More “Me Too!” From Microsoft

Zune Phone Confirmed! Launch Scenario! 4G WiMax Action! Rumors Off the WTF-o-Meter

The first real news is that we can expect to hear an announcement from Redmond about the it before March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, at which time we should learn the name of the device. At the same time, we should also learn other launch specifics, and here’s where it gets incredibly juicy; our source says that, pending FCC approval, the specter-like Zune Phone will hit the streets sometime in May, a full month before the iPhone.

No, really.

Which company’s already-created phone will Microsoft rebrand as their own?

Reference: iPod As Rescue Disk

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Palm Had The Accelerometer Before iPhone — Almost!

PC Expo 2001 Report

The MoveIt! SDIO card from MotionSense was demoed. It combines memory with and accelerometer to allow you to tilt a palm forward/backward and right/left to navigate maps or control games.

Unfortunately, that company’s website is no more.

If I recall correctly, when Ryan saw this, one of the demonstrations he witnessed was using a Pac-Man-like game.

Here we are six years later and it’s now the Year of the Accelerometer. Without Palm.

Additional:Apple Embraces Casual Gaming

The Joy Of Silent Film

The Winter Garden has been hosting three silent film screenings with live musical scoring by the Alloy Orchestra.

So far they’ve shown Hitchcock‘s Blackmail and The Eagle with Rudolph Valentino. Tonight (Feb 9) at 7PM is The General with Buster Keaton.

Additional:
More on The Eagle
Wikipedia’s entry for The Eagle
Buster Keaton info
Download The General for free!

When “Free” = $$$

When Cory Doctorow Ruled the World

RU SIRIUS: You make quite a prominent point about the fact that Over-Clocked [Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present — his new collection of short stories.] is available for free under a Creative Commons license. You also write about the good experience you’ve had with this, as a writer who does want to get paid for his work. Do you think this good experience is universal? Do you know if this has been studied at all?

CORY DOCTOROW: Well, I don’t know that anyone’s done any kind of systematic study. But my anecdotal study finds that everyone I know who’s tried giving away free books as a way of selling printed books has done it again with their next book. So, I think that’s a pretty good sign, right? It worked well enough for people to do it a second time. I guess the definition of insanity is doing something twice and expecting a different outcome. Presumably people were happy with that first outcome.

RU: About how many people do you hear from who are doing this sort of thing?

CD: At least ten or fifteen writers who’ve done this with their novels. And, of course, a lot more musicians. In a certain sense, I kind of live in the bubble of people who’ve done this, right? I mean, all my friends are the people who have done this. But it seems like it works pretty well. And that makes a certain amount of sense, especially for printed material. My thesis regarding printed material is that the basic thing that keeps people from getting long-form works off the screen isn’t the screen quality — it’s that computers are really distracting. It’s really hard to concentrate on one thing for a long time while you’re sitting in front of a computer. So as a result, I think people who get a novel over the wire tend to read some of it and get distracted. But they like it well enough that they’re willing to go out and buy it and read it on paper, which is a lot less distracting.

I haven’t been paying attention to the Sony Reader since my initial series of posts about it. One thing I had wanted to do is to try to convince writers to create some free stuff for it as a way of attracting new readers to their work. Well, look at what that strategy has done for Doctorow!

Bloody Spam (But Clever!)

This was the Subject line of an email spam. Of course I just had to click on it!

It takes a heavy dose of Gnosticism and the creepy parts of Christianity to create a nifty dystopic otherworld.

They’re getting too damned clever!

LifeDrive Notes: Portable Office

Sharing information and documents in the portable office

The only “gotcha” with using the Portable Apps suite is ensuring you save your work in a file format compatible with the software you use on your PDA. At the very least, you can also share music, pictures, HTML pages and text files: Music can go in /Audio, pictures in /DCIM, and for most handhelds with Documents to go, you can put text files (which can be edited by any computer or software including DocsToGo) in /PALM/Programs/DXTG. HTML pages can be accessed from anywhere on the card using file:///path/on/card in the Blazer address bar. Blazer puts things it’s downloaded in /PALM/Blazer/Download/, so you know where to look for those files.

PortableApps Suite

PortableApps Suite™ is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.

Palm Continues To Create Future iPhone Buyers

What I love and hate about Palm

Why does this have to be so hard? Why do we have to be forced to tether these devices to some desktop device somewhere, so that we can install new software, synchronize data between our handheld and the desktop, then try to synchronize the desktop to some server out on the Internet, and hope all that stays properly in sync without losing any data and without unnecessarily duplicating any data?

The epiphany:

I’m really starting to see the appeal of the Apple iPhone. Yes, it does much less than my Treo. Or my T|X. But Apple controls the full user experience on all sides (in some cases, via tightly controlled third parties), and they can give a much tighter and cleaner package. Does less, but does much better at the things it does actually do. And it will do more over time.

It will do more than a Treo will ever be able to do under creaky FrankenGarnet. And don’t hold your breath waiting for a Treo with a 320×480 screen.

LifeDrive Notes: DocsToGo 7 Hates The Bluetooth Keyboard Driver

Treo gone Mad

[…] Since I did a backup this morning, I simply restored my Treo to this mornings settings. I started a new document and began all over again. This time I began to save my document every few minutes as a Word file on the SD card. Within a few minutes, the reset loop started again. It seems, and I have had this problem in the past that Docs-to-Go 7 and the Universal Bluetooth Keyboard drivers do not like each other. Eventually they both corrupt and leave my Treo useless. I finished taking notes in Datebk6 as a daily journal and didn’t have any more resets after that. […]

A Pocket Keyboard Fit For The iPhone?

Small Compact Bluetooth Keyboard

Ultra Slim Keypad Bluetooth connection – SPP profile.

This light ultra slim metallic keypad is lightweight and slips easily into the pocket. I can be gotten by itself or in a combination with a leather case. The Freedom Slim has two magnetic pads that hold it in place in the case. As a standalone unit, It can be easily held in the hand or on a flat surface held steady by its four rubber feet.

Direct link to picture here. (Beware of the ridiculous sizing of the hand in the photo!)
–linkswipe via Palm Addicts -> Gizmodo