Handheld and Mobile World

New Windows Mobile Site: My Today Screen

April 1, 2008 by Ellen

It’s April Fools’ Day, but this isn’t a joke: there’s a great new Windows Mobile site officially launching today. It’s called My Today Screen, and is run by Doug Goldring and Tariq Bamadhaj, two people with a lot of experience in the area. Their mission is to:

provide users with an all-in-one resource for Windows Mobile, providing reviews, tips, guides, and other expert analysis, all designed to help you realize the full potential of your Windows Mobile device.

I’m delighted to see a new Windows Mobile site - it seems like lately there haven’t been many new ones, and at least a few of the old favorites have gone away. This one looks very promising, and they’re giving away over $1000 in total prizes this week, so stop by and check it out! Maybe you’ll win something!

Some Useful Mobile Info

March 28, 2008 by Ellen

I’ve always thought that the kind of information people need - and the way they want to get it - when they’re using a mobile device isn’t really the same as on the desktop. While I very much like being able to get any kind of info on my mobile, without having to go through a non-standard browser, I also like being able to find specifically what I’m looking for, without going through pages and pages of options.

At home or in the office, I like the pages and pages of options, at least a lot of the time, especially when I’m doing research, comparing products, or looking for very complete information about something.

But on the road, unless I’m just trying to waste fill time while I’m waiting for someone, I usually just want the answer to a question.

Here’s one site that agrees with me. It’s a collection of some of the info I might need the most when I’m travelling.

I’m sure there are others, but I’m not having much luck finding them. Any suggestions?

The Apple Time Warp

March 13, 2008 by Ellen

Cleaning out my Big Drawer of Geeky T-Shirts (the new one that came out of my recent Google visit just refused to fit), I ran across my original Newton Developers’ Conference t-shirt. I’m pretty sure there was only the one conference, and yes, I was there. As the shirt says:

A smart step for Newton. A giant leap in technology.

And a long time ago.

I think that if Apple pulls off the iPhone/iPod Touch third-party apps the way they might (and I know that’s an “if”, not a given), they’ll do what they tried to do 15 years ago with the Newton - make a PDA that’s really mainstream. And, no, I don’t think that exists right now. I see a lot of people with some kind of mobile device, but as far as I can tell, they’re primarily checking email, messages and websites. The majority of mobile users aren’t using most of the features, capacity and power of their devices.

What’s different? Quite a bit, including how much better technology is now than 15 years ago, and that the market’s in a very different state. Michael Mace wrote, several weeks ago: that

An elegant business model paired with mediocre technology beats an elegant technology paired with a mediocre business model.

and I think that the difference between the way Newton and iPhone hit the streets is a great illustration of that.

Apple’s learned a lot. I say: good for them. Many companies don’t. Here’s one opinion of the mistakes Apple made with Newton, and the critical difference between what they did then and what they do now.

Now if they could only make the iPhone commercials as good as the old Newton ones (those are 3 separate links) were.

eWallet for iPhone

March 10, 2008 by Marc

Yep, as you have already heard, Ilium Software is definitely supporting the iPhone. In fact we’ve planned to support it for quite some time, but until the SDK went public we wanted to keep it quiet. As I mentioned over at JustAnotheriPhoneBlog, we actually started work on eWallet for iPhone earlier this year and have made significant progress. It’s a very exciting opportunity for us because we’re big fans of the iPhone. We feel that Apple really “got it right” in their design and user interface and the SDK announcement proves that they’ve followed the same philosophy when it comes to the support of 3rd party applications.

With that said, I’d like to take a minute just to answer some of the questions we’ve been getting about the iPhone and our support of it.

1. Will you still support Windows Mobile? Absolutely. Just because we believe in the iPhone doesn’t mean we’ve lost faith in Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile does a lot of things really well, and it offers users a lot of flexibility. It’s an excellent platform and you will continue to see Ilium Software’s products developed for Windows Mobile.

2. What does this mean for the eWallet Companion web application? Nothing will change here either. We’ve had a fantastic response to the web application and the philosophy that drove us to develop the eWallet Companion remains true. People aren’t content to wait until they are sitting in front of the “correct device” to get to their information. People want their information available all the time, wherever they go, regardless of the device they have in front of them. The eWallet Companion does exactly this and for that reason we fully intend to continue supporting its development.

3. Will you be developing ListPro, NewsBreak, DockWare, etc. for iPhone? We’re definitely developing eWallet for iPhone. As for the others, I’d say “don’t be surprised if you see a strong and wide-ranging iPhone offering from Ilium Software.” We’ve got a lot of great applications and we think all of them would make fantastic iPhone products.

4. Will you make a Mac version? I’m not allowed to give you a definite answer on that one yet, but as some technical types might already know, the iPhone and the Mac run very similar software. I’ll leave it at that for now. :)

5. What about the Touch? At this point I see no reason why we won’t offer our applications on both the Touch as well as the iPhone.

6. When will it be available? We expect to have eWallet for iPhone ready for you when the App Store goes live in June.

7. Will you let me know when you have iPhone software? Absolutely! Just fill out this form to let us know that you’d like to be notified when we have an iPhone version of the software.

Thanks to everyone for their interest! We’ve been getting lots of emails asking us about this and its very exciting to know that as you guys move to new devices you want us to come along! We’ll do everything we can to make sure that we’ll always be there to help you find and organize your most important information!

Thanks for Asking

March 7, 2008 by Ellen

Yes, we absolutely plan to have our apps on the iPhone just as soon as we can. Like everyone else, we’re very excited about yesterday’s announcement. And no, I have no idea right now how we’ll pull it off. But I never do.

PocketGear for Sale

March 5, 2008 by Ellen

Motricity, the owner of PocketGear.com, Smartphone.net and a few other mobile software portals, announced yesterday that they’re restructuring their company, laying off about 250 people, moving their headquarters, and selling their portal sites. Here’s the complete story.

I’d thought for months that they were going to drop software - they were just paying way to little attention to it, but then I went through some calculations and decided it had to be bringing in too much money for that. Which goes to prove - once again - that my instincts are a lot better than my math.

So - any thoughts on who might take it on? Guesses I’ve already seen include nobody, Palm, Microsoft, SPB and Handango. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict Digital River (and this is just guessing, I have no insider knowledge whatsoever).

Anyone else care to take a guess?