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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Thursday, September 05, 2002InfoWorld: BlackBerry attracting third party improvements. Nextel plans to offer a "slightly redesigned" Blackberry with Direct Connect. Brief mention of Boost Mobile, a SoFL company offering pre-paid Nextel service.
I don't care much for Nextel's service because indoor reception is terrible, and Direct Connect is often more annoying than useful in business settings. On the plus side, they have a web interface for managing your phone contacts. Why haven't other manufacturers and carriers emulated that?
PPCW: Improve the Battery Life of your HP Jornada 928 WDA. Closing the cover only turns off the backlight, not the PDA.
PPCW: How to dial SIM card entries with PPC PE. Smells like an opportunity for a third-party to build a better dialer.
PPCW: Peter Aloisson Diamante T68. Lots of gold bits, 849 diamonds, $28,000.
Where is Sendo?
This article suggests that Sendo will price their Smartphone device to be cheaper than O2's XDA, with an anticipated price of around $460 with contract. The article goes to report that the Smartphone won't be released until first quarter 2003, which would be later than the targetted September/October ship date. [PocketPCHow2 Log]
Same old story. I have serious doubts that Sendo will ever ship anything, and I'm still wondering what carriers they expect to offer $600 subsidies. Maybe that's what is really holding back Microsoft's Smartphone platform...
infoSync: Smartphone 2002 gets J2ME support. Microsoft isn't smoking crack, the support comes via Insignia. No bundling deals announced.
infoSync: Bluetooth will succeed.
Oliver Thylmann theorizes that Bluetooth will succeed because Apple supports it, basing his opinion on what Apple has done for Firewire and Digital Photography. I'm not so sure that Firewire is a raging success, particularly if you exclude Macintosh storage applications -- Apple forced Mac users into Firewire by limiting internal expansion options and eliminating SCSI ports. Digital photography certainly owes little to Apple. Way back in 1994, Apple was a leader with the Kodak-designed QuickTake 100. Today, iPhoto is a response to the continued popularity of digital photography, not a catalyst for it's success.
iMovie might be an example of Apple following and catalyzing simultaneously, and the iPod for Windows may seriously push Firewire for PC users, but I digress.
Back to Bluetooth... I have doubts that Bluetooth will "succeed" on the desktop. The most mainstream application of Bluetooth on the deskop is to synchronize phone numbers with a cellular phone. Yawn. Connecting desktops to PDAs, wireless keyboards and mice... these are niche applications. Bluetooth is too slow to replace USB in most other desktop applications.
The good news is that Bluetooth doesn't need the desktop. Many applications of Bluetooth revolve around cellular phones, and most are more compelling and mainstream than synchronizing phone numbers. The bad news is that there are still few Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones on the market. In the US we have the Ericsson T68, and that's it. Motorola's 280i is MIA, Nokia's Bluetooth models have yet to cross the pond, and Ericsson has largely given up on America.
