04:16 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Nearly 100 million PCs are likely to be replaced this year, with 120 million being swapped out in 2005, according to data research firm Gartner released Thursday.

Gartner analysts said more than 30 percent of installed PCs are now at least three years old. Many of those machines run older versions of Windows operating systems, for which full technical support may not be available. This, they said, will play a major role in pushing sales of replacements. Strong economic growth in the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and Japan is also likely to boost sales of new PCs.

Time to invest more in Tech stocks?

Read the full story here.

03:59 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Palm Digital Media's PalmReader Pro has been renamed to eReader Pro.

What is the marketing strategy behind this name change by PDM's mother company PowerByHand?

PowerByHand owns PalmGear.com, Palm Digital Media.com, PocketGear.com, and Power Training, and - this one is new - eReader.com. eReader.com is a web-based store, which leads me to believe that Palm Digital Media is soon no more.

eReader.com V2.5.0 changelog:
- The application name has changed from Palm Reader to eReader (obviously)
- The default toolbar uses large icons, in color on Palm OS 5 handhelds. Note that this will cause books to be repaginated when first opened after the upgrade.
- Support additional screen orientations on TapWave Zodiac handhelds.
- Fix a bug where soft hyphens were not drawn if full justification was on.
- After selecting text in a book, choose the "Copy Quote" item to copy the selection to the clipboard [Pro only].
- Fix a bug that could cause highlights to be placed on the wrong page [Pro only].
- Requires 400K free memory.

A trial is available (2) until July 1, 2004.

11:05 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

After the first details came out on Sony's potential iPod killer, Guardian Unlimited has an exclusive hands-on review.

Our prime question: Is Sony's new music player good enough to trump the iconic Apple iPod?

What I personally dislike most: You have to convert your MP3s to Atrac 3 first before porting them to the device. Since both formats are based on lousy-compression, you can expect some loss in sound quality when transferring from one to the other.

10:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Yesterday Iambic released the final version of Agenus Pro V8.0. Lot's of changes since V7.x.

From my experience, though, I recommend that you wait a couple of builds longer, because Iambic likes to release buggy software.

You can download Agendus Pro directly from here.

07:16 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to a British survey carried out in March and April of 2004 questining more than 1,600 people, 72% of business travellers asked said onboard wi-fi web access would make them more likely to choose trains over cars or planes. It also found that the longer the journey that people took, the more interested they became in using web access on trains to get some work done.

05:39 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

As of Friday, May 7, 2004, JP Mobile has acquired PDA Defense product (excellent security application!) from Asynchrony. JP Mobile will re-brand the product as SureWave Mobile Defense.

JP Mobile will be launching three editions of the SureWave Mobile Defense product:

SureWave Mobile Defense - Enterprise Edition
SureWave Mobile Defense - Professional Edition (PDA Defense)
SureWave Mobile Defense - Network Edition

05:17 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

PDPal is a mapping tool for recording personal experiences of public space.

The goal of the PDPal experience is to use mobility and networks as a mediating and recording device that reactivates our everyday actions, transforming them into a dynamic portrait of our urban experience: we write our own cities.

The term "PDA" connotes a personal assistant, and therefore PDPal would be one of the first projects to transform the accessory construct of PDA's into a group and personal experience. PDPal's software will be available for update and download via the web or kiosk. The kiosks will use existing beaming devices and software by hi-beam (currently in use on Creative Time's public Beaming Network around New York City).

You can also find some more info here. The project seems to be in the works, but looks definitely unique

04:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

There has been a rash of recent editorials about privacy concerns with Google's gmail service. A number of organizations have asked Google to voluntarily suspend the service. One California legislator has gone so far as to say she plans to introduce a bill to ban it. This is nuts!

...says Tim O'Reilly from the famous O'Reilly Media publisher. Well, I did read his nine arguments, actually twice (!), but I cannot agree with him.

"Gmail is fascinating to me as a watershed event in the evolution of the internet. In a brilliant Copernican stroke, gmail turns everything on its head, rejecting the personal computer as the center of the computing universe, instead recognizing that applications revolve around the network as the planets revolve around the Sun."

To me it sounds as if Tim was among those celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Henry Kissinger, Shaq O'Neal who put money into Google in 1999 through Angel Investors. Now he might be waiting for the big bucks in return.

Would you want your mail being scanned by a bot for commercial purposes?