mobile

Garmin Mobile 10: Sat-nav for smartphones

Only yesterday we were complaining that the Palm Centro didn't have enough oomph for our liking when--whaddaya know?--the postman kindly delivered Garmin's Mobile 10, a memory card and sat-nav receiver combo that converts a variety of smartphones, including the Centro, into satellite navigation devices.

You simply stick the card--in microSD, miniSD, and SD formats, all included--into your smartphone, and the sat-nav software automatically starts to install itself. Once installed, you're ready to go and can input full addresses or just a zip code. The receiver automatically pairs with your phone via Bluetooth when you launch the … Read more

Report: Asian telecom gear makers still eyeing Motorola

Though they initially seemed cool to the idea, telecom gear makers in Asia are indeed interested in discussing a partnership with Motorola's handset division, according to a Mergermarket.com report cited Wednesday by Reuters.

The Motorola handset unit's steady loss of market share has generated plenty of anxiety among shareholders and plenty of fallout, including intervention by activist investor Carl Icahn; the resignation of CEO Ed Zander and phone division chief Stu Reed; and on-again/off-again declarations that Motorola is considering a spin-off of its handset business. The new report by Mergermarket.com, a mergers-and-acquisitions specialist owned by … Read more

Display technology's flexible future

SAN DIEGO--Steve Jobs said people "don't read anymore."

Karl McGoldrick hopes the visionary Apple CEO is actually wrong for once.

That's because McGoldrick is the CEO of Netherlands-based Polymer Vision, the only company that right now is working on making e-books in a form that's actually close to traditional books--ones that are mobile, bendable, and, above all, readable.

But the device, called Readius, is not just an e-book reader--it receives e-mail, text messages, and RSS feeds, makes phone calls, and keeps calendar and contact information--in addition to downloading books and newspapers wirelessly.

It caused quite … Read more

Bug yourself with fancy phone notes

Sure, the iPhone and all those whiz-bang Nokia crowd-pleasers have users in their thrall, but that doesn't mean you should feel bad with the something else you've got. While searching for cool software for a Palm Treo 650, I discovered a productivity oldie that has yet to crumble into the dust of antiquity.

For Palm, and Windows Mobile 5 and 2003, BugMe Notepad is a handy, feature-rich note-taking app that comes with a companion for annotating screenshots pretty much how you like. For some, that means typing text in various colors. For others, importing a photo and scrawling … Read more

First Look: Viigo for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry

If you think of your typical RSS reader or widget as a stream, Viigo is a river delta.

Unlike many services that feed headline news from a from a preselected widget or manually-entered URL, Viigo--available for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile--gathers news channels into a dedicated client that looks great on your phone. With some saving and functions similar to e-mail, and an extensive library of additional news sources, the free application is the most complete RSS-reading environment for smartphones I've seen so far. Tune in to the video below to get a taste of how Viigo can simplify … Read more

Music download service for BlackBerry

BlackBerry owners may be feeling like they have nothing to brag about now that the iPhone has added connectivity to Exchange e-mail systems--the BlackBerry's bread-and-butter feature.

Not to worry. By April, Blackberry owners will have something the iPhone still lacks--the ability to download songs over the air from any location with cellular access. Canadian company Puretracks, which has licensed more than two million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies, announced plans to launch a mobile store for the BlackBerry family of devices in April.

The files will be in the AAC format used by … Read more

Audiko does free ringtones for the iPhone

I remember a time when making ringtones used to be a very cumbersome experience. My technique of choice was to use the open-sourced Audacity then do various conversions in iTunes or Quicktime Pro by tweaking some of the advanced settings. However, the Web has spawned newer, less tedious methods. On of them, Audiko, is a particularly well-done effort, letting you grab audio tracks from your hard drive or the Web and customize them for use on your mobile phone.

While I think ringtones of popular songs are largely annoying and superfluous, the tools to create them are actually quite fun. … Read more

Missing link for unmanned aerial/ground vehicle?

The military sees a need for a flying robot that can swoop into an enemy position, transition to wheel or track mode, and then get busy icing bad guys--something along the lines of the Griffon UGV/UAV Air Mobility System.

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can wing in quickly to reconnoiter or attack enemy positions, they can't follow a target into a cave or a building. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), on the other hand, can enter structures, search for targets, and examine them at close range, but they're slower than UAVs, have less range, and are limited by … Read more

Sprint releases EV-DO Rev. A upgrade for HTC Mogul

The HTC Mogul is about to get fast...real fast. Today, Sprint released a software upgrade that brings an EV-DO Rev. A upgrade to the Windows Mobile smartphone, making it the first such handset in the United States. EV-DO Rev. A is an evolution of EV-DO which boosts download speeds from the 400Kbps-to-700Kbps range to 600Kbps-to-1.4Mbps range, while upload speeds will average about 350Kpbs to 500Kpbs (compared with EV-DO's 50Kpbs to 70Kbps). In short, you're going to get faster Web browsing, e-mail, and downloads--that is, if you're lucky enough to live in a coverage area.

According … Read more