugin API look pretty impressive (hint to those here who write software for Windows.. take note, hint hint. You know who you are).

Awasu™ is a free Windows news-reader that runs in the background on your computer and monitors these sites for you. When it sees that something new has appeared, it will let you know. Awasu will also keep track of what you have already read which saves you even more time since you no longer need to search through your favorite sites for new stories.

Just imagine. No more surfing the web looking for interesting stuff to read. Instead, Awasu will watch what's happening around the globe and let you know about events almost as soon as they happen. No more trawling through pages full of ads or popups. Now you can get only the stuff you're interested in, delivered to your desktop.

You're not limited to just news services either. You can keep an eye on the current weather in New York, the latest sales data from your London office or which band is playing at your favorite club this weekend. You are limited only by your imagination!

Can anyone download this and give it a try and see how it works? I'd love to see a review here on it. Any takers?

11:38 PM by cbarnett in Archive | iSilo/X

The excellent iSilo and iSiloX have reached beta 2 stage, and are available for download now.

Highlights of the 4.25 release for iSilo include:
- Added color themes feature:
- Ability to create color themes with selectable text
and background colors.
- Added ability to use an individual color theme for each
document to force the text and background colors to those
of the color theme.
- Added Options/Color configuration page/panel and dialogs
for managing color themes.
- Addressing of miscellaneous issues.

A full list is available at http://www.iSilo.com/info/beta/changes.htm

iSiloX changes for 4.25 include:
- Added ability to specify a maximum link depth for off-site URLs.
- In iSiloX for Windows, added ability to specify the character
set when creating Font Silo fonts.
- Addressing of miscellaneous issues.

A full list of these changes are also available at http://www.iSiloX.com/info/beta/changes.htm

Craig.

05:28 PM by hacker in Archive | Mobile Sites

I've been playing around with lots of RSS, RDF, and Atom code lately in a stealth project (major annoucement soon, Alexander has already seen some of the project), and in testing, I came up with some interesting bits of Perl that I think others will find useful.

So in that vein, attached is a small perl script that will take a feed (specified by you) and convert it to a MemoDB record that you can read in MemoPad on your Palm device.

It works like this:

./rss-to-memo --name Plucker --feed http://www.plkr.org/rss.pl

It will either append or create anew, MemoDB.pdb, with the feed of your choice as a record in MemoPad.

It requires a few non-core Perl modules, so you'll have to install those. To do that, just use the following syntax:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Getopt::Long"'

The Palm-specific modules (Palm::PDB and Palm::Memo) can be found at the Coldsync homepage. I cooked this up quick, but I could also use the Perl bindings in pilot-link, but I decided not to, because it requires a bit more work to get the pilot-link Perl bindings installed on most systems.

Simple, and all in 33 lines of code!

12:05 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

According to a research study, I read at vnunet.com today, more than one in three UK mobile phone users worry that they would lose touch with friends and contacts if they lost their mobile phones:

Over half of mobile users do not have a separate address book, and one in five use their mobile as their only record of phone numbers, according to research commissioned by mobile network services company Intervoice. But the study also claims that over half of mobile users have either lost or had a phone stolen within the past three years, and a quarter have lost two or more phones in the same period.

We all know by now that Paris Hilton doesn't have to worry about losing her contacts; but what about yourself? Do you keep backups of your important contacts?

This is a poll, so please feel free to vote.

10:39 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Today I read about a user describing his experience with a generic extended battery he bought for his Dell Axim X50v.

For two months ago I bough a DELL 2200mAh battery on Ebay. Now This week I noticed it started to leak. I have ask the guy to replace this battery. So beware what you're bying on Ebay. His refs (the seller) where OK. On the picture you can see the brown stuff is coming out, left below corner. I am glad it wasn't in my DELL X50v. Nevertheless $71.25 down the drain.

Apparently the guy he bought the battery from goes under the eBay alias Perfect Deals (which is kinda ironic). I think you should think twice before buying generic batteries from eBay. Instead, my recommendation is to either go with the original product, or to shop at one of the more better known battery vendors such as Lion Battery (look for batteries by Mugen).

08:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Boeing has created a wireless "hot spot" inside a Boeing 737 and came to Atlanta this week to sell Delta Air Lines executives on the advantages of surfing the Net and exchanging e-mail at 39,000 feet, according to this article. In other words, if we are lucky (well, those of us who can afford the the $10-$30 fees), Delta could soon become the first domestic airline to buy into Boeing's Connexion network.

Chris McGinnis, an Atlanta business travel consultant, says there's a ready market for aerial Internet. "I know that I, personally, would kill for something like that on a flight to Europe," he said. "I spoke with a person the other day who closed a real estate deal while he was flying from Seattle to Tokyo. It's something business travelers want and are willing to pay for."

Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, said executives long ago gave up the notion that airplanes provided the last refuge from work: "No one wants to get to their hotel room and have 80 e-mail messages waiting for them."

Deal says market data Connexion has gathered in Europe and Asia should convince U.S. carriers that Web access is a necessity for business travelers. Voice-over-Internet phones and videoconferencing could follow.