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Mobile Admin 4.0
Mobile Admin is an enterprise network administration platform that allows unified management of all IT systems from any computer or handheld device. The Mobile Admin server software is installed on a single server on the network and allows for instant management of all other systems, without the need to install any agent software on the systems to be managed.
Is the Palm OS dying?
The Washington Post has published an interesting but bizarrely flip-flopping editorial from PC World Contributing Editor James A. Martin entitled Is the Palm OS Dying? Should You Care? The piece discusses the uncertain future facing both Palm Inc. and the Palm OS, now owned by Japan's Access Software. In short, Mr. Martin makes no bones about Palm's gradual, protracted decline due to its aging OS and increasingly unglamorous hardware specs, calling Palm Inc. a "third-tier smartphone vendor" but ultimately asserts the platform as still viable and offering a compelling combination of friendliness, flexibility, and value.
Flash on mobiles
Adobe has announced a plan to try to get its Flash player installed on more mobile devices and set-top boxes. Dubbed Open Screen the initiative lifts restrictions on how its multimedia handling software can be used.
Adobe will stop charging licencing fees for mobile versions of Flash and plans to publish information about the inner workings of the code. In taking this step Adobe hopes to repeat on mobiles the success its Flash technology has enjoyed on the web.
Echo for the Viewty
The Echo--Mirror Screen Protector protects your LG Viewty and offers more than meets the eye. When your LG Viewty display is switched on, the Echo acts as a simple screen protector, but as soon as your display backlight is switched off, the screen protector acts as a mirror, meaning you can look just as beautiful as your Viewty.
BlackBerry Certification Program
Research In Motion announced a new BlackBerry Certification Program that will extend a reliable, comprehensive certification testing service in support of the BlackBerry wireless platform. The new BlackBerry Certification Program is intended to provide an empirical means of measuring and validating the real world skills and knowledge used in planning, administering and supporting BlackBerry product deployments. The program, which is designed for IT professionals and consultants as well as wireless carriers and other BlackBerry partners, will be available in 135 countries.
AT&T begins Starbucks rollout
AT&T and Starbucks plan to start offering their joint Wi-Fi service May 1 in San Antonio, the corporate headquarters of AT&T. By the end of 2008, AT&T said it would be offering Wi-Fi at all company-operated Starbucks stores.
After a six-year run with T-Mobile providing fee-based Wi-Fi access in its 7,000 coffee shops, Starbucks announced in February that AT&T would be its new carrier for wireless service. The ubiquitous chain is also brewing up a new deal for Wi-Fi customers: up to 2 hours of free Wi-Fi service per day.
In addition, all Starbucks partners will receive free Wi-Fi accounts allowing them to use the network in Starbucks company-operated locations. AT&T said more than 12 million qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verse Internet customers will have unlimited free access to Starbucks' Wi-Fi service.
50% off GPS carry cases
The team at Proporta don't like to see anything go uncovered, including GPS units, so they're offering their small, medium and large GPS Protective Carry Cases at half price, yes, that's a huge 50% off. All you have to do is enter LOVEMYGPS at the cart page when you're purchasing your case and you will receive this massive discount.
Propel for Palm OS v2.21
Propel brings ease of use, instant retrievals and launches of applications, music, pictures, contacts, and more to any Palm OS based smartphone or handheld. By replacing the native Palm OS launcher, Propel allows users to truly enjoy their mobile companion by making tedious operations a snap.
Version 2.12 introduces support for the Palm Centro GSM (AT&T) smartphone, an optimized layout for text and icons in list views, improved voice launching capabilities, along with various functionality refinements.
HanDBase Applet of the Year
DDH Software is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its HanDBase mobile database application. To mark the occasion, the company announced it is reviving its HanDBase Applet of the Year contest, seeking the most innovative uses for its popular HanDBase mobile database program for PDAs and smartphones. The goal for this year's contest is to demonstrate how easy it is for anyone to develop a mobile solution for either work or personal use.
The company will reward the Best Commercial Applet and Best Personal Applet with "HanDBase Runtime" licenses (a US $1,000.00 value) which will enable the winners to turn their entries into commercially-available standalone mobile applications. DDH Software's Web site currently offers the largest online gallery of free custom applets for mobile devices, including Access (Palm) OS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian handsets. Submissions are due before June 30th, 2008, and the winners will be announced on July 31st, 2008.
FlipSide for Windows Mobile
FlipSide, the BlackBerry MP3 player from Electric Pocket, is now available to users of Windows Mobile devices such as the Treo 700xw, Mogul, Ace, and Blackjack. The feature that has made FlipSide such an instant hit among BlackBerry users is its iPhone-like interface that allows users to visually "swoosh" through their music quickly and easily.
Navigating through music and selecting tunes is a simple process with FlipSide: scroll through the Album Covers, or flick through them using your finger on the screen, then click on the navigation button to open up a vertical list of the tracks. The spacebar is used to start, pause and skip songs, while the navigation button is used to scroll either left or right to either fast forward or rewind within a song. FlipSide for Windows Mobile plays music stored on memory cards in MP3 & WMA formats.
iPhone vs. BlackBerry
In a just-released survey report, ChangeWave takes a close-up look at the features consumers love and hate most about their iPhones and BlackBerrys. This report is a follow-up to a previous ChangeWave Smartphone survey showing a rapidly evolving two-horse race between the Apple iPhone and the Research In Motion BlackBerry--with second tier players like Palm and a host of others being pushed to the sidelines.
The previous report showed excellent consumer satisfaction levels for the two smartphone frontrunners--with Apple sporting a 79% Very Satisfied rating for its iPhone models and RIM grabbing a highly respectable 54% rating for the BlackBerry. But what is it about these two brands that have consumers so very satisfied?
Online dating comes to iPhone
Dating DNA announced the availability of their new Dating DNA Web App for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch Internet devices. iPhone and iPod Touch users can immediately start browsing photos and compatibility scores with thousands of singles worldwide from the the Web browser on these handheld devices, or by visiting Apple's Web site.
The Dating DNA Web App brings the photo browsing and compatibility scoring features from Dating DNA's popular free service to the palm of the user's hand. Dating DNA users, when not at their computer, can now browse photos of other compatible singles, then delete or skip each match, or select to have them added to their favorites section, called the "DNA Strand."
Sprint discontinuing Voice Command
Sprint isn't going out of its way to make a big fuss about it, but its long-standing Voice Command service will soon be no more. The service, which allowed Sprint-Nextel phones to dial two buttons and then give voice commands to place calls, will be discontinued on July 1st, 2008, meaning that all your server-based contacts will soon be inaccessible. Aside from removing the VC fee from your monthly bill, Sprint is advising users to download and print their contact lists, and better still, encouraging users to rely on handset-based voice-activated dialing.
Schwartz sees end to blogging
Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz rightly gets credit for pioneering the corporate blog as a tool to reach customers, employees, and others. But pretty soon the novelty of his methods will wear off, he predicted.
"At some point the word 'blogging' will be anachronistic," Schwartz said at the Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco. "I communicate."
And he predicted, in effect, that the rest of the executive world will catch up. "Historically, communication took place by being a celebrity CEO who met with heads of state, and got the local media to cover it," he said in an on-stage interview with O'Reily Media chief Tim O'Reilly. "You got the message out in an inefficient and environmentally irresponsible way. Then the Internet came round and gave you a way to reach the entire planet."
MSN Music to delete DRM keys
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.
New article: We review three teeny-weeny PCs
In this all-new product review shootout, we put three products to the test. Read on to learn how Asus Eee PC 2G Surf from Asus, Fujitsu LifeBook U810 Mini-Laptop from Fujitsu, and Sony VAIO VGN-UX490N/C 4.5-Inch Portable Computer from Sony stand up to our editorial review.
Read this Computing Unplugged article.
Tech jargon bad for your career
Jargon shows up in all professions, but in few is it more apparent, or more divisive, than in the world of technology. Picture this. You're in the middle of a presentation to a business team about some technology it would behoove the company to invest in and this comes out of your mouth:
"Just last week, we loaded 15 BGUs in the OTB and got an output of 1,300 cycles, which shows our testing program is right on target."
You might have missed it, but half the room was day dreaming and the other half were checking email on their BlackBerrys. What they were not doing: considering whether they should budget for this technology, because you had lost their attention. Can an over-reliance on tech jargon be bad for your career? Some experts say yes.
New rules of techie etiquette
Here are Eric Lundquist's new rules of being the techie gentleman or lady.
Breaking news: White House BlackBerry devices stolen by Mexican govt official
Looks like our own David Gewirtz was right in his concerns. Here's a breaking news report on the subject:
ZATZ Publishing today announces that national security concerns published by David Gewirtz, ZATZ Editor-in-Chief and the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? have been proven true in a particularly tangible and unfortunate example.
Today, Fox News reported that Rafael Quintero Curiel, lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation was caught stealing six or seven BlackBerry devices belonging to White House staffers who were attending meetings between U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian and Mexican leaders in New Orleans this week. Unfortunately, Quintero Curiel was caught after the devices had been in his possession for some time.
That's the equivalent in strategic U.S. government information of about 28,000 printed pages of data, or seven complete sets of all seven Harry Potter novels. And that's per BlackBerry. Given today's incident, that's seven times seven complete sets of all seven Harry Potter novels.
Read the full text.
Voice Search on Blackberry
Due to better support for Java, Microsoft's Tellme subsidiary is offering its voice search for Blackberry devices before it goes live on Windows Mobile handsets. Tellme keeps track of where you are through your phone's GPS radio so your search results are local to where you are. Device owners can tap a button and speak their search query; in return, Tellme will offer local results using the Microsoft Live Search engine.
The $1600 keyboard
Art Lebedev's Optimus Maximus keyboard, with its 133 tiny OLED display keys, is finally available to the general public (or more likely, photo-shopping enthusiasts) on ThinkGeek.com. The keyboard was only previously available through a limited pre-ordered list at the Lebedev Web site. Each key can be individually programmed to display different tasks, like playing tiny movies, HTML codes, or your favorite Web sites.
But if you thought that the price might have come down to bring in the curious consumer, you're wrong. And endearingly naive. At $1,600, it costs more than a few iPhones, most quality laptops, and even a couple of Danny Dumas or Brian Lam haircuts. Heck, you could even take a round trip to see Lebedev himself in Europe--why don't you buy him a beer in Russia's most expensive pub for coming up with such a cool and crazy-cracky product? Or you can stare at tiny screens and see your own fonts come to life, which is its own type of fun.
Visual CE 11.0 beta
The release of Syware's Visual CE 11.0 is right around the corner and here's your chance to get a sneak peek at it. Those of you who are already Personal, Professional or Mobile 360 licensees can purchase an upgrade to Visual CE 11.0 beta in advance of the production release. You will |
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