08:51 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Facer Launcher V2.0.6 is out and available at a 15% discount ($16.10 USD) until June 20, 2004.

The best thing about Facer is the plug-in system which allows for other third party applications (beside datebook and to-do list) to be integrated to Facer's Today page.

03:54 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BargainPDA is the first to bring the news we were all expecting to hear today: "Sony has informed us that they will not release any new Clie PDAs this year in the US. The Clie line will continue in Japan though. This move is of course devastating for a number of reasons." Some more interesting points were revealed:

- This move is a re-grouping, not an exit from the market
- Sony will continue to sell through stock of current models which could last for several months
- Sony will continue to honor all support agreements and warranties
- The Clie line will continue to grow and evolve in Japan
- They believe wireless is very important to mobile devices. To this end they will continue to work hard in the SonyEricsson partnership to bring innovative devices to market
- Beyond wireless Sony feels mobile devices need to be strong in multimedia and gaming

So would you still buy a Sony Clie today knowing that Sony lost its focus on PDAs for now?

04:31 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It is about time to invest in a new notebook.

For the first time, I've been thinking of buying a Macintosh-based computer. Yes, a very big step, because I wasn't exactly fond of Macs in the past (I learned to hate them at college).

But things are different since Panther OS X. I like the fact that Darwin runs on top of FreeBSD and allows to run *nix based programs. In the past, I could have argued that I was missing this or that application not available for Macs. Today, I am not aware of any such restriction any more, thanks to Darwin.

The big con: price. Why is Apple so horrendously expensive? And beside the general high price, here in Europe you pay another 20% premium compared to US prices. My question to you - if you are a Mac-owner: Is Panther OS X and a nice style enough reason for a PC junkie to seriously consider buying a Powerbook? Please help me to make a decision!

02:43 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Following our discussion from last week, more other tech sites were also reporting rumors of a possible end of the Sony Clie line. Shaun of PDA247 also confirms that Sony company is going to release an official press statement tomorrow. What is new: Sony Ericsson Mobile Phones will also be discontinued! (that stinks, I own a t610 and think it is a great phone!).

Let's see what news will bring tomorrow.

11:50 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Scheduled to hit the Japanese market June 12, the SONY GU-BT1 is a Bluetooth-compatible GPS receiver/transmitter unit especially designed for Sony's Bluetooth CLIE PDAs.

The personal GPS unit measures 60x89x18mm, weighs 72g, and is capable of running continuously for up to 12 hours on a single recharge.

Price will be around 31,290 Japanese Yen (which is roughly $280 USD).

12:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Found this inconspicuous paper today by two, at that time, inconspicuous students: The Anatomy of a Search Engine

Some quotes from this paper (which btw dates around 1998 me thinks) you should think about for a minute:

The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/

as of now, Google knows 4,285 million pages, an insignificant increase by 17,754 percent

With better encoding and compression of the Document Index, a high quality web search engine may fit onto a 7GB drive of a new PC.

Does that mean I can fit more than five 'Googles' on my iPod?

Simple experiments indicate PageRank can be personalized by increasing the weight of a user's home page or bookmarks.

Perhaps privacy issue made this impossible so far.

A Web search engine is a very rich environment for research ideas.

...and for earning a buck or two...

...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Now, THIS is funny. Does Google Adwords ring a bell?

So we are optimistic that our centralized web search engine architecture will improve in its ability to cover the pertinent text information over time and that there is a bright future for search.

And bright it was indeed.

12:00 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Every year, World Press Photo picks a World Press Photo of the Year, to encourage high professional standards in photojournalism and to promote a free and unrestricted exchange of information.

This year, the winner is French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju of The Associated Press, who shot a picture of an Iraqi man comforting his son at a holding center for prisoners of war near Najaf, Iraq. The picture was taken on 31 March 2003.

There are a total of over 60 winning images from various categories.

06:57 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Alan McConchie from the California Institute of Technology and Lewis & Clark College makes an interesting dialect survey exploring the regional variations for describing carbonated soft drinks. Could the result of this survey trigger the next civil war?

Make sure you have a look at this map which depicts the lingual differences (based upon more than 120,000 respondants).