07:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

We postulated this change earlier. Now it is official: PalmDigitalMedia is from now on known as eReader.com. The PalmDigitalMedia.com site will continue to operate for the next few weeks while the eReader.com site goes through a set of launch revisions based on customers' feedback.

There is an ongoing survey, which will provide you with a discount code (EREADER05) good for 10% off your next purchase over $3 at eReader.com.

04:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

PubSub is a free tool for all of RSS feed junkies. It monitors over one million weblogs and information streams to find the content you're looking for, in real time, and any time matching information appears, you'll see it in your news aggregator.

For example, you can subscribe to a feed for the phrase “Clie”. The feed is populated by matches against the weblog community or newsgroup posts. Very cool!

04:29 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

MyProductAdvisor.com offers a new (beta) tool called the PDA & Smartphone Advisor which aims to help you find the best PDA or smartphone for you. Although the site loads very slow for me, I was able to go through the selection process and the result was surprising: the first 6 PDAs I was offered as my personal choice were all Sony Clies....and I always thought I would tend towards buying one of the new PPCs

10:38 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

According to the Denver Post, Las Vegas section, Microsoft will begin selling portable music players for as much as 80 percent less than Apple's iPod later this year, promising a "look and feel" as good as the iPod.

Considering how Microsoft aggressively entered other markets recently (e.g. the game console market), a $50 MS Windows-powered audio player could be a real thread to Apple. No?

10:25 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Tom's Networking has a review and comparison of four different PDAs with wireless LAN support (HP H2210 iPAQ, Dell Axim X3 Advanced, ASUS' MyPal A716, PalmOne Tungsten C).

Interestingly, the author comes to the conclusion that "[n]o matter what the construction details are, the Tungsten C clearly outperformed all other products in my test group." Where the Tungsten had a data thruput of 2.7Mbps, the PPC handhelds only achived thruputs from 0.3 to 1.0Mbps.

10:16 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Very dark times might be approaching us soon.

According to various German news sources, Sony is going to leave the handheld market. Instead the company would strengthen its business on Notebooks and PCs, it is said.

The first time I heard about these speculations was a few weeks ago in a Brighthand article.

Considering that Clie sales per unit decreased by a massive 38.8% in the first quarter this year (Q1 2004 - 230,666, Q1 2003- 376,909, estimates by Gartner), it is plausible that Sony might try to change its strategy and find other, more lucrative markets.

I am not sure what, if this rumor turns out true, it would mean to the PalmOS handheld world. Could Palm even stand a tiny little chance against big and evil PPC without a strong licensee-partner like Sony?

Supposedly, Sony will come out with an official press release next week.

05:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MIT Technology Review runs a story of how Researchers from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have invented an index system that generates custom indexes and tables of contents organized according to a set of keywords that the user enters to describe the concepts she is interested in. The custom entries are drawn from the original manually-generated book index entries.

So when you enter a set of keywords, the system narrows down its index of thousands of entries to a single page's worth of a few dozen entries.

04:55 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Navman, maker of advanced GPS navigation devices, strikes a European deal with Sony. Navman's mapping software, which charts a user's progress using the GPS (global positioning system), will be available on Sony's next Clie handheld computer.

The deal covers Europe, with Navman picking up the business because US mapping software maker Rand McNally, which partners with Sony in the US, was unable to cater to Sony's European needs.