11:24 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

You will soon be able to get satellite high-speed internet from your car. That will be handy Just in case you want to download a new ebook while riding down the highway on a family vacation.

The RaySat SpeedRay 3000 satellite antenna will be available second half of 2005 for a mere $3500 plus installation and internet service costs.

And people think it's dangerous to use a cell phone while driving. Wait till they start reading ebooks while driving!

(via Gizmodo, which is a very nice site similar to www.engadget.com)

09:16 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BenQ announced that its P50 will be appearing this spring, with or without a mobile carrier, for somewhere between $650 and $800 street price.

You haven't heard of the P50 yet? The P50 is a quad-band GSM keyboarded smartphone, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular networking, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. It packs an Intel Bulverde PXA272 processor and am SDIO expansion slot, too. It's a bit longer than the Treo, although the keyboard is very similar to the Treo 600's, with similar domed keys.

08:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

As I promised you earlier, the fabled Archos Pocket Media Assistant PMA400 (official website, English manual) had its first debut at CES yesterday afternoon. It will be available at the end of January for $799; some accessories are already available now.

The complete specs:

Capacity: 30GB
Interfaces: High-speed USB 2.0, compatible USB 1.1, PC & Mac USB Host port compatible Mass Storage Device Built-in WiFi connection (802.11b technology) IRDA 115 kb/s port.
Operating system: Linux Qtopia™ with embedded ARCHOS multimedia applications.
Video playback: MPEG-4 SP with MP3 or ADPCM stereo sound, near SVCD quality up to 704x480 @ 30 f/s (MTSC), 720x576 @ 25 f/s (PAL), AVI file format.
Video recording: MPEG-4 SP with MP3 stereo sound, near SVCD quality (optimised resolution for standard TV through composite video line-in) with up to 512x384 @ 30 f/s, in AVI format.
Music playback: Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 kb/s CBR & VBR, WMA (including Microsoft® PD DRM protected files), WAV.
Music recording: From any analog source into MP3 or WAV (PCM) format. Voice recording with built-in microphone.
Photo viewer: JPEG, PNG, GIF or BMP.
PIM functionalities: Qtopia™ software to manage your address book, agenda, calendar, calculator.
Games: Qtopia™ embedded games and Mophun™ game engine to play games downloadable from Archos web-site.
Display: 3.5" TFT transflective touch screen (QVGA) 320x240 pixels, 262,000 colors and TV output.
AV Connections: Earphone/Line Out jack. Built-in microphone and speaker. TV cradle to connect to TV with analog audio/video In & Out to RCA jacks, S-video In, and IR receiver for remote and IR emitter for tuner control, SCART In & Out for European version. Travel audio-video kit in option to record audio and video analog source on the move.
Battery life: Up to 4 hours for video playback or 9.5 hours for music. Removable battery available as an option.
Scalability: Download firmware updates from www.archos.com
Power source: Internal: rechargeable Li-Ion Batteries. External: AC charger/adapter.
Dimensions: Approx. 125 x 78 x 20 mm (4.9" x 3.1" x 0.8").
Weight: 280 g (9.9 oz).
System requirements: PC: Pentium® III 800 MHz or higher, Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000 or XP. 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) with USB port and CD-ROM drive. Mac: 9.2 or X (10.2.4) USB Manager version 1.2 or higher with USB port and CD-ROM drive.

08:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Toshiba announced at CES last week that it will be shipping its mobile phone-oriented 2GB, 0.85in hard drive by the end of January. And according to The Register, a 4GB version will ship mid-year, with 6GB and 8GB drives shipping in 2006.

Toshiba is pitching the part at "next-generation mobile digital devices", but it's a good bet phone makers are going to take a keen interest in the drive, particularly given the clear convergence between handsets, PDAs and, increasingly, digital media players. Toshiba's hard drives may enable handset makers to incorporate large storage capacities more cost-effectively than they can with Flash-based memory cards, and potentially reach higher capacities more quickly.

I was never a big fan of flash devices, so I hope that PPC vendors will incorporate these harddisk drives soon!

10:52 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Microsoft just released ActiveSync 3.8 for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

It contains fixes making synchronization more trouble free and includes all the significant improvements brought to you in ActiveSync 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7.1.

11:26 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

In this new digital era, many are questioning the current intellectual property laws and are calling for reform. The recording industry has ruthlessly pursued file sharers even beyond what most people consider fair and reasonable. Many people wonder why it's in our best interest to keep a song's rights protected for many years. How long is long enough for content rights to get reasonable returns on the original investment required to create the work?

The battle cry has been that we must protect property rights or we will see less great movies and music and writing. The content will start disappearing because there just won't be enough revenue in it if we weaken property rights. In fact it is argued that not only must the content be protected, but the content owner should have full control over how and when it is viewed or used.

In an interview with Bill Gates at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by CNET news.com, we hear his thoughts about intellectual property. He answers with some pretty amazing comments like

...There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises.

and

...when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.

Check out the article itself for more of the context for what he has to say about intellectual property and many other issues related to Microsoft's business.

But however you slice it, a big opportunity for Microsoft lies in making the most of the large revenue streams associated with content providers and content delivery systems. Microsoft is unlikely to support any weakening of copyright or patent laws as long as they expect to have a piece of that pie. Good or bad? I suppose that's the $1,000,000 question.

10:17 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

InfoWorld is reporting that Pocket PC and SmartPhone brand names will disappear over the next year or two. They will be merged into a single Windows Mobile product brand name. This announcement came from an interview with Scott Horn, a senior director in Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices group, at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

I don't know about you, but I like calling them Pocket PCs, and I'll miss it. Palm still works well for PalmOne devices, or even Zodiac PDAs, and I don't want to give up that name either! The new brand name, Windows Mobile, sounds much more like the OS than the device, but hey, Microsoft is all about the operating system, so I guess they prefer that the focus stay on them.

So what lingo are we left with? What do you think we'll be calling Pocket PCs in the future?
-- Windows Mobile mobile devices
-- Windows PDAs?
-- Dark-side devices?
-- Palm wannabes?
-- Plain 'ole "Phones" (after all standalone PDAs disappear from the market!)

Got any ideas?... Discuss this story by responding with what you think we'll be calling them! (Family-safe language please.)

09:43 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Before Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates gave his key note speech (thanks to Doctorow for the link) yesterday at the CES, NBC TV network's Conan O'Brian said something that made me chuckle:

The theme of this year is that gadgets are no longer just for geeks. That's right, look around you ... they are also for nerds and dweebs.

Let's think about this for a second. Consider what Apple has achieved with its iPod music player, this little device that enables users to download up to 10,000 songs into a sleek white and silver rectangular device, slimmer than a pack of cigarettes. Apple managed to get rid of a nerdy stereotype and to attract in no time a less geeky crowd with very advanced technology.

Really, is it still the techno-loving geek -- the kind of person who goes to great length to be the first to try out something new, whether hardware, software, or gadgets, the kind who goes into seclusion for days when a coveted new gadget arrives -- who is mainly driving the gadget market today?

This post is also a poll, so make sure to give your vote!