Mon November 08 2004
Watch DVDs on your PocketPC |
05:47 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones Today I stumbled over a tool called DVD to Pocket PC. Its claim: You can convert your DVD's to your Pocket PC and watch them in great quality, with stereo sound and in full screen landscape mode. A memorycard as small as 128 Mb is sufficient to store a full length feature film, up to a hundred minutes From what I understand, the movie files are re-encoded using Microsoft's Windows Media 9 format which has a much better compression algorithm than DVD (Mpeg2). A free trial is available. I would be curious to hear your experiences on watching full-length movies on a PDA. How does it work? Can you recommend it despite the small LCD screen? |
[ 2 replies ] |
[Librie-Dev] Sony Librie MakeLFR - now with Graphic support |
05:36 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices Earlier we reported that the Sony Librie book format is being reverse-engineered, allowing for you to create your own Librie e-books. Now Sven released a new version of his little console tool MakeLFR. MakeLFR 0.3 adds text compression and graphics support (find it attached). Great work, Steve! You should really ask Sony to hire you with a great salary, since I am sure your tool will lead to a 100% revenue increase for the Librie. |
[ 5 replies ] |
palmOne Tungsten T5 spotted for $349 |
05:11 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones Buy.com currently sells the palmOne Tungsten T5 for a low $349.99 - shipped free. Plus, they include a free T5 hard case! I don't think you can go much lower than that. Hurry if you are interested, because I don't know for how long the offer will last. |
[ 5 replies ] |
Which is better: Microdrive or flash memory? |
05:04 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones Here is a cool question for you, asked today in the Inquirer: Which is better: Microdrive or flash memory? First the article talks about durability Microdrives apparantly don't like high altitudes, whereas CompactFlash cards don't mind hot coffee. So the point goes to flash memory. It then goes on comparing overall cost/absolute storage capacity. Costs for 1GB flash (either SD or Compact Flash memory) range $60-100, whereas costs for 1GB microdrive is around $32. The author thinks the price gap is only temporary: It's a pretty safe bet to say they'll be some aggressive price cutting on flash memory and devices built around flash in the next six months so they can get some separation from microdrive-based devices. |
[ 7 replies - poll! ] |
Sun November 07 2004
Avantgo server trouble? |
10:34 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones If you still use the Avantgo service, for the past few days you've probably received the following message on your PC during hotsync: "Server is temporarily halted for maintenance. Please try again later." The AvantGo webpage doesn't give a hint as to why the service is currently not working. I feel bad for you if you actually pay for the advanced AvantGo account |
[ 2 replies ] |
Sat November 06 2004
Poll -- Tell Us What You Think of Voice Recognition |
08:35 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones We're asking for your thoughts on voice recognition software in a poll, but first a few thoughts. November brings the release of ScanSoft's Version 8 of Dragon Naturally Speaking. eWeek writes that the program is greatly improved, especially in terms of accurracy which has improved by over 20%. One reseller of the software says "It really works; it's not an accuracy problem." (Of course, over the years I've heard that sort of comment a lot. Usually it means that a capability is almost there, but not quite yet!) But Chuck Runquist is the CEO of a software evaluation company, and he said "They did a super job in bringing it up to speed, in particular with the accuracy." So maybe there's something to it. My own interest was due partly to the mention of support for Palm handhelds. It turns out that there is support for both Palm and Pocket PC, but the voice recognition and transcription only happens when you get back to your PC. Not quite enough processing power in your handheld for the full-blown program, but even integrated remote dictation starts to conjure up all kinds of new uses. For example, imagine taking most of your notes verbally, and keeping them for future reference as text. Or, how about keeping your PDA in front of you during a meeting and catching all your comments for a sort of personal mini-minutes in text form. (I would say you could transcribe the meeting discussions, but I doubt the little mic on your PDA would be sufficient to catch any more than one person's words at best.) And now things could get really exciting for tablet PCs also, where one would be able to do transcription on the fly! Please give your opinion of voice recognition in the poll, and check out the full article at Voice software makes strides |
[ 6 replies - poll! ] |
Fri November 05 2004
Xiino 3.3E PalmOS Webbrowser |
04:58 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones Xiino is a PalmOS-based online web browser with SSL and javascript support. Funny thing is I have never heard of this browser, so I cannot say how well it works. A 30-days evaluation version is available for download. |
[ 3 replies ] |