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- Warner Crocker
Interesting happenings in iPhone App land tonight. On Twitter, Steve Rubel reported that there was a new app, NetShare from NullRiver, that allowed users to tether their iPhone up to a computer. Sure enough it was there for a price of $9.99. Matt Faulkner and I were talking about it and has we went to download the app and give it a try on our respective iPhone’s (yes, I took the plunge), it was no longer available.
I’m guessing someone from AT&T made a call.
- Matthew Dillon
The investment firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is offering up to $100 million to iPhone and  iTouch developers that come up with innovative and transformative applications for the iPhone platform. The investment opportunity, the iFund Initiative, offers money to potential developers regardless of their stage of development. The FAQ says that KPCB believes the success of the iPhone/iTouch will ignite a new wave of mobile Internet innovation and provide opportunities that are equal to or greater than the PC Internet. According to the iFund Initiative website, Pelago Inc. is the first company to obtain financial backing, and their application, Whrrl, is now available through the App Store. Here are a few other bits of info: - The iFund is open to individuals and companies outside the US.
- They will invest at least $100 million and will come up with additional funds if necessary.
- Applications should be succinct, detailed, and well-written.
- KPCB will reply to application submissions within at least 2 weeks.
Fill out an application to get started. Photo credit: William Hook
- Rob Bushway
Several weeks ago, I went to Austin, TX to meet with AMD. I asked our readers for questions they would like answered, and I submitted them.
I just received the answers, which are posted at the Read More link:
- Warner Crocker
Just a quick query here for some feedback from GBM Readers. A few weeks ago Microsoft pushed out an update to Windows Search with the numerical designation of 4.0. I didn't download it when it was available but picked it up through Windows Update. Knowing full well that Windows Search needs to do some indexing I kept my Tablet PC running all night with both Outlook and OneNote 2007 running (the two apps I do most of my searching in.) This morning was the first time I've had need since the update to do some searching in OneNote 2007 and I noticed things were noticeably slower than they were before. Outlook seems slower as well, but not as significantly as OneNote 2007. Now this may be any number of things, but I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this kind of behavior.
- Truc Bui
 CECT, well known for their iPhone clones, surprises us with a relatively innovative product with the YAMI II. Of course it's not the first watch to offer telephony functionality, nor is it the first to offer mp3 playback. CECT has, however, managed to stuff into this 30gram device a phone, a media player with mp3, wav, and amr playback capabilities, an FM tuner, a voice recorder, Bluetooth connectivity, and microSD support. The best part about the YAMI II is its handwriting recognition capabilities. That's right, on that tiny 1.3" screen is a touchscreen featuring handwriting recognition! I can't wait to see some reviews of this novel device. At the time of this post, no further details were available.
Via iTechNews.net
- Rob Bushway
 Thank goodness for Twitter and FriendFeed.
I just noticed Evernote's tweet letting everyone know about their new OneNote 2007 import wizard. I don't know when this was added, but it will surely make all the Evernote switchers, like me, happy. Now, all of my previous notes will exist in one program and be accessible via my Mac, PC, and my iPhone.
- Rob Bushway
 Tablet PC users rejoice!!!
We are thrilled to announce that ink support has finally come to the GottaBeMobile.com forums!!! Head over and give it a shot. I'll be working up directions later this evening, but here is the short version: 1) Ink is supported in the advanced new topic / post reply form 2) click this icon to pop up the ink tool 
3) Ink will get recognized after you click the post button! 
4) To use ink, you must be running - Vista or XP Tablet Edition with at least .Net 2.0 installed. XP Pro is also supported if you have the Tablet PC SDK installed
- IE 7 or Firefox with the IE Tabs add on
Huge thanks to ToDoUMPC.com, Angel Garcia, and David Luu, for their work in making this happen. Were it not for their hard work, this would not have been possible.
- Truc Bui
I love watching destruction of office equipment. Maybe it's my secret desire to give a few of my non-functioning peripherals the Office Space treatment. In all seriousness though, having a durable external hard drive is essential in the mobile space. Popular Mechanics has posted a head-to-head review complete with video of four popular portable external hard drives and drop-tested them to see which one held up the best. 
- Matt Faulkner
 Today we received an e-mail with some news about Experience Mobility moving their site to a new domain. I could explain it, but it's best to just post the information directly from their new site to explain. Make sure and visit the NEW site and update your feeds!!
Sad but true, we are starting over after finding that I was infiltrated with a serious amount of hidden SPAM within my blog. Evidently there was a vulnerability that was exploited at sometime and no matter what we did to remove it, it kept coming back. I suppose I could have left it there but it was just the point of having it that bothered me. Because it was not only in the blog but was also riddled through my database, it was decided that the best tact to take was to start fresh. So what about all my previous posts and reviews? I am not going to make an attempt to retrieve the old posts but over time, I will try to bring back my reviews but that will be a time consuming project and I am thinking it may well be a great Winter project. I do feel bad that there will be a lot of lost links … but life does go on.
- Matt Faulkner
 Lifehacker is running one of their Hive Five polls over on their site, this time it has to do with (Tablet PC's and) note-Taking tools. Head over and give you input on what tool should rank number one - or at least in the top 5. Make sure and read carefully on how to enter, or it won't count!!! Evernote - Journal - OneNote - InkSiene all come to mind for me...
The first round of the Hive Five voting takes place in the comments, where you nominate your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Note-Taking Tool Goes Here. If you don't follow this format, your vote may not be counted. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.
- Matthew Dillon
When I first heard about the Pogo Stylus, a stylus designed specifically for the iPhone/iTouch, I thought it was a joke. After spending some quality time with it, I can tell you it's no joke. The Pogo Stylus is a handy and functional tool that can be purchased at TenOneDesign.com for $24.95. Check out this GBM Shortcut to learn a little more about the Pogo Stylus. With all the rumors of a possible Apple tablet, the Pogo Stylus might also find life inking on MacBooks.
- Truc Bui
If you have a son or daughter going off to college or if you are in college yourself, don't miss PDF Annotator for Students for $29.90. It's the full Version 2 with special pricing for those of us in education. McKay Whitney, a regular site contributor, alerted us to the special pricing this morning. With most handouts available to students as PDF's, Grahl Software's PDF Annotator Version 2 allows us to write directly on these documents without having to import into OneNote first. This is advantageous on several fronts for me. First, only a few of my classmates actually use OneNote. Being able to mark up a PDF and share that file as a PDF without having to use another software as a medium for inking is a big benefit. Second, PDF Annotator saves time. My workflow for annotating pdf's before Annotator was to import the pdf file into OneNote (and depending on the file size, could take a bit of time), making notes in the pdf file via OneNote, then saving the OneNote file as another pdf. Third, some images and documents within the pdf that gets rotated by OneNote cannot be correctly reoriented once it is imported. By using Annotator, it is a non-issue.
- Truc Bui
GottaBeMobile Forum Moderator Sharon Treloar, aka sbtablet, shared a clean-up tool that is built in to the SP1 upgrade a few days ago. It essentially deletes all of the pre-SP1 files if you are sure you won't be reverting back. In the process, it cleans out anywhere from 800MB to 1.5GB of space. Rob Bushway, forum member segalsegal, and myself all ran the disk cleanup tool and regained approximately 800MB of disk space. I couldn't believe how easy it was! Thanks Sharon! 
- Truc Bui
What better way to do market research than to ask students for their input on what they consider are important aspects of computers. Lenovo employed two interns over the summer who were very familiar with tabletPC's and education. They created a head-to-head video comparison between their HP tablet and the Lenovo X61t. Being a tabletPC user in the education space myself, I have to agree with everything they say. There are parts where it does sound like a propaganda video for Lenovo but the students' comments reflect real-world accounts of what OEM's need to keep in mind when designing their next crop of tablets. Check out the video for a breakdown of their wants/needs/concerns after the jump.
- Truc Bui
IBM and Google's joint Cloud-based project at the top universities of Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, and MIT has been in full swing since May, putting pressure on for the rest of the industry to respond. Answering the challenge, HP, Yahoo, and Intel have announced their collaborative efforts with research teams from Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. EETimes.com reports: Each partner will host a cloud computing research site, largely based on HP and Intel hardware with 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores. The test beds will undertake research and training in a wide array of Internet-scale computing issues. Work is expected to span subjects ranging from data center hardware design to systems and applications software issues including automatic resource allocation, scheduling, monitoring and management. Andrew Chien, director of Intel Research, states, "My understanding is the IBM/Google partnership is focused on applications... We're trying to support research at a variety of levels including systems software and even hardware Intel might put in its future silicon." 
The industry is trending towards Cloud-based services and up to this point focused solely on the software aspects of the Cloud with little attention given to the hardware required to operate in the Cloud. This latest collaboration allows for a complete solution from the ground up for a truly integrated Cloud.
- Warner Crocker
 Meet the Marshall. Actually, meet Matthew Dillon, one of our newest GBM Team Members. Given that he likes to be called Matt, and we’ve already got Matt Faulkner running around here someplace, I think I’ll call Matt Dillon the Marshall. (Now let’s see how many of the younger folk can keep up with the old guy and know that reference.)
We talk about Matt’s mobile computing interests and what got him involved in technology as well as his interests in how that affects education. The Marshall is actually a guidance counselor. Matt joins us with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for mobile tech, but there’s one catch. He doesn’t own a Tablet PC. Find out why when you give the podcast a listen. We also discuss this week’s news in mobile tech land including what’s up with the NetBooks (or whatever you want to call them), the TechCrunch Tablet, Samsung’s Q1 UMPC refresh, and Fujitsu’s latest small, but expensive ultra-portable. Check it all out. All GottaBeMobile.com InkShows and Podcasts are sponsored by TechSmith.
- Warner Crocker
One of the key features of Netbooks (or whatever you want to call them) is the price. What happens when OEMs can’t meet the low price threshold that has everyone excited?
It looks like the makers of the MSI Wind are about to find out as they experience some stumbles trying to meet the announced price of $499 according to Laptop Magazine. Apparently devices with the six cell batteries are being sold for $549 or more around the web. Laptop reports that MSI has told them that due to the rising costs of batteries and materials they did indeed have to raise the price. Some customers are finding their original orders for $499 cancelled by Buy.com, and there is apparently some confusion in Internet purchasing land.
Who knows if this is sign of things to come for other OEMs or just problems MSI has to deal with, but it certainly will be interesting to follow as more Netbooks (or whatever you call them) begin to roll out.
Hat tip to jkOnTheRun
- Warner Crocker
I wouldn’t count these chickens just yet but this is some interesting barnyard reading. SDTimes claims to have gotten their hands on some detailed information on Microsoft’s Midori, which they claim is a new, built-from-scratch post Windows Microsoft OS. Built from the ground upp, Midori is supposedly Internet centric and highly componetized.
We’ve heard talk about all sorts of ways of redoing a Microsoft OS and there are certainly calls for a do-it-over-from-scratch approach, as well as a Min-Win sort of approach. While I’m sure Microsoft is spending its research dollars looking at all sorts of options, (these things take quite some time to get from idea to the move forward stage), I’d file this under interesting possibilities. Robert Scoble carries that a bit further thinking you’d be an idiot if you think we’ll see any such thing in the near future. I’m not sure I’d call you an idiot, I don’t think I’d hold my breath either. That said, the article is worth a read.
- Warner Crocker
Some good news for our Canadian friends from Motion. Motion will announce today that TELUS will become the latest Canadian Value Added Reseller for its products. TELUS will be reselling the C5 Motion clinical assistant to enhance its healthcare offering. Hit the Read More Link for the full press release. Also, John Hill of TabletPC Buzz and Allegiance Technology Partners has posted a streaming audio interview with Motion founding member and current COO and President Dave Altounian. Here’s the link.
- Warner Crocker
 I wouldn’t call this over by any stretch of the imagination but it does herald some potential good news for mobile customers. Yesterday, a judge handed Sprint Nextel a loss in a case over early termination fees. Sprint has two weeks to respond and if they lose here, I would imagine they will most likely appeal. While Sprint and the other Telcos argue that they need these fees to recoup the subsidies that they offer to keep the costs of cell phones low, (they are petitioning the FCC on this issue) this judge wasn’t buying that story. To be fair, Sprint and other Telcos have been moving towards at least a pro-rate system of ending contracts, but to be skeptical that is mostly to avoid regulation that seeks to abolish the practice.
Other similar cases are making their way through the courts and it points up the conflict between subsidized hardware prices and long term contracts that no consumer seems to like. In my view of the world that sort of lock in wouldn’t be required if companies were able to perform better or at least offer up a reasonable set of expectations that they could live up to.
- Warner Crocker
It looks like the Windows Live Mesh Client for Macs is available to download again, but I don't think it is quite working yet. Intriguingly after I downloaded and tried to install the Live Mesh Client it told me the newly downloaded file was older than the one that was already on my Mac, which I had downloaded when it became prematurely available a week or so ago. On running the previous version or the new version I get a request to update or cancel. According to the download page there is great demand for this, and they are pushing the app out the door before they had planned to, so hopefully this will be up and running soon. With all of that in mind, here's the link to the download page. Via LiveSide.
- Matt Faulkner
 I really like Lifehacker, they are always putting up some nice tips. This one today will help everyone save a few clicks, battery life or gain some performance! Right click your Aero on and off with this quick little tip they found over on Windows Vista Magazine. It will require a Registry edit, so be careful!!
- Matt Faulkner
 This past weekend was my first weekend with the iPhone 3G - first Apple product of any type to be exact. I have been using the AT&T Tilt for the past few months and before that, 2 other WM devices - the Treo 750 and the Cingular 8125. I've been using WM for quite a while as you can see, so the move to the iPhone was a big change for sure.
First impressions - Very nice and smooth UI. The use of touch is amazing compared to using the touchscreen on a WM device. Everything is just 'made' to touch, unlike the Windows Mobile devices. Yes, there are programs out there to make WM more touch friendly, but out of the box, there is no comparison.
- Warner Crocker
You’ve heard of the $100 Laptop (that actually costs more), but how about a $10 laptop? I guess this would be called the Ultra-ultra-low-cost portable computer. Apparently universities in India are working on creating a $10 laptop for higher education studies. I’m sure there are government subsides in involved in this, and who knows what it really means, of it could come to be with government subsides or not, But, at least they are trying.
I imagine the folks at Asus are trying to figure out how to add a version of this to their roadmap.
Via Engadget
- Warner Crocker
 In the category of winning hearts and minds Microsoft has released some video of, and information about, its Mojave Experiment, an effort on its part to try and change perceptions about Windows Vista. While saying up front that this isn’t part of the big and expensive marketing effort they are planning, they do provide some info into the focus group testing the videos represent. Intriguingly they told those in the focus group that this was a new OS called Mojave and then later revealed it was Vista. The following is from the Windows Vista News Blog:
For those new to the Mojave Experiment, it's a focus group effort we initiated a few weeks ago. We interviewed and polled 120 participants in San Francisco, in hopes of better understanding everyday users' perceptions of Windows Vista and seeing whether there really is a gap between perception and reality. We wanted to see how people reacted to Windows Vista when they were not aware they were seeing Windows Vista. We recorded our discussions, and today you can see them for yourself.
Some other facts about the research:
- Warner Crocker
 Last week we saw a news report that Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, warned his staff about the possible health risk of using cell phones. This reignited a debate that comes around every now and then about whether or not there is an increased risk of cancer with cell phone users.
Steve Rubel picked up on the story, along with others, and is wondering if in the future we’ll be viewing and participating in this potential controversy in the same way we went through the tobacco wars.
No conclusions can be drawn at present, but can you imagine the upheaval if enough scientific evidence was uncovered that supported that hypothesis? I know of one person who is convinced that her maladies are caused by WiFi and cell phones and her beliefs have led her to a very sheltered life at present.
- Warner Crocker
 Holy cow! As if there wasn’t already a plethora of Asus Eee PCs to choose from, Asus’s roadmap for world Netbook domination looks it plans to steamroll the competition (and consumers?) with more choices than you can count. Breaking things into three categories, Ultimate, PRO Fashion, and Smart Casual, I count 23 different models in the pipeline.
Ultimate series:
S101
S91
PRO Fashion:
1000HV
1002SA
1002HA
T101 ( tablet?? )
Smart Casual:
700, 701, 701SD(30G HDD), 701SD, 701SD-4G
900, 901, 900A-16G, 900A-8G, 900-16G, 900-30G
904HD, 904HA, 900HD
1000, 1000HD, 1000H
Via Engadget and jkkmobile
- Warner Crocker
It looks like the Asus R50A UMPC is going through its FCC rite of passage, which may mean it could soon be available in the USA. The R50A runs a Silverthorne processor and has a SSD and 3G radio included. I wasn’t impressed with the form factor at CES 2008 as the device felt very toy like to hold, which seemed odd given the specs.
Via jkkmobile
- Warner Crocker
Steve “Chippy” Paine is running a poll at UMPCPortal asking the simple question, “What is the minimum battery life you consider to be suitable for an Ultra Mobile device in 2008?” I’m not suprised by the results. Over 85% want four hours or more. While this may be akin to asking who wants lower gas prices, the point is obviously clear.
- Rob Bushway
SeattlePI's Todd Bishop has some awesome video footage of Microsoft's Sphere being demoed at the Microsoft Faculty Summit. 
From SeattlePI's story to appear on Tuesday: After months of rumors, Microsoft researchers are taking the wraps off a prototype that uses an internal projection and vision system to bring a spherical computer display to life. People can touch the surface with multiple fingers and hands to manipulate photos, play games, spin a virtual globe, or watch 360-degree videos. Sphere, as it's known, is expected to be shown publicly for the first time Tuesday at Microsoft's Faculty Summit in Redmond. For now, it's purely a research project. The company says it doesn't currently have plans to offer it as a product. The idea is to see what the technology can do, and how people will use it.
- Sierra Modro
 Today, I'm singing the "Early Adopter Blues". As many people know, I have a 1st generation Sony Reader, the PRS-500. The 2nd generation Reader, the PRS-505, just got an update to the firmware that includes features I'd love to have: automatic reflow for PDF, and support for Adobe Digital Editions and the ePub formats. If you've never heard of it, ePub is a new, open standard for ebooks based on XML and designed for interoperability. Adobe Digital Editions (DE) is an ebook organizer and library that works with PDFs and ePub formats.
This is a phenomenal free update. With support for Adobe DE, Sony has approached an open platform for ebooks. I never thought I'd say Sony had an open platform for much of anything, but this is closer than many. Many public libraries have DRM'd ebooks in Adobe DE formats, so now Sony Reader PRS-505 owners will actually be able to check out ebooks from the library. That is cool! I'm quite envious of this new firmware update. I'm also envious of the new Reader cover that I just found that includes a built-in light wedge. For everyone who wants to read in the dark, now you can with the Sony Reader. I need a new toy. More info: Yahoo, MobileRead Forums
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