08:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

All mobile news junkies listen up: GarishKernels has just released Egress V2.1 which has support for all RSS / Atom formats (RSS .09-2.0, RDF 1.0, ATOM 0.3), landscape mode, Today integration, background downloading, and a few other cool features.

New in V2.01 is the new channel wizard, caching of web pages for later display using PocketIE, support for downloading enclosures (Podcasting), a configurable item sort, and configurable item retention.

Looks like the market for mobile RSS clients is heating up. There are at least three good choices for PocketPC available now: Egress, PocketRSS and Newsbreak.

Egress is available for $12 (was previously available for $10).

08:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In a press release Hitachi today announced "Mikey" and "Slim", two new babies in the Hitachi family continuing the company's quest for high capacity in smaller and smaller form factors. These two miniature drives are designed especially for use in mobile phones, digital music players, and PDAs. Could this mean a temporary end to flash-based storage devices?

Mickey: 20% smaller than a 1"-harddrive, expected to make its debut in the second half of 2005 at a mere 14 grams and in an embedded-only design. Capacities between 8GB and 10GB.

Slim: a 1.8"-harddrive, also expected to make its entrance in the latter half of the year with 30-40GB of capacity for the one-disk version (and up to 80GB for the two-disk version).

In the separate announcement today Hitachi added the Deskstar 7K500 to its product line -- the world's highest capacity 3.5-inch SATA hard drive at 500 GB!

[via Golem.de]

05:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

We were just contacted through e-mail and phone by a Microsoft representative to remove the material regarding Windows Mobile 2005 (Magneto). We honor their (actually very polite) request and removed all sensitive information from this post.

Don't be upset! It'll take only a few more months before we can enjoy the first new devices running Windows Mobile 2005!

In the meantime, feel free to browse our community for more news and interesting articles on mobile content and gadgets.

05:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Gabor Kovacs aka Picard has released a new test build (0.095d) of the upcoming BetaPlayer 0.096. The plugin supporting the Intel 2700 accelerator chip of the Axim X50v is now open-source! In addition, the final 0.096 will include the following new features and fixes:

+optional software volume handling
+windows ce shortcut support
+intel xscale lcd controller (flipping and hardware vertical scale)
+default install supports aac le,he,ps profiles
+intel2700g plugin added to main install (open-sourced)
+plugin sources are includeded in main source repository
-divx audio with windows media codec fix
-wince 4.x window media codecs on non pocketpc fix
-corrections with libfaad usage and mp4 file format
-another mpeg4 header parser fix
-avi framerate and opendml fixes
-taskbar can be hidden
-uninstall restores file associations
-user input thread priority changed (for buggy keyboard drivers)
-better handling of low memory situation
-perfering gapi over raw framebuffer with smartphones
-minor bugfixes

05:14 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

We're almost stifling a yawn this time around, but here is yet another prediction for 2005, and unlike some others one that is well worth a read.

Jeff from Writing On Your Palm writes that Windows Mobile 2005 (aka Magneto) will be better than 2003SE, but not enough better to really matter. Ultra-portable computers (UPS) such as the OQO will remain niche products. RIM will expand its smartphone market presence with the Blackberry device. PalmOne will remain profitable and focus on the consumer (not geek!) user. The HP iPAQ will be slowly discontinued in favor of upcoming UPS devices. Geeks will enjoy upcoming portable video recorders (PVR). The first PalmOS Cobalt-based smartphone will be released in 1Q'05 by Samsung. There will be a rebirth of PalmOS in the "feature phone" (less powerful than smartphone) world. There will be no PalmOS on Linux before 2006. Tapwave will continue to challenge the game console market.

I agree with Jeff up to the point of where he predicts that WM 2005 wouldn't be a big deal. Unlike the current version (WM2003SE), which is still based on Windows CE 4.2, WM 2005 will be based on Windows CE 5.0. Because of this change, Magneto will include:
- ActiveSync 4.0.
- Support for Security Zones in Pocket IE.
- Revisions to Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.
- Direct3D Mobile (D3DMobile), a graphics solution built on DirectX (mobile gamers and movie fans will love this).
- SQL Mobile database engine in both Smartphone and Pocket PC.
- Two-button soft-button interface for Pocket PC OS.
- Smartphone 2005 icon-based desktop similar to the ones used by Sony-Ericsson and Palm.

I am sure the Direct3D Mobile feature alone would be worth a switch to Pocket PC for a lot of game freaks out there.

01:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Russell Beattie added a nifty new feature to his Mobdex ('Content for Mobiles') - project. You can now have small chunks of an e-book delivered to you daily via RSS feed. In other words, we don't accept any more excuses ('lack of time') for not having read classics such as H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. How-to-use, taken from Russell's blog:

Simply find a book, note it's ID number, then subscribe to the RSS feed like this:

http://www.mobdex.com/rss?book=116&id=russ

The ID can be anything, but because I'm not checking for duplicates or want to deal with a registration process, it's better to use something unique like your email or something secret yet unique. This RSS will return the first "page" of text in that book to your RSS aggregator. If the first few pages are gobbledygook (as Project Gutenberg books sometimes are) or you want to go back a few "pages", simply reset the counter (which increments +1 "page" per day you've checked the site) by appending a "page" parameter like "&page=12".

And if you're a speed reader and want the pages to be updated more frequently, add an "interval" parameter in minutes. This would produce another page for my aggregator every couple of hours:

http://www.mobdex.com/rss?book=116&id=russ&interval=120

And what is Mobdex?
Mobdex contains several hundred public domain e-books from Project Gutenberg, dynamically reformatted to be readable on the web and modern mobile browsers.

07:53 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Handango is giving out for free IM+ Mobile Instant Messenger for Pocket PC this week!

If you are looking for a complete mobile Instant Messaging solution, you should definitely get this free offer. IM+ works with AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! and Jabber, is a Pocket PC Mag Hot Download Pick and a Pocket PC Magazine 2004 Awards Winner.

07:25 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Engadget has announced the winners of its 2004 Awards. Among the winners we find the Apple iPod 4G (who would have thought), the Dell Axim X50v, and the Apple AirPort Express. Interestingly, Engadget's pick for the "Disappointment of the Year" is palmOne's Treo 650!