01:48 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Auvi Technologies from St. Louis, Mo. has some specification on its website of what it claims to be the smallest 1.8 inch hard drive player in the industry.

It is 3.8" x 2.4" x 0.5" hence only slightly bigger than an Apple iPod Mini. But you get a 40GB harddrive with it!

Before, I thought I would only consider an iPod as the right investment for a MP3 player. But since many iPod Mini owners have recently complained about several issues (such as clicking noises of the harddrive), it might be a good idea to check what the competition is doing. The SA1500 looks definitely good to me!

12:57 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Finally some great news from Sony. Sony has today announced its roadmap for the upcoming Memory Stick Pro devices. It includes devices with 2GB capacity, plus faster read and write options (up to 80Mbps).

The new "High Speed" Sony sticks are scheduled for October/November 2004 and will be available for $105 (256MB) to $700 (2GB).

08:31 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Science Fiction magazine Locus has an excerpt of an interview with Neal Stephenson. In case you don't know Stephenson... he is the cyberpunk genius who wrote Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and some other great works (all of which are available as e-books). Check out the interview (or just the excerpt which is free) if you want to find out more about his upcoming work.

Locusmag seems like a great place not miss; therefore I wrote a Locusmag RSS feed that you are free to use.

03:03 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

I was waiting for this to happen. Juicebox shows us how cool an E-Ink device can be if not manufactured by Sony. It is small (50x56x3.7mm), has a multimedia card interface, includes a MP3 decoder, and of course features the wonderful E-Ink panel.

The great thing about this project is that it gives the schematic and source code (alas excluding the confidential sources for the E-Ink display) for download. Btw, the smart guy behind the project, Holly Gates, has actually worked for E-Ink since 1998. Why on earth did they make E-Ink technology exclusive for Sony until now?

01:26 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Boeing is drawing new customers to its Connexion in-flight Internet service. Some 528,000 iPass users will have access to the service through the iPass global broadband roaming network, which includes more than 11,000 active Wi-Fi hot spots in 33 countries. iPass customers thus can access corporate networks, send and receive e-mails, and surf the Web while flying.

Read the full story at Newsfactor.

Alas, as far as I know, only business- and first-class jet-setters can currently surf the Net on the plane (for 20 to 25 bucks an hour).[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/font] But I am convinced there will a time when Wi-Fi access on the plane becomes a basic commodity such as a can of soda. Good times are ahead!

12:55 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Japan's leading game developer Sega started to offer a series of mobile content Sakura Taisen to users of FETi-mode, a mobile phone Internet service provided by FarEasTone of Taiwan.

The service features wallpapers, voice ringers and Java games based on Sakura Taisen, Sega's popular game title that has sold more than 3.5 million copies in Japan.

12:50 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

MicroOLAP Technologies has announced in our forum the release of CHM eBook Reader for Pocket PC. CHM eBook Reader for Pocket PC allows you to view Windows help CHM files on your PPC. Sounds like a great addition to your software collection if you own .CHM files which you would like to read in your palm.

You can download a (slightly crippled) trial from here.

11:10 AM by Zire in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Hey All,

Wanted to point out this wonderful app that I don't think I would ever get tired of. This is the best animation program available for the palm. Very straight forward, has great tools to help you create your animations and the website is very helpful as well. I also like the converter for animations but it is windows only. I use my pc at work to convert animations, when I'm at home I use the converter along with virtual pc for mac. The website includes downloadable user contributions and a tutorial. The one thing that this app needs is image manipulation like flip, mirror, and rotation. But thats it. Tried other animation programs for the palm and this one beats all of them hands down. I would recommend this application to everyone. Try it you'll like it. I attached a folder of animations that I made and an exported animated gif using the converter that you can get on the website.

Enjoy!

Here is additional information from the site.

Application:
Novii Animator

Version:
1.2

URL:
http://www.novii.com/animator/descr.htm

Description:
Making your own animated cartoons is very entertaining, and using NoviiAnimator you will like doing it again and again!

You can use it both for creating animations and drawing single pictures!

Both amateurs and professionals will realize all their ideas
with the help of NoviiAnimator.

Features:
Tungsten PalmOS 5 support
Memory card support
Color and grayscale support
Onion skin modes
Wide range of playback speeds
Animation compression
Unlimited frames
Smooth drawing technology
Reverse and loop playback
Animation credits view
Zoom mode
Region select tool
Flood Fill tool
Built-in help