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.

Via Palms Blog

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!

Palm Pixie, er Castle, erhm Eos…

Doug posted the other day, well yesterday, “Is the Palm Pre 2 coming sooner than we think?”, woe and behold, this rumour seems to be getting fleshed out. seems like the second Web OS phone is going to have a form factor like the Treo, albeit with anorexia. A super slim Treo form Palm smartphone with an unconfirmed model name has appeared in the last couple of days, and it’s gone from blurry pics to quality pics to specs.

From Engadget Update: Oh boy — looks like we just got the full spec list. And yes, it’s definitely coming to AT&T (if it’s really coming).

• 4GB storage
• Price: $349 (pre-rebate)
• Camera: 2 megapixel fixed focus digital camera and flash / video capture
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP and EDR, USB 2.0 via micro USB
• Removable 1150 mAh battery (4 hours 3G talk time)
• Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
• Contact sync with AT&T Address Book
• MediaNet
• Cellular Video
• Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
• A-GPS
• Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
• Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263

Quite surprising really, and it’s going to  AT&T, which is really interesting considering all of the Verizon, getting the iPhone and maybe some other Pink device as well. An opportune rumour, it might be said!

In my opinion it only makes sense that Palm put out a device in it’s most successful form factor, some would say “familiarity breeds contempt” but I reckon it breeds comfort. If this device actually comes to pass, it’s very exciting and may herald a step back towards the big league for Palm devices.

Palm Eos: super-thin, 3G, and headed to AT&T?

Pink? The Rumour Mill

It’s funny how things go round in circles, especially in the tech world. I’ve written about “Pink” before, so I’m surprised today to see not one or two posts on other sites running with it again.

The Question is as always, what is Pink? Some have it that it’s a revived Zune phone, Others have it that it’s a new collaboration between Verizon and Microsoft to actually create an iPhone Killer, the most recent post I can find is saying Motorola is building it, I thought they were done with WinMo? The latest goes that the MotoSurf A310 from Motorola is going to be the iPhone Killer from Verizon, but hang on isn’t Verizon getting the iPhone?

This is just one of the round about, random, sorts of rumours I’ve seen evolve for a while, and to think it’s going to get bigger, and more exaggerated, will obviously happen! What is Microsoft Pink supposed to be, a hardware device produced by, who knows, to challenge the iPhone, and bring Windows Mobile to the fore front of consumer devices!

If you ask me do I have doubts? I’d say “I don’t know”

I’m ever hopeful, and not wanting to denigrate the Zune platform in any way, I just can’t see a device based on all of this speculation, emerging any time soon.

Via ZDnet

FireFox [Fennec] Mobile Alpha, Caught On Camera!

Well it seems that the Alpha of Fennec, Firefox’s new mobile browser has leaked, and not with a weak stream, but a fully fledged gusher. It was only a few days ago that we had news of a Version being released for the Touch Pro, and the alpha is already circulating. Though not stable, it runs well enough for Brandon over at PocketNow to do a three minute video tour of the browser. Although he doesn’t mention the memory consumption, we have to assume that this will be a RAM hog, and not for devices with less memory than the Touch Pro, although it may be slimmed down with time, hopefully.

What is really good here is what looks like some real parity with the desktop version, such as the inclusion of plug-ins and add-ons. I’m a fan of FireFox, and the add-ons that I use make it a powerful cloud computing tool. I could but a new PC tomorrow, install Firefox, and my favourite add-ons, and be up and running effectively online in about an hour. Having the same ability on a new mobile would be awesome. Check out the Video!

via PocketNow

FireFox [Fennec] Mobile, For Touch Pro?

Considering the dominance of Opera Mobile 9.5 on all of HTC’s latest “big hitter” devices, it sort of makes sense that if you were going to release a competing browser, you would want to use one of the power devices like the Touch HD, but it’s not available for the NAM market. So the next big thing would be the Touch Pro.

A few weeks ago I posted about the Alpha 2 release of Fennec,  and did not really expect any news of a windows mobile release this early in the year. Well a post over at WMExperts will warm the cockles of any Touch Pro owners heart. Or Not. Information from the Mozilla Wiki, points in the direction of a February release, but there are plenty of caveats included!

We are targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February, targeting the HTC touch pro.

We are two patches away from the meta goal of building from trunk. The tools changes have review from dougt, and are waiting for review from ted, who has promised review by the end of the week. NSPR changes are waiting for review from Nelson, who asked for and received a patch against NSPR trunk

So we know what the team is working towards, but nothing has been promised, although when a development team starts talking about release dates, even though you might want to take it with a grain of salt, it seems Fennec is imminent. Well for some of us with HTC Touch Pro’s any way.

Via WMExperts

Mozilla Wiki

iPhone Nano, Asus Eeephone, DellAxPhone: The Rumour Mill

Hmm, I might be described as obsessive, but all the things that are possible in the mobile device world are fodder for my intensely overpowering mental illness. Why is it so? Why am I driven to distraction. by all of this possible shiny new, not really existent yet, newness? 

As an Eee and long time Axim user, the latter two devices, fascinate me, and the iPhone Nano, makes more and more sense every day, not a media player replacement, a dedicated phone, PDA, that takes all the best from the iPhone, and makes it really pocketable. You can all berate me now, but I think the iPhone Nano would be a good thing, fit in my pocket better.

So little mister reads more RSS feeds than anyone else in the world, has a rumour fest for you today, Why, “if they post it I’ll read it”, is that a warped quote from a movie?

Palm, CES, Thursday, The Rumour Mill!

Palm have made no secret about a big announcement, scheduled for this Thursday, they’ve even held a contest, so that excited, expectant, loyal Palm users could win a look at their next big thing.

What is expected, is at least the unveiling of an updated OS, the rumoured Nova? A post from TechCrunch today though, seems to be offering us a little bit more than just the OS.

We have information from a trusted source that the latest Palm smartphone running the Nova operating system will be launched Thursday. The new phone will have a full QWERTY keyboard that will slide down under a portrait-oriented touchscreen. We’ll have a mock-up shortly.

Yes they have a mock up for us, and a bad one at that, but their sources also make iPhone comparisons, to the OS not the form factor of the phone.

Anyone remember a show, “Ripley’s Believe it or Not”.

Exclusive: New Palm phone to have slide-down keyboard, large touchscreen

An Apple Mid, Tablet, or iPod XXL!

Well the iPhone Nano has been the toast of the MacWorld rumours, getting early and lot’s of coverage, thanks to not one, but two case makers, letting the rabid fanboys, get what they think is an early look at the iPhone Nano all be it fleeting.

From the Washington Post
The analysts still say it’s inevitable, the critics still say it’s unlikely, and the fanboys are still panting over mock ups and screaming, “yes!” However, this time there might be a little more to it. Vaja–a company that specializes in protective cases for mobile devices–briefly added an iPhone Nano category to its Web site, where you could pre-order a case for this non-existent Apple toy

Needless to say I’ve been skeptical about the Nano iPhone, for a long time, but the feeling around this  rumour seems to be moving from “glass half empty” to “glass half full” on this one. In a rather strange twist today, we’ve gone from minimise to supersize in one foul swoop.

How would you like a netbook sized iPod touch, what about a 7 to 9 inch screen? Well a little tweet from TechCrunch I saw this morning is pointing in that direction!

iPhone Nano, Oh Please!!!

Unaccustomed as I am too pointing out the ludicrous, more ridiculous, utterly obvious rumours that appear in the mobile gadget world, I have hit some sort of glass ceiling, that I have to break through on this iPhone Nano thing.

Firstly, if there is actually an iPhone Nano imminent, would you want one ?

Secondly, with the withdrawal of the great Turtleneck, from the Apple keynote at MacWorld, would any one be expecting the announcement of a new device from Apple this January?

Now I know we have seen case manufacturers and component manufacturers, leak new devices in the past, but you have to wonder at XSKN, a Chinese case manufacturer, who produce a range of iPhone skins, firstly leaking something that looks like a a smaller silicone cover, that looks similair to their iPhone range.

Now we see that the cases are available in all of there mocked up glory on the XSKIN web site.

One could conclude, that the device is real, if a company is offering a case for it, and that would probably violate a whole lot of Apple NDA clauses, wouldn’t it, and have been shut down pretty quickly, even considering the language barrier.

So why is this getting so much mileage, from heaps of sites at the moment? Slow news week, overstuffed on Christmas treats? naivety, or all of the above?

I really find myself wondering if XSKIN think they have found a great way to make their site more visible, or if they really  have some inside info, at the moment I’m going with the former. The only other thing I’ll say here is have a look at the wording of the link below, I’m now going to take some time to digest the ramifications of this story, and Christmas dinner!

“where cool is more than just a word” Hello??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

iPhone Nano – iPhone Nano – XSKN – Welcome to XSKN where cool is more than just a word