intodimensions.com

There’s a new Mail for Exchange (version 2.0) for Nokia phones. I downloaded it and will try it when I go back to work.

I bought an enclosure for a notebook hard drive yesterday. It’s a small box you stick a hard drive into so you can use it as an external drive with your computer. It was cheap so I didn’t look to closely at the text on the box until we arrive home. So when I started reading the text I found it rather interesting:

So if you don’t want to look at the pictures, here are the highlights:
- “Need not the driver”
- “Compatible with Various 2.5# Small Hard DISK”
- “The High Speed Attains…”
- “Magnesium’ s Aluminium Alloy Case”

NYTimes on the new iPod Nano:

APPLE says its iPod music player and iTunes music store have 74 and 85 percent of their worldwide markets. But according to Gene Munster, a Piper Jaffray analyst, the end is near. “Nobody can sustain an 80 percent market share in a consumer electronics business for more than two or three years,” Mr. Munster told CNN. “It’s pretty much impossible.”

Well, he’s right about one thing: Apple’s market share won’t stay at 80 percent. It’s about to go up.

If you doubt it, then you haven’t yet handled the iPod Nano: a tiny, flat, shiny wafer of powerful sound that Apple unveiled last week. Beware, however: to see one is to want one. If you hope to resist, lash your credit card to your wallet like Odysseus to the mast.

…The Nano will not come as good news to the growing membership of the curmudgeon club: people who resent the iPod’s success (22 million sold so far) and its trendiness. They’re fond of declaring that other players offer more features for less money.

In this case, however, they’ll have a tough time. Want to know what happens when you pit other players against the Nano, mano a mano? You give up, because no other flash player on the market offers anything close to the Nano’s concept or capacity.

Two-gigabyte flash players are rare as hen’s teeth in the United States, and rival four-gigabyte models are nonexistent (one gigabyte is generally the maximum). Color screens are uncommon on flash players, too; Samsung and iRiver each make one, but they’re a lot bigger, uglier and less capacious.

So are the analysts right that the sun will soon set on the iPod Age? The truth is, the iPod has faced stiff competition from some of the industry’s best-known companies since the day it was introduced. Yet even after four years, all of Dell’s horses and all Sony’s men haven’t made a dent in the iPod’s dominance. And with the introduction of gorgeous, functional and elegant iPod Nano, that’s not about to change.

I haven’t even held one yet but I want one! Perhaps retailers will dicount the mini now that the Nano is out so watch out for great deals on iPod minis (I’ll take one of those too at a good price).

[composed and posted with ecto]

We’re used to having antivirus software on our computers but now it seems we have to get used to it on our mobile phones as well. The BBC carries an article on securiy form F-Secure’s recent launch of an antivirus package for smartphones. It’s F-Secure’s Mobile Antivirus which for about $30 per year will protect your Symbian smartphone. Says F-Secure, it “provides fully automatic protection for mobile devices against viruses and harmful content in all file types”. I’m not sure this is necessary or not, but I suspect it’s getting increasingly important since mobile phones are more like regular computers today and they are connected to anything and everything.

When we moved to the UAE we brought with us our Sony Ericsson T637 phones from the US. We had them unlocked before moving and they did work over here but the reception was horrible. In many places where others got good connections with (mostly) Nokia phones, we got no connection at all. So we decided to get new phones and since everyone else (almost) is using Nokia… “when in Rome”. My pick was a 9300 Communicator. It’s a bit larger than other phones but it gives me the ability to ditch my PDA (which Crystal felt was really a waste since we had just invested in iPaqs) and carry only one device instead of two. So far I’m really happy with the 9300. It’s small enough to take anywhere comfortably, it syncs with Outlook, and you can transfer files back and forth with a PC. It can play MP3s and Real video which I haven’t tried yet, and it can get on the internet through the mobile phone connection. For a while I considered the 9500 but it’s considerably larger and heavier and you only get wifi and a camera compared to the 9300. Wifi would be nice but not necessary and a camera I can do without.

Gulf News publishes an opinion piece about the current developments in mobile phones.

Apple launches a new iPod, the iPod flea… or do they?

I’m happy! I just got remote syncing via wifi to work between my iPaq RX3715 and my Dell notebook. I followed the instructions here and it works great.

Is it finally here? Engadget.com seems to think so.

A new iPaq has finally arrived and this time the screen is okay. It’s presently charging and I will report back as soon as I’ve fiddled with it some.

The cracked-screen has made me think twice about my chocie of case for the iPaq. As much as I love the Krusell cases for their Multidapt connections, style and function, they are not the most protective cases around. Perhaps the iPaq screen is more sensitive than other PDAs and I certainly don’t want to jeopardize my (rather expensive) investment.

So the answer then is to get a hard case, I guess. I say that reluctantly since it seems such a bother to carry around a PDA in a hard case, but it does protect the device much better than a soft case. The best candidate as of right now seems to be InnoPockets aluminum case. It’s about as stylish as a hard case gets and has a little sliding door covering the camera lens which is a feature I like. You can carry the case on your belt or just throw (!) it in a bag.