Sure I'll buy an iPod Mini - when the price drops to $149!

So Steve Jobs big announcement was the $249 mini iPod. Although I must admit that I find the device to be very applesque - cool, and desirable, I also find that it just doesn't have any value as far as I am concenered. In his keynote her compared it to a $200 256MB flash-based MP3 player - but this isn't a true (pardon the pun) Apple to apples comparison. Firstly, because of the way that other companies sell their products, a list price of $199 means that, in reality, you can buy this device for at least $180, if not lower. Secondly, he specifically choose a bare-bones player like the Rio Cali. Why not the iRiver iFP-390T - it's just as small, costs under $200, and even comes FM Radio, Voice Recording, and an armband to boot - yes it only has 1/16th of the mini's storage, but again - there is a fine-line between the full-fledged players that can hold an entire music collection and players that have small capacities but are used for a 1-2 hour workout. The 4GB players are priced just below the higher-capacity players, and just above the Flash Players. My prediction - the prices on the smaller capacity drives will drop, and the ripple effect will be either a)A cessation of production of Flahs Players or b) A drop in the prices of Flash Players. The $GB Muvo from Creative is already available in the $250 vicinity, while it's 1GB flash cousin costs $400! I think I might consider a mini at the point at which it drops to $149, but by then we will all be wanting a Video iPod instead :)

Going back to Cali....

So I am in Calfornia. This is a weird state, the Governor is from a foreign country, and has made almost as much money making movies as the state has a deficit (Okay that's a stretch).

For the next three days, I need to remember that the ocean is to the west and the rest of the USA is to the east.

Internet Rule #1 - Don't believe everything you see online...

So last week, I was talking about the 'perceived' new HP Handheld. The actual 4100 and 4300 series models are a lot different than the one I saw a 'sneak preview' video of, but nevertheless, the 4350 does include a mini-qwerty keyboard. This is probably one of many such devices recently introduced or to be introduced just before the holiday buying season begins.

This is a major shift for several reasons. IMHO, the early PDA designers felt that the PDA was more of a device for reading and making small modifications to data that you normally entered and managed on your pc. Therefore, they felt that people would learn how to write for and adapt to handwriting recognition systems. Ultimately, with the rise of the BlackBerry - a device designed for e-mail, and with the rise in wireless technologies, their speed and availability (i.e. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G), it became evident that mobile workers were becoming more and more reliant on their PDA as primary sources of date entry for their use in the field.

And so, the industry is adapting. My guess is that soon we will see corporations beggining to shun the BlackBerry in lieu of devices running PalmOS 5, and Windows Mobile software. Those tools, coupled with Wi-fi or 3G access to data and third party over-the-air sync software will out-BlackBerry RIM on the e-mail front, and also provide so many other feature as well - such as better web-browsing, messenging software, more access option (such as combined Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled devices) and better throughput.

Handspring has released its revolutionary new Treo 600 to rave reviews so far, and to spearhead this trend, they are partnering with Good Technology, a blackberry competitor, to offer BlackBerry-style e-mail services along with the new device. Will it be the elusive BlackBerry killer? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I will wait for that iPaq that I saw in the spy pic :)

Second-hand Spam?

Everyone seems to have finally acknowledged that SPAM is a serious problem. Especially because so many viruses have been spread in a similar manner. However, there is a lesser-known scourge that I am starting to get annoyed with - something that I like to call second-hand SPAM.

Don't know what I am talking about? In my opinion, second-hand spam are unwanted e-mails sent to you indirectly - i.e. via a mailing list that you are on. This would include both e-mails inappropriate for the list as well as people who put the list's e-mail on a different list.

Many lists enforce posts only from subscribers, but if a rouge mailer joins as a subscriber, he or she could then easily stick the list's address on a distrib list on their own - this is annoying, especially if the idiot doing this assumes that all other people on this specific list care about the same issues as he or she does.

But what I really hate are list moderators who use a double-standard when deciding if a post gets through or not. For example, I know of a community-oriented list where the moderator shoots down classifieds - i.e. someone selling furniture or organizing a trip outside the context of the community, but would like to include community members - but will put through posts about how nice his/her recent vacation was.

Even if we find ways to effictively eradicate first-hand SPAM, there is no way to eradicate the causes of Second-Hand SPAM - Poor Judgement!

iPaq 4100

I know that this has been around for a while, but I finally stumbled across information about the ipaq 4100 series PocketPC. It seems like a very cool concept. It looks like a version of a miniaturized Tablet PC. The unit folds completely closed, but can be opened up in two stages. The first lets you flip the PDA style screen to the front, and used with the stylus, it works just like a traditional 'vertical' pda, not at all unlike the current 3xxx, 5xxx and 19xx series ipaqs. The second stage however, let's you flip out the back panel into a full-sized keyboard. This also requires you to flip the screen so that it is in landscape mode. This looks more like a traditional mini-laptop or similar to HP's old Handheld PCs (a la the Jornada 700 series). I know this may be hard to visualize, but I found this 'supposedly' legit HP flash presentation on an Italian WebSite - http://www.pocketpcitalia.com/top_secret.zip.

Hmm.. my 30th birthday is coming up next year, and I think that is when the Warranty on my current iPaq runs out.