Unless you?ve been completely avoiding. the topic, we?re sure you?re aware that Palm has had a heck of a. month. An Earnings Report that was not so much lackluster as it was depressing, Buyout rumors, Radio Shack EOLing the Pre & Pixi, and trickled rumors about the upcoming rumored ?C40? device on Sprint.

To combat all of the above, Palm CEO
Jon Rubinstein has been  very high profile as of late. Yesterday,
in an interview with Marketwatch , there?s this bit:

?As for licensing webOS, Rubinstein
called the idea ‘an interesting concept’ and said Palm may be willing to do so, if the ‘right strategic partner came along with the right kind of business model’”.

Those of us with long memories may
recall that once upon a time this *was* Palm?s business model. While
Palm themselves made the Palm Pilot line, you could also get a Visor
from Handspring, TGRPro or Handera330 from Handera, Clie from Sony, and more others (including the lamented Tapwave Zodiac).

Interestingly enough, some of the most innovative options for the PalmOS came not from Palm, but from these third parties. TGR was the first company to ship a device with an integrated ?slider? keyboard, virtual graffiti area, landscape mode, SD and CF support, and maybe even some others I can?t recall. Handspring?s Springboard accessories added a ton
of functions, like GPS and even a phone (both the GSM Visorphone and the CDMA Sprint model). This would eventually lead to the Treo, which became a Palm device when Palm bought Handspring. It?s fairly easy to argue that without the Treo, Palm might not even exist today. Sony added tons of high-end features. The fact that you could get devices with all these options and not be tied to one particular hardware vendor was a huge deal back in the day. I honestly think it?s one of the appeals of Android or Windows Mobile ? One can buy a device from Samsung, Motorola or HTC based on what they like on a physical level, but then still have access to all the apps you?re used to and a basic experience that?s generally the same across the board.

Of course, it would be disingenuous
to omit that the licensing may have led to one of Palm?s major missteps
? spinning off the OS Division. While this would have been a smart
move back when all the above companies were licensing, the spin off hit around the same time that the only licensees left were basically
Sony for some high-end devices and Alphasmart (who are somehow still
around). Add that to the stagnation of Palm OS5, the failed retail stores,
the cost of buying back PalmSource, the wasted dev time and money on
the Folio, some really puzzling marketing decisions for the Pre
and you kind of see how Palm went from being synonymous with PDAs and Smartphones to garnering a reaction of ?Oh, are they still around??.

Licensing Palm OS gave Palm the ability to see what people were seeking in terms of hardware while letting others take the lion?s share of the fiscal risk. It?s certainly a better option than selling to another company that may just ditch the phone and sit on the patents, or selling to someone who decides to keep the Pre?s (problematic for some) hardware and sticking another OS on it (which is, in this blogger?s opinion, missing the whole point).

Licensing was a good idea when they were on top and an even better idea now that they?re playing catchup in a martketspace they once helped define.

Some would say that having your blog ads hacked is a sort of sincere flattery. After all, the blogs that no one reads never get hacked! Right?
This, however, is a flattery we can do without, thank you very much. After having our right sidebar ruined and some rogue ads inserted in their place, we had no choice but to quickly revert to an old backup of our site design.

What does this mean?
Well, we plan to continue bringing you our perspectives on mobile tech and digital lifestyle that you love so much, however you might notice the the layout acting a little funny while we sort this out.
Most notably, at the moment you can’t comment on anything (there’s no submit button). Its nothing personal, and we LOVE your comments… just give us a little time!

Today at MWC, Microsoft got to announce to the world one of their most ambitious product updates in a long time, if not ever.

What’s so ambitious about an update to Windows Mobile? Well, for starters, its NOT Windows Mobile, Its Windows Phone 7 (Series?). This is more than just a name change- Microsoft seems to really want to make it clear that 7 has absolutely nothing to do with the previous mobile operating system which started off as “Pocket PC” about 10 years ago.

To be perfectly honest, I think Microsoft should also have done away with the number “7″ in the title. You see, this isn’t the next evolutionary step… this is a new and fresh start from scratch.


The focus now is to shift away from being like a desktop PC, and be more like a totally consumer-oriented interface. “Its not a PC, its a Phone!” was a line repeated throughout many of the speakers, as they demonstrated the integration of social networks, live media, and some sort of Xbox services into a personal device that could juggle work and personal information while still being able to differentiate the two. Oh yeah, and it also makes phone calls.

The new UI is mostly border-less panels with images and text, that are arranged in a reconfigurable grid. The panels appear to be “live”, updated in real time, and move with very striking visual transitions.

The best word I can think of to describe the UI is “pure”, and I can honestly say to their credit, it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They shouldn’t even call it Windows, honestly, because there aren’t any window-borders or anything resembling Windows at all. If it reminds you of Microsoft’s Media Center or the Zune interface, it should. Its designed by the same people, and that’s exactly what they are going for- they want to bring this to the masses.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this…

(more…)

Ok, here’s another reason I wish I had made it out to Vegas for CES instead of being stuck here in NYC…
According to engadget, Microsoft reps were apparently at the show “quietly” (their word, not mine) showing off what they claim to be Windows Mobile 6.5.3. If you recall, I recently had an opportunity to talk with an MS rep at a local event, and got some interesting information about what the new leaked builds are or aren’t (click to refresh your memory).

In a nutshell, the rep admitted that there was a new UI being developed, however it was not necessarily going to be named something as silly as a trailing decimal point, nor would it necessarily be a new OS. In fact, according to the rep, the reason for the UI change was because manufacturers were complaining that capacitive displays didn’t work well with the traditional UI.
The Touch HD2 for example, needed a lot of customized tweaks from HTC in order to function properly with its capacitive display (having an abnormally large screen helped some too). According to our conversation, Microsoft wanted to offer an alternative UI for manufacturers to use so that they would not have to go through what HTC did.

What I took from that conversation is that this is not actually a new version of the OS. My theories were reinforced after seeing some custom ROMs on XDA-developers that offered the new build numbers with a choice of the “old UI” or the “6.5.x” one. Upon further research, it appears that 6.5.1 and 6.5.3 were not actual internal names from Microsoft, but rather names given by the forum members, due to a lack of a better thing to call it.

Then engadget posts that MS reps are “quietly” showing off something they call 6.5.3 at CES… on obscure resistive display devices like the Pharos and Toshiba models, no less. This has raised a couple of questions in my head:
1) why are they doing it “quietly”?
2) why aren’t they showing it off on a capacitive device like the HD2 (which is supposedly what it was designed for)?
3) why does the screen shot (click thumbnail above to see engadget’s pic full size) show 23091 as the build number, when there are newer and more stable releases already on XDA (in the 28xxx series last I checked)?
4) if this really is 6.5.3, why does the version number in that screenshot still just say 6.5?

Without any trailing third digit to prove the existence of a new OS, it looks like they are just showing off the new UI that they are working on… which again might not be a new OS and might not be called anything new. I’m wondering, did the MS reps call it 6.5.3, or did the editors who were there call it that? Also, is the reason it was “quiet” perhaps because these were not supposed to be shown off like this? Maybe the reps at the event wanted to show something radically different, try to spice things up by showing what looks to be a new OS to fill the gap until 7?

OK, I’ll admit that I’ve got a Magic Jack running a phone line in my house right now.

In fact, I even did a review for infonotmercial.com a while back (you can see it here… and yes, that’s yours truly in the video).

But now, YMax Corp, the company behind the infomercial-famous Magic Jack wants to start saving you money in cellular calls as well.
How?
According to their announcement at CES, by offering a new version of the ‘Jack that uses a GSM Femtocell instead of just providing a phone jack on the back.

This means that in your own home (or anywhere that a Magic Jack femtocell is set up), you can make unlimited calls using your GSM phone and never have to pay a monthly cell bill for it. The details regarding which frequencies remain to be seen, but any quad band phone should work.

The question however, according to IDG news service, is whether or not this jibe’s well with the FCC.
You see, the FCC is in charge of licensing frequencies to carriers as well as protecting those airwaves from interference. Most femtocells currently operate under a carrier on a frequency they already have licensed. However, YMax is not a cell phone carrier. They own no spectrum.

Can they operate on the same frequencies as T-Mobile or AT&T without any legal heat from the carriers or FCC?
Well, YMax sure seems to think so.
“In your home, you own the frequency,” said MagicJack founder Dan Borislow. The MagicJack femtocell is not powerful enough to work outside a 3,000-square-foot home, according to the company. In addition, the software that comes with the femtocell will let users set the power level themselves to cover the appropriate area, with a default of about 500 square feet, Borislow said. Dan seems to think the FCC will certify this device pretty quickly, especially since he is expecting a release of the product over the next few months.

I don’t feel as sure about it, however… I recall Sprint’s FemToCell service, called Airave, required a GPS position from the box in order to work. The reason was supposedly because the frequencies that Sprint’s CDMA network currently use are not licensed for use outside the US. Apparently, even the low-range personal proximity access of a FemToCell is considered large enough to need frequency licensing.

I do hope Dan is right and gets this product pushed through- it should be an interesting service, to say the least. And as a relatively happy Magic Jack customer currently, I’ll be happy to give it a go. Free iPhone and Nexus One service for the year? Yes, please…

So, the new year is here, and the first thing that popped into my head was: Holy cow, 2010 is supposed to be, like, the FUTURE.

I mean, according to TV and Movies, we should have flying cars and robot butlers by now.
Well, we may not have colonized the moon, or be able to fly to work and leave our kids with Rosie the Robot, but we DO have pocket-sized devices which can do just about anything our desktop computers can, keep us connected to the cloud, snap pictures, give us directions, play music and movies, track our kids and even, wouldn’t you know it, make phone calls.

That’s pretty darned cool, if you ask me.

Here’s to hoping the next 10 years bring even more personal technology innovation, and you can be rest assured that we’ll be here to blog about it… assuming of course that the robot uprising hasn’t gotten us first.
From all of us here at MoPocket.com, have a happy and healthy new year!

Everything is amazing, but no one is happy. Wise words from a funny man.
If you spend any time on social networking sites or follow the latest in viral videos, you’ve probably seen this. Comedian Louis C.K. has proclaimed our generation to be “the crappiest” generation of all time to Conan O’Brian, because we fail to realize how good we have it. We’ve got instant communication, a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, the ability to fly in the air and cure countless diseases… but if our flight across the country is delayed 20 minutes, people act like it is the worst day of their lives (a trip that previous generations had to do on foot over the span of many years!).

The bit is extremely funny, but also very thought provoking. How many times do we complain how terrible it is when something doesn’t work, without recognizing how complex and intricate some of these conveniences we take for granted are?

Ok, so perhaps he isn’t down on exactly how everything works… in one moment, he complains that people are impatient with their cell phones responding…
“Will you just give it a moment?” he says, “its coming from SPACE!”.

Space? Really?
Hmmm… are we talking about satellite phones? Maybe GPS positioning? A SETI app for the iPhone?

Ok, I suppose that’s why Louis is a comedian and not working as a cellular network technician (although if network technicians got to be astronauts, I would TOTALLY sign up for that job!).

Still his point is a totally valid one… how dependent have we become on these technologies that it can ruin our day if/when it doesn’t work as expected? Oh noes, my cell phone doesn’t have reception in this building! What if I miss any tweets from my friends??

What did the previous generation do? Can you imagine they used to have to hope there was a payphone nearby somewhere? Yeah. Remember pay phones? Now picture the worst experience you’ve ever had on a cell phone. Was it really THAT bad?

If you haven’t seen the video, here’s click play below:

If you want to know more about Louis and this routine, check out his interview with Vanity Fair.