Category: Gadgets

Pocket Streets 2005 Now for Smartphones and Pocket PC’s

Microsoft Pocket Streets 2005Microsoft recently announced Pocket Streets 2005 as a stand-alone product, although it still remains a component of their Streets and Trips 2005 package. There are two separate stand-alone versions ¯ Pocket Streets 2005 for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs, and Pocket Streets 2005 for Windows Mobile-based Smartphones.

If you own a Smartphone, you can toss away the compass since the Smartphone version now has GPS support. Previous versions of Pocket Streets only had GPS functionality in the Pocket PC version. If you are looking for routing and driving directions though you will still need to consult Microsoft Streets & Trips or Microsoft MapPoint.

You can generate directions and maps for Pocket Streets using the 2004 or later versions of MapPoint, Microsoft Streets & Trips, and AutoRoute, or you can download Microsoft’s maps of major cities. Pocket Streets 2005 includes more than 300 maps of North America and more than 275 maps of Western Europe, as well as Microsoft ActiveSync 3.7. New maps are available for Australia, Brazil, and Greece, but these will only be compatible with Pocket Streets 2005.

This is an ideal companion for any tourist visiting a city for the first time.  You can locate the nearest ATM or service garage, in fact Pocket Streets has an extensive in-built list of bank ATMs and public transportation sites. You can customize maps with personal points of interest, and a new measurement scale feature is expected to determine the distance between locations more accurately.

Two useful features will help the more absent-minded traveller. Pocket Streets 2005 opens with the most recently used map already loaded, and you can search for destinations and addresses by using only partial names.

Pocket Streets is currently only available in English, but you can download maps that are in any language. It will sell for an estimated retail price of $24.95 (~€19.63). 

Pocket Streets 2005

Epson’s P-2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer announced

Epson P2000Designed as a replacement for Epson’s P-1000, the imaginatively named P-2000 has higher capacity storage, a faster interface, two memory card slots and the ability to view, store and playback photos, videos and music.  If you are still nostalgic about the black and white photos taken in the back garden with the Brownie camera, just think of the multi-sensorial memories your kids will have.

Powered by a lithium ion battery, the P-2000 features a 40GB hard drive that can store thousands of photos, sparing the next generation the task of transferring all those unlabelled photos from plastic bags and cardboard boxes into albums. The built-in memory card slot supports Compact Flash Type I and Type II and Secure Digital memory cards, allowing you to transfer files quickly without having to connect to a computer.

Budding amateur film-makers can zoom and rotate images, create a slideshow with music and share images on an NTSC or PAL television screen, monitor or projector using an optional third-party cable. And surprise, surprise, you can also print directly to supported Epson printers.

Epson have a long tradition in LCD technology having introduced the first LCD digital quartz watch over 30 years ago, in the early 1970’s.  The 3.8″ Epson Photo Fine LCD screen displays images up to 8.9 megapixels and supports JPEG and RAW image file formats, MPEG-4 and Motion-JPEG video files, plus MP3 and AAC audio files. The P-2000 connects to Macs or PCs using a USB 2.0 interface for transferring photos, videos and audio files.

The Epson P-2000 display offers three colours per image pixel and a higher density of 212 pixels per inch, compared with one colour per pixel and 80-100 pixels per inch on a typical digital camera display. This gives it the ability to display up to 262,144 colours and an impressive, high-resolution image.

The Epson P-2000 will be available in early November for a price of $499 (~€395).

Epson

First 100Gb Portable Music Player

Xclef 500Just when you were find it tough to find enough music to fill your 40Gb iPod, Digital Mind comes along with the DMC Xclef 500 portable MP3 music players. Christened “big brother” it has the largest available storage space of any portable music player on the market. With a price tag of $449.00 (~€355), this bouncing 100Gb baby is capable of holding more than 25,000 music files, so now all you need is the time to listen to them – close to two months of 24 hours a day listen.

The Mac- and PC-compatible digital music player sports a traditional build because it uses a standard 2.5-inch laptop hard disk drive mechanism, and has already eclipsed its older sibling 80Gb released earlier this year with an incredible 80 gigabytes. With this kind of capacity, it’s more likely that it will be used to either carry data files or backup the entire hard drive of your computer.

Xclef 500 connects using a USB 2.0 interface and also accepts input from a built-in mic, line-in audio connector and S/PDIF optical mini plug.  The 20 hour plus battery life uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and supports built-in MP3 encoding, voice recording, and FM radio.

Xclef 500 supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and ASF audio file formats. AAC format, including those Digital Rights Management protected files purchased through iTunes, is not supported.

Since it is recognized as a USB mass storage device, files can be moved easily between PCs and Macs. Its intuitive user interface allows the user to start navigating through files and playlists almost immediately.

Of course the cynical might say that the huge capacity of this device, which is larger than most laptop drives and many desktop machines, is unnecessary, but as we know, available space is always filled, even if what fills it becomes worthless.

DigiMind

TI to put DVB-H in Single Chip

Texas Instruments have just announced they will be building a single chip that will that will allow cell phones to receive digital television broadcasts over a wireless network.

Currently if a mobile phone manufacturer wanted to do this they would have to include three separate chips – a TV tuner, a signal demodulator and a channel decoder, but the TI chip, codenamed “Hollywood”, includes all this functionality already.  “Hollywood” will support two emerging digital and open TV standards for the wireless industry – the European, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld); and the Japanese Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T).

Texas Instruments say that the chip will be able to receive a live TV broadcast at up to 30 frames per second, twice the rate that some of today’s top notch phones display video clips.

While the chip is already being trialled, manufacturers probably won’t receive samples until 2006, pushing commercial deployment to 2007.

It’s unclear if users will watch TV on a tiny mobile screen.  Furthermore, it is not yet known which mobile phone manufacturers will provide the phones, although Nokia, who announced last year that they are going to put television tuners into all their cellphones, (having already done so with the 7700) could be a contender.

A time might come when we forget what the mobile phone is really for.  We’ll be so busy playing music and video games, taking photographs, or watching TV that receiving a call will become an irritating nuisance.

Texas Instruments

London Schoolchildren to get Broadband Learning at Home

Soon, too soon for some, there will be no excuse for not having your homework done as London education authorities are planning to install broadband in the homes of London schoolchildren. , This initiative by the London Education authorities is timely in the light of a recent OECD report that identified “Disappointing” the use of ICT (computer & technology) in upper secondary schools, even in the most advanced countries, despite major investment outlays over the past 20 years.

With broadband already in more than 80 per cent of London classrooms, the plan now is to extend the initiative and allow pupils at primary and secondary schools, access to high-speed Internet services at home. That means a portal that supports a million people, who will have a personal log-on, 25MB of space, their own email and of course, access to a cornucopia of online learning materials.

As we’ve previously reported extending learning to the home has been very successful in trials in Kingston Upon Hull in the UK where, using the KIT TVIP service, pupils are able to work on the school’s servers using a keyboard, a Set Top Box and their television.

It looks like there will be very few excuses left for not attending class either, unless you are at death’s door, since the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) has created an education network that shares IT resources through classes held via video-conferencing, virtual field trips and personalised pupil programmes. Virtual field tripe, eh?  Looks like you won’t even be able to say the damp brings on an asthma attack when the tree identification trip can be done from the comfort of that lovely classroom. The personalised learning feature will facilitate a managed learning environment, through online facilities.

When you put the words children and Internet together the result sparks fear in the hearts of many parents, so readers will be relieved to learn that the content filtering and managed access in place on the machines in schools is being extended to the children’s homes.  In fact a service called ‘LGfL at Home’ will filter the home broadband service.  Parents can have a password to circumvent the filtering while children can access the online learning resources.


Last April Digital Lifestyles looked at Kingston Communication’s collaboration with an East Yorkshire school that has led to an exciting project to engage pupils in interactive learning, both at home and in the classroom. (story link)

London Grid for Learning

Philips’ Connecting the Community Project

Philips have kicked off a new project in Singapore to bring together content and service providers to equip a sample of households with broadband and connectivity products. Under the auspices of Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority, the project will run for six months and residents will will participate in various ‘e’ services, including, Philips say, e-health, e-learning and e-security.

Philips are particularly interested in healthcare and the company are looking at options for providing services within the consumer’s home via a broadband connection. Applications include pop-up reminders for mediation appearing on TV screens, and the company currently delivers the service through SMS.

“We believe e-health services over broadband is one of the driving forces for establishing connected communities where patients are empowered to manage their health more effectively, and in the process help healthcare providers control costs,” said Andreas Wente, President and CEO of Philips Electronics Asia. “These personalized healthcare services would not only aim to help people with chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure manage their health more effectively, but ultimately help in maintaining a healthy digital lifestyle – for example, delivering weight management or employer health programs via a broadband enabled TV.”

The Connecting Community project is supported by Philips’ own InnoHub test bed facility, which crates a linked environment of communication and home entertainment devices that speak to one another. The InnoHub also will function as an ‘idea management facility’ for exploring the feasibility and commercial potential of innovations.

“This collaboration in Singapore embodies our vision of an emerging Connected Planet since it observes the daily habits and routines of normal families and, more importantly, identifies how their natural behavior responds to the latest state-of-the-art connectivity solutions,” said Cesar Vohringer, Chief Technology Officer, Philips Consumer Electronics. “Through an understanding of how these families interact not only virtually within the home but now through their communities, Philips can further realize its new brand promise by applying these discoveries in the creation of products that are advanced, easy to experience and designed around these consumers.”

Singapore’s IDA

Robbie William’s Flash New Album

Robbie William’s new Greatest Hits album will be available on MMC memory card, the first major album ever to be sold on the format. Designed for use in PDAs and mobile phones, the cards will be available from Carphone Warehouse stores next month for UK£29.99 (€43.14).

The publisher, EMI Music, are in talks with Carphone Warehouse to bring out more albums on MMC before Christmas, under CW’s ‘playmobile’ brand. Isn’t that a range of plastic figures? Oh, I see the connection.

EMI claim that the sound quality will be comparable to a CD – though as the album also features video, the content is sure to be heavily compressed. Since mobile phones and PDAs are far from high fidelity devices, I suspect it doesn’t matter to most of the people who will buy the card anyway – though I predict that 25% of sales will be to nosy music execs from other labels.

Carphone Warehouse are modestly saying that the introduction of Robbie’s new MMC is the beginning of a new music era, and that it will ‘delight the iPod generation.’

I seriously doubt it will delight people with iPods – no technical details are available on the file encoding scheme, but I doubt if they’ll be compatible. In fact, I will give the first person who manages to get the tracks from the MMC to play, natively, on an iPod an original, vinyl, 12” of Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’, the track that Williams shamelessly ripped-off for his new single Radio. No transcoding allowed, and using kit available to your average Robbie William’s fan.

The MMC format will be fraught with problems – not all phones or PDAs use MMC cards and consumers may avoid it when they realise that they won’t be able to use the music on other devices like their home or car stereo. At two or three times the cost of a CD. The value added features will have to be compelling.

The Carphone Warehouse’s Director of Group Business Development Kevin Gillan said in a statement: “2004 has undeniably seen a massive, and very mainstream, shift towards digital music. We see pre-loaded music memory cards as the next step and part of a general consumer hunger for more mobile content. playmobile will go beyond this and provide our customers with a quality experience at real value for money.”

CW intend to introduce many other types of content on the playmobile brand, including games, ringtones, wallpaper and video.

Robbie Williams


Microsoft and Cisco Announce Security Partnership

Microsoft and Cisco will announce a partnership today to make the security features of their respective range of products compatible. By tying up security at both the server operating system and hardware layer, the two companies hope that they will beat hackers and virus writers, whilst at the same time regaining the faith of corporate customers.

Microsoft and Cisco products hold a particular fascination for hackers, who enjoy exploiting various vulnerabilities in their platforms. Some corporate customers have switched to Linux and Unix as server operating systems on the grounds of security, as there are simply less viruses and malware on those systems.

By ensuring interoperability, customers should have an easier time deploying security policies and integrating products from both companies on their networks.

The next big step for the MS/Cisco partnership will be the release of Longhorn Server in 2007, when Microsoft’s own Network Access Protection scheme will be compatible with Cisco’s own Network Access Control features.

Microsoft will announce the news here later on Monday

OQO’s Ultrapersonal Computer Hits the Shops

OQO have launched their ultrapersonal computer, the OQO Model 01. At 4.9” x 3.4” x 0.9”, it’s the size of a largish PDA, and has a 5” touch-sensitive 800 x 480 screen. Inside, though, it’s definitely not a PDA – it’s built around a 1ghz Transmeta Crusoe chip with 256mb of RAM and a cushioned 20gb hard drive. The sort of specification seen in laptops three or so years ago, though Bluetooth and WiFi (b only) are built in. OQO claim around three hours of usage on a single charge.

The screen slides back over the unit in a sort of rack and pinion arrangement, revealing a 52 button keyboard. Graphics are handled by a 8mb 3D accelerator. A docking unit is available so that your OQO can be connected to a DVD drive, external monitor and a keyboard you don’t have to be an Ewok to use.

All this miniaturisation comes at a cost – the Model 01 will set you back US$1900 (€1533!), so you’d better have a really good reason to justify buying this over, say, one of the smaller notebooks.

The Model 01 will run Window XP, though reports on performance are not good – the 1ghz processor struggles with Microsoft’s behemoth of an operating system. Since the 01 will run some Linux distributions, users following the path of the penguin might get better results. It could be handy for those who regularly give presentations – it can be attached to PC projectors, and Mandrake with OpenOffice might be a good solution for this sort of work.

OQO Model 01

OS X on XP

Ah, the legally troubling world of emulation. MSX, a company based in Hawaii, have announced the release of their CherryOS – an application that allows the owner of any reasonably well-specified PC to turn it into a Macintosh G4, if they so choose.

The G4 is based on on IBM’s PowerPC architecture and as such is radically different from Intel’s x86 platform – so the host processor’s instruction set has to be translated from one platform to the other. Emulation effectively creates a virtual machine, in this case a G4, within the other computer’s operating system, in this case a PC. CherryOS emulates a G4 so well that all of the system’s hardware resources, an area where most emulators usually fall down, are accessible. Getting Firewire, USB, PCMCIA and Ethernet all to work well can’t have been easy.

Processor overheads and memory use are another traditional sticking point for emulators since the emulator has to be stored somewhere and instructions have to be translated, but MSX claim that CherryOS uses up only 20% of a host PC’s resources.

Users won’t be able to do much with their virtual G4 unless they install an operating system on it. MSX assure that OS X, available from Apple for about US$149 (€120), works fine.

Apple won’t be pleased: even if the product is 100% legal, didn’t reverse engineer any of their hardware or use any Apple code, it means users can now run Macintosh applications on hardware that is considerably cheaper (and less stylish) than their own kit.

Arben Kryeziu, CherryOS inventor says he created the application because he grew tired carrying a PC and mac around with him. “Think about it,” he said, “Now about 600 million PC users can have the Mac advantage. One computer to use all software and if PC users would use Mac software to get email, perhaps they would avoid viruses, Trojans and spy-ware.” True, but one could argue that about Linux, which is more popular than OS X. What else have you got?

He also went on to describe some of the advantages CherryOS brings: “You can build and test applications for a Mac on your development PC, test web site design for Mac web browsers without having to buy the hardware, run OS X, the world’s best operating system, on a less expensive hardware platform and use your favourite Mac apps on a PC.”

CherryOS