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?

12:59 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Legacy 1.05X for Palm has been released now and adds new compatibility to new Palm devices:
- Sony UX (40,50), Sony TH55 compatibility
- Palm OS4 compatibility (but only for hi-res devices, with at least 320x320 resolution). The 1.05X is still slow a bit on OS4.
- optimized drawing for UX/TH

This version is functionally the same as 1.05. If you have a device with an existing (and working) Legacy 1.05 on it, then you don't need to upgrade to 1.05X.

You can download/purchase the 1.05X version on the Legacy Palm page.

12:52 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | iSilo/X

After a long beta period, iSilo/X V4.05 finally enters release stage RC1. iSilo is available for Palm OS, Pocket PC, Windows, Windows CE Handheld PC, and Windows Mobile Smartphone. Changes include mostly bug-fixes from the previous beta, which we were already discussing here.

You can download iSilo V4.05 RC1 here and iSiloX V4.05 RC1 here.