New PDAntic.com Clickgamer Store!
I’ve always been impressed with Clickgamer and their HUGE stable of Pocket PC, Smartphone, Palm OS and Symbian games. We now have a special game store set up with Clickgamer, and will soon set up a link from the main banner directly to this store!
For the time being, you can visit the store from this link:
http://www.clickgamer.com/pdantic.htm
Every game you buy from Clickgamer also helps support PDAntic.com, so this is your chance to do your “good deed” for the day and have fun at the same time! 
The Future According to NEC
Phillip “pt” Torrone is always a good source of links to really cool stuff. His latest post in the Mobius group pointed us towards an NEC site that features “near future” product concepts. Among these ideas are flexible phones that can wrap around a wrist, a pen-sized device that can act as input (through a laser keyboard) or output (micro projector) for another device, and edible RFID chips that can be “played” in a media player and sold like candy.
Check it all out here:
http://www.nec-design.co.jp/showcase/index.html
Press Release: Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and More
Microsoft Creates New Opportunity for Windows Mobile Developers With New Software Platforms and Tools
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Community Technical Preview And $100,000 Mobile2Market Contest Catalyze Innovation
SAN FRANCISCO — March 24, 2004 — Today at Microsoft Corp.’s third annual Mobile Developer Conference (DevCon) 2004, Microsoft continued to deliver on its commitment to mobile and Microsoft? Windows? developers by unveiling the new Windows Mobile (TM) 2003 Second Edition software focused on enabling unprecedented hardware innnovation and application development. In addition, Microsoft delivered the Visual Studio? 2005 Community Technology Preview that provides valuable developer resources and announced a Mobile2Market contest to assist developers with application promotion and distribution opportunities. This year’s event has been designed to help both mobile and PC developers take advantage of the opportunities that Windows Mobile is delivering.
“The convergence of the mobile and PC development environments represents a tremendous opportunity for software innovation. Microsoft is proud to support our hardware partners and the developer community by providing innovative software like the new Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software,” said Ya-Qin Zhang, corporate vice president of product development for the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft. “At this show, we are also focused on providing the best integrated tools and technical resources that will ignite application development and bring new value to customers and the mobile industry.”
New Customer-Driven Software: Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
Today, Microsoft showcased Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software, the newest version of the Windows Mobile software platform, which offers new functionality and fosters device and application innovation. The Windows Mobile platform adds support for dynamic screen switching between landscape and portrait modes and square screen resolution support that enables smaller devices with keyboards — both of which are platform firsts. Additional features include VGA and QVGA that support high-resolution displays for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones, respectively.
“The Motorola MPx with a unique, compact dual-hinge design is one of the first devices that take advantage of key capabilities enabled by Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software,” said Michael Tatelman, vice president and general manager of the MOTOPro group, Motorola Mobile Handset Business. “Microsoft’s continued commitment to drive innovation and engage with the developer community is beneficial in providing our customers with a robust set of applications and solutions that, when combined with the MOTOPro Innovation Platform, deliver a powerful wireless experience.”
With this release, Microsoft is focused on enabling hardware diversity while preserving platform consistency. Hardware diversity facilitates creation of exciting new form factors by device makers to address specific market needs. Platform consistency enables developers to reach a large addressable market with a single code base. Also benefiting developers is Microsoft’s updated Windows Mobile Developer Resource Kit, which allows developers to easily create new applications and services based on the new software and thus benefit directly from the new functionality expected, such as higher-resolution screens and new form factors.
This kit includes eight new white papers focused on Windows Mobile development and new and updated code samples, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition emulators, embedded Visual C++? 4.0 SP3, and Windows Mobile 2003 SDKs.
“Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software creates an opportunity to bring our existing solutions to a new generation of innovative devices,” said John Psuik, president and CEO of Developer One. “Microsoft’s new software has enabled us to build new, innovative solutions for our customers that take advantage of new display functionality like support for landscape orientation and high-resolution screens.”
Platforms and Tools That Empower
Today at the event Microsoft released a Community Technology Preview version of Visual Studio 2005 to provide developers with a glimpse of future tools. This preview version includes the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0, which enables smart device development. It is the first deliverable in a series of prebeta Community Technical Preview versions of Visual Studio 2005 that will be distributed to target segments of the developer community and are intended to help developers plan for future projects, evaluate Microsoft’s development tools, and provide feedback to Microsoft throughout the development process.
In addition, Microsoft highlighted great momentum around the .NET Compact Framework, launched at last year’s conference. This includes a growing partner roster and positive feedback from partners and customers that have realized the benefits of the combination of the familiar Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Compact Framework for building smart device applications. Customers are seeing cost reductions and increased productivity benefits with this combination of tools. Landmark Graphics Corp., for one, has cut its development costs by 40 percent to 50 percent using Microsoft .NET technology. The combination of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Compact Framework has proved to be an efficient and very productive environment for building Windows Mobile-based applications.
Continuing to Foster the Ecosystem
Microsoft’s Mobile2Market program is designed to help commercial developers connect with multiple distribution channels including retailers, e-tailers, original equipment manufacturers and mobile operators. To date, 40 distributors including 22 mobile operators have requested and received access to Microsoft’s catalog of applications for Windows Mobile-based devices.
Building on the current success of the Mobile2Market program, Microsoft announced the $100,000 Mobile2Market application contest. Four grand prizes of $25,000 and application promotion and distribution opportunities will be awarded to four independent software vendors in the following categories: Smartphone Work, Smartphone Play, Pocket PC Work and Pocket PC Play. More information on the contest can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/information/devprograms/mobile2market/contest.mspx.
SanDisk Coming Out With an SDIO WiFi/256MB Combo Card
For those who own Pocket PCs that don’t have built-in WiFi, like the iPAQ h1945 for instance, SanDisk will soon be shipping an SDIO WiFi/memory card. This will give those lucky people the opportunity to not only use wireless connectivity, but store up to 256MB of music, photos, or files on the card at the same time. If you have only a single SD slot on your Pocket PC, you know how irritating it can be to have to swap cards!
There’s only one problem - Windows Mobile 2003 doesn’t support SDIO cards with this sort of combo capability. However, there’s a new release of Windows Mobile 2003 expected soon (see another recent post!) that will alleviate this shortcoming. It’s expected that this card will also work on Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone, so those of us who have SDIO-enabled Smartphones will soon be able to use them at hot spots or on our home WiFi networks. On the down side, SanDisk isn’t expecting to have Palm OS drivers for this card anytime in the near future… So much for getting WiFi access for my Tungsten T3!
When this card finally makes it to market, expect a price point of about $150.
Busy, busy, busy…
Whoooooa. I need to apologize for the lack of content lately! I’ve got multiple excuses; work has been hectic (I’m trying to get a big server consolidation project off the ground), I’m going to be a referee for a robotics competition ( http://www.coloradofirst.org), I’m trying to finish my taxes, and to top it all off I’m busy doing my Palm Tungsten T3 / HP iPAQ 4150 shootout!
Expect to see some new articles in the next few minutes.
Press Release:NS BASIC’s 5th Palm Programming Contest
NS BASIC Corporation is pleased to announce our 5th Palm Programming Contest. NS Basic applications have taken advantage of new Palm OS’s and various devices without hassle. In the past 4 contests we have seen great improvement of entries in quality, performance and sophistication. Here is the result of the previous contest:http://www.nsbasic.com/palm/info/contest4/
This time, we have three categories: Enterprise, Games and Open. All registered NS Basic/Palm users are welcome to participate in the contest.
The prizes are $100 USD in each category. You may enter more than one program, but a program can only be entered in one category. Judging will be by NS Basic’s experts. All judging is arbitrary and final. We will be looking at quality, performance, ease of use, sophistication and overall coolness.
All programs must be written in NS Basic for Palm. Entries may be commercial, shareware or freeware. Please indicate with your entry whether we can share your program or screenshots with the public.
Send your questions and entries to contest@nsbasic.com.
The deadline is March 31, 2004 at 12 midnite EST.
The categories are
? Enterprise: Applications for business, government, education or the military.
? Games: Fun applications for the Palm
? Open: Anything else
Press Release:NS BASIC’s 5th Palm Programming Contest
NS BASIC Corporation is pleased to announce our 5th Palm Programming Contest. NS Basic applications have taken advantage of new Palm OS’s and various devices without hassle. In the past 4 contests we have seen great improvement of entries in quality, performance and sophistication. Here is the result of the previous contest:http://www.nsbasic.com/palm/info/contest4/
This time, we have three categories: Enterprise, Games and Open. All registered NS Basic/Palm users are welcome to participate in the contest.
The prizes are $100 USD in each category. You may enter more than one program, but a program can only be entered in one category. Judging will be by NS Basic’s experts. All judging is arbitrary and final. We will be looking at quality, performance, ease of use, sophistication and overall coolness.
All programs must be written in NS Basic for Palm. Entries may be commercial, shareware or freeware. Please indicate with your entry whether we can share your program or screenshots with the public.
Send your questions and entries to contest@nsbasic.com.
The deadline is March 31, 2004 at 12 midnite EST.
The categories are
? Enterprise: Applications for business, government, education or the military.
? Games: Fun applications for the Palm
? Open: Anything else
Press Release: Pocket PC Life’s $8000 Online Giveaway
Pocket PC Life, Europe’s leading PDA review Website has launched its own subscription service. The Service offers discount vouchers from the best PDA Companies on the web, members competitions, complimentary software, exclusive offers, details of upcoming software/hardware, news, views and of course reviews on demand.
There is one fee for all members who receive a substantial amount of quality items, software and benefits for a small cost. Pocket PC Life believe that this is the way online subscription services should be, value for money and especially tailored made for its visitors.
To celebrate the launch of our new subscription service, Pocket PC Life and FileMaker have teamed up to bring you an out of this world competition for its new subscribers. A ?4,500 ($8,000) competition in which 30 lucky winners will receive a copy of the award winning FileMaker Software.
In addition, all subscribers will be able to take advantage of the discounts that the subscription service offers. Members will be able to claim discounts from 10%- 50% off from?Top?PDA Companies like: Clickgamer.com, PocketGear, PDAHut, Handango, Ballshooter, Suntekstore, Moonlight Technologies and TrajectoryLabs to name a few.
Other Key Benefits of the subscription include:
- Exclusive Game customized especially for PPCL by Clickgamer.com
- Free E- Issue of Pocket PC Magazine
- Exclusive PPCL Theme, Theme Generator and Themes from Pocketthemes
- Discounts from the best PDA Companies on the Web
- Global Discount Coverage
- Pre Release News and Reviews via email
- Access to a vast library of Freeware Software, Skins and eBooks
- Double chance to win all competitions and giveaways
- Automatic entry to all competitions and giveaways
- Members only offers on selected software and hardware
- Monthly Members newsletters with updates on PPCL Members discounts, news, reviews and happenings
- Priority registration for PPCL future events and exhibitions (Watch this space for more news!!)
- Access to PPCL members only area
- And that?s only the tip of the iceberg
And now I bet you are wondering how much this amazing subscription costs?
A PPCL Subscription for one year is ?15/$25 which is equal to ?1.25/ $2 a month.?
Please visit www.pocketpclife.co.uk for more details.
Press Release: PlanMaker for Handheld PCs Beta Now Available
Nuernberg, Germany — March 17, 2004 — Another important step for PlanMaker 2004, the new Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet: PlanMaker for Handheld PCs is now in public beta testing.
Anyone can download both the Handheld PC and the Windows beta versions from the manufacturer’s web site at www.softmaker.com.
The remaining versions, for Pocket PCs and Linux, will follow in the coming weeks.
PlanMaker offers the feature set and ease-of-use of a modern high-end spreadsheet application - not only under Windows, but also under Linux and on Pocket PCs and Windows CE-based Handheld PCs. This means that PlanMaker is the only spreadsheet worldwide that is available for four different popular operating systems and offers the same feature set on all of them.
One of the major design goals in PlanMaker’s development was the seamless conversion of Microsoft Excel files. PlanMaker reads and writes any file from Microsoft Excel 5.0, 95, 97, 2000, Excel XP, and Excel 2003, and renders all of them faithfully.
PlanMaker not only offers a vast collection of more than 320 calculation functions - including support for complex numbers, statistics, financial maths, and data analysis - but also enables the user to create attractive presentations by providing a fully Excel-compatible AutoShapes drawing engine (on all platforms, even Linux and Pocket PCs!) and a fully Microsoft Excel-compatible charting module that offers 70 different chart types in 2D and 3D - color gradients, fill patterns, and trend lines included.
PlanMaker carries a suggested retail price of US$49.95 or EUR 49.95 and will be available through resellers and directly from SoftMaker.
Tiny Toshiba HD Could Make It To PDAs
Toshiba announced a new 0.85″ hard disk drive in 2GB and 4 GB capacities that could start showing up in PDAs and other mobile devices soon! This is the first drive to provide multi-gigabyte storage in a form factor of less than one inch. It’s about a quarter of the size of Toshiba’s current 1.8 inch microdrive, and is planned for use in mobile phones, PDAs, digital audio players and still cameras, camcorders, and external storage devices.
Toshiba plans to start sampling the new drives in the summer, while production is expected by the end of 2004. I’ll take my next PDA with a 4GB HDD, thank you very much!
For more details, check out the original press release here.
MaximumPDA.com Reviews Asus MyPal A620BT PocketPC
News flash!
MaximumPDA.com has just published a review of the Asus ?MyPal? A620BT PocketPC with Bluetooth. Here is a clip:
“The world is full of PocketPC choices. Today?s users have to choose from over 20 different models and that is only in the U.S. In the rest of the world, especially Asia, the choices are even greater. One company that I have been impressed with, ever since I saw their first PocketPC in Taiwan a couple of years ago, is Asus.”
You can check out their review of this new PocketPC here.
The Star Trek Influence on Today’s Tech Gadgetry
There’s a great article in the San Francisco Chronicle today about how many tech engineers, including Steve Wozniak and one of the original Palm designers, have been influenced by Star Trek in the design of the tech gadgets we all use. In fact, in many ways the article shows just how far we’ve come in the 40 years since the original series pilot!
It’s a good read - check it out here!
Let’s Throw The Pocket PC From The Train!
Throwing a Pocket PC down a flight of stairs, dousing it with water from a faucet, and hammering it into mud using a shovel are not things you would normally do. But with the TDS Recon Pocket PC, you’d be able to do all of these things and still expect your handheld buddy to continue working. Pocketnow has done a wonderful review of this ruggedized Pocket PC and has some video that is just hilarious! They also have pictures of the Recon being abused in all sorts of horrible ways.
Check out their review of the TDS Recon here!
Coming Soon: The Pocket PC / Palm OS Shootout
Many Pocket PC enthusiasts, myself included, were decidedly unhappy with a recent CNET article that purported to be a fair comparison of Pocket PCs and Palm devices, but ended up being very biased in its tone.
My longtime readers remember that I did a review of the palmOne Tungsten T3 back in October of 2003 and that I was very impressed with the device. I’ve also done a review of the HP iPAQ 4150 in December and have used one of these wonderful Pocket PCs every day since then. At the time I wrote the T3 review I mentioned that I hoped to buy one soon, mainly so I could begin doing Palm OS software reviews once again. My main concern was that the price hadn’t dropped from the original $399 - I purchased my “$450″ iPAQ for less than $380 within a month of its release, so I was hoping that I’d be able to get the T3 for less than suggested retail price.
I kept watching Amazon and finally saw the price drop below $360, so I made my move. As mentioned in my original review, I think this is the ultimate Palm OS device. But does the Tungsten T3 and Palm OS beat a top of the line Pocket PC? We’ll see… I expect to finish my article soon, so keep checking PDAntic.com for details. This should be fun!
For The Geek Who Has Everything: The USB Swiss Army Knife!
How many times have you wanted to pull a 100 MB file off of your work PC to take home, and didn’t have any CD-R media to burn it onto? Well, now you can buy a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife with cutting tools (knife, can opener, corkscrew, etc…) and 64 or 128 MB USB flash memory! Pull it out of your pocket, pull out the USB “blade” and plug it into your USB port, and you’re ready to copy away!
This is a lot of fun, and the first toy that we’ve heard about from next week’s CeBIT show in Hamburg, Germany. There’s no word on the cost of the 128MB version, but the 64MB will apparently run about ?55. As usual, there’s no information on when we might actually see these devices in local stores worldwide, but this will make me dump my Leatherman Micra in a heartbeat!
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Joy of Tech!
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MacLevelTen
