The story about Vista and enhanced newspaper reading is posted on just about every website and tech blogs, so I won’t repeat it all here. Good stuff…I love electronic book reading.

However, while perusing tech.memeorandum.com , I came across this shot of Tom Bodkin, assistant managing editor at The New York Times demoing the new feature. Recognize the tablet pc? It is HP’s discontinued TC1100. I find it ironic that whenever companies want to highlight how great their new software is, how hi-tech it is, we always end up seeing a picture of the discontinued TC1100 along with it. That tells me that HP really had a good thing with the TC1100 and have let a wonderful thing go.

I was talking with a good friend of mine over the weekend who passed along some very interesting information regarding Lenovo. I trust the man completely and feel good about blogging it.

Before the X41 Tablet PC was announced last year, he was given a private demo of the X41 during an IBM Partner conference. During that time, he was told that a smaller Tablet PC was also being developed and would be coming to market. Now, a lot has occured since that partner conference and I have not found anything concrete to add to what he told me, but considering the tremendous success of the X41 and the market focus on ultra-mobile pcs, I’d be shocked if Lenovo didn’t come out with it.

Although he did not know the exact size, my suspicions are that it will likely be an 8” convertible. A 10” convertible will be too close to the X41 and upcoming X60 tablet pc.

If I learn anything else about it, I’ll be sure to pass it along. Until then, keep your eyes and ears open on this one.

I’ve been following Christian’s posts the past several weeks as he has been developing a utility to control the fan on his Tecra M4 Tablet PC. He started developing the app as a way of prolonging battery life and adjusting the noisy fan.

Well, he has just released the utility and has made it available. Based on his comments, it would appear to work on all Toshiba laptops. You can download it here.

Here is a summary of the features:

* Change brightness in 8 steps
* Change fan speed in three steps
* Remembers settings (put it in your startup directory)
* Remembers settings and switches between them when you change from AC to battery.

Craig Pringle, a fellow Tablet PC MVP, has posted a good wrap-up on Vista and Tablet PCs. Check it out.

David Radin of Post-Gazette.com has just posted a nice article on the improvements in handwriting recognition since his last review.

Tablet PCs have come a long way. The last time I reviewed one, I had a good experience with the software; but the hardware had its problems. Recently, though, I've been using a convertible laptop from Gateway -- and those hardware problems, so far, have been nowhere to be seen. Better yet, with the increase in hardware speed and large memory configurations, it has been fast and accurate.

I was just checking out the DualCor website and noticed that they have provided some really good details on the DualCor cPC, with complete specs. Once of the things I noticed in the specs is that it says “Origami UI option”. The other interesting thing is that the cPC appears to be running the Via 1.5 ghz processor on the Tablet side of the device.

Time to start calling the cPC an Ultra Mobile PC / Origami? I think so…It has everything the eo and other Origami’s have, plus it has built-in phone connectivity.

When can I order one?

I’ve really fallen in love with this LS800. As nice as the tablet pc is, however, there is one accessory that makes it usable for me: the bump case. Without the bumpcase and the integrated stand, I think I would just be a frustrated slate user and end up having to send it back. The stand makes it very usable for me because I can quickly prop it up, hook in my lenovo usb keyboard, and get to work – no loss of productivity (see video review) and no fumbling around. I’ve tried the motion wireless keyboard, but I much prefer the lenovo usb one. It just feels so much better and is a quicker setup.

How could Motion one-up themselves on the bumpcase? Integrate a stand into the back of the tablet pc – just like we see on the Samsung Q1 UMPC. I know that would put a dent into their accessory sales, but it sure would be a nice enhancement. 

The other accessory that will make this much more usable for me will be the new extended battery. If I hadn’t had an opportunity to use the extended battery and I didn’t already know that it was coming (May 5 btw), I might be tempted to send it back. I miss the long battery life.

The bumpcase stand and the upcoming extended battery really raise the bar for me on the LS800. Were it not for those two things, I’d only be using the X41. As it is right now, the LS800 is garnering much more of my mobile computing and tablet time due to its’ portability, unobtrusivness, and flexability with the stand.

Melissa Chotiner contributes to a Blackboard blog and wrote a really good article on Tablet PCs and education. In the article, she points to a research project they participated in, interviews Brad Baldwin, of Agilix , and also points to StudentTabletPC.com . She pulls some really good quotes from one of Tracy’s articles about how she integrates a tablet pc into her educational experience. Some really good info here if you are interested in tablet pcs, ultra-mobile pcs, and education.

Tracey: “I’m so passionate about tablets because it’s one of those rare occasions where you find the perfect solution to a problem. Keeping organized for school use to take a lot of time and effort. I use to spend hours organizing my binders and keeping everything neat and tidy to satisfy the perfectionist in me and make things easy to find when I was studying. Now it’s just a simple matter of saving files in the right place. The software and hardware aren’t perfect yet obviously, but the idea of going digital with everything is. When everything you need at any point in any class is right there with you and organized…now that’s just efficient.

I was talking with Dennis last night and he has been slammed with network support all week – 12 – 15 hours days. I’ve been heads down programming all week, trying to wrap up several web projects. A quick look online at Messenger and I see Trevor and Tracy of www.StudentTabletPC.com are behind the 8 ball with finals at school, Josh had to reformat his computer yesterday (talk about knocking out your productivity for a day or two).

Other folks I’ve talked to this week are really, really busy as well – just slammed. My wife and kids had three funerals / memorials to attend this week – that’ll knock the wind out of your sails. My next door neighbor, a tech guy, had to pull some all-nighters this week. Another friend of mine had to travel out of the state at the last minute.

What has your week looked like? Are you working all weekend like a couple of folks I know?  How do you recouperate after a knock-down drag-out , caffeine induced week? Do you typically un-plug from your tech stuff?

Me? I really need to work all weekend, but I’m taking the weekend off, headed for some needed downtime in the mountains with some friends of mine.

If you can, try to unplug this weekend. For a different spin on “GottaBeMobile”, go for a bike ride or go for a walk. For myself, I’ve found that I when I force myself outdoors, it does wonders for my ability to recover from weeks like this and prepare me for the following week. The sunshine will do you good. 

When I was with Dennis at CES in January, we got to see one the new SanDisk 1GB Ultra II SD Plus USB cards cards – they are very cool.

I just picked one up from up from Buy.com and am now storing it in my Treo 700W. When I go to a customer site and need to get some files from the client computer, I just flip open the USB part of the SD card, slide it into the USB port on the computer and transfer away. No need to carry extra thumb drives since I always have my phone with me and the card is stored in the phone. It is also pretty useful if your computer doesn’t support sd cards since this sd card has usb built right in.

Buy.com has them on sale for $63.98 and free shipping  – which is about $26 less than I paid for it last week. They retail for $149. I'm not sure how long that sale will last.

Something useful for you to add to your mobile kit.

Spam is out of control. Way out of control. I used to get about 100 – 150 spam emails a day. My Outlook junk email filter did a great job of handling it, but I still had to download them and when I was mobile with just my Treo, I was downloading them there too.

Meet SpamSoap.com.

SpamSoap intercepts your email before it gets to your server, scans it for spam and viruses, then forwards it on to your mailserver after it verifies that it is clean. It takes them all of 3 – 5 seconds before it gets to you. You get an email once a day from SpamSoap with a list of emails that it quaratined for you. Result: you end up with a very clean email box and not having to download junk email and viruses, and your network doesn’t get bombarded with spam. Pricing starts out at $2.50 per mailbox per month. This service is only for folks who have their own domain name and have control over making mx record changes.

FYI: Dennis and I are both resellers for SpamSoap and can help you get set up on this service if you want it, but we are more interested in you knowing about it and getting a cleaner email box – whether we benefit from it or not. Visit www.SpamSoap.com for more info.

James and Kevin of JkOnTheRun.com are doing a fantastic job with their mobile postings. They have really raised the bar on the quality of the postings and applicability to mobile users. Keep up the good work – you are doing an awesome job!

If you don’t subscribe to www.JkOnTheRun.com, visit them and add them to your RSS reader NOW.

Looking for the killer laptop but don’t necessarily have the bucks? Well, Dell is running a 35% off special on Inspiron notebooks priced $999 or more.

Coupon code: LNB2339KQ35MMR

Thanks to Kevin  over at www.JkOnTheRun.com for the info

We all run in to situations where we need to get a 10 – 50mb file to someone, but due to size limitations on emails, getting it to them is difficult if you don’t have an ftp server or something.

Enter www.YouSendIt.com

Go to www.YouSendIt.com, browse to the file you need to send, type in the persons email address, and hit Send. The file gets uploaded to the YouSendIt.com website, and the recipient gets an email notifying them of the file to be downloaded. They click the link and begin downloading. Best of all, the service is free for up to a 50mb file and you don’t need to sign up for an account! Other pricing options

• You can send up to a 50mb file without an account
• 100mb with an account (still free)
• 1gb for $4.99 per month
• 1gb for $19.99 (ad free and your own branding)
• 2gb for $29.99 per month (ad free and your own branding).

Not a bad deal for folks needing to get those 5mb high res photos to a client.

More info: https://beta.yousendit.com/whyyousendit.php

I frequently find myself in situations where I need to print a document, but either the client doesn’t have a printer, I’m in a hotel without my printer, or the security is such on the network that I can’t use their printer. What is a mobile guy to do?

I’m sure many of you have solutions that have worked for you, but here are two that I’ve used and my clients have used:

www.eFax.com and www.printanywhere.com

www.eFax.com lets you receive faxes directly to your email box, as well as send faxes. So when you need to print a document, you can fax it to your clients fax machine instead. In the event, someone needs to fax a hardcopy document for you to sign, they can fax it to your eFax number, you receive in your email, print it as a pdf (built-in), sign it using your tablet pc and PDF Annotator, then fax it back to them. They have a free service that lets you receive faxes only. To send and  receive faxes ( which you need for remote printing to a fax machine), pricing is $12.95 a month. I like this service because it allows me to have a fax machine wherever I go and handle remote printing needs at the same time.

www.printanywhere.com lets you print email attachments by sending them to a fax machine via the printanywhere.com webservice. You can use your tablet pc, laptop, or pda enabled phone. All you do is forward the email to faxnumber@printanywhere.com . This is a great service if all you have is your smart phone and need to print an attachment that someone just emailed you. I have not used this service myself, but several of my clients love it. Pricing starts at $4.95 per month.

What do you use to handle your remote printing needs?

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I'm always interested to hear what anyone has to say about Tablet's and UMPC's. I cruise the internet looking for new thoughts, new faces, etc. in order to help provide what we hope is a well rounded reporting experience for you. I cam across this blog entry today, from James Forbes. Here is the info from his blog bio page:

"Jim Forbes, now retired in San Diego, is the founding producer of a Demo event and was the editor of the award-winning Demo and DemoWeek newsleters, as well as a Sr. Editor with InfoWorld, PCWeek and other publications. I follow mobile technology very closely."

Now I have never read anything that I remember by James, but I did think his blog post was a nice read, so offer it for your perusal as well. He titled it, "Gates Starts Promoting Tablet Computing, Again". Here is an excerpt:

....."Bill Gates is back to giving tablet computing its occasional booster shot. Last week, speaking in Holland, the Gatester predicted that tablet PCs would replace textbooks for all students. If that doesn't make tablet PC marketing managers' heart beats spike and their spread sheet projections go through the roof, then there's nothing that can be done for them. Well actually there is an it's up to Microsoft to do it. The one thing that's needed now is Vista, which will contain updates to Windows' aging tablet PC drivers and which will be the keystone to the release of new, better performing tablet PCs. Microsoft's push back on the release of Vista upset more than a few marketing managers' plans. It also has likely delayed the release of new hardware needed to help push tablet PCs directly into the mainstream".....

...."I'm intimately familiar with two of the best selling tablet PCs, a Lenovo ThinkPad X41 and a Hewlett Packard TC1100. In fact it was after briefly using an HP TC1100 at Demo Fall 2005 that I got interested in tablet computing again. As I've written in earlier blogs, I became disillusioned in tablet PCs after using a device called an M240 from a smoking hole in the floor of Silicon Valley caused by a company called Momenta Inc." ....

...."I love the form factor and the inherent capabilities of tablet PCs, I think this class of computers is about ready for wide scale corporate deployment. I'm sold on the technology and intend on using this machines for years to come.--Jim Forbes"

Looks like Jim has been both a fan and an enemy of the platform, but sees the promise. Read his entire well stated blog post here

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I'm not sure whether Loren has more time or ideas. Whichever it is, he keeps coming up with new things to do with ink. First he came out with ink in IE (primarily on form filling), and now he decided to play with doing ink in Firefox. Surprised a Microsoft MVP is playing with Firefox development? If you really knew that much about our little MVP group, you'd be surprised to find out just how rebellious they can be!

"TabletPCBlogs has a cool feature that enables you to author a post with ink. However, in order to blog in ink, you have to use Internet Explorer. This isn't a bad thing--at least to me--but there are quite a few people I know that prefer not to use IE and are Firefox fans instead. Up to this point, I wasn't sure what we could do about this. Well, we may have a solution after all. The snapshot below is a picture of me inking in Firefox. How was this done? The solution employed here uses a special Firefox plugin that provides inking capabilities. The nice part about this solution is that no ActiveX is required and the inking surface comes up quickly. The downside is that the user is going to need to install the ink plugin. Actually, this isn't a bad deal. As it stands now, the ink plugin only supports Tablet PCs and Windows XP systems with the Microsoft Tablet PC SDK installed. Also, recognition is only available on a Tablet. It does get me thinking about supporting a more generic solution, but that will have to wait. Right now I'm focusing on enabling a scripting level for the plugin so that JavaScript can interact fully with the ink surface, such as set the color and thickness of the brush, catching the recognized text, and so on. Like always, so many exciting things to do."

Check out Loren's Firefox efforts thus far and make you comments on this post in his blog. It is not released code yet, but he says it should not be too long!

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Just a quick pointer to The Carrypad UMPC journal. They have a UMPC "Top 10" list up of people's interest in their UMPC Product Portal page. Like they say, it is not exactly scientific, but interesting nonetheless. If you haven't checked it out, it is a good source of info on Ultra-Mobile PC hardware and also other "Ultra Portables".

Thanks "Chippy"!

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Oh man, I just had to post this one I picked up from Robert Scobles blog. A very cool and hilarious cartoon about the whole browser wars thing. Embedded in the rhetoric are actually some truths, and if your "force" is strong enough, you will pick up on them.

Okay, I admit it, I am an IE user, and never use anything else. I just do not have time to learn another browser. Even though I do not use other browsers, I applaud the other players hanging in there. To all those other guys, good luck, it is an uphill battle to fight the mighty IE!

Thanks for pointing this one out Scoble!

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Emily on the Microsoft Ultra-Mobile PC Origami team, has posted more on her travels with a UMPC over at Origamiproject.com, the team blog. If you remember, her last adventure was on a bus ride, but this one went a little further and ended up in Europe. I enjoy listening to her, but am still quite annoyed that I can't do all this great stuff with one myself. I made the supreme sacrifice and let Rob get all the fun!

Like the story says..., stay tuned, you never know where Emily may go next!

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Well, this is not exactly deep, but it does make sense. In a PC World interview Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobility Group, makes some comments about this "round of UMPC's that have been announced and are close to shipping:

"On May 1, Samsung Electronics will start selling its Q1 ultra-mobile PC (UMPC), the first of a new breed of handheld device that Microsoft and Intel hope will change the way people use computers. However, don't look for a revolution to happen overnight. "The opportunities are big but I think the turning point is still in the future, not tomorrow," said Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobility Group. We are now playing with the first wave of something," he said. Based on the Origami platform developed by Microsoft and Intel, Samsung's Q1 runs the Tablet PC version of Windows XP and boasts a seven-inch touch-screen LCD panel and a 900-MHz Celeron M processor. With a price tag of around $1200, Samsung expects to sell 400,000 of the devices over the next year".

Yep -- I agree. V1 products always have V1 product issues. Remember the TC1000? It worked, it had all the right components, but it was just too slow. Compaq still sold a gazillion of them!

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Another quick goodie I picked up from jkontherun, and I quote:

"David Gaw has an informative, under 9 minute video review of the Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet PC, which is basically a refresh of the M200 line. As an M205 owner for the past 16 months, I was tempted to upgrade to the M400 this spring, but I'm really looking to go smaller and lighter on the next go-around. I like how David compared the M400 in so many ways to the M200; in fact, I was surprised to see how little size difference there really is, even with the included optical drive in the M400"

Head over and check it out if the M400 is in your sights!

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Palm addicts is giving you a chance to win a TC1100 Tablet PC!
They (literally) don't make them like this anymore!

Source: jkontherun

More tablet pc news from the vertical markets, this time from the automotive industry. From The Auto Channel, we get word of some new tablet pc based customer service software.

A new generation of automotive customer service software is on the way! Wynn's, a division of Illinois Tool Works, Inc., headquartered in Azusa, Calif., has selected Dealer Technology Group (DTG) of Highlands Ranch, Colo., as their strategic partner to provide a next generation software tool to assist automotive service advisors in the auto repair service industry.

Wynn's M.A.C.(TM) Basic (PC-based) records customer information that is used to identify dealer/manufacturer recommended services, as well as provide service technician's valuable diagnostic information. Wynn's M.A.C. Pro (Windows XP(R) Tablet PC - based) allows service advisors to greet customers at their vehicle (saving time), perform vehicle walk-arounds, and make service recommendations via a "good, better, best" menu process. With either program, customers can select services from several menu options presented. This proven technique reduces dealer "one line repair orders" by increasing recommended service and product sales. Field tests have proven that, when consistently used by service advisors, the DealerLOGIX(TM) sales process significantly increases both service drive sales and customer satisfaction -- making it a must for the auto repair service industry.

Here is another sign where Tablet PCs in the mobile world are making their mark – delivery drivers using tablet pcs to deliver beer. Intersolve just raised $2 million to develop this tracking system. BTW: if anyone at Intersolve wants to send some software our way, Dennis and I would really be interested in beta testing this beer delivery service

Using Intervolve's Route Accounting System, a salesperson in the field can enter a beer order into his or her pocket PC and immediately sync it with the warehouse system. The warehouse can then start loading trucks with orders for the next day's routes. Likewise, drivers who deliver beer use pocket or tablet PCs to edit orders and invoices and keep track of their accounts.

"It's all about efficiency and smarter selling, and it really runs their business," Newton said.

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One of the things Rob and I have considered from the beginning of our planning for GottaBeMobile.com was to cover Media Center as well as it pertains to mobile devices. Is this something people are interested in? The thought came from the fact that lots more mobile PC's, Tablets, etc. are coming with Media Center installed, and Vista will just increase that.

Would this interest you? If so, what would you like to see covered?

We just published a new poll on note-taking ( on the right side of the site ): What do you primarily use to take notes?

GoBinder, OneNote, EverNote, TEO, Journal, Word, MindManager, Notepad, Paper,None of the above

Thanks for participating.

I always appreciate a really, really good review – one that gives me practical, take home advice on how I can use something. Tracy Hooten has done just that with her TEO 3.0 review.

There has been a fair amount of positive buzz regarding TEO 3.0 and rightly so. A “plug-in” it is not.

Whether you have watched our video or not ( and thanks for the plug, Tracy ), I’d encourage you to read Tracy’s review. She offers some really practical tips on why you need to seriously consider TEO 3.0 as your notetaking application.

I received the following email from Steve Van der Hoeven, Product Manager for Fortune Fountain Ltd, the developers of DialKeys.  I asked Steve if I could pass along the email to you so it would help clarify anything I failed to demonstrate on the eo video review, or explain  why certain things would not work.

Dear Rob Bushway,

I'm Steve the product manager of DialKeys at Fortune Fountain Ltd.

I just saw your review of the EO and your comments about DialKeys usability and would like give you some more information:

The keyboard can be displayed/hidden by running a small program called showhide located in the DialKeys directory. The keyboard button should launch this program or activate directly the code necessary hide/show DialKeys as does the application Launcher. We can’t from our side program those keys as they are fully under the control of specific EOM drivers, but we would be glad to help EOM to integrate it.

The concept is that DialKeys should be displayed only when text needs to be input, else the user hides it by the press of a button and presses the button again when he need to input text again.

Third party applications can also show hide DialKeys. Here is the link for how to do it in C#: http://www.dialkeys.com/?DialKeys-CodeShow.html

You have perhaps not noted the pads can be dragged to anther corner of the screen by dragging the minimize button or the minimized pad. This helps when some editing needs to be done in the lower corners.

The engine is capable of the functions you were missing:

-For the scrolling of the full window, we have function to scroll up/down reset the widow position.

-The scrollbar can be directly activated by DialKeys

Those functions are inaccessible because in the requirements of the UMPC skins left out lot of our more advanced features.

The digitizer of the EO has maid the tradeoff to be somewhat sensible to the pen and the fingers, while the other EOMs have decided in favor of the ease of use by fingers. This hinders full screen inking and requires to press hard on the screen with the fingers. We believe resistive touch screens should have no palm rejection as this allows the best touch experience, and for the best full screen inking active digitizer are the way to go. The best of both worlds will only be merged when dual touch sensors will become available.

Regards,

Steve

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OrigamiPortal.com is reporting some more detail on the official launch of the Samsung Q1. Apparently a forum member (Maverick) made some calls to get the scoop. Here what what they had to say:

"After the news came out that the Samsung Q1 would be released in Korea on May 1st there was a lot of news around the internet saying that date was a worldwide release. Well Maverick just made a post on our forums here stating that after calling Samsung they confirmed that the device will not be available in the US or the UK until the first week of June. This adds onto another post Maverick posted earlier about the device possibly having two released versions, the first ones without GPS/DMB support and another release in July with these options. Great to get some a little better release date info about this device, so thanks Maverick for doing some calling".

Read the actual post here.

Warner just IM’d me a link to Frank's blog where Frank posts about TabletKiosk delaying a majority of the eo orders until the beginning of June due to a quality control issue.

As the end of April rapidly approaches, we find ourselves in the position of having to balance our commitment to quality with the expectation of a timely product delivery. After the process of quality control was completed on the first eo™ production units, it was determined that there was an issue in the tooling of the back panel that affected the operation of the system fan. Because of this problem, the back panel had to undergo a slight redesign and thus the initial shipment is going to be only a fraction of what we had anticipated. Additionally, we expect the supply of the eo™ to be extremely tight for the next 60 to 90 days as the production supply catches up to demand. If you are one of the lucky few who receives your eo™ on time, congratulations and we hope that it meets and exceeds your computing expectations. If not, we want to offer our sincere apologies and let you know that we are working hard to assure that the delay in receiving your order is as minimal as possible.

After reading the email from TabletKiosk, I have to say that I am not surprised at the honesty and openness of how Martin and Tablet Kiosk approached the situation. They have a quality issue with a first batch and decided it was enough of an issue to hold the batch. They were up front and told it how it was. No PR speak, no bull. They want to get it right for the customer.

Other OEMs should take notice.

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Very cool video about technology in flying ON "10", whis is a great site dedicated to showing innovative uses on new technology. David Hale of Microsoft and others talk about using the Tablet PC as a tech tool for flying. David takes the reporter on a flight that he plans and executes all on his handy Motion LS800.

According to David, using a Tablet PC for navigation, weather, flight planning, etc., makes the process of flying "brain dead". Hmm, I like my Tablet, but not sure I trust it that much!

This video is well worth watching!

Thanks to Aaron Axvig for the tip to this video!

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"Asustek will introduce its first tablet PC (R1) in May or June, according to the Chinese-language Apple Daily. Overseas media reports in January suggested the company would be launching slate- and notebook-style tablet PCs in April or May. At that time, the notebook-style version was dubbed the "R1F". The specs published then match the specs shown in the Apple Daily report."

That's it, that's all the info I have, but we'll follow this one ...

Source: Digitimes

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I used to read a lot of ebooks on my HP TC1000, back when Microsoft was giving away a free ebook each week. My wife and I both got hooked until we started to have to pay for the books. Just too expensive. Now with the release of Ultra-Mobile PC's imminent, I would really like to get back into the laying in bed in the dark reading thing! Guess we will have to wait to see what happens to prices though. On that note though, this is a really promising thing. How about a digital (albeit printed) ink newspaper? Not with a computing device, but with "electronic paper"? Here is a story in the New York Times:

....."In the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller "Minority Report," a subway passenger scans an issue of USA Today that is a plastic video screen, thin, foldable and wireless, with constantly changing text. The scene is no longer science fiction. This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink -- millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges. This is only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos, which is based here, by the newspaper trade group IFRA in Germany and, in the United States, by The New York Times. The International Herald Tribune, which is owned by The New York Times Company, is also in discussions to make subscriptions available later this year for the same e-paper devices used by De Tijd, according to Michael Golden, the International Herald Tribune's publisher. " ....

Hmmm, New York Times electronically folded in my pocket? Can I do the crossword puzzle on it?

Read the full story here

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Adam Blankenship is thinking about the future of Ultra-Mobile PC's. He's also thinking about the future of how his company could be affected by the use of a UMPC. I like his thinking. This is an example where people are thinking about how this device could be used for more than just an entertainment and personal consumer device.

"I was working up a PowerPoint on how my company could benefit by deploying UMPCs to it's support engineers and thought I would share it with the community here. I outline some specific uses as well as a step by step example of how a engineer's first few hours on any given day might be enhanced by the use of a UMPC. Let me know what you think."

Adam did this Powerpoint presentation to use as an intro tool in his organization. Since there is no real data to support some of his assumptions on productivity, etc,, there are some wait and see points here for me personally. However, I applaud the forward thinking, and hope his company takes him seriously. Keep us up top date Adam!

Here is a link to his Powerpoint Presentation

Source: UMPCBUZZ.COM

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I picked this up from the MindJet Blog. Interested in what's going on with the process of delivering the Office 2007 product line? Check out this mnd map done by Don Campbell (MS Evangelist for Office). Updated on April 21st, these is a lot of good information in here. I was amazed at the amount of times "blog", RSS, etc. were mentioned. Looks like they are going to depend on us bloggers to help get the word out. Now let's see how well they actually support my blogging efforts in the product itself! Don also points to some nice videos done on Channel9 with the Office team members.