12:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Teac seems to become serious in entering the lucrative mobile MP3-player market. Only a few months ago we reported on the Teac MP-1000 player. Now with considerably more storage capacity than its predecessor, the MP-2000 can boost with a 5Gb mini harddrive, MP3-, WMA- and OGG-support, built-in FM tuner, and voice-recording capability. Specs:

- 128 x 128 display
- 18hrs playback time
- dimension: 85 x 48 x 17 mm
- weight: 70 grams

The player has already hit the stores in Europe and is available for EUR 259.00 (link).

11:57 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Japan's JNC reports that Sony has a new line-up of lithium-ion batteries, boasting the industry's highest level of energy density:

The G8 Series, a cylindrical lithium ion battery with a diameter of 18mm and height of 65mm, offers a high capacity with 2550mAh (a 6% increase from the conventional battery) while the A8 series, a a lithium ion polymer battery offers a power supply of 830mAh (a 9% increase from Sony's conventional model of the same size). Both are geared towards mobile products, and shipment will start from December 2004 onwards.

A 2550mAh definitely sounds great, but somehow it is hard to imagine a 18mm x 65mm battery inside a handheld.

11:16 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Msmobiles has a story that Taiwanese HTC plans to include Skype's VOIP software with its next generation Smartphones:

I am the WiFi engineer of HTC.com.tw, which is the manufacturer of Orange SPV C500, a wince smart phone, and also the main producer of various famous PDA, such as iPAQ serious and Axim serious of Dell. We're interested in dual mode smart phones, and would like to discuss with you the possibilities of using skype smart phone version as our voice over IP application solution. Please contact with us for detail discussion if you're also interested in such field. My email is shanfu_lin@htc.com.tw

And who is the loser? Certainly the big US phone companies wouldn't be too happy.

09:38 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Although I've made my opinion clear on eReader's December promo, I like to share with you the complete list of the "free" e-books, including those that are still officially unlisted for December (copyright-protected works in bold):

Dec 01 J. Verne Around the World
Dec 02 F.H. Burnett A Little Princess
Dec 03 -- The 9/11 Commission Report
Dec 04 J. Conrad The Secret Agent
Dec 05 L.F. Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Dec 06 A. Chekhov At Christmas Time
Dec 07 P. David Star Trek: New Frontier: Stone and Anvil
Dec 08 H.G. Wells The Time Machine
Dec 09 M. Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Dec 10 C. Dickens Some Christmas Stories
Dec 11 M. Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Dec 12 H.G. Wells Twelve Stories and a Dream
Dec 13 Sun Tzu The Art of War
Dec 14 E.R. Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes
Dec 15 F.H. Burnett The Secret Garden
Dec 16 L. Tolstoy Anna Karenia
Dec 17 E.O. Orczy The Scarlet Pimpernel
Dec 18 L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables
Dec 19 H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds
Dec 20 K.D. Wiggin The Birds' Christmas Carol
Dec 21 M.A. Collins Body of Evidence CSI: Crime Scene Investigation #4
Dec 22 C.B. McAfee Study of the King James Bible
Dec 23 R. Kipling The Jungle Book
Dec 24 C.C. Moore The Night Before Christmas
Dec 25 C. Dickens A Christmas Carol
Dec 26 L.M. Alcott Little Women
Dec 27 J. Buchan The Thirty-Nine Steps
Dec 28 J.F. Cooper The Last of the Mohicans
Dec 29 D. Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Dec 30 P. Ruditis Star Trek: Enterprise: Shockwave
Dec 31 H.C. Andersen Andersen's Fairy Tales

In other words, if you are looking for e-books that you cannot download otherwise for free, mark three days: Dec 07, Dec 21 and Dec 30.

02:13 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Wireless Librarian lists more than 400 library hotspots in the US. The index is regularly updated; some libraries require a nominal fee. Others are restricted to staff only. Some places even loan out notebooks or Wi-Fi cards.

A wonderful resource if you don't want to miss our website while spending your time in a library

01:50 PM by TadW in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

I am sure some of you have already tried using Google to find free e-books. At cebooks blog, I stumbled over the following two Google-queries with some advanced operators, which can do quite some magic:

Find Apache's (default) index page:
+("index of") +("/ebooks"|"/book") +(chm|pdf|lit|zip|rar) +apache

Find a particular e-book file ('TITLE'):
allinurl: +(rar|chm|zip|pdf|lit|tgz) TITLE

Be aware that some of the hits may point to copyright-protected e-books and that neither Google nor I are responsible for that!

05:48 AM by TadW in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

UK-based O2 has unveiled its XDA II mini PDA phone, described as the world's smallest (with a size of a deck of playing cards). Powered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 PocketPC Phone Edition Second Edition with a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA272 processor, the phone integrates tri-band GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth and a 1.3 megapixel camera. Wi-Fi is optionally available through a SDIO card slot.

Unlike most other smartphones, which run Microsoft Windows Mobile for Smartphones, the XDA II mini is a fully-functional Pocket PC with an integrated touchscreen, i.e. it functions as a fully working Pocket PC with mobile phone functionality.

In Europe, the same phone is sold rebranded as the T-Mobile MDA Compact.

10:56 AM by hacker in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I just found this interesting article [palmsource.com] (emphasis mine):

PalmSource will continue to offer both Palm OS® Garnet and Palm OS® Cobalt to support a broad range of mobile devices including smartphones. PalmSource also plans to implement Palm OS on top of Linux, bringing the benefits of Palm OS to the Linux community, including the award winning user interface, software frameworks based on the best of Palm OS and BeOS®, a large base of professional and consumer applications, and an enthusiastic community of more than 25 million users and over 360,000 registered developers. PalmSource intends to work as a partner within the Linux community to help Linux grow rapidly in the consumer and enterprise mobile markets.

I wonder if they're going to consider the enormous amount of application on Linux that interface directly with their handhelds already (pilot-link, J-Pilot, Evolution, gnome-pilot, KPilot, PilotManager, ColdSync, jSyncManager, and others), and begin to leverage that, or just NIH it and create their own proprietary extensions instead of reusing what we've already created.

Interesting times ahead, to be sure.