Wednesday, October 27, 2004

 

psp details announced, and it aint pretty

so sony has come out with japan launch details of the psp, and frankly, its a bit unimpressive. first off, the japanese based systems (which our region free) will launch on 12/10. while the system looks great and the game lineup is impressive (gt4 and mg-acid are both december titles) its the battery life that is a bit scary - especially since sony has yet to comment on battery drain in regards to wi-fi lan use:

According to Sony, PSP features an integrated high output lithium-ion battery that provides a play time of between 4 and 6 hours for game titles and continuous 4 to 5 hours for video viewing. These numbers, according to Sony, were determined with the system's luminance set to maximum (180 cd/m2) and minimum (80 cd/m2), volume set to half the maximum level, headphones used instead of speakers and wireless LAN not in use (note that the maximum luminance value rises to 200 cd/m2 when playing through AC power). The systems battery-life in a real and especially LAN situations remains unclear at the moment.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

 

apple's october 26th mystery?

october 26th is turning out to be a big day amongst tech afficiandos everywhere. of course, there is the launch of the third installment of the gta 3 trilogy: grand theft auto: san andreas, but also, there is a mystery event that apple is holding on the 26th where music industry and media VIPs are being exclusively invited to.

the word on the street is that apple will be annoucing an exclusive agreement with U2 to carry their new album exclusively on the itunes music store and may be launching the new photo based ipod along with a possible special edition, black ipod that will be limited in availability and may come with a full catalog of u2 music.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

 

new blackberry VoIP handheld..

count RIM in on the VoIP bandwagon. RIM is testing a new blackberry handheld that will have wi-fi support and integrated VoIP functionality. the new device is currently listed as the 7270. more info is here.

 

boingo and vonage take the first step

as mentioned previously in this blog, we are on the cusp of VoIP growing to mainstream awareness. in recent news, wireless hotspot provider boingo has announced a deal with vonage to provide the equivalent of roaming VoIP services.

what does this mean? well, if you are an existing vonage subscriber you can take your laptop and the vonage softphone software and place calls from your "home" location while in a boingo hotspot. calls are the same as if you had made them from your home. details of the alliance can be found here.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

 

the hiatus is back off! new motorola finger input phone

sorry for the delay in between postings...i apologize to all few of you who actually read this stuff.

anyway, some interesting news in the mobile marketplace. motorola has received clearance from the FCC for a new lineup of phones that are based on "finger writing recognition." FWR allows people to enter text by tracing their finger over a touch pad that is placed on top of the screen. its interesting and remind me of the origina "graffitti" writing system by palm. more information about the release can be found here.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

 

a big uh-oh for goodlink

interesting news from the software licensing front yesterday as palm announced that it will be licensing exchange connectivity directly from microsoft so that future devices (including smartphones) will have "out of the box" connectivity and integration with microsoft exchange 2003 server. what does this mean? well for one, it means that the connectivity is built-in - there will no longer be a need for a third party software solution for palm devices to provide over-the-air or cradled synchronization between enterprise or personal PIM data and email.

goodlink built its current business on providing a powerful, yet simple, third party application that could run on RIM mobitext devices and palm treo smartphones. the product is considered to more reliable and robust than the blackberry software, but what will this mean to goodlink's palm family of offerings once palm begins to offer this connectivity as part of the hardware product? goodlink has been making a concerted effort to build its pocket pc offering however industry insiders rumble over the fact that this is a waste of time because many of today's pocket pc devices lack an integrated keyboard which is a key demand of mobile executives.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

 

Jpeg exploitation!

unless you follow computer/internet security matters, you probably haven't heard much about the interesting "jpeg explot" technique that has security companies very intrigued.

basically, here is how it works. Code is attached to jpeg images (no matter what kind of image it is..kittens, porn, or your favorite moviestar) and when you view the images in internet explorer, code is executed and a program is requested from another server, and then bad things could happen.

microsoft responded to this exploit earlier in september, however, not everyone is in a rush to patch. there haven't been many reports of malicious use of this trick, however, usenet is reporting that the exploit has been discovered in a sample of pornogrpahic pictures that have been distributed through usenet.

Why do I care about this? A long time ago someone once told me "no consumer electronics device has ever been successful without the promise of pornography in the privacy of your own home." think about it: the vcr, the camcorder, the internet, etc. The list goes on.

so if someone really wanted to wreak havoc on unprotected machines, porn would be a great distribution tool.

More info on this exploit can be found here.

Friday, October 01, 2004

 

quick hits

so, ive had the chance to spend some time with the new blackberry 7100t since i was t-mobile's first customer at 9am yesterday for the first day of the devie's availability. in short, the device is great. the screen (in indoor conditions) is exceptionally bright and text/images render very well. they keyboard takes a little time to get used to, but the suretype predicitive input system outperforms and after getting used to it, is very helpful. one other thing - the device feels "comfortably cheap" which means it doesnt have the feeling of "fragility" that a lot of devices (including the treo 600) have. i didnt have time to use the "modified" bluetooth stack (rumor has it that it is limited to headset support only), but the word in the forums is that its pretty easy to operate. more about this phone can be foudn at the blackberry web site.

engadget had a couple of postings yesterday. one posting was about offiical specifications of the psp. the official size and weight (about 9.5 ounces) was announced along with the confirmation that the devices will play music formats other than ATRAC. nice move sony.

in another posting, they rumor that the treo 650 will be officially announced around the 25th of october. in case you havent seen them, there are new photos of the spring production model here.

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