Category: gadgets and technology

As promised, here’s a roundup of all the reviews we could find of the new Treo 600 … [Gizmodo]

I just held one here at the office and it is a veery impressive unit. Smaller than my Tungsten C which was surprising. Totally want one!!

Earlier this year, the New York Times carried an article about AOL/Time Warner’s plans to enter the PVR market, both with the DVR box for Time Warner customers, and with a new service called MystroTV.

A few months later, details about the Mystro service began to leak out. It may be pay per view video-on-demand plus Television DVR functionality in addition to broadcast TV on demand. That last one’s a new feature. Imagine a system with every major network show from the past few days stored on your box and ready to go at the touch of a button. It’d be like having the ability to TiVo everything over a shorter time frame.

Whatever Mystro may turn out to be, it sounds like the wheels are in motion. Time Warner is advertising a few openings on the Mystro marketing and development team as they gear up for test marketing in Green Bay.

It’ll be interesting to see what a huge company that owns multiple channels, the largest internet service provider on earth, music labels, and studio assets can do with a magical box sitting in your living room.

[PVRblog]

I also picked up on the NYT story when it ran… I wonder what they will do with this box. The Explorer 8000 box is rolling out pretty strong now as a Time Warner Cable device and service, but how will the MystroTV box compete? If it’s the way cable modem service is sold, you can expect to choose the Mystro option or the TWC (Explorer 8000) when selecting your service. I hope that the additional features like email and web surfing become available to both boxes. You know just to have… I like the idea of connectivity options.

With all the hoopla around TiVO, many might have overlooked this little bit of information!

Scientific-Atlanta shipped 387 thousand Explorer 8000 home entertainment servers in the fiscal year 2003, including 158 thousand in the fourth quarter.

That is more than total DvRs shipped by TiVo and others combined. Explorer 8000 does all sorts of neat thing including email, web-surfing and of course digital video recording. Scientific Atlanta has 13 percent of the total market, after Echostar and Tivo, according to new Red Herring.

[Broadbandblog]

It would be nice if those things the box can do would be turned on by Time Warner Cable here in NYC…

Rumors continue to spread that there is a serious bug with the GSM version of the Treo 600 (at least in the US) and that it could be as late as early December before they become available. No one seems to know precisely what’s really going on. Meanwhile, Sprint’s CDMA version of the Treo 600 (pictured at right) has been out for almost a couple of weeks now, prompting a few people to suggest some sort of sinister conspiracy between Handspring and Sprint to get people to switch carriers just to get their hands on the new Treo. Which is just crazy. Read… [Gizmodo]

i-mode is currently the world’s most popular platform for mobile Internet and e-mail. Launched in February 1999 in Japan, it currently has a subscriber base of nearly 40 million.

Outlining the aim of the wallet phone, Mr Hisashi Hamada of the company told Business Line that using this, a subscriber of i-mode services could “consolidate all his smart cards that he carries in his wallet such as credit cards, club membership cards or bus/train passes into a single chip in the mobile phone.”

Explaining its features, Mr Hamada said: “The smart card details such as club membership cards or credit cards of a subscriber of I-mode service are first embedded and stored on an IC chip on the mobile phone.’ [The Hindu Business Line]

Recently, I’ve read several editorials discussing the death of the short-range wireless networking standard called Bluetooth. I found these to be extremely surprising, as I think 2003 will be long remembered as the year Bluetooth finally caught on. [Brighthand]

Beginning Nov. 24, consumers in the nation’s top 100 markets, about 193 million Americans, will have the right to keep their mobile phone numbers when they change cellular service providers. By May 24, 2004, number portability should be available in the rest of the country. [New York Times: Business]

• If you are under contract with your current carrier, be prepared to pay a termination fee, typically $150 to $200.
• Contact the carrier you want to switch to. That carrier will start an automated process to move your number onto its system from the old carrier’s system.
• In all likelihood, obtain a new phone. The old phone will probably not work with the wireless technology of the carrier. Most carriers will provide a phone or sell one at a discount. Immediately after you sign up with a new carrier, you will be able to place calls from your new phone. However, it could take two hours to a day for your new phone to receive calls placed to your old number. During that waiting period, you can still receive calls on your old phone.

Check out the Wallflower Picture Frame which uses WiFi to load pictures onto it’s 1.2GB hard drive. It has a 12″ screen, by far the largest of any frame I’ve seen and supports 8×10 pictures at a resolution of 1024 x 768. The only negative is the price which starts at $599… though when you consider what you get, it really is not that bad. Certainly blows away my Ceiva.

I read an interesting article on 3GNewswire today on the adoption of 3G technologies and the different approaches each carrier is taking. One detail I found of particular interest was that Verizon allows their EVDO network customers to roam onto their extensive 1XRTT network when out of range which would be frequently if you either live or travel outside of the 4 markets into which it has been initially launched. I’m puzzled by why that would be left out as part of any real PR on the launch. This would potentially enable a greater group to try the service, knowing that they would be able to still connect to the previous service, even if it is slower…when out of range in their home markets.

This strategy worked for the launch of digital cellular and is the reason why the Verizon network is superior to many others including Sprint who also uses CDMA for their network since Verizon maintains the analog spectrum on most of their phones.

I can’t wait to see one of these in person…

All in all, as expected, the Treo 600 is the best smartphone on the market today. It’s an excellent phone, a good PDA, a serviceable wireless email and Web device, a decent cameraphone, and with the expansion slot, your choice of an MP3 player, a WiFi/Bluetooth node, or a location-aware GPS device. If you only want to carry one electronic device in your pocket or purse, the Treo is for you. [WERBLOG]

PalmSource and Sony Ericcson are discussing the possibility of the mobile phone company releasing devices running the Palm OS.

In an interview last spring with AlwaysOn, the CEO of Sony admitted he wasn’t terribly happy with the arrangement his company has with Ericcson to make smart phones running the Symbian OS.

Nobuyuki Idei, Chairman and CEO of Sony, said, “In terms of our OS strategy, it is not clear whether Symbian … is the right way to go for the mobile phone. And I can’t tell you why Sony has a Symbian OS on its phones and Palm OS on its PDAs. Even Bill Gates asked me if I was crazy.”

Earlier this week, David Nagel, the CEO of PalmSource, mentioned in an interview with Dow Jones that his company is in talks with Sony Ericsson. However, he didn’t give any details. Still, it is a sign that there may yet be Sony Ericsson smart phones running the Palm OS from this partnership. [Brighthand]

Take it from someone who just got off the boat from Europe, American mobile services is catching up and *fast* in terms of service and accessiblity. I’m amazed at how easy it is to get a cellphone here in the U.S. now – the same as how amazed I was back in 2000 how easily you could in Europe.

I’ve mainly been interested in the GSM providers here, but even the CDMA guys have made it pretty damn easy as well. First, the stores are all incredibly accessible here. In the past few days I’ve been to T-Mobile, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, RadioShack and MetroPCS stores. All have had some neat phones on display, lots of different plans to choose from and most importantly the first three had easy to buy pre-pay SIMs so I could just start talking without having to deal with a contract. That said, there are still some nits. Here’s my thoughts on the past few days exploring the options for GSM here in the Bay Area… [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Samsung is showing a new Palm Powered smartphone at the ITU World Telecom Conference. The SGH-i505 is a Palm OS 5 smartphone that has a rotating display and built in VGA camera. [PalmInfocenter]

Looks very cool, though you will have to use Graffiti instead of using a keyboard which will be a requirement for me on any new connected device.

My 15inch PowerBook was configured and delivered today… wow is this a beautiful computer!! So far I am just getting things re-established from my previous trusty friend. I used my TiBook pretty hard. Daily for over three years… by far the best computer I’ve had so looking ahead – this one has some work to do. Somehow, I don’t think that will be too hard. 😉