10:48 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

PDA users to mobile multimedia: "Been There, Done That!"

I had the pleasure of visiting with someone on an airplane who had an iPod. I'd never actually held one in my hands, so it was pretty exciting to me. I'm a sucker for just about any technology. The user was going on and on about how it was the best thing since sliced bread because music was available anywhere.

True, that iPod had something like 5gig, and my $150 Pocket PC only had a 1gig SD card, but I wondered why it is that the world seems to have only discovered portable MP3 players when iPod got popular.

How long have PDA fans been shouting at the top of their figurative lungs that these things are great! You can listen to MP3s of music or old time radio shows or movie sound tracks, or whatever you please. You can even play on a screen keyboard to make your own music. Read ebooks, watch movies, make wifi phone calls, browse the web, keep a photo album, organize your life, and do a myriad of things that portable multimedia players will probably never bring to the table. But iPods are a dream come true for many people. See page 2 of USA Today, for example... iPOD phenomenon. People love their iPods.

Now Sony is probably going to try to do a similar thing that Apple did with the iPod... steal away all the wonder and glory of the PDA by hyping on the PSP all those commonplace things that you can do more cost effectively with a PDA. But to the consumer that never heard the PDA message, it will sound like it's all a brand new thing when the PSP does it.

When it's all said and done, Palm and Microsoft are going to realize that they had a chance to dominate the market for portables. Instead of just sticking PIM and multimedia on phones, they could have stuck a phone on PDAs. But alas, the new specialty devices like iPOD and PSP that look like they will take over the portable non-SmartPhone market, leaving PDAs in the dust. How many years ahead in capability were all the PDA makers? How did they take advantage of that lead? How well did they convince the general public that PDAs can do just the things that they always wanted to do, but didn't realize it yet? No. Instead the message was "see the pretty color screen" and "replaces your datebook" and "this $400 device can replace a $50 jump drive". Only recently did they try to push the MP3 player stuff, and by then iPod was in the driver's seat.

People seem to think it was inevitable. I think it's a missed opportunity. It may not even be too late yet. But it's gonna take some kind of special publicity effort to play catch up now.

The worst part of the picture from the business side is that PDA makers don't seem to have any arrangements for tie-ins to get the related revenues. Apple has iTunes revenues. Sony has control over content and content delivery. All the more with the severe DRM laws. Microsoft seems to just be content to stay in the background as an enabler of technology, kind of like PalmSource. And the only tie-in that PalmOne seems to have found is to ride on the coat tails of the smart phone business. I doubt they are even getting much of a kickback from all the mobile carriers that are raking in the bucks for data and phone plans on these things.

If PDAs really do become nearly extinct, don't blame the form factor. Blame the market players that let a great opportunity slip right by. And the next time you see someone considering a 512meg MP3 player, be sure to show off your fancy PDA with movies and songs and a whole lot more!

12:53 PM by ScoutBuck in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

ScoutBuck posted the following interesting interview chat with palmOne Mexico. I only did a few lingual corrections, and I hope I didn't change the meaning of the content in any way (if I did, please excuse me!). -- Alex

PDAMexico.net had a two hours chat with palmOne México director, Miguel Hernández.

Main points of the chat session:

- Treo 650 GSM in Mexico and Latin America available in April'05.
- Production stop of Tungsten T3.
- Tungsten C still in production.
- Predicts long life for Palm OS products.
- PalmOne Mexico promotes Palm OS at Universities and other educational institutions (the UNAM, the UAM, the ITESM, the UNITE).
- Palm OS Cobalt stills being tested; some PIM applications had to be rewritten.
- PalmOne Mexico is planning to actively support and promote HispaPUG México (Mexican Palm User Group, part of HispaPUG).
- Road-map of palmOne it confidential, but open for suggestions.
- In future, expect (more/all?) palmOne products to integrat WiFi.
- "Our business is mobility".
- The PDA business has to remain profitable; the strategy of market purchase is not sustainable in the long term. We have seen many players like Sony, Toshiba, Casio, Phillips, etc., to leave the market when they haven't even been able to position themselves after spending a lot of money (lost the profitability of the business). palmOne, on the other hand, has shown a solid structure regarding its global finances; already today we have products that start at 1300 pesos (as the Z21), offering functionality at more accessible prices.
- Since technologies matured and the costs are stabilized, we can offer more advanced products at better prices.
- palmOne is an extremely versatile and adaptive company; we are adapting to a more aggressive player in a competitive environment.
- The apps development belongs 100% to PalmSource; although we are also in the process of making alliances for the localized apps development. For this purpose, we maintain a database of about 3000 developers in Mexico, with a briefcase of the main 50 companies we are in contact with.
- We (palmOne Mexico) recognize the tremendous work and the effort of the whole group (HispaPUG?), we know that what you have done during this time plays an important role in reaching one of our most important goals: to create a culture of mobile computation in our country and in our region, Latin America. Really, many thanks to all, in particular to Abe, Ricardo, Samuel, for their support.
- For those working with palmOne Mexico, it gives us pride and an enormous satisfaction to see the large group of users so advanced, enthusiastic and passionate as all of you are...

Read the full chat at PDAMexico.

02:13 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I've just discovered a very fun and simple way to watch movies for free on a Pocket PC. All you have to do is

1) Download your chosen public domain movie from a Free Public Domain Movie Archive. Think there's nothing worth watching there? Think again. From 15min Three Stooges shorts to full length feature films with David Niven to other fun flicks, there's sure to be something you'll find worth watching. Note: You'll want a broadband connection to do this.

2) Copy it to your SD card. A full length movie takes just over 200meg, so you'll need at least a 256meg card for the best resolution MPEG4. But in a pinch you can use a lower resolution version that takes about 1/4 the space.

3) Make sure you have a player installed that can handle MPEG4. One very good one is free - BetaPlayer. I haven't tried Media Player, but it's possible that Media Player can even play these videos.

4) Enjoy! That's all there is to it!

5) Extend your fun...
--> Do the same thing with PalmOS. If you find the appropriate video player software. Anyone know of one that works?
--> Convert your own DVDs for viewing on your PDA. I just bought a copy of DVD Studio 3.0, but wasn't able to convert the first DVD I tried. It only converted the trailers. But then again, I couldn't even play the movie on my laptop using the DVD player, so I think the problem was not related to DVD studio or my PDA. When I get a chance I'll try other DVDs and will do it with my desktop PC instead of the laptop. I fully expect to have more success. If you're more daring or short on cash, you can find free versions of software to do the conversions. Check out the BetaPlayer web page for some recommended software.
--> Use an analog to digital converter or a video card with video in to convert vhs tapes to pda format. Even home movies are possibilities for your handheld. Just think... you can bore all your friends at work with handheld versions of your last family vacation!

If anyone else gives these things a try, let us know how it works for you. I'm sure there are many of our readers that already have a lot of experience doing this.

05:08 PM by TadW in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Lexisgoo English Dictionary V2.0 (Build 30159) is the new and enhanced version of the previous bestseller and award winning Lexisgoo English Dictionary for Pocket PC. It has better support for VGA devices, allows you to add notes for keywords, includes support for anagram search, a new smart text selection that will help you to lookup words from editable applications more easily, and various speed and resource usage improvements.

Notice that the download link at PocketGear still points to the V1.5 version! Follow this direct link to download V2.0.

10:02 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Newegg has a "Weekend Blow Out Sale!" offering the palmOne Tungsten T5 (416MHz, 320x480 TFT, 256MB, Palm OS v5.4 PDA) handheld for USD $353.99 with free FedEx shipping. Ok weekend is over, but the sale is still there. If you want one, hurry up!

[via PalmAddict]

09:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Scott Redford, president of Diesel eBooks and a loyal visitor of MR, speaks out on the need for standards in DRM technology and e-book formats. I fully agree with Scott. There should be only one e-book standard that is well-supported and works well with any e-book reader device. Most importantly, the standard shouldn't restrict ("digital restriction management") the e-reading experience of the paying customer in any way .

Scott, feel free to express your thoughts here as well; we are a very open-minded community and love to hear the opinion of "professionals". I am sure this could lead to some interesting and rewarding discussions!

09:13 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

PDAs, surprise surprise!, are losing ground to smartphone and feature phones. According to analyst firm Canalys, global mobile device sales grew by 51% in the last quarter of 2004 compared to the year before. While the market for smartphones, or "voice-centric devices", increased by a breathtaking 101%, the market for handhelds (including wireless-enabled devices), so-called "data-centric devices", rose just by 5% for the year.

Nokia is the leader in shipped smartphones (4.9m in the quarter), followed by palmOne, whose combined 1.5m handheld and smart phone shipments meant an 8% overall growth. The reports also notes that growth could have been better if the Treo 650 had been more widely available at the time. Still, palmOne remains the leading smart phone vendor in North America.

Research in Motion continues to chase HP for the third place, with increase in sales of 249% on last year compared to HP's 1% growth.

06:07 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Laurens updated Sunrise again, and this time the upgrade includes:

• removed: file change notification (the method used for monitoring external changes made to SDL files turned out not to work reliably in quite a few cases. The problem would result in settings not being saved properly to the SDL or "NoSuchElementException" errors when attempting to delete a document.)
• fixed: local file with links as document source (using a local file with links to websites and/or newsfeeds would produce intermittent NullPointerExceptions. This was due to a cache synchronization issue.)

You can download Sunrise V0.41 from PalmGear.

If you are new to MobileRead and still don't know what Sunrise is about, you should visit this thread for more information.