Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Mobility Site . We hope 2008 will be Happy, Healthy and filled with the joy of good friends and a loving family.

[Editor's Note: sent via my AT&T Tilt...hope it makes it to the site~Susan]

Mark/Space Releases The Missing Sync for iPhone

The Missing Sync for iPhone Offers Powerful Migration Tools for smartphone Switchers and Adds Useful Synchronization Capabilities Not Provided by Apple

Mark/Space, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of The Missing Sync for iPhone. The Missing Sync for iPhone helps migrating smartphone users switch to the iPhone, and enhances current iPhone users synchronization features. Now SMS, call logs and notes data will no longer be trapped on the iPhone.

Mark/Space has, for some time, provided a lifeline for Mac users that want to use smartphones and other devices. Now that Apple has an attractive alternative to those devices, Mark/Space now lets those people migrate their data easily with The Missing Sync for iPhone. It also adds features for iPhone users that need to capture useful data created on the iPhone, like SMS messages, notes and call logs.

[Read more]

FOX Bowl Games: U Call the Play Contest

Interactive Contest Engages College Football Fans of the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic and the Four FOX BCS Games Fans to Call Upcoming Plays for the Chance to Win Prizes During AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic

Top college football teams won’t be the only ones competing during bowl season this year. AT&T Inc. today announced an interactive way for college football fans to play along during the nationally televised AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic and the four BCS games airing on FOX.

Fans can log on to the AT&T blue room (http://www.attblueroom.com) or use their wireless phone from AT&T to register and compete in AT&T U Call the Play. Participants earn points and bonuses based on the accuracy of their predictions. They can track the standings for all players competing in AT&T U Call the Play by viewing the live leader board online and on their mobile phone.

[Read more]

The top 5 UMPCs of this year

Selecting the best UMPC released in 2007 was not an easy task. In one hand you have few really good products and in another hand you have a year marked with products with poor performance thanks mostly to Intel’s new processors and Microsoft’s Vista. Taking in consideration all this, here is my list of best UMPCs of 2007:

5-Samsung Q1U - It was one of the first to be release with LED Displays, the first one to be released with a integrated keyboard, a fact that changed the Opinion on UMPCs of the specialized press which never understood the concept and usability of a slate UMPC.

4-Gigabyte U60 AKA Avox - This UMPC became the best seller at todoUMPC in the last two month of the year. The low price of it, a integrated keyboard and the GPS Module sold with the device helped to position this UMPC in the best seller list despite some no favorable reviews published by specialized pages.

3-Everun by Raon Digital - a radical new design compared to it predecessor. An excellent battery life.

2-Asus R2Hv - the last of the Pentium M UMPCs. It’s a fact that battery life is not that good in this UMPC compared to what we see in other UMPC using the Intel A110. But this device did a good job for those looking for “extra” performance. That and the fact that it has an integrated GPS made this UMPC a best seller. Unfortunately, Asus only had a limited amount of Pentium M so they made only a few them. It predecessor, the Asus R2H was also a best seller in 2006 and part of 2007.

1-OQO 02 - A excellent design that reminds me the Apple iPhone. The best cradle that I have tested. A performance hard to believe for a VIA processor.

The HTC Shift did not make my list because… where is it? It was supposed to be sold by now in USA but that never happened. Another good UMPC is the Kohjinsha SH8 but it’s in my opinion a design that makes this device a little bit bigger than what I consider the optimal UMPC. The Fujitsu U810 was not included in my list because of it’s poor performance in Vista and the really poor keyboard design. The keys location on this device is in my opinion the worse that I have seen in a long time.

Lets see now that brings 2008. Will Intel finally release a REAL processor? Will Microsoft finally optimize Vista? Will UMPC makers jump into the Linux Boat to release real low price UMPCs? Who knows…

Best of 2007 - Top 5 Windows Mobile Phones

I made my picks for the best Mobile Phones of 2007, now for the bread and butter list. The list that we care about, the Windows Mobile List.

5. T-Mobile Shadow - Very cool custom UI for this one.

4. HTC Mogul - Heavy hitter, work horse style Pocket PC Phone.

3. T-Mobile Dash - Sexy, lightweight, and super powerful.

2. Samsung BlackJack II - Improving on the few shortcomings of the BlackJack I, the BlackJack II is an awesome phone.

1. AT&T Tilt - Need I say more. It’s got everything.

I have to admit, my list heavily favors touch screen devices. The year brought some great phones from the Windows Mobile camp as well as some serious contenders from others like Apple and Nokia. Moving to 2008, I hope to see a lot more cool devices. I think that Android, Nokia, and even Apple might have done enough to push Microsoft forward a little.

2007 New Years Resolutions

What will be your New Years Resolution?

Mine is simple and I already let a couple folks know about it last week. My New Years Resolution is to communicate better with everyone. That means staff members of my sites, family members, users, and companies.

While I do a decent job keeping up with and in touch with many people via email and voice with my phone of the week, I still let a lot slip by for later. Sometimes later doesn’t come that quick. While I hold down a normal job, sometimes it’s tough to find the time to communicate better. Hopefully that can change in 2008. This will also include actually mailing out my Christmas Cards this time around.

What can I do to get better at communicating?

With Family - Easy, talk more :)

With Staff - Get prepared to use the admin forum more and more guys! I will also start sending out those emails to all of you again. Still, if you need something quicker, call me or email me guys!

With Vendors - I just need to work on finding more time to thank vendors/PR Agencies, notify them of reviews posted, and just communicate better in general.

So, What will be your New Years Resolution?

VITO FunContact 2.0

VITO Technology has released a new version of FunContact. Managing contacts on your Windows Mobile Pocket PC has become easier and more fun! New features on top of finger friendly and stylish interface make FunContact a truly irreplaceable contact manager. Now even more visual effects!

The new sliding out keypad allows you to easily dial numbers missing from your contacts. All it takes is tapping the red arrow, and here you are dialing the number you need. T9 contacts look up is also possible on this keypad like on smartphones.

New version of FunContact provides its own contact editing. It has become possible to edit or add new contacts without going to the default WM contacts. Forget about default contacts with its old-fashioned looks and awkward editing. Now you can easily edit your contacts right from FunContact, delete, add new fields, etc. You’ll find out that editing contacts is fun as well!

The calls in call history are now grouped by the type of calls (missed, incoming or outgoing calls) and by the date. All types of calls for the same contact are grouped separately for each day. This way you will see only one record in the list even if you got several calls from a certain contact: only the last one is displayed.

FunContact is available for $19.95 at http://iWindowsMobile.com and http://vitotechnology.com. Look out for 25% HOLIDAY DISCOUNT! Current users upgrade for free.

VITO Technology Inc. is known for its high-tech products in the field of Windows Mobile and Symbian software, GPS navigation and custom projects. Introduced in the present article FunContact is a touch oriented contact manager for Windows Mobile Pocket PC.

Useful links:

Read more about Windows Mobile contact manager - FunContact
Download free trial Windows Mobile contact manager - FunContact
Buy Windows Mobile contact manager - FunContact

 

Source: VITO press release

Verizon Expects 300 Million Messages This New Year’s Eve

This New Year’s Eve, Verizon Wireless expects its customers to send and receive more than 300 million messages in the 16 hours between 12 p.m. today and 4 a.m. ET New Year’s Day.

Mike Lanman, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless, said, “During holidays such as New Year’s Eve, text, picture and video messages allow our customers to personalize their communications with friends and family. Last New Year’s Eve, our customers sent and received more than 284 million text messages and nearly 4.75 million multimedia messages, so we fully expect to surpass the 300 million mark tonight.”

Source: Verizon press release

JKK shows how to add a touch panel

I was on vacation last week and that explains why I missed this really useful post where JKK shows how he added the touch panel to his Asus Eee PC.

As  you can see, it’s not something for everybody to do but if you know what you are doing is a relative simple process.

Palm Centro Video 1st Look

This has been out a bit, but I got my hands on one and I think it’s a very cute, functional phone, with a super price.

Astraware’s Annual Hogmanay Party!

From Monday 31 December until 11 January (Midnight PST) Astraware will be offering a different product each day with a huge discount! Whether you’re a fan of action games, puzzles or word games there will be something for everyone. Be sure to check out the Astraware site at http://www.astraware.com every day to see what the new discount title is!

The first game in the Annual Hogmanay Party on Monday 31st December is the beautiful puzzler Glyph for just $9.95. To grab this, or any of the great Hogmanay offers, head over to http://www.astraware.com/promo/hogmanay08.

Club Astraware members can still earn points - even on the Hogmanay games - which count towards discounts on future purchases. If you’re not already a member, why not sign up now? It’s free to join and only takes a couple of minutes - and you could earn 2500 points just for joining! Simply visit http://www.astraware.com/club to find out more!

via  Gear Diary and Astraware

[Editor's Note: I have 10-15 Astraware games on either my Dell Axim x51v or AT&T Tilt. I am going to add some more during the Hogmany Party.... I have been waiting for this sale, where I can get two games for the price of one!! ~Susan]

CBE for ARM CR8TOR

Stephen Furber has been recognised in the Queen’s New year honours list, and now becomes a CBE (Commander of the British Empire).  For those born in the UK,  the best known pieces of technology he worked on were the Acorn and BBC Microcomputer… But the rest of the world would be far more impressed by the fact that he was a designer of the ARM microprocessor

Yes THAT ARM microprocessor… the granddaddy of the ones that power Axims, Ipaqs, PSPs, Playstation 3, Video Camera’s and er… a little unknown device called the iPhone.

http://www.arm.com/markets/holidaygifts/index.html

Speaking in a BBC interview he said…

"The success story of the ARM is one that has built slowly but steadily," he said.

The first ARM chips came off the production line on the 26 April 1985.

"It was 10 years before it really started to emerge as a global success story and probably 15 years before it was recognised as such," he said.

And he’s now busy using them to build computers that model the human brain…

The machine, nicknamed the "brain box", is designed to eventually contain one million ARM processors.

"We are using ARMs like we were using transistors 20 years ago," he said. Although the finished machine will pack a huge amount of processing power, it will still only model around 1% of the human brain, or around one billion neurons.

Source: BBC

Playing games in the OQO 02

My experience with the OQO 02 could be categorized like positive. I have to say that I’m really impressed with how far VIA has gone from the first CPU installed in the already old v7110 from Tabletkiosk. The performance of those processors was really bad and left me  with a real bad opinion of them only comparable with my bad opinion about the Intel A110 processor.

The OQO 02 is a real enjoyable devise with a very elaborated finish. And its performance is more than enough for… playing some good old games.

One Day, One Deal … Very Cool!

So, you want a Slingbox but you just keep putting it off.  Well here is a deal for you and anyone else that wants to take advantage of this terrific price.  You can get at Woot! a refurbished Sling Media SB240-100 Slingbox-AV for $69.99.  That is a terrific price!

So what is the deal with a refurbished model?  You never know.  Maybe it was returned, maybe the original box was damaged, and possibly it was broken … but it is fixed now.  What ever the reason, it is (almost) like new and you will get a 90 day warranty from Woot!

Features:
Single Input
Connects one standard definition device such as your DVR, digital cable set top box or satellite receiver.

SlingPlayer
SlingPlayer is the software that works hand-in-hand with the hardware inside the Slingbox to bring your entire living room TV viewing experience to your laptop, desktop or mobile device.

No Monthly Fees
Watch and control your TV and its programming on your compatible cell phone, PDA, laptop or desktop with no monthly subscription fee.

Sometimes reality can overtake you, run you down, smack you in the face, and unlay your best-laid plans. And then smack you again in the face, a little harder, just to remind you who’s boss.

Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Pointui, the definitive user interface for mobile devices.

I caught this item from  Jason Langridge and was very impressed looking at the slides here at Pointui, then I caught the video below.  Imagine having a device that can use 3rd party applications … what a novel idea!

So, you are probably asking “what is Pointui?”  Pointui (pronounced point-you-i) is the name of a user interface technology and just so happens to be the company name too!

Pointui has been built from the ground up so we can deliver a total user experience never before achieved on a Windows Mobile device.

We aim to provide a consistent enjoyable experience across all products we develop without compromising on performance. Home is the first of many products we aim to release to make your device simpler to use and more functionally rich.

So what do you think?  Like it?  Want it for your Windows Mobile device?  Jason Langridge indicated that Pointui will be making their interface free for download in the next day or so.  That is cool ….

Chris posted about this 3 days ago here.  There is a link in his post that gives a countdown to the release if your are interested.