Happy New Year!

10 most read posts written and viewed in 2007

2007 is wrapping up and I thought it would be interesting to see what the top 10 posts here at jkOnTheRun were. Finding that information is easy thanks to Google Analytics and it's interesting to note that out of the several millions of page views here this year, just over one-third of them are the home page. Sounds like a fair number of folks have a jkOnTheRun bookmark!

Before I share the list of most viewed posts in 2007, I want to point out that some of the heaviest viewed individual posts this year were actually written in prior years. I'll remove them from this list so that only the posts written this year qualify. If there's interest, I can share a top-ten list that includes posts from all prior years. Having said that, let's start out with number ten and work our way up to number one!

Raon Digital EVERUN now with WiBro

I don't seen any news on the Raon Digital site to confirm, but MobileWhack indicates that the latest and greatest EVERUN model now sports integrated WiBro for connectivity. The Korean model is S60H and likely supports the 802.16 wireless standard. Since WiBro is the South Korean branding of the WiMax standard, the news will likely make folks in Korea happy. After all, here in the U.S. we're waiting to see if Sprint or Motorola can still pull off a WiMax rollout.

iPhone 1.1.3 video walkthrough: A-GPS, bookmarks on home screen, more

Last week, Gear Live offered up screenshots of the upcoming 1.1.3 iPhone firmware upgrade. Apparently many folks felt that the pics were Photoshopped and some even claimed that the site was simply trying to increase traffic with the alleged fakes. Although I've yet to meet Andru Edwards of Gear Live personally, we have had conversation as peers in the tech blogging world. I've always perceived Andru & his team as hard-working and honest folks, so I really didn't need proof of the 1.1.3 upgrade.

For those that were unsure of the firmware pictures and features, Andru has an outstanding video walkthrough of the iPhone upgrade. In it, he shows off what we might see in the next iPhone firmware version; I say might because Apple isn't going to release a function if it doesn't work as designed, so keep in mind that what you see may not be the final firmware. What's in the version that Andru has, however, is exciting:

• Customization of the home screen and multiple pages for home
• Safari bookmarks for your home screen with icons that are screen snips of the bookmarked site
• Assisted GPS in Google Maps which is essentially the new "My Location" feature
• Hybrid views of satellite and aerial maps
• Ability to send SMS messages to multiple recipients

Again, it remains to be seen if all of these features (or more) will make it to the next public firmware release. My guess is that we'll see all of them and I'd bet that the release will be timed to coincide with the start of CES. At last year's CES, the announcement of the iPhone was the most talked about news item... and Apple doesn't even attend CES!

Mobile tech helps child with clothes at two homes

Regular readers are likely familiar with my ten-year old son, Tyler. If not, you can catch a video of his thoughts on the Asus Eee PC. What you may not know is that Tyler lives with his mom and he's only at our home on scheduled weekends. His mom and I have been amicably divorced for several years and she's a great parent to our son. So why am I sharing this info and what the heck does it have to do with mobile tech?

Much like the small problem I had last year when picking out glasses for myself, I found a drop-dead simple use of mobile tech to solve a recurring problem. Here's the problem: Tyler routinely forgets to return the outfits to his mom that he wears over on weekend visits. We've tried the normal solutions, i.e.: place the clothes from mom's house in a bag at the end of the day and grab the bag on the way home Monday morning. No such luck. What's worse: after several outfits are left, they get mixed in with outfits that are supposed to stay at my house. We all end up wasting time digging through hampers in two homes to find the return clothes and we always seem to forget what Tyler was wearing when he came over.

Couple of good bag reviews up

The quest for the perfect gear bag is almost as pressing to the geek as the quest for the perfect gadget.  We always look for a better and more comfortable way to carry all the stuff we might need on our daily jaunts into the real world (yes geeks do go into it) and I am no different than most in that regard.  I have so many gear bags it's almost embarrassing, note that I said almost, and my bag tree is always full.  I have seen reviews of two bags that look pretty useful and thought I'd pass them along for those of you who are in the active "bag quest" mode.

First up is the CODi Courier laptop bag that got very high marks by PC Magazine.  The courier is a traditional brief case form that has a plethora of pockets and compartments that the reviewer found to fit a 15.4 inch laptop snugly.  For those times when you need to carry extra gear there is a zipper that opens to extend the bag three inches which should accomodate anything you might need to throw in there.  The reviewer rated the Courier 4.5 out of 5 stars so if you're willing to part with the $174 this bag might do wonders for you.  You can find more information about this bag on the CODi web site.

The next bag reviewed is the Skooba Shuttle Backpack, a form that I prefer for carrying my stuff around.  I find that a well-designed backpack makes it much easier on my back to carry a bunch of gear around, although I probably carry less around than many.  Gear Diary has just published a thorough review of the Shuttle with a lot of photos and a real-world perspective that you should check out if you're looking for a backpack.  The Shuttle looks to have a quality I really like in backpacks and that is it has a very thin profile.  I find this to make it much easier to travel with a backpack and the Shuttle looks like it would be very good in this regard.  I also found the interesting open pocket on the front to be potentially very useful for stuffing a sweater or jacket when the temperature gets too hot for wearing one.  The Shuttle is $140 but is on sale now for $120 which is a pretty decent price.  My personal feeling is the Shuttle is too big for me but YMMV.

My bag of choice is still the Booq Boa XS backpack that I have been using for several years now.  Unfortunately this is the smallest size Boa that Booq made and it's no longer for sale, although they do still sell the XM which is a little bigger.

The last OnTheRun with Tablet PCs podcast is big news

You may have listened to the final OnTheRun with Tablet PCs podcast by now.  The podcast that I did with Marc Orchant came to an end with the untimely death of Marc earlier this month.  I expected heavier than normal listenership due to its being the final production but I couldn't figure out until this morning why it has been even heavier than expected.  Messing around on the web as I usually do I found this which I believe explains the high listenership:

This is gratifying because it shows how respected Marc's reputation was in not only the tech world but in the major news outlets.  Awesome!

Proporta Laptop Battery reviewed at Gear Diary

We have always been fans of external batteries that provide much needed extended battery life to our mobile gear, especially on trips.  Judie of Gear Diary has reviewed such an external battery, the Proporta Laptop Battery, and she gives a typically detailed overview of using this battery with her gear.  I'll let Judie tell you what she thinks about the Proporta:

If you have been looking for an external battery solution that will allow you to travel without worrying about where and when you’ll be able to recharge, the Proporta Laptop Battery may be exactly what you need. I think it is definitely worth the extra pound of weight in my gear bag, but the price may give you pause when it’s compared head to head with other external batteries.

Head over and read the review if you are thinking about an external battery solution.  I've used them in the past and they can make a huge difference when you're away from an outlet for hours.

Thanks for the conversation!

I was hoping to catch this one exactly, but I'm at the Toyota dealer getting the Hybrid serviced while James got a few posts out this morning. Call it karma or call it amazing coincidence, but we're ending the year here at jkOnTheRun with over 7,000 posts since the site was started! This is actually post number 7,002; guess I shouldn't have stopped at WaWa for coffee on the way in to the dealership this morning. ;)

James and I chatted about this milestone just last week, and although we think that's a large number of posts for two writers, there's an even more telling number that blows us away: the number of comments. We couldn't believe there were over 23,000 reader comments here on the site! It's a testament to our readers for taking that much of an interest in the conversation here. And that's what our intent is: offer up topics, reviews and opinions but make sure we have a conversation with you. Hopefully, with over 7,000 posts, we've done our part. With over 23,000 comments, we know you have and we hope it continues! Stay tuned later today for another end of year update on the content this past year... and thanks!

Vista sleep woes- an update

The problem sleeping and resuming that my HP 2710p Tablet PC suddenly developed has been preoccupying my time over this long holiday period and has resonated with a lot of readers.  Some readers agree with me that Vista is to blame for my problems and others do not agree with that and believe that something I did caused the sudden onset of the problem or that some of the device drivers are to blame.  There is no answer to the cause of the problems, nothing was updated on the device nor did Vista apply some update that changed the OS.  I am very familiar with battling flaky Windows installations and I can swear that nothing was changed by me during the timeframe when this ugly problem arose.  I have spent a lot of time going over system logs to see if I can spot something that changed to no avail.  Vista doesn't think anything changed yet my sleep problems started happening all at once and consistently so logic dictates that something changed without my knowledge.  This is in my opinion a big problem with the Windows ecosystem as it is not uncommon in my experience.  Read on to see what I've done so far to try and resolve this new issue.

Matt Miller looks at gadgets over the past year

Fellow podcaster Matt Miller handles a lot of gadgets over time, if you want to know how many he's seen this year check out his look back at the gadgets he's played with this year.  Talk about geek overload!  He's written up his favorite devices and he's given some gadget awards so don't miss his look back.

YourPND lets you be your own backseat driver

Tired of someone else giving you directions when driving? Why not substitute your own voice for the one on your GPS? YourPND is a service that records your voice speaking the many standard navigational words found in GPS devices. The phrases are then saved to file that's currently compatible with many of the TomTom branded units, but the company plans to offer support for Garmin, MyRide, Mio and other units in the future.

The company's current site is in Dutch, but they're also working on an English version; you can sign up here to be notified when it goes live. To use the service and have a download of your recorded navigation terms costs just under 7 Euros. To gift your voice to a friend or family member via a USB stick, expect to pay around 20 Euros. If neither option sounds attractive, I can sit in your backseat with Google Maps on my iPhone for a buck a mile. ;)

(via OhGizmo!)

Reports still coming in that CompUSA has HTC Advantage for cheap

I have been hearing from readers for a few days that some CompUSA stores that are going out of business have the HTC Advantage in stock for cheap prices.  Reader Rob let me know just now that his local Tampa store had the Advantage for $629 which is a very good price.  If you're in the market for an Advantage it might be worth a trip to your local CompUSA before they close for good.  One reader reported that there were no Advantages displayed and that she had to specifically drive the sales rep to look in the back where a number of them were found.

MacBook Pro loses Bluetooth- a fix

I can't just bash Vista and ignore Mac problems when they arise and today for the first time one did on my MacBook Pro running Leopard.  I booted into Vista Ultimate using Boot Camp and played Call of Duty 4 for a while.  I am totally impressed with how well Vista runs on the MBP under both VMWare Fusion and natively with Boot Camp.

After I finished playing COD4 I restarted the MacBook Pro and booted into Leopard and was I surprised to find that not only was Bluetooth not working but the system didn't realize there was a Bluetooth module installed.  I had a brief moment of panic thinking the hardware module must have been fried but I went online and in just a minute found a fix.  I shut down the MacBook and when it was time to start it up I held the Power Button down until I heard a loud beep from the system.  This signaled that a hard restart was coming up and sure enough the Bluetooth was running again when the system booted up.  Apparently from what I could tell the holding of the power button forces the power management system to reset which is the likely culprit.  Since I use the Bluetooth Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse getting it working again was pretty important and I am thrilled that the fix was so simple.  So there you go, Macs can exhibit problems all of a sudden just like Vista, it just seems that the fix is much simpler.

Nokia's Mail for Exchange now supports N77, N82

Although I have yet to personally see either model handheld, Nokia N77 and N82 owners might be interested to know that Mail for Exchange now supports their device. The latest version of the application is v2.2, but the only changes from the prior release is the support for these two models. If you're running version 2.0 of Mail for Exchange and don't have the N77 or N82, there's no need to upgrade based on my perusing the release notes (PDF).

This is actually a good reminder for me to cancel my own hosted Exchange account. I haven't used it for over a month, so that tells me my current setup is working for me. More to follow on some cloud computing...

(via Eseries)

Is the WiBrain an OQO for those on a budget?

Ever since I left my I.T. career to write full time earlier this year, I've been paying much closer attention to my budget. I'm losing the budget battle, but I've gained a different perspective in terms of device pricing for the feature set. Case in point: the WiBrain UMPC I have on loan from Dynamism. I haven't had much play-time with it yet since we have a new playmate in the house (no, not THAT kind of "playmate", although that would have made for an interesting holiday gift!). I have noticed something interesting about the WiBrain however: it has an amazingly similar set of features when compared the low-end OQO Model 02, but it doesn't have a similar price!

LTE tests yield over 100 Mbps for mobile data

I realize that the 4G wireless data networks are yet to be chosen by all of the U.S. carriers, but perhaps the latest real world trial results will favor LTE. Long Term Evolution was recently chosen by Verizon Wireless and if the recent tests are any indication of future performance, I think VZW is making a good choice for their EV-DO replacement.

Nokia Siemens executed the test in an urban area by placing a base station atop a building and then had several cars equipped with LTE devices drive up to one kilometer away to measure coverage strength and throughput. Initial tests show throughput over 100 Mbps at a range of several hundred meters, however, no results were provided for throughput at the fully tested range. Still, LTE sounds promising for fast mobile data access, so we'll be watching to see how the technology develops.

(via Phone Scoop)

Another Vista failure

Well here we are at the end of the year and my work set up in my home office has been honed to work like a fine machine.  The way I work in my office is I have the MacBook Pro on the desk to the left.  It is hooked up to an external monitor for two screen goodness and everything works flawlessly.  On the desk to the right (in an L shape) is the HP 2710p sitting in its expansion bay, screen open to allow me to switch back and forth between the Mac and the HP as needed.  This system has worked flawlessly for me until three days ago.

Use a 3G Windows Mobile device as a WiFi router

If you're already tethering your Windows Mobile device for use as a 3G modem and you want to share that connection even further, look at WMWifiRouter. This free / donation-ware application allows your WinMo 6 handheld to behave like a fast, cellular router. Of course, the more you share your one signal over WiFi with other clients, the slower all of you will be since the wireless pipe is only so big, but this could be useful in a pinch. (As in: CES!)

Obviously, you'll want a truly unlimited data plan and I wouldn't recommend doing this on a daily basis or you carrier might be peeved. Checking your terms of service is another good idea, but I'm not sure if any of the carriers address this particular usage. If you want to follow the full life-cycle of the application, there's a dedicated thread over at XDA Developers.

If you got lost at the word "tethering", we've got you covered there too. Here's a quick video on how to Bluetooth tether a Windows Mobile 6 devices to a Windows PC and here's the technique for doing the same thing with Mac OS X.

(via UNEASYsilence)

JK's Mobile Tech Predictions for 2008

The end of 2007 is nigh and we geeks are casting our eyes to the future to figure out what mobile goodness might be coming our way in 2008.  You should take these with a grain of salt as we can never be certain about such things but here are my mobile tech predictions for 2008.  Read on if you want to get my take on what next year might bring with phones, MP3 players, notebooks, UMPCs, and Tablet PCs.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned the Google Android under the smartphone predictions so I've added it now.

A-Data joins the 1.8-inch SSD party

We already knew that A-Data was planning a 2.5-inch, 128-GB Solid State Disk, but the company just announced an SSD drive for the 1.8-inch market as well. The smaller drive will be available in 32- and 64-GB capacities in a standard SATA or PATA interface, along with a ZIF or Zero-Insertion Force model as well. No word on the pricing or delivery dates, which is a little concerning. Although I might have missed the actual product launch, I haven't seen the 128 GB unit that was promised for the middle of 2007.

I anticipate we'll get quite a few pitches and demos of SSD technology in a few weeks at CES. However, the slow pace of capacity growth coupled with a slow decline in SSD pricing makes me think that we won't see widespread consumer adoption of this tech until 2009 or later. Hopefully, I'm wrong because I'm sold on how well SSD works for mobile devices in terms of speeds, durability and lower power consumption. On the flipside, by using "the cloud" for applications and data storage, my original thought that 32-GB wasn't enough capacity is changing for me personally. Use of the Asus Eee PC has me re-thinking my initial concerns there.

Voice announce calls on iPhone with... GarageBand?

This has to go in the "why didn't I think of that?" category which I don't think we have. It's a slick and simple hack to get an iPhone to voice announce your callers by name and the concept can be used for practically any phone that supports custom ring tones.

Here's the trick from Mac OSX Hints: just use GarageBand 4 to record a contact name in your own voice. NOTE: Feel free to ask a friend to record the name for you if they have that sexy, breathy voice that's pleasing to the ears. Save the recorded name and use it as a custom ringtone for that particular contact and you're good to go! It's a bit of work to do the voice-overs for all of your contacts, but you can do as many or as few as you need in a relatively short time.

(via Steve Rubel)

No tech this holiday, but there was joy

I've been relatively quiet on the blogging front lately and mentioned that there were no gadgets for me this holiday. The reason why is shown above as we decided to give a good home to a dog this holiday. We hit up our local SPCA and rescued Kelso, the adolescent Labrador Retriever shown above. Needless to say for anyone that's raised a dog before, we've got our hands full. I've had to move my home office down to the kitchen table to keep Kelso company. As if it wasn't bad enough that he almost had no home this holiday, he's forced to do the "lampshade on the head" routine: he had minor surgery and was chewing at his stitches.

In any case, I'll be getting back online more as Kelso allows. Although there was no new tech here, doing something nice for someone less fortunate is more than good enough this holiday time for me. Actually, the kids had plenty of tech enough to keep me happy anyway; configuring devices is a heck of lot easier to me than putting toys together!

Amazon nets Warner for DRM-free tunes. Are we at the tipping point yet?

Amazon scored another win for themselves and for consumers today with the announcement that Warner tunes will be DRM-free on the Amazon MP3 site. Although I have an iPhone and use iTunes with it, I haven't succumbed to spending hundreds of dollars in music downloads. I used the Zune Pass subscription service for a year, but once Amazon opened up their DRM-free store, I cancelled my music subscription from Microsoft.

That was the tipping point for me because I knew Amazon had the staying power and clout to make a music store without DRM work. Of course, no content store is worth its salt without... well... content. (duh!) With the addition of Warner Music joining Universal & EMI in the Amazon store, I'm thinking we're at or nearing the tipping point for a faster move away from DRM for music. I can often find the same DRM-free tracks for less at Amazon as opposed to iTunes or other stores and I don't have to go through the hassle of burning my tunes to CD only to later rip them for various devices in the house like iPods, Windows Mobile handhelds, PCs and Macs.

While I can appreciate the need for artists and labels to make money for their content, I'm firmly convinced you shouldn't have to buy the same content for different devices. The same goes for book content on eBook readers, but I won't go there just now. Yes, I've purchased the same book on different platforms and yes, I'm bitter about it. ;) Have you "tipped" towards the Amazon MP3 store yet?

Fire up Sideshow on your Windows Mobile device

Windows Sideshow technology has been around for some time but has not really taken off.  It is the technology that allows your Windows PC to interact with external devices like PDAs and MP3 players.  Mobility Site has shown a new beta program for Windows Mobile 5 & 6 devices that looks really nice and might bring Sideshow technology to those devices in a way that is actually quite useful.  This video demo shows the potential of the Go Gadgets program that connects to the Windows PC via Bluetooth when in close proximity and via 3G when out and about.  Take a look at it and see why Go Gadgets looks really promising.

Go Gadgets is in beta 2 and to sign up send an email to beta AT ikanosconsulting DOT com.

UPDATE:  I see Kevin posted about this a few days back but the video is new.

Microsoft updates Live Search Mobile

With all of the holiday preparations going on last week, I completely missed the updates Microsoft made to their Live Search Mobile service. According to the Microsoft Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog, the following features and changes are available at http://m.live.com:

• 1-click directions for all businesses and street addresses in U.S.
• Additional details for U.S. businesses, including neighborhood, business category, cuisine (restaurants) and hours of operation
• Photos and reviews for U.S. businesses
• Improved movie show times Instant Answers (we now show critics rating)
• Added interactivity to all maps (clicking on maps now zooms in/out to predefined levels, or advanced to the next waypoint for routing maps)
• Traffic & map Instant Answers
• Mobile search for the China market. Scopes offered are local (no maps, but coming soon), web, images, news and Spaces.

I just hit up the 1-click directions for a local Starbucks and got results from the north, sound and the nearest major highway. The results appeared to return quicker than when I last used the service, but of course your mileage may vary. Too bad I didn't see this news earlier, we could have used the info to find a good place to eat as we were just out running around. Remember, this is a web-based service, so it should work across most mobile devices with a browser.

(via Neowin)

Free web-based task management service optimized for iPhone

Need a simple task management system that you can access from any web-browser? There's a number of them out there, but one of the newest is now optimized for (you guessed it) the Apple iPhone. Once you create a free account at Getting Tasks Done!, you can build an unlimited number of projects, each with any number of tasks. You can share certain tasks with friends and also access them on most any computer browser. With the new iPhone optimization, you're not limited to IE, Firefox, Opera or Safari; you can manage your task list right in Mobile Safari, plus read one of up to 200 motivational phases if you need a little kick in the pants.

Once you've got your account all set, you'll want to bookmark this link on your iPhone: http://gettingtasksdone.com/iphone/ I wonder if the iPod Touch will work without any modification of the User Agent string? Anyone care to take on that task and get back to us?

(via IntoMobile)

Frontgate Charging Station

I've gotten a few queries about the charging station I mentioned that I got for Christmas so I wanted to give a photo of it in action and post a link to find it online.

Here's a snap of the i-Dog (music will play, NSFW) jamming to Kenny Loggins:

Wired's top ten heartbreaking gadgets- say what?

It's the end of the year and there is no shortage of Top Ten lists all over the web.  You certainly don't have to look very hard to find them on all the major tech web sites.  Wired Magazine has published an interesting list of the Top 10 Heartbreaking Gadgets of 2007.  This list looks at some gadgets, sometimes the technology behind them instead of a gadget itself, and lists the most disappointing ones, at least to the authors.  Some of the gadgets they list would certainly make any disappointing gadgets list such as the Palm Foleo, a device aimed at creating a whole new genre of gadget that was such a failure Palm killed it before releasing it.  But I have to admit there are some gadgets on this list that befuzzle me a great deal, not the least of which is their inclusion of the HTC Advantage.  It's no secret I am pretty taken with mine so to see Wired list it as a major disappointment I find a bit confusing. 

To be fair, HTC's ultramobile PC isn't the worst UMPC we've seen all year, but it promised so much and delivered so little that it can be considered nothing short of a disappointment. We expected this device -- svelte and apparently fully featured -- to be the one that finally broke free of the problems that have plagued UMPCs in the past. Alas, this childish fantasy was not to be, as the Advantage choked repeatedly in the same familiar areas. First there’s the unusable keyboard, then a form factor that’s too thick to be used as a phone, and finally a price tag that’s far too expensive. Worse yet is a lackluster camera and lack of WPA wireless encryption. UMPCs might still be popular in Japan, but everywhere else these tiny PCs are getting smoked by more user-friendly convergence devices. Anyone up for some iPhone?

UMPC?  Last I checked the Advantage is a PDA, not an ultra-portable PC although in Wired's defense this term confusion is something we've complained often about here on jkOnTheRun.  The term is too generic and it's not really surprising that Wired would be comparing this Windows Mobile device to other real PCs.

Check out the entire list and see if there are some devices there that you agree or disagree with.  I wasn't surprised to find "computers running Vista" on the list, after all major publications can not miss an easy opportunity to bash Vista, right?  And I'm not sure I'd put the Amazon Kindle or the OLPC on a major disappointment list.  Maybe this is an attempt to drum up discussion, which worked.

What gadgets did you get for the holiday?

Well it's back to work with the Christmas holiday now behind us so it's only appropriate that we ask you what geeky gadgetry did you get under the tree?  We've already heard from one reader who found an HTC Advantage under the tree, what a great gift!  So what did you get?  I got a very nice gadget charging wooden case myself and an i-Dog who is dancing on my desk right now.  The charging case is a cool way to charge phones and other small gadgets while looking very nice!  How about you?

Happy holidays from jkOnTheRun

Kevin and I want to wish each and every one of you and your family a very safe and happy holiday!  It is a time of year to spend good times with friends and family and we hope you get the chance to do that.  We appreciate all of you as you are the reason we do what we do here and we are enriched by the interaction with you.  Take the time to reflect on this past year and what is important to you.  We will take the holiday off today and be back tomorrow so happy holidays everyone!

The Geek's Night Before Christmas

‘Twas the geek’s night before Christmas, and all through the house,

Not a hard drive was whirring, not a single clicking mouse;

The gadgets were charging in their docks with care,

In hopes that St. Nick shopped at Best Buy this year;

The geeks were all snuggled all warm in their beds,

While visions of smartphones did dance in their heads.

With a click and a whir there arose such a clatter,

As the PDAs and UMPCs began to all chatter;

A song they did sing to ring in good cheer,

In their sleep geeks were smiling for what did they hear?

Nothing, because it was all flash drives here,

And as they settled their heads back down in the bed,

They dreamed of the gadgets that might be colored red;

A Zune, an iPod, or an HDTV,

Could that be what they’d find underneath the tree?

As the geeks fell asleep with their eyes all aglow,

And the visions of electrons did come and did go;

With a whoosh down the chimney the gear did alight,

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

MobileTechRoundup 119: HTC Touch Dual, WiBrain and Happy Holidays!

CLICK HERE to download the file and listen directly.
MoTR 119 is 35 minutes long and is a 32.1 MB file in MP3 format.

INTRO: Based on “Time v2.1″ by Meta Sektion, additional mixing by James Kendrick.
HOSTS: James Kendrick (Houston), Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia)

TOPICS:

Matt takes a look at the HTC Touch Dual.
The WiBrain UMPC arrives at Kevin's house for the holidays, on loan from Dynamism.
Dell outs the price for the Latitude XT Tablet PC. Discussion of price / value vs. features.
Freeware of the show: Copernic Mobile and Zumobi for Windows Mobile.
Find out why Matt upgraded to the Nokia OS2008 on the N800. ;)

From all of us and families at MobileTechRoundup, we wish you and yours a Happy Holiday Season! :)

• If you like the show, please consider voting for us at Podcast Alley. It only takes a minute and it helps us get the word out about the show!
• We’re actively seeking additional sponsors, so if you’re a mobile hardware, software or services company, give us a shout!

CONTACT US: E-mail us or leave us a voicemail on our SkypeLine!
SUBSCRIBE: Use this RSS feed with your favorite podcatcher or click this link to add us to iTunes!

ModBook- soon to leave vaporware status?

The dream of a Mac Tablet was fueled last year by the ModBook, essentially a MacBook that Axiotron converts into a Tablet PC.  They have been supposedly going to launch and ship for a year but every few months came up with excuses that prevented that from happening.  That may be about to change given an email I just received from The Other World Computing Team, the marketers for the ModBook:

Thank you for your patience regarding your order for the Modbook OS X
Tablet Solution. This e-mail is to inform you that the product is nearly
ready to ship and that new configuration options are now available. As
of the latest available information from Axiotron, we anticipate being
able to ship your Custom configured Modbook solution on or before
January 11th, 2008. On a first in, first out basis - Modbooks are
expected to begin shipping on or before January 8th, 2007.

As is our standard policy, we do not charge your credit card for an
order prior to it shipping. While your credit card will be authorized
when it goes into build, no charge will occur until the day it is shipped.

Before we can queue up your custom Modbook solution, you will need to
select from our new and updated offerings. To do so, please login with
your account information and order number at the following URL:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Modbook/

You may also use the above information to officially cancel your order
if that is your preference at this time.

Your order qualifies for the special 'early bird' discount. You will
receive an $80 discount your ModBook system(s). You need only select your
final system configuration and your order will be updated to reflect this
discount of $80 per Modbook in your basket.

In relationship to the system you previously selected, the following
changes have occurred:

**WAAS Enabled GPS (formally a $99 option) now STANDARD Built-In!**

Apple OS 10.5.x Leopard Included & Preinstalled (was 10.4 'Tiger')

Memory options available up to 4.0GB (was 3.0GB)

Internal Hard Drive options available up to 570GB (was 500GB)

Standard Intel GMA X3100 Accelerated Video (was GMA 950 Video)

New top-end processor speed of 2.2GHz (was 2.16GHz)

Apple iLife '08 Included and Preinstalled (was iLife '07)
---------------------------------------------------------

Although we cannot turn back the clock, the current system features and
options updates, as well as new lower pricing for various available
options, is reflective of updates possible as a result of this time. We
apologize for the delay and appreciate your understanding.

Thank you,

The Other World Computing Team

Interestingly I have never ordered a ModBook so I don't know where they got that idea but if this is accurate and they are about to start shipping that is great news.  Only a year late, too.  What's funny is that the top configuration of the ModBook is still cheaper than the entry-level Dell XT Tablet PC.  :)

Early Christmas present for Loren Heiny

Loren Heiny ordered one of those new Toshiba M700 dual digitizer Tablet PCs and when he found out that Toshiba wasn't shipping them with touch digitizers he cancelled his order.  He's posted about an unexpected shipment, it seems that Toshiba didn't cancel his order and shipped his non-touch equipped Tablet anyway.  He's posted a bunch of unboxing photos and you'll have to read his post to fully appreciate how much crapware was installed on his new Tablet.

Vista SideShow coming to Windows Mobile devices, iPhones and more

Microsoft Windows Vista is nearly a year old and yet one of the more interesting functions just hasn't matured into widespread usage. I'm thinking of support for Windows SideShow devices; secondary displays that can show information from your PC, even when it's not powered on. The concept is great but so few devices actually support it.

Ikanos Consulting is looking to change that by introducing SideShow support for both Windows Mobile devices and the iPhone. Go Gadgets for Windows Mobile is on the release calendar for some time in 2008, but if you're interested now, you can sign up for the beta. Currently, there's only screenshots of the iPhone version; no beta yet. According to Ikanos, the SideShow information is done through a web-based renderer which could lead to using any device with a web-browser and external connection with SideShow. Good to see this platform developing!

(via Engadget Mobile)

MacBook Pro and VMWare Fusion- nirvana

Yesterday I had a lot of free time due to the long holiday weekend and decided to rebuild my MacBook Pro (MBP).  It seemed a fitting time as I totally rearranged my home office to make it better for working extended periods mostly to get ready for a secret project that looks like might be coming pretty soon.  I also received an Apple wireless keyboard to complement my wireless Mighty Mouse and got it installed right after moving all my furniture and gear around.  I mentioned earlier I had some unwanted remnants of a busted Parallels Desktop removal so based on reader recommendations I decided to do a clean install of Leopard and install VMWare Fusion to make a clean running system that could also run Vista Ultimate.  It took a few hours but everything went smoothly and here is what I did.

Coffee break- time to switch to VMWare Fusion?

Last Friday I had the good fortune to meet with jkOTR reader Jason Johnson who was in town for a wedding.  Jason is a great guy who lives in Kentucky and he and I met in my local Starbucks to geek out and give Jason an excuse to get away from the wedding preparations for a few hours.  It was good to meet Jason and as usual in these meetings not only Jason got to see some gadgets but I learned something new too.  Jason got to see the HP 2710p Tablet PC which he was impressed with, along with the Nokia N800 and the HTC Advantage.  The Advantage impressed Jason a lot like it does most everyone who sees one for the first time.  I couldn't show him the new Nokia N810 because I don't have one yet but I had just upgraded the N800 to the newly available OS2008.

It was an enjoyable session and I learned something new that has me questioning whether I should be looking at VMWare Fusion to run Vista on my MacBook Pro.  When I got the MBP I installed Parallels Desktop along with Vista Ultimate and it served me well for months.  When I upgraded to Leopard I started having major problems with Parallels and I attempted to uninstall it but it required a special method to remove it that I didn't find out about until after I tried to get rid of it normally.  My uneducated removal attempt left me with a system that I need to rebuild from scratch to totally remove all remnants of Parallels and I have been holding off performing that until I had compelling reason to do so.

This is in my mind to do now as Jason pulled out his 15-inch MacBook Pro running Leopard and I played with it a little.  Jason's MBP has 2 GB of memory and he was running VMWare Fusion and Vista on it.  I was very impressed how seamlessly he switched from Leopard to Vista using Fusion as the transition happened almost instantaneously and as I watched him toggle back and forth it occurred to me that he had the MBP asleep in his gear bag (a very nice InCase backpack) with both Leopard and Vista running.  The transition was so smooth and Vista was running so fast that I figured he had a lot of memory allocated to Fusion and Vista.  Imagine my surprise when we checked and found that Fusion had only 768 MB allocated to Vista and yet it still was running so well.  It made me start thinking about getting Vista running on my MBP again yet with Fusion this time.  This will require me to reinstall Leopard from scratch, a clean install this time to reformat the hard drive.  That means I'll need to restore all my data and programs but I'm willing to do that.  It will be a good opportunity to test Leopard's Time Machine which should work I think.  Has anyone rebuilt a system from scratch and restored it with Time Machine?  I'm thinking to install Vista with Boot Camp which I believe Fusion will use too so I only have to install Vista once and yet be able to use it as a dual boot system or with Fusion to share OSes.

It was good to meet you Jason and have a happy holiday season.  I believe he's driving back to Kentucky right now so safe travels.

Vanity Googling- do you do it?

I've read a few posts recently about what I term "Vanity Googling", you know searching for your own name on Google to see what you find.  The articles I read said that everyone should check what Google has to say about you and I must admit as on online person I have been doing my Vanity Googling for a long time.   It was no surprise to me to find the search on "James Kendrick" shows my stuff appearing very high on Google. While my name is not that common there have been some fairly famous people with the same name so to top this search is pretty cool.

The search that blew me away however was one I did for the first time on "jk". I had not done this search before because I figured that those initials are very common and the results wouldn't be very useful.   Imagine my surprise to find this:

Now that's pretty cool, only the Harry Potter author comes in higher.   Do you search your own name and if so have you ever been surprised by the results?

A touchscreen by itself does not a better device make

I spent a wee bit of time using the WiBrain UMPC today, mostly to set it up for daily use. My eyes are slowly getting used to the 4.8-inch SVGA display and I can navigate quite quickly using the trackpad and mouse buttons. As I used the touchscreen, I noticed that my palm was brushing up against the trackpad since I'm right-handed and the pad is at the bottom right front face of the device. Using some settings in the Synaptics software, I've minimized the ill-effect somewhat, but it's still an annoyance, so I stopped using the touchscreen for a while. Smoother sailing.

The lack of using the touchscreen combined with some other upcoming touchscreen devices and jkk's awesome Eee PC touchscreen hack got me thinking about the effective use of a touchscreen on a mobile device. I'm starting to scratch my head now in wonder. Not about touchscreens; in principle, I think they're very useful. After all my Samsung Q1P is used daily and it has a touchscreen. I've never once used a mouse with it, so clearly I like the touchscreen. But what about some of these other devices like the WiBrain, the Belinea and even jkk's Eee PC? I'm not seeing the compelling reason to have touch on these devices.

Asus Eee PC 2G at $299: good value over the 4G?

It will be a little tougher (but not impossible) to get XP installed on an Asus Eee PC with 2G of flash storage and the less expensive models are now available. Earlier this week, a number of retailers showed inventory of this portable sub-notebook with a starting price of $299. A quick Google for "Asus eee 2g" shows some online stores such as J&R shipping in-stock models now. The full gamut of Easter Egg pastel colors are yours for the choosing too.

For $100 in savings, what are you losing from the $399 Asus 4G? The 2G model has half the RAM at 512 MB, no integrated web-cam and a slightly lower capacity battery. Expect around 2.5 to 2.8 hours of battery life as a result. Still, a great little laptop for the kids that can still be used for getting things done in a pinch too. Personally, I think the loss of the web-cam isn't that big a deal. At only .3-megapixels and an observed low frame-rate (in Linux and XP), you're not missing much based on my experience. You can easily find a 1 GB memory module for less than $100, so the real limiting factor on the 2G is the 2 GB of SSD memory. If you can work around that with the SD slot or USB drives, this is a nice value for a notebook the size of a trade paperback.

Update: OK, I need to consider turning in my official "Asus Eee PC Fan Club Card" after several astute readers mentioned a few more differences between the 2G and 4G. I forgot that I added the 1 GB RAM module to my 4G, so both 2G and 4G come with the same 512 MB of RAM. As far as the missing RAM access panel: I've heard mention that the reason for the missing RAM access panel is because there isn't a RAM slot; instead, the memory is on-board. If the memory isn't upgradable, it's not a deal-buster, but makes the unit much less attractive. Thanks for keeping me honest in the comments; serves me right for busting out a quick post before spending the day rushing around for last minute gifts! ;)

Good article- The year of the new mobile operating system

InfoWorld has published a good article that takes a look at what the introduction of the iPhone and the Google Android platforms means to the US smartphone market.  It definitely appears that next year is going to be a really interesting one to watch and as InfoWorld points out we should see the carrier's "walled gardens" start to crumble.  This is a good thing as carriers are now realizing that it is too expensive and resource-intensive for them to try to force customers into their own portals because the portals aren't generating enough revenue for them to operate.  The iPhone and especially the Google Android will accelerate that realization as customers will have more carrier-independent choices in the US.  This is very good for the consumer but you will no doubt have to do your homework as choices open up.  We're here to help you with that on jkOnTheRun so buckle up, it's going to be a wild ride.

Help escalate the floating TIP bug in Firefox 3!

Have you tried the newest beta of Firefox 3 yet? I didn't, but Sumocat noticed last week that the Tablet Input Panel, or TIP, is natively supported in the latest build. Don't break out the pens just yet though because Rob is seeing some issues in the TIP functionality. Will this get fixed before the popular browser comes out of beta?

There's hope, according to jkOTR reader Alex who shot me a note. Alex points out Bug 409148 that he logged against the beta:

When typing in a URL using the floating tablet input panel in Windows Vista the autosuggest window that comes up after typing a few characters will appear over the TIP window, the result is the TIP window closes automatically assuming the user has moved the carrot out of the address bar input box and onto the suggestion box below, which takes no text input. This makes using firefox 3.0 impossible for tablet users who have no physical keyboard as typing in any url results in the autosuggest coming up, and the TIP support can not be turned off.

The bug has a priority of Major and is ready for research and fixing. Here's where you come in! You can help escalate the bug, by going into the Bugzilla tracking system and voting for it. You'll need to register for an account if you don't have one and it looks like you initially get 1,000 votes to use. In some cases, you can apply as many or as few votes to a bug as you like, so think carefully about your voting. The higher the vote count, the more likely the bug will be researched and hopefully fixed!

Hey PR person, leave me alone

It's that special time of year that we geeks all look forward to, that time of the year when we get to spend time doing what we love and with those who mean the most to us.  I'm talking about CES time, of course.  :)  There's nothing quite like the gathering of over 250,000 geeks in one place to prove the the world is a great place.  Those of us fortunate enough to attend the upcoming show are no doubt experiencing the same thing this week as PR firms have gathered all their troops to make sure that each and every one of us who are registered to attend the big show are flooded with invitations to visit their booth to see the "most wonderful thing to be demonstrated" at the CES this year.  I'm not really complaining about this, everyone has to do their job and that's OK with me.  This week I have been receiving over 100 such invitations daily and let's face it that's a bit overwhelming.  I'm not complaining about this as I said, everyone has to do what they get paid to do and I understand that.

What I am going to complain about though is the few PR folks who have started calling my cell phone with the same invites.  Yes, this year is the first year that the CES is apparently giving out the phone number that I registered with to some of the PR folks and they are jumping on the chance to give me a call to schedule time to meet with their CEO/PR folk/technical gurus to see the "most exciting product of the show".  That's going a little too far for me and I'm not too happy about that as I am currently trying to close out my year like everyone else and don't need to be constantly answering my phone only to discover the equivalent of a marketing call.  Come on folks, it may sound like a good idea but trust me it's not.  And to the folks at the CES who decided to give some exhibitors my phone number- lumps of coal in your stocking this year.

HP refreshing tx1000 Tablet with the tx1400... or not?

MobileWhack caught wind of a Tablet PC refresh from HP; looks like the tx1400 will soon take the place or stand beside the tx1000 that we saw at last year's CES (shown). An AMD Turion 64 X2 is still under the hood and it appears that 2 GB of memory may be standard; 1 GB was the base spec of RAM in the tx1000. I don't see any difference in the video as MW indicates the same NVIDIA GeForce GO 6150 GPU. Come to think of it, I'm not seeing many differences at all other than 802.11n support, so either the deets are still in hiding or this is simply an incremental upgrade. We'll dig around with our HP contacts and see if this is the real deal. Meanwhile, it's a good time to ask what you'd consider changing on the tx1000 Tablet PC. Too late now if this is refresh, but it's always good to share some opinion.

jkOnTheRun Video Geek Session- HTC Advantage

Yup, we've covered the HTC Advantage before, but while chatting today, James asked my opinion on the device. I just got a few minutes of playtime with it last week during our trip to New Mexico, so my first thoughts are shared. There's a brief overview of the device for those who haven't seen it followed by a some good banter on if this would be the one device we would take somewhere if we could only choose one device *gasp* to take.

We took your great feedback into account in this video chat... well, other than the comment about two ugly guys; there's only so much we can do there! ;) We used headsets this morning but there's an apparent echo that we have to work out yet, plus I think we need to invest in some production-quality lighting. Hey... on a blogger's salary, we have to make due, but we'll keep working towards improvements if people like the video chat format!

MailStore backs up your PC-, web-mail for free

Here's a nifty little backup solution for your mail and it's free. MailStore is a Windows application that will backup all of your mail, and not just from Outlook or Outlook Express. It supports mail storage from Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Windows Mail, Exchange, and (most attractive to me) POP as well as IMAP mailboxes. That's good news for folks with web-based POP / IMAP accounts. I'm definitely transitioning away from Exchange in favor of Gmail's IMAP offering and MailStore could be just the ticket for a localized backup in case it rains on the cloud.

There's some intelligent features built into MailStore as well: attachments are only saved once to save space, previews of mail items are available in the app and you can search through your archives through an Extended Search feature. Not a bad deal for free!

(via Cybernet)

Gear Diary smackdown: HTC Touch vs. HTC Touch Dual

One thing is certain in a smackdown between the HTC Touch and HTC Touch Dual: bet on the HTC device and you're sure to come out a winner. Judie Hughes is in the enviable position of having both Windows Mobile 6 phones in her possession, so