09:38 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Was reading about smart phones and it hit me one more reason I don’t like the growth of smart phones over traditional PDAs (besides the compromise of the PDA specs and screen and battery issues, like we’ve all discussed before.)

As an analogy, remember how before the internet you used to control your own PC. No big worries about being exposed to evil stuff out there. When you did something on your PC it was basically handled locally. Then Microsoft IE and the Windows upgrades and all kinds of other programs started trying to make things “seamless.” Basically, they took matters out of your hands and you didn’t really know when your computer was talking to the internet and why. You didn’t know exactly what ActiveX controls were going to do under the covers. You lost control. And look at the result. We’ve been forced to accept levels of blind trust relative to internet communications that we never would have accepted in the beginning, but Microsoft and others ramped it up for the more valuable purposes like Windows upgrades and you really didn’t have any choice. You got accustomed to letting them control the terms and methods of your interaction with the web.

Now think about PDAs. True, we have WiFi and Bluetooth in traditional PDAs and they have a level of exposure to internet villains. But now with smart phones you see the game changing already again. Now smart phone makers and wireless carriers are bending the rules of play according to their own wishes, not according to the best interests of us customers. Bottom line is they want to sell downloads and content and wireless minutes, whether data or voice. That means that all the core software is tailored to their plans. They want hooks into their distribution systems. They want to get you on their data plans. They want you running their software for monitoring and controlling the way you connect in this new interconnected world. (I bet some of our readers that are already using smart phones can give some real-life examples of this, or alternatively they can dispute this viewpoint.)

I’m sure there will be great benefits and features, but I’m not so sure I am comfortable being forced into doing things in new ways designed by the people trying to take control of how I spend my money. Some of the things I might not feel comfortable with right now are probably going to become commonplace soon. Just watch… you will see more and more the wireless carriers are going to steer OS development for smart phones and we’re going to be doing things according to their best interest. We’re going to lose control of how we interconnect. We’re going to be paying through the nose for wireless data plans and published content. It's going to have such strong DRM that it's useless except on your smart phone. And we’re going to be upgrading both for phone technology and for PDA technology.

I think, for now, I’ll stick with my traditional PDA. And maybe we’ll see growth of some WiFi-like technology until it is a ubiquitous alternative to wireless carriers. Am I concerned for no reason? Too early to tell, I guess, but the future will be interesting, and there's some very talented people out there trying to determine the future of mobile computing on our behalf... or at least on someone's behalf.

And a general MobileRead thought as a postscript--
If you have an idea or opinion on this or any topic, please share it! We enjoy the participation and feedback, and as always are looking for ideas for improvement.

In addition, please feel free at any time to private message any of the editors at MobileRead if you have suggestions for increased participation in the discussion. We really appreciate both the frequent and occasional posters here that make MobileRead such a great place to discuss mobile computing and technology!

07:20 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MailWave provides wireless access to IMAP4 and POP3 enabled servers. Advanced features such as Inbox synchronization, and calendar and task viewing provide the mobile worker with valuable information while on the road.

The e-mail client supports multiple networks, email servers, and wireless devices providing a very flexible wireless email solution. MailWave is a powerful wireless email access solution with advanced features such as push style message delivery, stylus free operation, and attachment downloading. Deploy MailWave to a single user or the entire enterprise quickly and securely using over the air activation.

Price: $9.95/month (that doesn't come cheap ).

For more info and download instruction read at mytreo.net or visit the author's homepage.

01:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

In case you've missed any MobileRead news from this week, here is our usual roundup:

Announcements
Happy Birthday Ignatz!
MobileRead Mobile for offline-readers, update
Under Attack ;(

Book Reader Hardware
Sony Librie - download all BBeB encrypted e-books
To good to be true: Sony Librie finally cracked!

Emerging Technologies
Delphi XM MyFi - radio via satellite
Flexible Liquid Crystal - the answer to our display problems?
iPod Mini challengers - and how they fail again
iPod Photo - now officially on Apple's site
MP3 Photo Jukebox
OpenZaurus 3.5.1 - alternative Zaurus OS
Sandisk release new fast and small card readers
Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 converted to English!

General Chat
Add MobileRead to MyYahoo!
E-books for your mobile phone
eBayFeed 1.11 - eBay USA fixed
Got Gmail? Perhaps you are already hacked!
It is true: palmOne is losing its market share

General Palm Discussion
PalmGear - Mobile
PalmGear - RSS Feeds working again!
PalmGear with a new look - breaks PalmGear RSS feeds!
PDA Sales Dropping
Treo 650

General PPC Discussion
eReader selected as "Best e-Book Reader" for PPC
visNotes-encrypted memos

03:06 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Google's Gmail is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to your email account simply by knowing your username, according to Nana Netlife Magazine:

"Everything could get publicly exposed – your received mails might be readable, as well as all of your sent mail, and furthermore – anyone could send and receive mail under your name", thus reveals Nir Goldshlagger, an Israeli hacker, on an exclusive interview with Nana NetLife Magazine. "Even more alarming", he explains, "is the fact that the hack itself is quite simple. All that is needed of the malicious hacker, beside knowledge of the specific technique, is quite basic computer knowledge, the victim's username – and that’s it, he's inside".

Google admitted to the security flaw and is working on a fix.

One tip for Google: Stay beta forever, then you don't have to bother with legal claims at the end.

12:34 PM by sUnShInE in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Gateway has now announced its own MP3 player with photo capabilities. The Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox has a mere 4Gb of storage, and will street at US$249.99. The Photo Jukebox uses Windows Media Player 10 to synch up music and photos from a PC to the device, comes with a 1.6-inch vibrant color screen, and weighs 3.4 ounces.

Humorously, Gateway is also taking shots at Apple saying, "The new Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox will make anyone currently on a waiting list for other mini-digital music players think twice". They're also boasting that the Photo Jukebox's battery can go for 8 hours and, more importantly, can be removed and recharged "unlike most other digital music players."

Gateway is only taking pre-orders right now, with shipments expected in mid-November.

Read more from the Gateway press release.

12:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

eBayFeed required a small fix to make it work with some recent changes (10/19/2004) at eBay USA. You are advised to upgrade to eBayFeed 1.11.

source code: here and here.

full package, zipped: here.

You can still see the script in action at halted.de (make sure to copy it on your own server as this server is only for temporary demonstration purposes!)

If you want to give it a quick try, use this feed link with your favorite feed reader like Bloglines, FeedDemon, etc.

About:
eBayFeed/1.11 allows you to create customized RSS 2.0 feeds of your favorite eBay searches. Compared to other eBay-to-RSS solutions, ebayFeed has the following advantages: it is fully customizable and extensible (open-source), it supports eBay platforms of other countries (take a look at config.inc), you can run it on your own server, it doesn't log your clicks on items, nor does it advertise your search habits to others (such as qksrv.net), and it allows you to fully utilize eBay's advanced search forms. It currently supports eBay USA, eBay UK, eBay Germany, eBay France, eBay Italy.

08:57 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

OpenZaurus is an alternative linux distribution for Sharp Zaurus-based PDAs (except the SL-A300 and SL-6000). The original purpose behind the project was to create a ROM image (kernel + root filesystem) which was a bit closer to what the developer community specifically desired. The method by which this was accomplished was simply to use the Sharp ROM as a base and make alterations, bugfixes, additions and even removals, where necessary, to make the package more open.

LinuxJournal compares OpenZaurus to the original Sharp ROM:

One might think, why would I want to replace my current Sharp Linux distribution? Although I must admit Sharp's embedded Linux distribution is pretty impressive, some points could be improved. Some of these points include SD card compatability and missing utilities, such as SSH. In addition, OpenZaurus provides 16MB of built-in Flash separate from the 64MB of memory split between, in the SL-5500, 32MB for storage and 32MB for heap. The heap memory also can be written to, allowing you to add and remove applications that you can't touch in the Sharp ROM, such as the Hancom applications. Most importantly, OpenZaurus offers freedom of choice.

The same article also goes into detail how you can download and install OpenZaurus on your own Sharp PDA. See attached images how pretty the system looks like.

11:10 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Thought I should mention that we also have two mobile pages up for a quick overview of new and updated software at PalmGear:

PalmGear New Software PalmGear Updated Software

Link-Depth is 0 for both channels.

Note that the links might change in near future, since I am working on something new which will eventually incorporate those two links.

Enjoy
Alex