Marc

More and more it becomes clear that the definition of “mobile” in our market is changing. From wi-fi connectivity on the Nintendo DS to more obvious candidates like the iPhone, mobile computing is evolving before our very eyes.

My mobile future? Personally I use my UMPC for everything, have a Windows Mobile Smartphone, and a dedicated MP3 player right now. I also wear two USB drives (one of which is a U3 device) around my neck almost all the time…it’s a little like I’ve got some sort of technological talismans protecting me from the demons of the disconnected world! 🙂  My laptop meanwhile sits gathering dust in the corner and my poor Toshiba E800, with all it’s high-res glory, spends more time running Dockware than anything else.

So where is the mobile revolution taking you? What devices are finding their way into your backpack, pocket, and purse as we move into the future?

 PS: Sorry for the long pause between posts!! As the folks in our beta team know we have some new stuff coming down the pipe and as Product Manager it’s eating up a fair bit of my time! Hopefully I can start writing more regularly again!

So I’m toying with our free products the other day and I think “Holy Cow! These babies need some help!” I figured this was a good time to turn to you guys and get some advice.

If you could choose only one free product from our free software section to get updated, which one would you choose, why would you choose it, and what is your number one request for how we should update it? (and you can already assume that we’ll update them to be WM 5.0, WM 6, and screen size compatible.)

Hey everyone. Just a quick CTIA follow-up. Rather than a blow-by-blow or other less than exciting method of telling you about it, I’ll give you the CNN news-blurb version including the most interesting things I saw (or didn’t see as the case may be!)

• Handango was present with a nice booth. Got to spend some time with them.
• Motricity had a HUGE MTV2 party (2000 people) at Hardrock with focus on downloadable media/entertainment.
• Handmark had a nice presence as well and I got to talk to them.
• Palm had a big booth with lots of people showing off their phones.
• There was ONE Palm OS device on the entire show room floor (which was huge.) (The Treo 680).
• Motorola had a big booth but dedicated as much time to music players, bluetooth headphones, and other electronics as to mobile devices.
• The UMPC had equal positioning at the Microsoft booth as all other devices. The newest tiny UMPCs are REALLY nice.
• Every Kiosk at the Microsoft booth including Windows Mobile devices.
• Saw the new HP WM 6.0 Smartphone (Standard) device. Very nice.
• HTC was at the MS booth as well.
• Saw more Windows Mobile devices in the hands of attendees than ever before although I still saw 2 Franklin Planners. 🙂
• Most people I met didn’t know what my UMPC was but as soon as they saw it they had to ask about it and closed with “Oh my god, I WANT one of those.”
• Plenty of Symbian devices being displayed. Some Blackberry devices as well but a smaller presence than I’d expected.

So there you have! Marc Tassin’s “in-a-nutshell” review of the CTIA Wireless show. A great show though and lots to think about!

I’m packing up and heading out for CTIA Orlando. I’ll be meeting with a number of friends and business partners while I’m there so if you plan to attend drop me a line! It should be a great show this year and I’ll be sure to post my thoughts when I return.

I also wanted to thank everyone out there for the fantastic response you’ve given to NewsBreak 2.0. We’ve been hearing some wonderful stuff and some great ideas for future versions as well.  I think the thing I love to hear the most are comments like “I never saw the point of RSS but thanks to NewsBreak I’m hooked!” Hearing that is a dream come true since one of my goals with NewsBreak is to have a product that makes RSS easily accessible to everyone. Thanks!

Earlier this week we released NewsBreak 2.0! Now we’re very excited to announce – eWallet 5.0.1! OK, well maybe “very excited” isn’t quite the right description but hey, it’s finished and released so “Woo Hoo!”. We’re happy!

eWallet 5.0.1 is a minor update to eWallet for all platforms. It includes almost a hundred (sorry, I’m not going to try to list all 100!) tiny changes, mostly fixes or tweaks to smooth out things we discovered after the release of 5.0 . None of these are earth shattering and if you never install 5.0.1 you probably wouldn’t notice a difference. For instance, on some cards on some smartphones an extra line got left on the screen when you scrolled through card fields. On the off chance that you use that card on the affected smartphones, 5.0.1 fixes it – no more line! Woot!

Still, we tend to be perfectionists at heart at Ilium Software and if even a few people could run into the problem we like to fix it. So here it is! 5.0.1. If you’ve installed the 5.0 full version (or unlocked the 5.0 trial), installing the 5.0.1 trial over the top of it should result in a full, unlocked version. If for any reason it doesn’t, the same codes that unlocked/registered 5.0 will do the same for 5.0.1.

And we won’t be hitting all your email boxes to tell you about this one so don’t feel bad if you don’t get a notification. Like I said, most folks don’t really need it and spamming you with yet another upgrade email isn’t what we’re shooting for.

So feel free to grab the update if you’re insterested and, as always, if you have any problems or questions, let us know!