04:35 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Earlier we reported rumors on an upcoming iPod Flash player. Think Secret now confirms speculations that Apple's flash-based iPod will be introduced at Macworld Expo in 1GB (may sell for $149) and likely 2GB versions (may sell for $199):

The device is currently being manufactured by Taiwain-based Asustek, which Apple brought on towards the end of the summer as a second ODM for manufacturing iPods. Sources say the flash-based iPod will be powered by a chipset from SigmaTel and that it will feature a screen that is the same width as the iPod mini's but two lines shorter.

According to insiders, due to some manufacturing issues the device's full-scale roll-out may postpone for as long as a month.

06:01 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

After we did some serious optimizations to our newsfeed system, we now decided to offer our readers a choice of separate RSS feeds for each section of the site.

In other words, you can now build up your own personalized Mobileread headlines list by subscribing your aggregator to the combination of feeds that suits you best.

Instructions how to use RSS are provided in the link below.

[Link to our RSS feeds]

Comments are as always welcomed!

01:38 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MobilePipeline reports on a new Forrester survey indicating users really don't want to combine their mobile phone and PDAs after all. For example, mobile phone users don't seem to think that they really want all those PDA features.

Many PDA enthusiasts have been saying this for quite a while, scoffing at the idea that adding a phone to a PDA is a always a good thing. Citing feature compromises, battery life, size, cost, and a host of other reasons the idea of independent devices is more palatable. But the industry experts have loudly and confidently proclaimed that the smartphone category will almost completely squeeze out the separate PDA and mobile phone categories.

Don't count out smartphones though.... pretty soon the compromises may start to disappear as technology improves. And consumers might not really know what they want. There was a time when people didn't think they wanted a microwave either!

Forrester's summary (buy the whole article for just $249) says...

PDAs and phones seem to be on a collision course as PDAs get connectivity, phones get bigger screens and richer operating systems, and device makers experiment with new form factors that attempt to marry the two. These integrated devices form the bulk of the "smartphone" category. However, the majority of both mobile phone and PDA users are consistent in saying that they are not interested in this marriage — each device fulfills a different need. While PDAs will continue to integrate phone features that reinforce the device's core functions and smartphones will appeal to PDA owners who crave a single device, the majority of phone manufacturers will pick and choose those PDA attributes that make sense for individual customer segments.

09:36 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Laurens, one of the most responsive PDA developer I know, has just released Sunrise 0.40-pre7. The release contains two important fixes related to plain text conversion and DLL linking on Windows XP machines.

Unless new serious issues show up, we should be able to expect a final 0.40 release soon (at least if you believe that Laurens' to-do list for 0.40 is empty now).

If you are new to Sunrise, click here to find out more about its top-notch features for website offline conversion.

09:30 AM by Gatton in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Once again Fictionwise is offering for free download the nominees for the annual Nebula award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. First up is a novella called "The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes" by Adam Troy-Castro.

Not sure if they only offer novellas for free or if they mix it up with some novels or short stories. Anyone remember from last year?

http://www.fictionwise.com/Z88070H1130/nebula2005.htm

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.