Some of the best gadgets are those that merge the old with the new. Retro styling is still fashionable, My last car was a 1961 Ford Falcon station wagon. The restoration trend, to preserve these great old stylish designs, sometime calls for innovations that meld older tech with new. Thus a marriage of mobile devices, like a retro car stereo, and an iPod, is something that crosses many Tech barriers.
Category Archives: Mobile tech
The Ad Wars Continue, New Mac Ad!
This is pretty much self explanatory, and an amusing start to the weekend. Most of us are amused by the advertising antics of Microsoft and Apple, and this latest salvo fired from MacCentral seems to be having a little poke at the “Laptop Hunter” series from MS.
One thing Apple does well, irony
Palm Foleo, Resurfaces? Rumour Mill
While I wait for most of you to pick your jaws up off the floor, we’ll get into the Foleo from Palm. Does anyone remember it? A mobile companion that was set for great things, along the lines of the Celio Redfly, that never eventuated!
The original Foleo concept was meant to be a mobile companion that supported Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Announced on May 30, 2007, and renounced on September 4, 2007, the ill fated Foleo never eventuated. What did Palm have to say about it?
Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we can not afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.
What was a bit screwy at the time, was the mention of a second platform, meaning the Foleo was based on a Linux derivative. As we have seen of late, WebOS is Palm’s major focus. It looks like the Palm Pre will be available in early release at Best Buy, on June 7, but stock and location are limited, and a NetBook built on the new WebOS could be the next Foleo!
Kindle On Steroids?
With the current downturn of the traditional newspaper, as this short Blog post over at E-Commerce News highlights, “Will the Internet Kill Newspapers?” as more and more people turn to online solutions for their daily news needs. The burgeoning need for sales not at print level to maintain the growth of all major news providers, is becoming more dependent on online subscriptions via devices like the Kindle. It appears though that a lot of the major newspapers are happy with the way the Kindle, and many other e-readers in the same category, handle their content.
A few publishers are forging alliances with consumer-electronics firms to support e-readers that meet their needs. Chief among their complaints about the Amazon portable reading gadget is the way Amazon acts as a middleman with subscribers and controls pricing. In addition, the layout isn’t conducive to advertising
So not only is this about the Kindle, other players are stepping into the e-news arena, with digi-books!
Are you an app addict?
If you’re not an iPhone/iPod user, you would pretty much think meh, about apps and iTunes and the whole appstore thing. With the news this week that Apple’s App Store has eclipsed the 1Billion download mark, you would think everyone is downloading apps at an incredible rate. Incredibly though, mobile users on other platforms are less inclined to download, or just prefer a pristine device. Something I can’t imagine actually, but apparently lot’s of peeps out there are application virgins!
As surprising as it may seem, a huge percentage of mobile users, do not value add to their devices, with downloaded applications, I can’t imagine…
Feeling Blue, some Innovations to help!
With any mobile device, the supporting technologies that are not directly attributed to the OS related to your device, develop at a different rate to your Os. Bluetooth, no matter what device or OS you are using, has become an integral part of all mobile, and for that matter, static devices you may use.
In what is breaking news today we are seeing the release of BT 3.0, it’s actually hitting the market, whether we will see the benefits soon is another question.
The fact is we all want a more efficient,faster way to interface with our mobile devices, and BT 3.0 seems to offer that! Integration of the new tech may take a while, but you have to admit, in the simplest of functions you would appreciate a higher transfer speed. Syncing any device sans cable, at a higher speed has got to be on most people’s wish list!
Updates, the Cross WinMo Users find the heaviest this Easter!
One thing that is self evident of late in the Windows Mobile community is the excitement about forthcoming updates to the OS. Although there is a huge amount of insecurity about whether a lot of those users will even be able to access the upgrade. There’s a device specification lower/lowest limit already defined for Windows Mobile 6.5, and Microsoft have already handballed the responsibility to the device manufacturers. That’s right in a sly move, Microsoft actually left it up to the OEM’s, mainly HTC, to alleviate the update drought!
So what is actually going to happen?
Who knows really, but recently over at FaceBook, as an off shoot of the Windows Mobile Fanpage, there’s been a stirring, that’s delivered plenty of questions, and few if any answers!
So what does all this mean, check out the thread on the FB page and see if you agree with the other WinMo users over there
Aaron Woodman, Director for Consumer Experiences for Windows Mobile, will be available the week of March 23rd to take questions on anything related to your consumer experiences with Windows phones. Post your questions below, and then check in a week and see the information we’ve accumulated.
Aaron may not be able to answer every question—and he won’t be giving away any deep trade secrets—but he has a wealth of fascinating knowledge to share on our favorite mobile phones.
Digital Discrimination! Deafened by an E-Reader!
Mobile tech is really a cross cultural, cross ability unifier. We able bodied users don’t often become aware of the hurdles that significantly differently abled tech users have to face, to use the same technology that us so called normal people use. {Caveat: using the term “normal”, to describe any member of the JAMM team, could be misconstrued as misleading, and does not refer to any of the former or current team members}.
Question: What good is an eBook reader to a blind person?
Answer: Really good if it has text to speech function enabled!
The Kindle can read your eBooks to you if you want. but there is a function that can be built into the actual eBook software that can disable the text to voice function. Why though would you even think of that. Hmmm, seems money comes into the equation. Apparently the eBook, and specifically the Kindle 2’s ability to vocalise a book, is a threat to the National Authors Guild.
Oh, Amazon, you don’t want this kind of publicity. Today in New York the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and its partners in the Reading Rights Coalition will protest outside the offices of the Authors Guild. Their goal is to reverse the Guild’s threat to disable text-to-speech from e-books for the Kindle 2.
It seems that when Amazon introduced the Kindle 2, it announced that it would be able to read e-books aloud, a boon for the vision-impaired. But the Authors Guild had a problem with that, and so Amazon announced that it would give authors or publishers the ability to disable text-to-speech.
I really can’t make sense of the story and all of the background, or the politics involved. It is all revolving around a fear of losing profits I suppose.
What doesn’t make sense though, is that authors don’t want more exposure, in any media they can be conveyed in! This is probably an example of hierarchy gone wrong, but I do believe the blind should hear! Crack the link below for more info!
Free For All: YouTube App from YouTube, WinMo and S60! Native at last!
At last there’s a way to use YouTube on WinMo and Symbian S60 devices, and although it’s data hungry, and there is a warning at installation, to save your hip pocket, if you don’t have an “all you can eat” data plan, don’t even go here!
youtube, on winmo from youtube
The speed and ease of use, what I would describe as “intuitive”, makes this an application for all WinMo devices, and you have to applaud Google for actually coming up with this. Although, I have to admit that any application that increases hits for them is value adding and lining Google’s pockets, this is another welcome, free app from Google, that again allows you to stick to just a Windows Mobile device whilst on the move.
PC in A Plug, Now This is Mobile Technology! part 26
Okay, this is a concept that blew me away today, and the more I think about it the more I want to share it. Imagine now, go to your gadget happy place, chant a bit, a full computing experience that fits in your pocket, and it’s not a phone. Not a Mid, but a computing module contained in a case that resembles/is the equivalent of a power unit for any one of your other devices.
The incredible shrinking computer is about to reach a lower limit in size, with a new computer that’s contained entirely within a wall-wart. Any smaller than this, and the computer would disappear inside the electrical outlet.
I can’t even take this in in any sort of coherent manner, but marvell seem to have a way for you to get rid of your desktop PC forever, and your laptop and netbook. A unit like this would definitely be a mobile boon, but the peripherals would be a pain to carry!
Marvell Plans $100 Computer Inside a Wall Plug | Gadget Lab from Wired.com
