11:38 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

According to the Denver Post, Las Vegas section, Microsoft will begin selling portable music players for as much as 80 percent less than Apple's iPod later this year, promising a "look and feel" as good as the iPod.

Considering how Microsoft aggressively entered other markets recently (e.g. the game console market), a $50 MS Windows-powered audio player could be a real thread to Apple. No?

11:25 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Tom's Networking has a review and comparison of four different PDAs with wireless LAN support (HP H2210 iPAQ, Dell Axim X3 Advanced, ASUS' MyPal A716, PalmOne Tungsten C).

Interestingly, the author comes to the conclusion that "[n]o matter what the construction details are, the Tungsten C clearly outperformed all other products in my test group." Where the Tungsten had a data thruput of 2.7Mbps, the PPC handhelds only achived thruputs from 0.3 to 1.0Mbps.

11:16 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Very dark times might be approaching us soon.

According to various German news sources, Sony is going to leave the handheld market. Instead the company would strengthen its business on Notebooks and PCs, it is said.

The first time I heard about these speculations was a few weeks ago in a Brighthand article.

Considering that Clie sales per unit decreased by a massive 38.8% in the first quarter this year (Q1 2004 - 230,666, Q1 2003- 376,909, estimates by Gartner), it is plausible that Sony might try to change its strategy and find other, more lucrative markets.

I am not sure what, if this rumor turns out true, it would mean to the PalmOS handheld world. Could Palm even stand a tiny little chance against big and evil PPC without a strong licensee-partner like Sony?

Supposedly, Sony will come out with an official press release next week.

06:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MIT Technology Review runs a story of how Researchers from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have invented an index system that generates custom indexes and tables of contents organized according to a set of keywords that the user enters to describe the concepts she is interested in. The custom entries are drawn from the original manually-generated book index entries.

So when you enter a set of keywords, the system narrows down its index of thousands of entries to a single page's worth of a few dozen entries.

05:55 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Navman, maker of advanced GPS navigation devices, strikes a European deal with Sony. Navman's mapping software, which charts a user's progress using the GPS (global positioning system), will be available on Sony's next Clie handheld computer.

The deal covers Europe, with Navman picking up the business because US mapping software maker Rand McNally, which partners with Sony in the US, was unable to cater to Sony's European needs.

05:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

We have a thread where members discuss the usablity of reading news on your iPod. Well, guess what, there are some people who even think of reading entire books/references/guides on their tiny iPod screen.

Quote from iPodLibrary:
podBooks are cool, instant "books" that can be accessed on your iPod using the Note Reader. Ideally suited to reference, sports and music info, guides and so-on, we now aim to make them available here at iPodLibrary.com.

03:13 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Pocket-Lint reviews the Rio Karma 20Gb MP3 Player, which isn't perhaps as sleek as the iPod, but it definitely costs less. It also offers some powerful features like a 15 hour battery life, Ogg Vorbis playback and an Ethernet port useful for network streaming.

03:07 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Good news for Tungsten and Zire owners. Brighthand reports that palmOne is preparing to release an SD expansion card for adding WiFi to their Tungsten T3 and Zire 72 handhelds.

Isn't it strange that there are so many WiFi expansion cards available for PPCs, but not a single one (yet) for Palms?