Mobile Technology

Latest Mobile Phone : Nokia N96

2008-06-13T16:14:00.001-07:00

Nokia N96 Features:

The Nokia N96 has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Bluetooth for Data
Colour Screen
Symbian Technology
Music Player
Polyphonic Tones
FM Radio
Email
MMS
3G
5 mega pixel camera
Wi Fi Enabled
MP3 Ringtones
Built-in Satellite Navigation
USB

Meet the amazing Nokia N96, the most advanced Nseries phone yet made. Packing a mighty 5 megapixel camera, built-in GPS, and a whopping-great 16Gb of built-in memory, the N96is easily one of the most powerful phones ever unleashed on the world!

Nokia N96

Screen:	240x320 pixels, 2.8 inches, 16M colours, TFT
Ringtone:	Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3
Memory:	16Gb internal memory + microSD memory cards
Networks:	Quad
Connectivity:	HSDPA, 3.6Mbps, WiFi, Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0
Dimensions:	18mm x 55mm x 103mm
Weight:	125g

Nokia N96 Images:
Nokia N96 Overview:

Unbelievable Power

Occasionally a mobile phone comes along that just beggars belief, to the point that when it's first released, it's so powerful that no-one can believe it's real.

Well, prepare to believe the unbelievable, because here comes the awesome Nokia N96.

Super-Advanced

There are no two ways about it, the Nokia N96 is easily the most advanced Nseries phone ever made. Taking the vast wealth of features from its predecessors, and adding on them, the phone packs in more features into its sexy, shiny body than you'd believe possible! It really is a case of 'whatever you want' with this beauty, as it's packed to the gills with more cool stuff than you can shake a stick at.

But, of course, there's one question everyone asks when they see a new phone: how good is the camera? Well, quite simply, it's stunning, weighing in at 5 meaty megapixels, with autofocus and flash, making the Nokia N96 a real, viable alternative to a digital camera.

Innovation Station

And then, of course, the Nokia N96 has built-in GPS. We're seeing more and more phones start to include this wonderful feature, and Nokia are leading the way once again! Combine the GPS with Nokia Maps, and you have a frighteningly good sat-nav system, all in the palm of your hand!

You can also tell it's an Nseries phone by the design, as it's quite obviously inspired by its older brothers, the N81 and N95. So, you get the sleekness of the former, with the innovative dual-slide design of the latter. So, simply slide the screen on the Nokia N96 downwards, and unveil the dedicated media and gaming controls. It's just perfect design, that!

Massive Memory

If you're wondering where you're going to store all the cool photos, music, video, games and maps you need, then wonder no more, because the Nokia N96 also comes with a massive 16Gb built in, bigger than any Nokia before it. You'll be able to get so much cool stuff on it!

All in all, then, the Nokia N96 has easily earned its title as the most advanced Nseries phone ever. In fact, it's nearly one of

Latest Mobile Phone : Motorola L9

2008-06-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Motorola L9 Features:

The Motorola L9 has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Bluetooth for Data
Bluetooth Voice & Data
Camera
Camera with Zoom
Colour Screen
Java Technology
Music Player
Polyphonic Tones
MMS
2 mega pixel camera
Digital Zoom
Video Messaging
MP3 Ringtones

The L9 is a welcomed edition to the MOTOSLVR range of mobile phones. Following the latest trend of 'the shinier the better', the SLVR L9 is now housed in a sleek reflective shell and boasts a glossy b

Motorola L9

Screen:	176x220 pixels, 1.9 inches, 256k colours, TFT
Ringtone:	Polyphonic, MP3
Memory:	20Mb internal memory
Networks:	Tri
Connectivity:	Class 10 GPRS, 32-48 kbps, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB
Dimensions:	113mm x 49mm x 11.5mm
Weight:	96g

Motorola L9 Images:
Motorola L9 Overview:

MOTOSLVR gets a new stylish look with its release of the Motorola L9. With its sleek design, mirrored finish and glossy black keypad, this phone will catch your eye. The L9 comes complete with FM radio, Bluetooth wireless technology, 2MP camera w/ 8x zoom and video capture, and microSD removable memory. There is max memory storage of 2GB with its 20MB onboard memory and expandable microSD card, which provides plenty of room for ringtones, games, pics, videos, and more to suit your entertainment needs. GRPS and EDGE technologies allow for fast downloads and video streaming. The Motorola L9 features CrystalTalkâ„¢ audio technology which allows for crystal clear conversations in noisy enviroments SUMMARY OF FEATURES: â€¢ Sleek candy-bar design with a mirror reflective finish modeled after the MOTOKRZR K1. â€¢ Premium-shimmering black keypad â€¢ 2.0 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom, landscape and portrait modes available â€¢ MPEG4 video capture with 4x zoom and full screen playback â€¢ GPRS class 10 and EDGE class 10 technologies for quick downloadingÂ³ â€¢ Progressive downloading and video streamingÂ³ â€¢ Approximately 20 MB internal memory; external memory support with optional microSD up to 2GB â€¢ Integrated digital music audio player â€¢ Supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC+ enhanced/ AMR/ WAV ringtones and music â€¢ Wireless connectivity with stereo Bluetooth wireless technologyÂ¹ â€¢ Airplane mode for uninterrupted music enjoyment â€¢ Dedicated key for quick access to integrated FM radio with Radio Data System â€¢ MegaSIM (3.0V only) support3 â€¢ CrystalTalkTM for voice clarity in noisy environments â€¢ PTV, M-PTT & SCREEN3 enabled3 â€¢ Messaging: MMS, SMS, EMS, IM, Email (POP3/SMTP/IMAP4)Â³ â€¢ Connectivity: Mini-USB, A2DP Stereo Class 2 Bluetooth wireless technology, USB 1.1, PC Sync, MotoSyncâ„¢, Mobile Phone Tools, PTT/PTV

Latest Mobile Phone : LG Virgo

2008-06-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

LG Virgo Features:

The LG Virgo has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Bluetooth for Data
Colour Screen
Music Player
FM Radio
Email
MMS
3G
Slide Phone
3 mega pixel camera
MP3 Ringtones
Touch Screen
USB

With 3 different ways of using it, the LG Virgo is as versatile as it is gorgeous. Type away with the slide down keypad, quickly select shortcuts with the built-in jog dial, or access any feature you want with the sumptuous, amazing touchscreen! Quite simply, it's sexy and useful!

LG Virgo

Screen:	240x480 pixels, 3 inches, 256k colours, TFT touchscreen
Ringtone:	Polyphonic, MP3
Memory:	microSD memory cards
Networks:	Tri
Connectivity:	HSDPA, up to 7.2Mbps, Bluetooth 1.2, USB
Dimensions:	14.5mm x 51mm x 102mm
Weight:

LG Virgo Images:
LG Virgo Overview:

Multi-Input

Touchscreen phones are getting more and more prevalent. One manufacturer in particular has gone mad with touchscreens, and that's LG.

Say hello to the mobile phone that combines a touchscreen with an ace sliding keypad, on top of a superb little jog dial: the LG Virgo.

Touchy-Feely

The most obvious feature of the LG Virgo, the thing that immediately catches the eye, is the huge touchscreen on the front of the phone. Not only does it look gorgeous, giving the phone a smooth, clean look, but it also makes accessing the phone's features an absolute dream, with a mere prod of the fingers powering it.

On top of the touchscreen, though, you also get a jog dial, on the side of the phone, letting you cycle through your shortcuts and quickly on them. Add in a full, slide-down keypad, and the LG Virgo becomes a truly versatile mobile phone to use.

Sound/Vision

So, the LG Virgo is a gorgeous mobile phone that's an absolute joy to use... but is it actually any good? Well, frankly, yes. First on its impressive list of features is a wonderful 3 megapixel camera, allowing you to take cracking good photos, wherever you are, without having to lug a digital camera about with you.

That's your eyes taken care of, but what about your ears? Well, they'll be excited, too, thanks to the music player built into the LG Virgo, supporting a massive range of music formats, letting you listen to more of your top tunes than ever before!

Raw Power

Rounding out the top three features of the LG Virgo is its internet access. That may not seem like much, until you realise it uses HSDPA and what that means is that you'll be able to get online on the phone, wherever you are, at speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps! Which is fast, to say the least!

All in all, then, for a combination of raw power, sheer beauty and ease of use, you're going to have to look a long way before you'll find a mobile phone better than the LG Virgo!

Latest Mobile Phone : HTC Touch

2008-06-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

HTC Touch Cruise Features:

The HTC Touch Cruise has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Bluetooth for Data
Music Player
MMS
3G
3 mega pixel camera
Built-in Satellite Navigation
Windows
USB
Themes

What happens if you combine the raw power of Windows Mobile 6.0 with the awesome usefulness of sat-nav, and wrap it all up in a sleek, attractive body? You get the HTC Touch Cruise, a stunning blend of high-end smartphone and sat-nav device.

HTC Touch Cruise

Screen:	240x320 pixels, 2.8 inches, 65k colours, TFT touchscreen
Ringtone:	Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3, AAC
Memory:	128Mb RAM, microSD memory cards, SD 2.0 compatible
Networks:	Quad
Connectivity:	HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB
Dimensions:	15.5mm x 58mm x 110mm
Weight:	130g

HTC Touch Cruise Images:
HTC Touch Cruise Overview:

Imagining Power

Imagine a phone that has a fabulous camera, sat-nav built in, that has TomTom maps to let you know exactly where you are, and that's powered by the sheer processing grunt of Windows Mobile 6.0.

What you've just imagined is the amazing HTC Touch Cruise.

Windows Mobile

As with previous phones in its family tree, the HTC Touch Cruise comes complete with the ultra-powerful Windows Mobile operating system. Not only is this a great system in its own right, making the phone an absolute breeze to use, but it also means you can easily sync it up with your PC, for the ultimate in connectivity.

What's more, with mobile versions of Outlook, Internet Explorer and so on, there's absolutely no reason why your HTC Touch Cruise can't be your PC when you're not in the office!

Sat Nav

The big killer application in the HTC Touch Cruise is easy to spot, right from the outset, as it has built-ion satellite navigation, allowing you to use it as your very own portable sat-nav, without needing a separate GPS receiver. Why carry two boxes, when one will do?

But it gets even better, because not only do you get GPS built in, but you also get TomTom maps, developed by the team behind the TomTom sat nav systems. And why is that a good thing? Well, since TomTom maps are amongst the single best navigation tools you'll ever experience, it means the HTC Touch Cruise is quite simply one of the most powerful sat-nav devices ever made!

Super-Phone

To make the HTC Touch Cruise a real PC in your hand, it really needs to have a decent internet connection, as well. There are no worries there, in that case, as it uses HSDPA, meaning you'll be able to get online at speeds of up to 3.6Mbps, faster than most home broadband connections!

For the perfect combination of phone, PC and sat-nav, you really can't beat the HTC Touch Cruise.

Latest Mobile Phone : HTC Shift

2008-06-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

HTC Shift Features:

The HTC Shift has features including:

Bluetooth for Data
Camera
Video Camera
Java Technology
Music Player
MSN Messenger
Email
3G
Push Email
Touch Screen
Windows
USB
Themes
Wallpapers

What do you get if you take a Vista-powered laptop, hammer it down to a fraction of its former size, and add built-in mobile broadband, as well as a whole slew of other cool mobile stuff? You get the versatile, amazing (and mind-bendingly powerful) HTC Shift.

HTC Shift

Screen:	800x480 pixels, 7 inches, 16M colours, TFT touchscreen
Ringtone:	N/A
Memory:	1Gb Ram, 40Gb Hard Drive built in
Networks:	Tri
Connectivity:	HSDPA 3.6Mbps, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, USB 2.0
Dimensions:	25mm x 129mm x 207mm
Weight:	800g

HTC Shift Images:
HTC Shift Overview:

Mobile PC

As you look at the HTC Shift, I would imagine I can guess what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'That's a big phone,' right? Well, you see, the thing is, it's not. It's not a phone at all!

No, what you see here is not a big phone, because it is, in fact, a super-small laptop!

Yes, it's a UMPC, or 'Ultra-Mobile PC' as they're known, one of a growing number of diminutive powerhouses, that match, and often exceed, the performance of their bigger laptop-brothers! The HTC Shift certainly does, because what you're looking at here is in fact the ultimate, all-in-one mobile broadband machine! It'll let you get mobile broadband without having to buy anything else!

Ultra Powerful

If it's going to have the title of a mobile PC, then it needs to be powerful. As in, really powerful, and certainly more powerful than even the top-end mobile phones. Well, the simple fact is that the HTC Shift is more powerful than any device we've gotten our hands on. The first factor in that is the fact it comes with not one, but two operating systems, Windows Mobile 6 (in cut-down, power-saving mode) and Windows Vista Business, providing the ideal match between worlds.

So, if you need it in full-on, full-fat work mode, just press the button to switch it to Vista, giving you full access to the full, included Office suite, and any additional programs. And then, when you're done, a single button-press switches it back to Windows Mobile mode, and watch the power consumption drop to minimal levels. Why is that a good thing? Well, simply, it lets you keep the HTC Shift turned on, so you can access the critical functions and keep getting important messages, without Vista turned on, which means a massive increase in battery life from laptop performance, up to mobile phone performance.

Fun Time

It's clear, then, that the HTC Shift is a two-headed creature, with its combination of two Windows interfaces. But it's also two-headed in what it does. It has the sensible business head... and then, if the call arises, it can put its fun head on! Key to that is the inclusion of Windows Media Player 11, the latest and most advanced version of Windows Media, with superb music and video playback.

If you do fire up Windows Media Player, then you're in for a treat, as well, because the HTC Shift has a high-definition 7-inch screen. Not only that, but it's widescreen and in a stroke of genius by HTC, you can change the screen resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768. So, you get the ability to easily use the touchscreen's icons but at the press of a button, you get a massively higher resolution screen!

Total Security

Finally, with the vast wealth of material you'll be putting on your HTC Shift, how can you be sure it will be secure? Well, the answer's simple; the HTC Shift is one of the most secure devices in existence, thanks not to encryption or secure passwords, but thanks to the fact it has biometric security. Or, to put it simply, it has a fingerprint reader. The only person who has your fingerprint is you, so the only person who can get into your Shift is you.

So, if you want the ultimate mobile PC, a device that truly will go anywhere and do anything your PC at home or work will do (and I mean anything), then you need the HTC Shift. If you want a mobile broadband device that will let you connect to the internet at 3.6Mbps, you need the HTC Shift. If you want the total mobile broadband solution, without needing to buy anything else, you need the HTC Shift.

Whatever your needs, there's no doubt... you need the HTC Shift!

Latest Mobile Phone : HTC Diamond

2008-06-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

HTC Diamond Features:

The HTC Diamond has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Bluetooth for Data
Colour Screen
Music Player
MSN Messenger
Internet
Email
MMS
3G
3 mega pixel camera
Wi Fi Enabled
Touch Screen
Windows
USB

It has the unadulterated power of the Windows Mobile 6.1. It has a unique 3D TouchFlo interface, making it possibly the nicest touchscreen phone to use that we've ever seen. Packed with features, and housed in a simply fabulous body, it can only be the HTC Diamond!

HTC Diamond

Screen:	480x640 pixels, 2.8 inches, 65k colours, TFT touchscreen
Ringtone:	Polyphonic, MP3, WAV, WMA
Memory:	4Gb internal memory
Networks:	Tri
Connectivity:	HSDPA, 7.2Mbps, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, USB
Dimensions:	11.5mm x 51mm x 102mm
Weight:	110g

HTC Diamond Images:
HTC Diamond Overview:

User, Friendly

HTC have made some really rather stunning mobile phones, but not everyone has heard of them, presumably because the name isn't as cool as something like Nokia. Maybe they were seen, in the past, as a bit 'business-y'?

Well, that's all going to change, because they've made a super-user-friendly, incredibly slick, and drop-dead gorgeous mobile phone that really is all set to take on the iPhone: the fabulous HTC Diamond.

Touch Me

Aside from the startlingly sleek design (which will grab your attention and never let go), the first thing you'll notice about the HTC Diamond is its screen, all 2.8 inches of it. The reason you'll notice it is because this is one of the first mobile phones to feature a full VGA resolution at 480 x 640 pixels. Or, in other words, it's sharper than just about ANY other phone you can mention!

And that's a good thing, because it lets you take in the full impact of the brand new 3D TouchFlo interface that you use to get round the phone. It's powered by Windows Mobile, but you'd never know it, as the TouchFlo interface that sits on top is simply one of the slickest, sexiest and most intuitive interfaces ever seen. Swipes and prods of your finger will kick the HTC Diamond into beautiful, animated life, and everything feels wonderful to use!

Feature-Packed

No matter how nice the HTC Diamond is to use, though, and no matter how incredible and intuitive its interface is, it'll be no good if it does nothing. But this is HTC, so you can guarantee it'll be packed with features. Take, for example, the 3 megapixel camera built in, that allows you to snap away and grab amazing photos totally on the spur of the moment.

If you ever wanted to share those photos online, then you're going to find that very easy and fun, because not only does the HTC Diamond pack in HSDPA at up to 7.2Mbps (ok, no question, that's broadband speeds!), but it also uses the latest Opera Mobile web browser, which is, quite simply, the slickest, fastest and best web browser you can get on mobile phones!

Utter Beauty

Now throw in to the mix the fact that the HTC Diamond has GPS built in (giving you the ability to always know where you are, and never get lost again!), and you'll find that no other can compare to this amazing phone.

It's powerful, it's sexy... it's the HTC Diamond, easily the most amazing mobile phone HTC have ever made.

Latest Mobile Phone : Apple IPhone 3G

2008-06-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

Apple IPhone 3G Features:

The Apple IPhone 3G has features including:

Bluetooth for Voice
Colour Screen
Music Player
Polyphonic Tones
Internet
Email
3G
2 mega pixel camera
MP3 Ringtones
Touch Screen

It was unique, it was sexy, it was the iPhone. But it lacked one feature that people were crying out for: 3G. Well, now it's back. That's right, Apple's wonderkid has evolved, and now comes with super fast internet access, and as the icing on the cake, built in GPS. It's unique, it's sexy, it's the amazing Apple iPhone 3G.

Apple IPhone 3G

Screen:	320x480 pixels, 3.5 inches, 16M colours, Touchscreen
Ringtone:	Polyphonic, MP3
Memory:	8Gb internal memory
Networks:	Quad
Connectivity:	HSDPA, WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth (headsets), USB
Dimensions:	12.3mm x 62.1mm x 115.5mm
Weight:	133g

Apple IPhone 3G Images:
Apple IPhone 3G Overview:

Next Evolution

In 2007, a phone was unleashed that promised to revolutionise the mobile industry, with its unique interface, a huge raft of features, and a body sleeker and sexier than just about every other mobile phone on the market. It was the iPhone, and it was beautiful.

The only thing it lacked, however, was 3G. Well, Apple have only gone and added it, making what was already a cool phone into a serious player in the mobile world. It's the next evolution; it's the awesome Apple iPhone 3G.

Internet Supremo

It should be obvious, from the name Apple iPhone 3G, exactly what the biggest addition to this unique mobile phone is. Unlike the previous version, this new iPhone sports a 3G... and not just any 3G either, because what you get here is HSDPA, meaning speeds unlike anything else. It means you'll be able to surf the web, with the iPhone 3G, nearly 3 times as fast as you could with the previous version. It really is ludicrously fast!

Mind you, it's ludicrously brilliant, as well, because it's not some third-party add-on web browser, tacked on as an afterthought here! What you get in the Apple iPhone 3G is their super-fast, incredibly powerful Safari browser, letting you have an internet experience unlike ANY other phone!

Feature-Packed

It's not just 3G that's been added, though, because the Apple iPhone 3G now has GPS built-in, as well. That opens up a whole host of new possibilities, with the pre-installed Google Maps. Imagine walking down the street and having the iPhone 3G telling you where your nearest restaurant or pub is, in real time. It's simply awesome.

Of course, as well as these new features, all the stuff that made the first iPhone great makes a return. Things like the iPod music/video player built into the phone, featuring the same level of brilliance as that first version, not to mention the awesome Cover Flow mode, giving you a visual representation of your album covers on the screen of the Apple iPhone 3G, that you can flick through with just a tiny brush of your fingertips.

Simply Stunning

That Cover Flow mode shows off one of the coolest returning features in the Apple iPhone 3G, and that is the sheer number of different sensors and technology to let the phone figure out what position it's in. We've all seen it in the first version: that interface that rotates automatically when you tilt the iPhone over, of the simulation of water on screen, that you can make move just by shaking it about. Those sensors return in the iPhone 3G, along with the massive, gorgeous touchscreen, and quite frankly, it just wouldn't be the same without them!

It really is a wonder of the mobile world, and in the opinion of a lot of people, this may be the best mobile phone ever made. It's the awesome Apple iPhone 3G.

Mobile Computing : Laptop

2008-06-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

A laptop computer, or simply laptop (also notebook computer, notebook and notepad) is a small mobile computer, typically weighing 3-12 pounds (around 1.3 to 5.4 kilograms), although older laptops may weigh more.

Laptops usually run on a single main battery or from an external AC/DC adapter that charges the battery while also supplying power to the computer itself. Many computers also have a 3 volt cell to run the clock and other processes in the event of a power failure.

Laptops contain components that are similar to their desktop counterparts and perform the same functions, but are miniaturized and optimized for mobile use and efficient power consumption, although typically less powerful for the same price. Laptops usually have liquid crystal displays and most of them use different memory modules for their random access memory (RAM), for instance, SO-DIMM in lieu of the larger DIMMs. In addition to a built-in keyboard, they may utilize a touchpad (also known as a trackpad) or a pointing stick for input, though an external keyboard or mouse can usually be attached.
History
Laptops began from a desire to have a full-featured computer that could be easily used anywhere. Their predecessor was called the luggable. These all-in-one systems could be easily transported, but were heavy and usually were not battery powered. The CRT was one of the major reasons luggables were so large and heavy, but the use of a full-size desktop motherboard with room for ISA expansion cards was another size factor.

It was the transition to LCD and plasma displays that permitted the luggable to shrink in size and become the first real laptop, though at first still without internal batteries. Battery technology improvements and the introduction of smaller devices such as the 3.5-inch floppy disk permitted a gradually more compact and sophisticated complete portable system.

Types

Mainstream

Laptops weighing between 5 and 7 lb (2.3–3.2 kg) with a screen size of 14.1 or 15.4 inches (35 or 39 cm) diagonally.

Desktop replacement

An Apple PowerBook G4 17" often used as a desktop replacement.

Main article: Desktop replacement computer

A desktop replacement computer is a personal computer that provides the full capabilities of a desktop computer while remaining portable. They are often a larger, bulkier laptop. Because of their increased size, this class of computer usually includes more powerful components and a larger display than generally used in smaller portable computers and can have a relatively limited battery capacity (or none at all). Some use a limited range of desktop components to provide better performance per dollar at the expense of battery life. These are sometimes called desknotes, a portmanteau of the words "desktop" and "notebook," though the term is also applied to desktop replacement computers in general.^[1]

Powerful laptops meant to be mainly used for fun and infrequently carried out due to their weight and size; the latter provides more space for powerful components and a big screen, usually measuring 17–20 inches (43–51 cm). Desktop replacements tend to have limited battery life, rarely exceeding three hours, because the hardware is not optimized for efficient power usage. Sometimes called a luggable laptop. An example of a desktop replacement computers are gaming notebooks, which are designed to handle 3D graphic-intensive processing for gamers.

Subnotebook

Sony VAIO C1 subnotebook.

Laptops weighing typically between 4.6 and 6 lb (1.8–2.7 kg) and a screen of 10.6 to 13.3 inches diagonally. A subnotebook is a small and lightweight portable computer, with most of the features of a standard laptop computer but smaller. The term is often applied to systems that run full versions of desktop operating systems such as Windows or Linux, rather than specialized software such as Windows CE, Palm OS or Internet Tablet OS.

Subnotebooks are smaller than laptops but larger than handheld computers and UMPCs. They often have screens that are 26.92 cm (10.6") (diagonal) or more, and a weight less than 1 up to about 2 kg; as opposed to full-size laptops with 35.81 cm (14.1") or 39.12 cm (15.4") screens and weighing 2 kg or more. The savings in size and weight are usually achieved partly by omitting ports or having removable media/optical drives; subnotebooks are often paired with docking stations to compensate.

Subnotebooks have been something of a niche computing product and have rarely sold in large numbers until the 2007 introduction of the Asus Eee PC and the OLPC XO-1.^[2]

Parts

2.5" hard disk drive

Most modern laptops feature 12 inch (30 cm) or larger active matrix displays with resolutions of 1024×768 pixels and above, and have a PC Card (formerly PCMCIA) or ExpressCard expansion bay for expansion cards. Internal hard disks are physically smaller—2.5 inch (60 mm)—compared to the standard desktop 3.5 inch (90 mm) drive, and usually have lower performance and power consumption. Video and sound chips are usually integrated. This tends to limit the use of laptops for gaming and entertainment, two fields which have constantly escalating hardware demands.^[3] However, higher end laptops can come with dedicated graphics processors, such as the Dell Inspiron E1505 and E1705, which can be bought with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 or similar or the MacBook Pro which comes standard with an nVidia 8600M GT. These mobile graphics processors tend to have less performance than their desktop counterparts, but this is because they have been optimized for lower power usage.

There is a wide range of laptop specific processors available from Intel (Pentium M, Celeron, Intel Core and Intel Core 2), AMD (Athlon, Turion 64, and Sempron) and from VIA (C3 and C7-M). Motorola and IBM developed and manufactured the chips for the former PowerPC-based Apple laptops (iBook and PowerBook). Generally, laptop processors are less powerful than their desktop counterparts, due to the need to save energy and reduce heat dissipation. However, the PowerPC G3 and G4 processor generations were able to offer almost the same performance as their desktop versions, limited mostly by other factors, such as the system bus bandwidth; recently, though, with the introduction of the G5s, they have been far outstripped. At one point, the Pismo G3, at up to 500 MHz, was faster than the fastest desktop G3 (then the B&W G3), which ran at 450 MHz.

Some parts for a modern laptop have no corresponding part in a desktop computer. For example, current models use lithium ion and more recently lithium polymer batteries, which have largely replaced the older nickel metal-hydride technology. Typical battery life for most laptops is two to five hours with light-duty use, but may drop to as little as one hour with intensive use. Batteries gradually deteriorate over time and eventually need to be replaced in one to five years, depending on the charging and discharging pattern.

Laptops typically use SODIMMs, as shown here.

Docking stations became another common laptop accessories in the early 1990s. They typically were quite large and offered 3.5" and 5.25" storage bays, one to three expansion slots (typically AT style), and a host of connectors. The mating between the laptop and docking station was typically through a large, high-speed, proprietary connector. The most common use was in a corporate computing environment where the company had standardized on a common network card and this same card was placed into the docking station. These stations were very large and quite expensive. As the need to additional storage and expansion slots became less critical because of the high integration inside the laptop itself, the emergence of the Port Replicator as a major accessory commenced. The Port Replicator was often a passive device that simply mated to the connectors on the back of the notebook and allowed the user to quickly connect their laptop so VGA, PS/2, RS-232, etc. devices were instantly attached. As higher speed ports like USB and Firewire became commonplace, the Port Replication was accomplished by a small cable connected to one of the USB 2.0 or FireWire ports on the notebooks. Wireless Port Replicators followed.

Virtually all laptops can be powered from an external AC converter. This device typically adds half a kilogram (1 lb) to the overall "transport weight" of the equipment.

A pointing stick or touchpad is used to control the position of the cursor on the screen. The pointing stick is usually a rubber dot that is located between the G, H and B keys on the laptop keyboard. To navigate the cursor, pressure is applied in the direction intended to move. The touchpad is touch-sensitive and the cursor can be navigated by moving the finger on the pad.

Intel, Asus, Compal, Quanta and other laptop manufacturers have created Common Building Block standard for laptop parts.

Disadvantages

Parts standardization and compatibility issues

Current compatibility problems in the laptop trade are reflective of the early era of personal computer hardware, when there were many different manufacturers, each and every one of them having their own connectivity and mounting systems and incompatibility was the norm. While there are accepted world standards of form factors for all the peripherals and add-in PC cards used in the desktop computers, there are still no firm worldwide standards relating to today's laptops' internal form factors, such as supply of electric voltage, motherboard layouts, internal adapters used in connecting the optical drive, LCD cable, keyboard and floppy drive to the main board. Most affected by this are users uneducated in the relevant fields, especially if they attempt to connect their laptops with incompatible hardware or power adapters.

Some parts, such as hard drives and memory are commodity items and are interchangeable. However, other parts such as motherboards, keyboards, and batteries are proprietary in design and are only interchangeable within a manufactures brand and/or model line.

A significant point to note is that the vast majority of laptops on the market are manufactured by a small handful of Original Design Manufacturers (ODM).^[4] The ODM matters more than the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). Major relationships include:

Quanta sells to (among others) HP/Compaq, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu, Acer, NEC, Gateway and Lenovo/IBM - note that Quanta is currently (as of August, 2007) the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world.
Compal sells to Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Acer, and Dell.
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to HP/Compaq, Dell, IBM, NEC, Acer, and Lenovo/IBM.
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP/Compaq, NEC, and Dell.
ECS sells to IBM, Fujitsu, and Dell.
Asus sells to Apple (iBook), Sony, and Samsung.
Inventec sells to HP/Compaq, Toshiba, and BenQ.
Uniwill sells to Lenovo/IBM and Fujitsu.

Durability issues

Example of how laptop performance slowly declines after several years, due to dust and lint buildup on internal heatsinks. Simply blowing air into the vents is not enough to remove this buildup. Instead, laptop disassembly is required to properly clean the heatsink.

Due to their portability and tight integration, laptops are more subject to wear and physical damage than desktops. Components such as batteries, screen hinges, power jacks, and power cords are commonly subject to deterioration due to ordinary use. These components are usually expensive to replace, with a typical laptop battery costing US$130, the AC Adapter US$75. Other parts are inexpensive such as a power jack costing perhaps US$20, but replacement may require extensive disassembly and reassembly of layers of internal components. Other inexpensive but fragile parts often cannot be purchased separate from larger more expensive components. For example, the video display cable and backlight power cable that passes through the lid hinges to operate the screen will eventually break from opening and closing the lid hundreds of times over many years, and usually these tiny cables cannot be purchased separate from an entire US$400 LCD panel.

A liquid spill onto the keyboard, which is rather a minor mishap with a desktop system can damage costly components such as the motherboard or LCD panel. Dropping a laptop can damage the LCD screen if not break apart its body. The repair costs of a failed motherboard or LCD panel may exceed the purchase value of the laptop.

Laptops must also rely on extremely compact cooling systems involving a fan and heatsink that eventually fails due to filling with airborne dust and debris. Most laptops do not have any sort of removable dust collection filter over the air intake for these cooling systems, resulting in a system that gradually runs hotter and louder as the years pass. Eventually the laptop cooling is so choked with dust that it starts to overheat just from minor operational load. This dust is usually deeply buried inside where casual cleaning and vacuuming cannot remove it, and instead complete disassembly is needed to clean the laptop.

Ruggedized Laptops

Some manufacturers have mitigated some of these problems by selling "ruggedized" laptops. These often have a rubberized sheeting under the keyboard keys and special drain that safely routes all of the water out through a hole in the bottom of the case.

Additionally, the bodies of these laptops are typically made of a stiffer magnesium alloy instead of plastic, since it is the flexing of the circuit boards and fragile mechanical devices that causes the most damage. Hard drives are often mounted in soft shock-absorbing silicone mounts to greatly increase their chances of surviving a waist-high fall.

When a laptop hits the floor, the free-floating hard drive heads can slap against the spinning platter, scratching it and cause an irrepairable head crash that renders the hard drive unusable. Recently hard drives have been constructed which can move the read heads completely off the spinning platters, known as unloading. With the use of an accelerometer, the hardware can detect the sudden fall and park the heads off-platter before the laptop hits the ground. (See Sudden Motion Sensor.)

Advantages

Laptop computers are very comfortable & useful on vacation.

The main advantage of laptops over their larger desktop counterparts is the inherent portability. Another advantage is the laptop's ability to operate on battery power in the case of a power outage and less energy consumption.

Upgrade ability

Laptops' upgradeability is severely limited, both for technical and economic reasons. As of 2006, there is no industry-wide standard form factor for laptops. Each major laptop vendor pursues its own proprietary design and construction, with the result that laptops are difficult to upgrade and exhibit high repair costs. With few exceptions, laptop components can rarely be swapped between laptops of competing manufacturers, or even between laptops from the different product-lines of the same manufacturer. Standard feature peripherals (such as audio, video, USB, 1394, WiFi, Bluetooth) are generally integrated on the main PCB (motherboard), and thus upgrades often require using external ports, card slots, or wireless peripherals. Other components, such as RAM modules, hard drives, and batteries are typically user-upgradeable.

Many laptops have removable CPUs, although support for other CPUs is restricted to the specific models supported by the laptop motherboard. The socketed CPUs are perhaps for the manufacturer's convenience, rather than the end-user, as few manufacturers try new CPUs in last year's laptop model with an eye toward selling upgrades rather than new laptops. In many other laptops, the CPU is soldered and non-replaceable.^[5]

Many laptops also include an internal MiniPCI slot, often occupied by a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth card, but as with the CPU, the internal slot is often restricted in the range of cards that can be installed. The widespread adoption of USB mitigates I/O connectivity to a great degree, although the user must carry the USB peripheral as a separate item.

NVidia and ATI have proposed a standardized interface for laptop GPU upgrades (such as an MXM), but again, choices are limited compared to the desktop PCIe/AGP after-market.

In January 2007, Asus announced XG Station external video card for laptops. XG Station is connected to the laptops using USB-2 and Express card interface.

In February 2007, a new standard for external PCI Express cables and connectors was announced. Future laptops can be expanded using external PCI Express backplane and chassis.

Performance

A modern mid-range HP Laptop.

For a given price range (and manufacturing base), laptop computational power has traditionally trailed that of desktops. This is partly due to most laptops sharing RAM between the program memory and the graphics adapter. By virtue of their usage goals, laptops prioritize energy efficiency and compactness over absolute performance. Desktop computers and their modular components are built to fit much bigger standard enclosures, along with the expectation of AC line power. As such, energy efficiency and portability for desktops are secondary design goals compared to absolute performance.

For typical home (personal use) applications, where the computer spends the majority of its time sitting idle for the next user input, laptops of the thin-client type or larger are generally fast enough to achieve the required performance. 3D gaming, multimedia (video) encoding and playback, and analysis-packages (database, math, engineering, financial, etc.) are areas where desktops still offer the casual user a compelling advantage.

With the advent of dual-core processors and perpendicular recording, laptops are beginning to close the performance gap with desktops. Intel's Core 2 line of processors is efficient enough to be used in portable computers, and many manufacturers such as Apple, Lenovo and Dell are building Core 2 based laptops. Also, many high end laptop computers feature mobility versions of graphics cards, eliminating the performance losses associated with integrated graphics.

Health issues

Laptop coaster preventing heating of lap and improving laptop airflow.

A study by State University of New York researchers says heat generated from laptops can significantly elevate the temperature of the scrotum, potentially putting sperm count at risk. The small study, which included little more than two dozen men ages 13 to 35, found that the sitting position required to balance a laptop can raise scrotum temperature by as much as 2.1 °C (3.8 °F). Heat from the laptop itself can raise the temperature by another 0.7 °C (1.4 °F), bringing the potential total increase to 2.8 °C (5.2 °F). However, further research is needed to determine whether this directly affects sterility in men.^[6] A common practical solution to this problem is to place the laptop on a table or desk.

Heat from using laptop on lap can also cause skin discoloration on the thighs.^[7]

Because of their small keyboard and trackpad pointing devices, the use of laptops can cause RSI, and for this reason laptops have docks that are used with ergonomic keyboards to prevent injury. The integrated screen often causes users to hunch over for a better view, which can cause neck or spinal injuries. Some health standards require that ergonomic keyboards be used in workplaces.

Security

Laptops are generally prized targets of theft, and theft of laptops can lead to more serious problems such as identity theft from stolen credit card numbers.^[8] Most laptops have a Kensington security slot to chain the computer to a desk with a third party security cable. In addition to this, modern operating systems and software may have disk encryption functionality that renders the data on the laptop's hard drive unreadable without a key.

Related devices

A laptop can use the same software as a desktop machine but is small enough to support mobile computing and operate on battery power. Devices that are similar to a laptop include:

Transportable, also called portable computers: Computers which can easily be moved from place to place, but cannot be used while in transit, usually because they require AC power. The most famous example is the Osborne 1. A transportable, like a laptop, can run desktop software; but it does not support mobile computing.

Tablets: Computers shaped like slates or (paper) notebooks featuring touchscreen interfaces and a stylus, plus handwriting recognition software. As of 2007, the most common subcategory is the Tablet PC, which is essentially a laptop with a touchscreen. Some tablets have no keyboard, while others called "convertibles" have a screen that can be rotated 180 degrees and folded on top of the keyboard. Tablets may have limited functionality and not be best suited for applications requiring a physical keyboard for typing, but are otherwise capable of carrying out most tasks that an ordinary laptop would be able to perform.

Internet tablets: Internet appliances in tablet form. An internet tablet supports mobile computing. Internet tablets usually use Linux and they are able to run some applications, but they cannot replace a general purpose computer. Internet tablets typically feature an MP3 and video player, web browser, chat application, and picture viewer.

Personal digital assistants (PDAs): Small computers, usually pocket-sized, usually with limited functionality. A PDA supports mobile computing, but almost never runs any desktop software.

Handheld computers: A high-end PDA or small tablet.

Smart phone: A hand held or PDA with an integrated cellphone.

Boundaries that separate these categories are blurry at times. For example, the OQO UPC is a PDA-sized tablet PC; the Apple eMate had the clamshell form factor of a laptop, but ran PDA software. The HP Omnibook line of laptops included some devices small enough to be called handheld computers. The hardware of the Nokia 770 internet tablet is essentially the same as that of a PDA such as the Zaurus 6000; the only reason it's not called a PDA is that it doesn't have PIM software. On the other hand, both the 770 and the Zaurus can run some desktop Linux software, usually with modifications.

Major brands and manufacturers

It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article entitled List of laptop manufacturers. (Discuss)

Major brands

Acer - TravelMate, Extensa, Ferrari and Aspire
Apple - MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro
Compaq - Evo, Armada, LTE, and Presario
Dell - Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, Vostro and XPS
Gateway
Hewlett-Packard - HP Pavilion, HP Omnibook, HP Compaq Notebooks
Lenovo - ThinkPad, IdeaPad, and 3000 series
Panasonic - Toughbook, Let's Note (available in Japan only)
Sony - VAIO: FJ Series, UX, TZ, NR, SZ, CR, FZ, and AR series
Toshiba - Dynabook, Equium, Portege, Tecra, Satellite, Qosmio, Libretto

ODM brands

Gaming

Abbcore Technologies - Velocita
Alienware - Area 51m, Alienware Sentia and Aurora m
Dell XPS - M1730 (laptop), and M1530 (laptop)
Falcon Northwest - DR6800, TL2
Vigor Gaming - Atlantis, Augustus, Artorius, and Aegis
Voodoo PC - Envy
WidowPC

Educational laptops for children

Digital Textbook
Elonex ONE
InkMedia
Intel - Classmate PC
OLPC XO-1 - $100 Laptop or Children's Machine
Tianhua GX-1C

Source : Wikipedia

Other brands

Abbcore Technologies - Desktop, Notebook, Server, Media Center
Acorn Computers - Deskbook, Desknote and Solonote
AVADirect
Averatec
BenQ
Everex - CloudBook, gBook
Fujitsu Siemens - Lifebook, FMV - BiBlo, Amilo
Gericom
Gigabyte Technology
HCL
HTC - HTC Shift
Hypersonic
Hyundai
Jetta (electronics company) - Jetbook
LG - Xnote
LinuxCertified - Linux laptop
MDG Computers
Medion
Micro-Star International (MSI)
NEC - VERSA, LaVie
Neo - Empiriva, Endura
Noahpad
OQO
Orca
Packard Bell - EasyNote
PC Club
Philips - X200
Pioneer Computers
Positivo Informática
Prestigio
Sager Notebook Computers
Samsung - Sens
Seanix - Seanix
Sharp - Mebius
System76
VIA - NanoBook, pc-1 Initiative
Zenith
Zepto
Wipro Technolgies

iPhone 2 : The second chapter of Apple's iPhone

2008-06-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do

The second chapter of Apple's iPhone era is almost ready to begin, and it's already clear that things will be a little different this time around.
Few people who pay even scant attention to the technology industry could claim to be shocked by the introduction of a faster iPhone earlier on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since June 2007, Jobs said, and will likely sell a few more once the new model arrives on July 11 with a faster networking chip, GPS capabilities, and a software upgrade that's an IT manager's dream for a mobile device.

From a features point of view, the new model delivers on what iPhone customers want and need. Yes, you still can't do mobile messaging, and I still don't think you can do cut-and-paste, which is just bizarre. But Apple has added just about everything else people have asked for or complained about in iPhone 1.0: faster networks, secure access to corporate e-mail, precise location-based services, and third-party applications.
What's perhaps more interesting is what Apple has learned about the mobile phone business. It's not all that surprising that Apple, which has a proud legacy of product design and software development, would have created an excellent product that has the rest of the industry scrambling to overtake.
But several developments later on Monday indicate that Apple has had to learn just as many lessons about playing in the mobile phone market over the past year as it has taught the mobile phone industry about product development.
About 90 minutes after Jobs concluded his keynote, AT&T held its own press conference to announce some major changes in the way iPhones are sold. You now must immediately agree to a two-year contract with AT&T whether you buy the iPhone in one of Apple's stores or one of AT&T's stores, and there will be no online ordering. AT&T and Apple have ended their revenue-sharing agreement, and Apple also said that the "vast majority" of its new carrier agreements overseas do not involve revenue sharing. To top it off, iPhone data plans are now $10 more expensive.
This just might be the aftereffect of the unlocked iPhones. Apple executives downplayed the actual number of unlocked iPhones several times this year, claiming they couldn't estimate how many iPhones had actually been unlocked and that in any event, it just demonstrates demand for the product.
But Apple's carrier partners sure cared about that number. Apple negotiated extremely favorable deals for iPhone 1.0, getting a piece of AT&T and other carriers' revenue for data services while retaining complete control over what applications would appear on the device.
Apple held up its end of the bargain in one sense--delivering a solid product that enticed people to switch networks and drove data usage--but failed to secure its product against those who wished to unlock it from its designated networks, forcing some carriers to watch their rivals reap the benefits of iPhone data usage. Wireless carriers may be opening up their networks in new and interesting ways, but their influence on the mobile market isn't waning just yet.
It's not clear whether Apple will introduce technology changes into the new iPhone that makes it harder to jailbreak, then unlock, but it will at least require U.S. iPhone buyers to sign a two-year contract and activate the iPhone on AT&T's network before they can take it home. This won't eliminate unlocking, but could discourage it to some degree.

Of course, compromise is part of any good partnership. In exchange for giving up revenue sharing and its novel at-home activation service, Apple is getting a subsidized iPhone. That will lower the price of entry into the iPhone world and should accelerate sales without dinging Apple's product margins to the degree that would be result if Apple absorbed the cost decrease itself. The increased sales should also offset the loss of the shared revenue.
So the big question: will the iPhone 3G--and new business model--enable Apple to meet its sales target for 2008 of 10 million units? If Apple has sold 6 million units to date, as Jobs said in his keynote, that means the company has a long way to go, having sold just 2.3 million iPhones so far in 2008.
The fact that the new iPhone won't be available until July 11 was one of the most surprising things to emerge from this morning's keynote. Apple, of course, never put a finer grain on when it expected to ship iPhone 3G beyond "next year," which Jobs quoted a few times in response to questions about the issue in 2007. But few expected the company to miss the one-year anniversary of the iPhone's debut with the new model, and at the very least, Apple itself had promised the iPhone 2.0 software by the end of June.
That means Apple will have shipped almost no iPhones from roughly the middle of May to July 11: about two whole months, although AT&T stores took longer to run out of their supply. We'll get a more precise number for iPhone shipments during Apple's third fiscal quarter, which ends in June, during the company's earnings call in July. But no matter how you slice it, that's a large gap that points to a bit of a supply chain snafu at some stage along the way.
Apple's Greg Joswiak, vice president of worldwide iPod and iPhone marketing, reiterated Apple's 10 million shipment goal in an interview after Jobs' keynote, so it's not like Apple is backing down. There are two main reasons why the company can still be confident: the combination of 3G and the cheaper price will spur potential customers who have been sitting on the sidelines in countries where the iPhone already exists, and a total of 70 countries will get official access to the iPhone, including major new destinations like Canada and Australia. In addition, Jobs hinted to CNBC later in the day that the big prize--China--could be coming sooner rather than later.
It's always interesting to watch a company try to make its way into an entirely new business; those who fail far outnumber those who succeed. The most common reason why many fail is because they forget to learn from their initial experiences, or assume they know better based on their past successes.
Apple may not proclaim it from on high in the Stevenote, but today the company showed that it's willing to learn from its mistakes, and to adjust its business model when prudent. So far in its iPhone era, Apple has wisely tackled the hard problem first--making a great product, and continuing to improve it--and is now making the kinds of changes to its business model to make sure the iPhone really does turn into the third leg of the company's business some day.

Source : Cnet News.com

Mobile TV

2008-06-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

Mobile TV is television service delivered to subscribers via mobile telecommunications networks, such as the mobile phone carriers. Japan and South Korea are at the forefront of this developing sector[1]. BT in the United Kingdom was the among the first companies outside Korea to launch Mobile TV in September 2006, although the service was abadoned less than a year later[2]. The same happened to "MFD Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland", who launched their DMB-based service June 2006 in Germany, and stopped it in April 2008[3]. Also in June 2006, mobile operator 3 in Italy (part of Hutchison Whampoa) launched their mobile TV service, but opposed to their counterpart in Germany this was based on DVB-H [4]. In the US Verizon Wireless and more recently AT&T are offering the service.

Overview
Mobile TV involves bringing TV services to the mobile phones. It combines the services of a mobile phone with television content and represents a logical step both for consumers and operators and content providers. Mobile TV over cellular networks allows viewers to enjoy personalized, interactive TV with content specifically adapted to the mobile medium. The services and viewing experience of mobile TV over cellular networks differs in a variety of ways from traditional TV viewing. In addition to mobility, mobile TV delivers a variety of services including video-on-demand, traditional/linear and live TV programs. Another exciting opportunity for users is Mobile TV pod casts, where content is delivered to a user’s mobile on demand or by subscriptions. Stored locally on the handset, this content can then be viewed even when there’s no network connection. And a service provider can schedule the delivery to “off-peak” hours, for example during the night.
Technically, there are currently two main ways of delivering mobile TV. The first is via a two-way cellular network and the second is through a one-way dedicated broadcast network. These include digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H), digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), TDtv (based on TD-CDMA technology from [IPWireless]), 1seg (based on Japan's ISDB-T), DAB and MediaFLO. None is ideal as all have drawbacks of one kind or another: spectral frequencies used or needed, signal strength required, new antennas and towers, network capacity required, or business model.
Using the existing 3G (WCDMA/HSPA) network is the fastest and easiest way to get Mobile TV off the ground. It allows for the quick start an operator needs to grab the initiative and develop relationships with both customers and content providers. There is more than enough capacity in 3G networks to scale up for a mass market of Mobile TV services, particularly if an operator has HSPA as this will provide for several steps of capacity increases. And MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service), which means broadcast over 3G networks, will soon allow a traffic channel to be shared by all the users that are simultaneously watching the same program in the same area. MBMS complements HSPA to support higher loads in dense areas and ensure efficient network utilization.
However out of the 120 plus commercially launched mobile TV services worldwide, more than 90% of these are based on existing two-way cellular networks, using unicast. With unicast, content is transmitted separately from a single source to a single destination, like from a server to a mobile handset. And that is how each individual can get the content they want. With broadcast, the same content is delivered to a very large number of mobile handsets in a single transmission.
By using a combination of unicast and broadcast, network capacity and investments can be optimized. Broadcast bearers can be used for the most popular programs, and an unlimited number of additional programs and on-demand content can continue to be delivered efficiently using unicast. In the combined unicast–broadcast scenario, the user will not notice any difference in how content is delivered. The user will have a single user interface (TV client) in the terminal to access all content. This combination unicast and broadcast provides the best way to meet personalization and mass market.

Challenges
Device Manufacturer’s challenges
1. Power Consumption: Battery technology for mobile portable devices may be stuck in a race condition. Improved battery life can be used up by the upgraded mobile content and enhanced functions. However, dashtop mobile devices can also be powered by a 12-volt vehicle battery, however vehicle batteries are not a sustainable source of power for mobile devices.
2. Memory: To support the high buffer requirements of mobile TV. Current memory capabilities available will not be suited for long hours of mobile TV viewing. Furthermore, potential future applications like peer to peer video sharing in mobile phones and consumer broadcasting would definitely add to the increasing memory requirements. The existing P2P algorithms won't be enough for mobile devices, necessiating the advent of 'mobile P2P' algorithms. There is one start-up technology that claims patentability on its mobile P2P, but has not drawn attention from 'device manufacturers' yet.
3. User Interface Design: A large number of mobile phones do not support mobile TV; users have to purchase new handsets with improved LCD display and user interface that support mobile TV. This new design has to appeal to the end-users and increase the clarity of images without making the handset very bulky. The wider LCD touchscreens will be preferred by end-users and iPhone's popularity in the Unites States is part of the compelling evidence.
4. Processing Power: Device manufacturers should improve the processing power significantly to support a MIPS intensive application like mobile TV.
Content Provider’s challenges
The mobile TV industry opens up a new market for the content specifically tailored for mobile TVs. These could include making new mobisodes –mobile episodes of popular shows which are relatively shorter in length (3 to 5 minutes), modifying the content to suit mobile TV. Providers need to think of innovative ways of editing content, increasing close-up shots for clarity on small screen, etc.

Mobile TV standards
European Union feels it's urgent to choose a single standard for mobile TV in European nations. EU seems determined to pick one standard by 2008, and indications are that EU is inclined to back Nokia-led DVB-H, while European broadcasters count on market mechanism.
GPRS
3G
DVB-H/SH
S-DMB (Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast) - South Korea, Japan
CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) - China
MediaFLO - launched in US, trialled in UK and Germany
ISDB-T (Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting) - Japan and Brazil
1seg (One Segment) - Mobile TV system on ISDB-T
T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Mulitmedia Broadcast) - South Korea, Germany
DAB-IP (Digital Audio Broadcast) - UK

References
^ NYTimes.com via Yahoo! Finance: Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the U.S., May 6, 2008
^ ZDnet: BT ditches mobile TV service, 26 July 2007
^ Broadband TV news: MFD hands back German T-DMB licence, May 1, 2008
^ The Register: DVB-H rockets ahead in Italy, 28 July 2006

Sources: Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Enterprise digital assistant (EDA)

2008-06-12T16:26:00.001-07:00

A Enterprise digital assistant (EDA) is a handheld computer, born of the Personal digital assistant popularity which was adapted for extensive more robust usage within the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) and Enterprise business Applications as a Data Capture mobile device.
Over the years, these business applications have grown from simple batched data collection using Barcode readers to include extensive usage of other expanding business technologies within the areas of WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks), GPRS Edge Communications, Biometrics, Magnetic Stripe, Smart Card and RFID data capture technologies.
EDAs are also known as Data Capture Mobile Devices or Batch Terminals or Handheld Portables.
EDAs have many uses in many types of business: Warehouse management, Inventory control and Field Services to mentions a few.
EDAs, are to the business sector, what the Personal digital assistant where to the domestic sector, which allows business applications to combine a portable device with their data collection requirements.
As is the case with PDAs, EDAs may include a Touch Screen, IrDA, Bluetooth, a Memory card slot, however EDAs may also include one or more data capture devices.
EDAs, are available on a verity of different OS Platforms i.e. WindowsCE, Windows Mobile, Windows PocketPC, Windows XP Tablet Edition, Linux (Various), Palm, DOS and some proprietary OS Platforms.
As the gray area between a PDA, Smartphone and EDA can be blurred when comparing the wide array of common features and functions, where EDAs attempt to define a difference is within business mobility applications which normally bring a pre-define requirement for long term constant daily operation (Normally allowing a minimum of 8 hours), and a higher than normal IP rating (impact rating / Drop Test) of no less than an IP54 rating, when compared to PDAs, combined with a minimum of a least one Data Collection function i.e. a Barcode or RFID Reader etc.
An EDA is designed to withstand all-day everyday use in more harsh or hazardous environments, these rugged compact devices can deliver wireless WAN/LAN/PAN voice and data communications, including VOIP functionality.
EDAs are available in a number of form factors, for example Handheld or Wearable and can be further extended to include figure barcode scanners, RFID panel Antennas, Swipe card readers, External Battery Packs and Integrated Mobile Printer carry cases.
Where PDAs are intended as single person devices for personal applications and usage, EDAs are very often intended as multi-person devices for business applications and usage.
PDAs can be expanded to add-on data capture functionality, where as, EDAs very often are designed without the need for additions and can include a combination of built in data capture functionality. Barcode_scanner or RFID Reader, 802.11b/g Wifi, GSM, GPRS and VOIP are the most common standards of functionality within EDA mobile devices.
Source : Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Ultra-Mobile PC

2008-06-12T16:20:00.001-07:00

The term Ultra-Mobile PC (abbreviated UMPC), or Project Origami, is a specification for a small form factor tablet PC. It was developed as a joint development exercise by Microsoft, Intel, and Samsung, among others. Intel is also responsible for the Mobile Internet Device, a variation on the UMPC concept.
Project Origami UMPCs feature the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows Vista or a specially adapted Linux distribution [1] and low-voltage Intel Pentium or VIA C7-M processors in the 1 GHz range.

Features
Project Origami Ultra-Mobile PCs have a 20 cm (8-inch) or smaller touch sensitive screen at a minimum resolution of 800 × 480. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is used with slight tweaks to the interface to make it more suited for the small form factor. In addition, a software suite known as the Touch Pack Interface is included to make the interface more suitable for use of stylus as well as hand.
The Project Origami Ultra-Mobile PC is just a platform for which manufacturers can design any model they want, provided they meet or exceed the baseline specifications laid down by Intel and Microsoft. However, the UMPC will be capable of running a full version of most PC operating systems. When the UMPC was disclosed at CeBIT 2006, Samsung, ASUS, and Founder had near-complete devices on display.
UMPCs with Windows XP installed are able to run any software that has been written for the Windows XP platform, though the small form factor often mandates some changes to the interface. The standard Windows XP interface is the default, though a choice of having an interface more suited for the small form factor is available with the Touch Pack Interface. As the units are so small, many UMPCs do not feature a physical keyboard, but an on-screen virtual keyboard provided in the Touch Pack Interface. Also, since the device has standard USB 2.0 connectivity, external keyboards and mice can be attached.
UMPC devices include a 900 MHz Intel Celeron M, Pentium M, Core Solo or VIA C7-M processor, 256 MB to 2 GB of RAM, and a 30 to 160 GB hard disk, depending on the manufacturer. Other ultra mobile devices feature AMD Geode CPUs (Raon Digital Vega) or Transmeta Crusoe CPUs (OQO Model 01). Ultra-Mobile PCs can also feature Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, webcams, fingerprint readers, stereo speakers, TV tuners, and memory card readers. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and WWAN connections are sometimes included as well.
UMPCs have enough processing power to support audio, video, and gaming, in addition to having rich support for browsing the internet as well as for other communication and networking applications. Windows Media Player is included, with a special skin designed to provide a better experience on the small screen. The devices also feature DirectX 9–class graphics, and all applications available for standard Tablet PCs are expected to be compatible.
Prices of UMPCs are gradually coming down to the US$500 range. Battery life is expected to increase from the initial 2½ hours to 8 hours.[2] Most UMPCs are now available with Windows Vista although many new UMPCs come with the option to have Vista or XP Tablet PC Edition installed, one example of this is the Samsung Q1 Ultra which originally launched with only Vista versions, but has subsequently launched Windows XP versions.[3]. This is largely due to the fact that current UMPC hardware is ususally too close to the minimum Vista requirements to be comfortably used.

Pre-launch marketing campaign
In February 2006, a viral marketing campaign was quietly launched for the UMPC, then still referred to by its codename, "Project Origami". Speculation over "what is Origami?" and pictures of the rumored prototypes were passed around and covered extensively on Engadget, Scobleizer,[4] Thatedeguy [5] and other technology sites. Finalization of the Origami project was announced in time to keep the excitement level high for CeBIT.
Much speculation positioned Origami as a portable gaming device that would directly compete with Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP. This rumor gained credibility after videos were leaked showing Halo: Combat Evolved being played on a UMPC. While the movie was quickly taken down from its original source, mirrors exist on many other sites. Later in the week, the Associated Press confirmed that "Origami" was actually to be a regular PC with "limited gaming capabilities".[6]

DialKeys
A new text input method was implemented for the Ultra-Mobile PC. Consisting of two rings of keys around the lower corners of the screen, DialKeys is intended for use with the thumbs.

Available devices

First two devices
The list of UMPCs on the market is growing beyond the first two available UMPCs: AMtek's T700 and Samsung's Q1.
The AMtek T700 is sold in the USA as the TabletKiosk eo v7110, agoPC ago7, and Azentek GB-810, in Europe as the PaceBlade EasyBook P7 and its Label Origami, and in Australia the TabletKiosk eo v7110 and the Pioneer DreamBook UMPC 700 and in Japan the PBJ SmartCaddie.

2006
In late August 2006, TabletKiosk launched a line of Intel based UMPCs, the eo i7210 and i7209. They followed this up in March 2007 with a ruggedized VIA based UMPC, the eo TufTab v7112XT.[7]
OQO is also selling UMPCs. The OQO model 01 was actually launched well before the Ultra-Mobile PC craze began, but its specifications were very similar to the UMPC specifications.
In September 2006, Raon Digital launched the Vega running a AMD Geode LX800, 256MB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive. It has a 4.3" screen, a 500MHz processor, and a battery life of 5.5 hours. It runs Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and retails for 680,000 Korean won (U$700-750). However it does not have WiFi capability.
In early October 2006 Samsung quietly launched the Q1B, bringing the Ultra Mobile platform closer to the vision that Microsoft created. The Q1b features a VIA C7-M ULV processor running at 1GHz, up to 5 hours of battery life, and a lower price point than the Samsung Q1. It also has optional modules for HSDPA or WiBro for ubiquitous internet connectivity in major cities around the world. Also a new UMPC on the market is the T770 from AMtek. It is a Windows Vista powered device with a 1200MHz processor and 1024MB of RAM. It has a 40GB hard disk (or 60GB on another cheaper brand, and also the same device) and a 7" screen. It is available for 899€ (the cheaper brand is 849€).

2007
Wibrain [8] launched the first UMPC model B1E and B1H in December 2007.
In 2007, Bill Gates introduced the OQO model 02 in his keynote at CES 2007. The OQO model 02 is now shipping with a 5-inch/12.7-cm screen, EV-DO WWAN, Bluetooth, 802.11 a/b/g WiFi, running Microsoft Windows XP and Vista. OQO has won quite a few computer and design awards, including Guinness World Records recognition of OQO model 02 as the world's smallest fully functional computer.
In August 2007, Raondigital launched their second UMPC 'EVERUN' which has built in WiFi and HSDPA. It uses the AMD Geode LX900. EVERUN is introduced as the UMPC with the longest battery life—as much as 6-7 hours with its standard battery and 12 hours with a large battery. Unlike its previous model 'VEGA', Everun has a full qwerty key pad, aesthetically similar to a Smartphone, which appeals to the mobile commuter.
On September 17, 2007, OQO launched the model e2[9] for the European audience with a localized keyboard, 1.6 GHz VIA C7-M processor, 120GB hard drive or a 32GB SSD option.

2008
Wibrain launched the 2nd models of B1L series with Linux Ubuntu on February 27, 2008. Their starting price is around $500.00. Wibrain UMPC features 4.8 inch touch enabled LCD screen, 1024x600 resolution, 1.0 GHz or 1.2 GHz VIA C7M CPU, 512MB or 1GB memory, 30GB or 60GB harddisk, full qwerty keyboard, built-in WiFi((802.11b/g).
Around the same date, CHIP.DE[10] featured an article about the R2H from ASUS, which runs a Windows Tablet PC edition OS on its Intel Celeron system. It has a VGA-TV output, GPS, 3 USB ports, 60GB hard drive and 512MB RAM. It also offers wired/wireless network capabilities. In Germany, its current price is 939€ at Amazon.de.

Upcoming devices
Makers of the CPUs found in most Ultra-Mobile PCs, VIA & Intel, are stepping up efforts to create new processors and chipsets that could result in devices with one tenth the power consumption compared to today’s laptops in 2008. In particular, Intel's Atom processor (the successor to Steally), which won't be available until 2008,[11] will be a 45nm design and the first core designed from the ground up to be lower power.

UMPC accessories
There are currently several companies developing accessories exclusively for the 7" UMPC platform. These include carry cases, screen protectors, styli, protective bump cases and docking stations. In addition, several prototypes of "mounting solutions" have been previewed which permit the UMPC device to be mounted in the car, on the wall or attached to an adjustable arm.

source : Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Carputer

2008-06-12T16:13:00.000-07:00

A Carputer, or 'CarPC', is a general purpose computing platform installed in a vehicle. Until 2006, no OEM or major aftermarket supplier offered or supported carputer-class installations, limiting the installed base to the hobbyist, enthusiast and entrepreneur communities. In use as early as 2000, the term generally refers to contemporaneous personal computers retrofitted in a production model car.
Home made Carputer systems are usually built from traditional desktop components, particularly the increasingly compact small form factor systems and ITX systems. The first commercially available aftermarket Carputer systems involved two main components: a monitor in the dashboard and a PC in the trunk. There are now all-in-one systems that can directly replace the factory radio in a car, without any separate components.
Laptops also serve a useful role as Carputer system components, but laptops are harder to integrate cleanly into the car. The major problem developers face is the software that is to be installed. For instance, as of 2007 GPS navigation is a common OEM equippable option and roughly equates to a laptop running GPS software. Actually doing the comparison across a few dimensions is illustrative:

Machine
The machine consists of a motherboard, processor, memory and data storage method. Data storage typically consists of a hard drive or solid state flash memory. Small form factor and low power consumption typically require the use of a micro-atx, or mini-itx board. Carputers are also available second-hand as aftermarket additions.

Screen
Commanding the Carputer is a very important factor when installaing one in a Car. Early Carputers (pre-2000) typically used LCD character displays to interface and play music. Commands were typically sent to the Carputer by means of a keyboard. Not far after the initial advent of the Carputer, many people started using a wireless serial port remote to control their machines. This was about the time that small TV screens became affordable. The majority of the first (affordable) Carputer screens were RCA video input only.
This awkward phase of sub-par display devices was frustrating to the Carputer community. Users had difficulty justifying $1000+ (now less then $200) for a nice screen, and for the most part, screens that nice were rare or just unavailable. Modern screens are leaps and bounds better than those just a few years ago. The most common modern-day screen that people use is the 7 inch VGA touch screen.[1]

Interface Hardware
In addition to the display unit, many other options exist to interact with a Carputer in a manner that does not distract the driver from the most important task - keeping the car on the road.
In 2005, users were beginning to experiment with Heads Up Display options, although these are typically custom built rather than mass produced.
Bluetooth devices are commonly used in the Carputer environment to wirelessly connect to GPS devices, mobile phones, or keyboards used to manage and maintain the system.
Other alternatives for control involve the use of either IR or RF connected remote controls for hands-only, driving-friendly control.

Interface Software
Interface software is what drives a Carputer system's hardware. The interface is very important because of the nature of the Carputer system. Typical use of a Carputer is while the vehicle is in motion. A well executed interface allows the user to concentrate on driving, rather than being distracted while looking at a screen in the vehicle's dash.
Available interface software varies depending on which operating system is utilized. Typically Windows operating systems have more options for interface software. However, there are many interface software solutions available for Macintosh and Linux as well. There are many freeware solutions available as well as shareware software that can only be used on a pay-for basis. Nearly all interface solutions offer the flexibility of customization.

Power
The most basic question those new to Carputers have is how to power the machine. Laptop users have an easier option, with the use of internal batteries. All other Carputer machines need one of two methods for power. One method is the use of an inverter; the other is the use of a DC-DC power supply.
Generally, houses (where computers are normally designed to be used) used AC (Alternating Current.) Automobiles, on the other hand, use DC (Direct Current.) PC power supplies are made to be used with Alternating Current. DC to DC power supplies are sold at most Carputer sites and are designed specifically for powering PCs in automobiles.
On a side note, when cranking a car the starter normally draws so much power that all other non-essential devices temporarily lose power. This normally would cause a booting computer to suddenly lose power, which isn't a good thing. With a bit of creative wiring, or an additional part, this issue could be taken care of quite easily. Modern DC-DC power supplies like the M2-ATX are able to provide a continuous, 12V power stream to a PC even when starting the engine.
Using the M2-ATX also solves the problem of the computer suddenly losing power when the ignition is cut. A hardware and software combination allows the computer to sense when the main power source has been cut and use the remaining power to safely shut the PC down. Several DC-DC PSUs now include shutdown controllers that connect to the car's ignition wire.
A DC-AC inverter, on the other hand, provides standard household current so that normal power supplies can be used. The disadvantage of this is efficiency. An inverter consumes more power and exudes more waste heat than an equivalent DC-DC power supply.

Audio Equipment
Typically people putting in a Carputer will use a standard audio amplifier hooked up to the Carputer and the speakers in the car. A Carputer itself does not output enough power to the speakers to make audio levels audible. Using an Amplifier will make the audio from the PC just as loud as it does when using a standard car radio.
Equalizing the audio is also very important to Carputer enthusiasts. With the use of software running on the Carputer, users have endless options to equalize the audio output from the Carputer. There are many different varieties of software that can handle audio better then any standard car equalizer. Typically car equalizers have 7-9 bands that you can adjust, but with computer software you can adjust up to 64 bands.

Other Circuits
Many people will use a series of relays to turn on devices such as the screen and amplifier. This is a very important part in a Carputer system, without these circuits to trigger on devices, other than the computer; you would have to manually turn them on after the computer would start up. Carputer enthusiasts usually want the process of the Carputer starting up easily and efficient, so these circuits make much of the process automated.

Basic features
Play music from CDs, hard drive (MP3s, other compressed files) or external device (USB/PCI FM radio receiver, etc)
Play video from DVDs, VCDs or from the hard drive (Note: Hard drives are sensitive to vibration, so driving with your Carputer turned on may shorten the life of the hard drive unless the hard drive is shock-proofed. Because laptop (2.5") hard drives are designed for such a portable device, they are generally more tolerant of shock and are an ideal choice over desktop (3.5") hard drives. Laptop hard drives are designed to endure the stress of moving and extreme conditions, unlike that of a desktop hard drive which is usually used as a stationary device, rarely if ever moved.
GPS: Provide location tracking, route planning/navigation, etc.
Satellite radio radio through external receivers. (Both Sirius and XM available)
AM/FM Radio (There are radio tuners that can be integrated and controlled by software)
Ease of operation through touchscreen display
Internet browsing through an eligible cell phone or wireless 802.11 connections
Hands free cell phone control via software with Bluetooth
Mobile office
Other external application support

Intermediate features
Display video from car mounted camera for backing up. (infrared cameras are available for backing up at night)
Record video from a webcam/mini-dv camera and store it to the carputer for later perusal. (good for recording close calls on the freeway - setup a rolling buffer which stores the last X minutes on button press)
Connect with your cars OBD-II interface and display real-time data on all diagnostic information available. (RPM/Temps/Speedo/etc.) Pull error codes immediately. Never wonder what a check-engine light is for again.
Wardriving: Using your 802.11b or g wireless connection and GPS, locate and log locations of wireless routers.
Play video games: Run an emulator and have every Atari game. Alternately include actual gaming system in the car.
Download traffic/weather information from internet. (use home WIFI or connect through mobile phone)
Connect to a mobile phone or other device using Bluetooth (useful for voice and data comms and synchronizing with PDAs, etc.)
Interfacing with factory steering wheel buttons or equivalent.
Provide night vision capability with infrared cameras.
Wireless synchronization of files between desktop and carputer
Use broadband internet phone options with cellular data card

Advanced features
Process video from car in real-time using image recognition software. Capture license plates and store in database with GPS location.
Using your GPS receiver, store logs of locations vs speed and time of day. This could be uploaded to a collaborative site for predicting travel times vs time of day. (very useful in areas where freeway congestion is variable)
Provide realtime tracking of vehicle location.
Process Audio from car in Virtual Studio Tecnology. With Consolvers, implusers, Ambiosonic and Ambiophonics. Harmonic fidelity near 100%

Advantages
Car computers can provide functions that a stereo system does not, such as internet connectivity.
No longer have to change CDs with a stereo. Rip all CDs to MP3's and store on the CarPC's hard drive
Add navigation to your vehicle
Utilize your CarPC screen even more by adding a backup camera to it
Internet connectivity available on the road

Disadvantages
Higher current draw from the car battery compared to a car stereo
Many hard drives can fail in a car environment
A brightly lit screen can be distracting at night although most complete solutions have a dim light feature
May receive a ticket in some states/provinces if playing a video, such as a movie, with the vehicle in motion and the primary display in the driver's field of view; regardless if the driver was intentionally trying to watch it or not.

source : Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Smartphone

2008-06-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities beyond a typical mobile phone, often with PC-like functionality. There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone.[1][2] For some, a smartphone is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers.[3][4] For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features.

Definition
There is no agreement in the industry about what a smartphone actually is and definitions have changed over time.[6] According to David Wood, EVP at Symbian, "Smart phones differ from ordinary mobile phones in two fundamental ways: how they are built and what they can do."[7] Other definitions put different stresses on these two factors.[citation needed]
Most devices considered smartphones today use an identifiable operating system, often with the ability to add applications (e.g. for enhanced data processing, connectivity or entertainment) - in contrast to regular phones which only support sandboxed applications (like Java games)[citation needed]. These smartphone applications may be developed by the manufacturer of the device, by the network operator or by any other third-party software developer[citation needed].
In terms of features, most smartphones support full featured email capabilities with the functionality of a complete personal organizer. Other functionality might include an additional interface such as a miniature QWERTY keyboard, a touch screen or a D-pad, a built-in camera, contact management, an accelerometer, built-in navigation hardware and software, the ability to read business documents in a variety of formats such as PDF and Microsoft Office, media software for playing music, browsing photos and viewing video clips, internet browsers or even just secure access to company mail, such as is provided by a BlackBerry.

History
The first smartphone was called Simon designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By today's standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-end smartphone.
The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with the Nokia 9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone was the result of a collaborative effort of an early successful and expensive PDA model by Hewlett Packard combined with Nokia's bestselling phone around that time and early prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge; the Nokia 9210 as the first color screen Communicator model which was the first true smartphone with an open operating system; the 9500 Communicator that was also Nokia's first cameraphone Communicator and Nokia's first WiFi phone; the 9300 Communicator was the third dimensional shift into a smaller form factor; and the latest E90 Communicator includes GPS. The Nokia Communicator model is remarkable also having been the most expensive phone model sold by a major brand for almost the full lifespan of the model series, easily 20% and sometimes 40% more expensive than the next most expensive smartphone by any major manufacturer.
The Ericsson R380 was sold as a 'smartphone' but could not run native third-party applications.[8] Although the Nokia 9210 was arguably the first true smartphone with an open operating system, Nokia continued to refer to it as a Communicator.
In 2001 RIM released the first BlackBerry which was the first smartphone optimized for wireless email use and has achieved a total customer base of 8 million subscribers by June 2007, of which three fourths are in North America.
Although the Nokia 7650, announced in 2001, was referred to as a 'smart phone' in the media, and is now called a 'smartphone' on the Nokia support site, the press release referred to it as an 'imaging phone'.[9][10][11] Handspring delivered the first widely popular smartphone devices in the US market by marrying its Palm OS based Visor PDA together with a piggybacked GSM phone module. By 2002, Handspring was marketing an integrated package called the Treo; the company was subsequently bought by Palm primarily because the PDA market was dying but the Treo smartphone was quickly becoming popular as a phone with extended PDA organizer features. That same year, Microsoft announced its Windows CE Pocket PC OS would be offered as "Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002".[12] Microsoft originally defined its Windows Smartphone products as lacking a touchscreen and offering a lower screen resolution compared to its sibling Pocket PC devices. Palm has since largely abandoned its own Palm OS in favor of licensing Microsoft's WinCE-based operating system now referred to as Windows Mobile, although WinCE and Palm OS together now amount to 10% of the smartphone market.
In 2005 Nokia launched its N-Series of 3G smartphones which Nokia started to market not as mobile phones but as multimedia computers.
Out of 1 billion camera phones to be shipped in 2008, smartphones, the higher end of the market with full email support, will represent about 10% of the market or about 100 million units.[citation needed]
The Smartphone Summit semi-annual conference details smartphone industry market data, trends, and updates among smartphone related hardware, software, and accessories.

Operating systems

The most common operating systems (OS) used in smartphones are:
Symbian OS from Symbian Ltd. (65% Market Share Sales Q4 2007)
Symbian has the largest share in most markets worldwide, but lags behind other companies in the relatively small but highly visible North American market.[13] This matches the success of its largest shareholder[14] and customer, Nokia, in all markets except Japan. Nokia itself enjoys 52.9% of the smartphone market.[15] In Japan Symbian is strong due to a relationship with NTT DoCoMo, with only one of the 44 Symbian handsets released in Japan coming from Nokia.[16] It is used by all the major handset manufacturers, including BenQ, LG, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.[17] Various implementations of user interfaces on top of Symbian (most notable being UIQ and Nokia's own S60) are incompatible, which along with the requirement that applications running on mobile phones be signed [18] is hindering the potential for a truly widely accepted mobile application platform. It has received some adverse press attention due to virus threats (actually trojan horses).[19]
Windows Mobile from Microsoft (12% Market Share Sales Q4 2007)
Windows CE operating system along with Windows Mobile middleware are widely spread in Asia. The two improved variants of this operating system, Windows Mobile 6 Professional (for touch screen devices) and Windows Mobile 6 Standard were unveiled February 2007 and in the first half of 2008 respectively. Windows Mobile is enjoying great popularity because of the low barrier to entry for third-party developers to write new applications for the platform.
RIM BlackBerry operating system (11% Market Share Sales Q4 2007)
This OS is focused on easy operation and was originally designed for business. Recently it has seen a surge in third-party applications and has been improved to offer full multimedia support.
iPhone OS from Apple Inc. (7% Market Share Sales Q4 2007)
The iPhone uses an operating system called iPhone OS derived from Mac OS X. Third party applications can be made available for normal iPhone users by creating a web service that can be accessed via the included web browser. Native application support was recently announced in March 2008 and currently requires a beta version of the iPhone OS which is available to developers and corporations for testing purposes. The new release of iPhone OS should be made available in early July 2008.[20]
Linux operating system (5% Market Share Sales Q4 2007)
Linux is strongest in China where it is used by Motorola, and in Japan, used by DoCoMo.[21][22] Rather than being a platform in its own right, Linux is used as a basis for a number of different platforms developed by several vendors, including Motorola and TrollTech, which are mostly incompatible.[23][24] PalmSource (now Access) is moving towards an interface running on Linux.[25] Another platform based on Linux is being developed by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone.[26]
Palm OS developed by PalmSource (now a subsidiary of ACCESS).
PalmSource traditionally used its own platform developed by Palm Inc. Access Linux Platform (ALP) is an improvement that was planned to be launched in the first half of 2007. It will use technical specifications from the Linux Phone Standards Forum. The Access Linux Platform will include an emulation layer to support applications developed for Palm-based devices.

source : Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Personal digital assistant (PDA)

2008-06-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a handheld computer, also known as small or palmtop computers. Newer PDAs also have both color screens and audio capabilities, enabling them to be used as mobile phones (smartphones), web browsers, or portable media players. Many PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi, or Wireless Wide-Area Networks (WWANs). Many PDAs employ touch screen technology.

History
The first PDA is considered to be the CASIO PF-3000 released in May 1983. GO Corp. was also pioneering in the field. The term was first used on January 7, 1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. PDAs are sometimes referred to as "Palms", "Palm Pilot", or "Palm Tops".

Typical features
Currently, a typical PDA has a touch screen for entering data, a memory card slot for data storage and at least one of the following for connectivity: IrDA, Bluetooth and/or WiFi. However, many PDAs (typically those used primarily as telephones) may not have a touch screen, using softkeys, a directional pad and either the numeric keypad or a thumb keyboard for input.
Software typically required to be a PDA includes an appointment calendar, a to-do list, an address book for contacts and some sort of note program. Connected PDAs also typically include E-mail and Web support.

Touch screen

PalmPilot, 1998
Many original PDAs, such as the Apple Newton and the Palm Pilot, featured touch screens for user interaction, having only a few buttons usually reserved for shortcuts to often used programs. Touch screen PDAs, including Windows Pocket PC devices, usually have a detachable stylus that can be used on the touch screen. Interaction is then done by tapping the screen to activate buttons or menu choices, and dragging the stylus to, for example, highlight. Text input is usually done in one of four ways:
Using a virtual keyboard, where a keyboard is shown on the touch screen. Input is done by tapping letters on the screen.
Using external keyboard or chorded keyboard connected by USB or Bluetooth.
Using letter or word recognition, where letters or words are written on the touch screen, and then "translated" to letters in the currently activated text field. Despite rigorous research and development projects, end-users experience mixed results with this input method, with some finding it frustrating and inaccurate, while others are satisfied with the quality.[1] Recognition and computation of handwritten horizontal and vertical formulas such as "1 + 2 =" was also under development.
Stroke recognition (termed Graffiti by Palm). In this system a predefined set of strokes represents the various characters needed. The user learns to draw these strokes on the screen or in an input area. The strokes are often simplified character shapes to make them easier to remember.
PDAs for business use, including the BlackBerry and Treo, have full keyboards and scroll wheels or thumb wheels to facilitate data entry and navigation, in addition to supporting touch-screen input. There are also full-size foldable keyboards available that plug directly, or use wireless technology to interface with the PDA and allow for normal typing. BlackBerry has additional functionality, such as push-based email and applications.
Newer PDAs, such as the Apple iPhone and iPod touch include new user interfaces using other means of input. The iPhone and iPod touch uses a technology called Multi-touch.

Memory cards
Although many early PDAs did not have memory card slots, now most have either an SD (Secure Digital) and/or a Compact Flash slot. Although originally designed for memory, SDIO and Compact Flash cards are available for such things as Wi-Fi and Webcams. Some PDAs also have a USB port, mainly for USB flash drives.
As more PDAs include telephone support, to keep the size down, many now offer miniSD or microSD slots instead of full-sized SD slots.

Wired connectivity
While many earlier PDAs connected via serial ports or other proprietary format, many today connect via USB cable. This served primarily to connect to a computer, and few, if any PDAs were able to connect to each other out of the box using cables, as USB requires one machine to act as a host - functionality which was not often planned. Some PDAs were able to connect to the internet, either by means of one of these cables, or by using an extension card with an ethernet port/RJ-45 adaptor.

Wireless connectivity
Most modern PDAs have Bluetooth wireless connectivity, an increasingly popular tool for mobile devices. It can be used to connect keyboards, headsets, GPS and many other accessories, as well as sending files between PDAs. Many mid-range and superior PDAs have Wi-Fi/WLAN/802.11-connectivity, used for connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots or wireless networks. Older PDAs predominantly have an IrDA (infrared) port; however fewer current models have the technology, as it is slowly being phased out due to support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. IrDA allows communication between two PDAs: a PDA and any device with an IrDA port or adapter. Most universal PDA keyboards use infrared technology because many older PDAs have it, and infrared technology is low-cost and has the advantage of being permitted aboard aircraft.

Synchronization
An important function of PDAs is synchronizing data with a PC. This allows up-to-date contact information stored on software such as Microsoft Outlook or ACT! to update the database on the PDA. The data synchronization ensures that the PDA has an accurate list of contacts, appointments and e-mail, allowing users to access the same information on the PDA as the host computer.
The synchronizing also prevents the loss of information stored on the device in case it is lost, stolen, or destroyed. Another advantage is that data input is usually a lot quicker on a PC, since text input via a touch screen is still not quite optimal. Transferring data to a PDA via the computer is therefore a lot quicker than having to manually input all data on the handheld device.
Most PDAs come with the ability to synchronize to a PC. This is done through synchronization software provided with the handheld, such as HotSync Manager, which comes with Palm OS handhelds, Microsoft ActiveSync for older versions of Windows or Windows Mobile Device Center on Windows Vista, which comes with Windows Mobile handhelds.
These programs allow the PDA to be synchronized with a Personal information manager. This personal information manager may be an outside program or a proprietary program. For example, the BlackBerry PDA comes with the Desktop Manager program which can synchronize to both Microsoft Outlook and ACT!. Other PDAs come only with their own proprietary software. For example, some early Palm OS PDAs came only with Palm Desktop while later Palms such as the Treo 650 has the built-in ability to sync to Palm Desktop and/or Microsoft Outlook, while Microsoft's ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center only synchronize with Microsoft Outlook or a Microsoft Exchange server.
Third-party synchronization software is also available for many PDAs from companies like Intellisync and CompanionLink. This software synchronizes these handhelds to other personal information managers which are not supported by the PDA manufacturers, such as GoldMine and Lotus Notes.

Customization

Uses
PDAs are used to store information that can be accessed at any time and any where.

Automobile navigation
Many PDAs are used in car kits and are fitted with differential Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to provide realtime automobile navigation. PDAs are increasingly being fitted as standard on new cars.
Many systems can also display traffic conditions, dynamic routing and roadside mobile radar guns. Popular software in Europe and in America for this functionality are TomTom, Garmin, iGO etc. showing road conditions and 2D or 3D environments.

Ruggedized PDAs
For many years businesses and government organizations have relied upon rugged PDAs also known as enterprise digital assistants (EDAs) for mobile data applications. Typical applications include supply chain management in warehouses, package delivery, route accounting, medical treatment and record keeping in hospitals, facilities maintenance and management, parking enforcement, access control and security, capital asset maintenance, meter reading by utilities, and "wireless waitress" applications in restaurants and hospitality venues. A common feature of EDAs are the integration of Data Capture devices like Bar Code, RFID and Smart Card Readers.

Medical and scientific uses
In medicine, PDAs have been shown to aid diagnosis and drug selection and some studies have concluded that their use by patients to record symptoms improves the effectiveness of communication with hospitals during follow-up. The first landmark study in testing the effectiveness of PDAs in a medical setting was conducted at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospitals in affiliation with Harvard Medical School. Led by the team of Steven Labkoff, MD and Sandeep Shah, the Constellation project used Apple's Newton (first PDA in the market) to cater to the demands of the medical professionals. Constellation's objective was to test how clinicians in various medical environments (wired vs un wired) would use medical reference books on a hand-held device. The study validated the hypothesis that PDAs with medical content would be used to a greater degree (>40% more often) in unwired environments. Today, the company evolved from the effort Skyscape offers a wide range of resources including drug information, treatment options, guidelines, evidence based information and journal summaries including the drug & safety alerts. Other entrants include Epocrates and ABX guide, which supply drug databases, treatment information and relevant news in formats specific to mobile devices and services such as AvantGo translate medical journals into readable formats and provide updates from journals. WardWatch organizes medical records to remind doctors making ward rounds of information such as the treatment regimens of patients and programs. Finally, Pendragon and Syware provide tools for conducting research with mobile devices, and connecting to a central server allowing the user to enter data into a centralized database using their PDA. Additionally, Microsoft Visual Studio and Sun Java provide programming tools for developing survey instruments on the handheld. These development tools allow for integration with SQL databases that are stored on the handheld and can be synchronized with a desktop/server based database.
Recently the development of Sensor Web technology has led to discussion of using wearable bodily sensors to monitor ongoing conditions like diabetes and epilepsy and alerting medical staff or the patient themselves to the treatment required via communication between the web and PDAs.

Educational uses

As mobile technology has become very common, it is no surprise that personal computing has become a vital learning tool by this time. Educational institutes have commenced a trend of integrating PDAs into their teaching practices (mobile learning). With the capabilities of PDAs, teachers are now able to provide a collaborative learning experience for their students. They are also preparing their students for possible practical uses of mobile computing upon their graduation.
PDAs and handheld devices have recently allowed for digital note taking. This has increased student’s productivity by allowing individuals to quickly spell-check, modify, and amend their class notes or e-notes. Educators are currently able to distribute course material through the use of the internet connectivity or infrared file sharing functions of the PDA. With concerns to class material, textbook publishers have begun to release e-books, or electronic textbooks, which can be uploaded directly to a PDA. This then lessens the effort of carrying multiple textbooks at one time.
To meet the instructive needs sought by educational institutes, software companies have developed programs with the learning aspects in mind. Simple programs such as dictionaries, thesauri, and word processing software are important to the digital note taking process. In addition to these simple programs, encyclopedias and digital planning lessons have created added functionality for users.
With the increase in mobility of PDAs, school boards and educational institutes have now encountered issues with these devices. School boards are now concerned with students utilizing the internet connectivity to share test answers or to gossip during class time, which creates disruptions. Many school boards have modernized their computer policies to address these new concerns. Software companies such as Scantron Corp. have now created a program for distributing digital quizzes. The quiz software disables the infrared function on PDAs, which eliminates the element of information sharing among individuals during the examination. Many colleges encourage the use of PDAs.[1]

Sporting uses
PDAs are used by glider pilots for pre-flight planning and to assist navigation in cross-country competitions. They are linked to a GPS to produce moving-map displays showing the tracks to turn-points, airspace hazards and other tactical information.
PDAs can be used by road rally enthusiasts. PDA software can be used for calculating distance, speed, time, and GPS navigation as well as unassisted navigation.

PDA for people with disabilities
PDAs offer varying degrees of accessibility for people with differing abilities, based on the particular device and service. People with vision, hearing, mobility, and speech impairments may be able to use PDAs on a limited basis, and this may be enhanced by the addition of accessibility software (i.e., [[speech recognition]] for verbal input instead of manual input). Universal design is relevant to PDAs as well as other technology, and a viable solution for many user-access issues, though it has yet to be consistently integrated into the design of popular consumer PDA devices.
PDAs have recently become quite useful in the TBI/PTSD population, especially seen in troops returning home from Operation Iraqi Freedom(OIF)/Operation Enduring Freedom(OEF). PDAs address memory issues and help these men and women out with daily life organization and reminders. As of quite recently, the Department of Veterans' Affaiars (VA) has begun issuing thousands of PDAs to troops who present the need for them. Occupational therapists have taken on a crucial role within this population helping these veterans return to the normalcy of life they once had.

Technical details

Architecture
Many PDAs run using a variation of the ARM architecture (usually denoted by the Intel XScale trademark). This encompasses a class of RISC microprocessors that are widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems, and its design was influenced strongly by a popular 1970s/1980s CPU, the MOS Technology 6502.

OS

The currently major PDA operating systems are:
01. Palm OS - owned by PalmSource
02. iPhone OS - owned by Apple Inc.
03. Windows Mobile Professional and Classic for use on Pocket PCs, (based on the Windows CE kernel) - owned by Microsoft
04. BlackBerry OS - owned by Research In Motion
Many operating systems based on the Linux kernel - free (not owned by any company) These include
05. Familiar (comes in three flavours: GPE, Opie and barebone)
06. OpenZaurus (for Zaurus PDAs)
07. Ångström, a descendent of OpenZaurus
Intimate (for PDAs with an exceedingly large amount of memory)
08. Symbian OS (formerly EPOC) owned by Motorola, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson

Decline of stand-alone PDAs vs phones

Stand-alone PDA sales fell 43.5% from 2006 to 2007. Approximately 4 million PDAs are sold per year. However, with smartphone sales increasing from levels of approximately 60 million per year, more telephones are being used as PDAs with phone capability.
According to a Gartner market study, the overall market for PDAs grew by 20.7% in the third quarter (Q3) of 2005, compared to Q3 2004, with marketshare resolving as follows (by operating system):[citation needed]
Palm OS for Palm, Inc. PDAs and some other licensees- 14.9% (declining)
Windows Mobile for PDAs that comply with the Microsoft's Pocket PC specifications - 49.2% (increasing)
RIM BlackBerry for BlackBerry PDA (produced by Research In Motion) - 25.0% (increasing)
Symbian OS - 5.8% (increasing)
Various operating systems based on the Linux kernel for various special designed PDAs (many other supported) - 0.7% (stable)
Other - 4.4% (stable)

Popular consumer PDAs
Abacus PDA Watch
Acer N Series
AlphaSmart
Amida Simputer
BlackBerry
Fujitsu Siemens Loox
HP iPAQ
High Tech Computer Corporation(Dopod,Qtek)'s series of Windows Mobile PDA/phones (HTC)
iPod Touch
iPhone
Palm, Inc. (Tungsten E2, TX, Treo and Zire)
PocketMail (email PDA with inbuilt acoustic coupler)
Psion
Sharp Wizard and Sharp Zaurus
Sidekick
Royal

Discontinued
Apple Newton
Dell Axim
GMate Yopy
hp Jornada Pocket PC (phased out/merged with iPAQ line in 2002)
LifeDrive
NEC MobilePro
Casio Pocket Viewer
Sony CLIÉ
Tapwave Zodiac

Rugged PDAs
Hand Held Products (HHP)
Intermec
Psion Teklogix
Symbol Technologies
MobileCompia (M3)

See also
Personal Navigation Assistant (PNA)
Automotive navigation system
Danger Hiptop
Desknote
Graffiti (Palm OS)
Hipster PDA
Information appliance
Laptop
Mobile software
Mobile learning
Mobile web
Personal area network
Personal Communicator
Personal Information Display
Personal information manager
Smartphone
Sony Clie
Subnotebook
Tablet PC
Ultra-Mobile PC
Wearable computer
Sena Cases
Timex Datalink
Virtual assistance

Source : Wikipedia

Mobile Computing : Wearable computer

2008-06-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

Datalink USB Dress edition with Invasion video game. (Three lives remaining). The watch crown (icontrol) can be used to move the defender left to right and the fire control is the Start/Split button on the lower side of the face of the watch at 6 o' clock
------------------------
Wearable computers are computers that are worn on the body. They have been applied to areas such as behavioral modeling, health monitoring systems, information technologies and media development. Government organizations, military, and health professionals have all incorporated wearable computers into their daily operations. Wearable computers are especially useful for applications that require computational support while the user's hands, voice, eyes or attention are actively engaged with the physical environment.
One of the main features of a wearable computer is consistency. There is a constant interaction between the computer and user, ie. there is no need to turn the device on or off. Another feature is the ability to multi-task. It is not necessary to stop what you are doing to use the device; it is augmented into all other actions. These devices can be incorporated by the user to act like a prosthetic. It can therefore be an extension of the user’s mind and/or body.
Such devices look far different from the traditional cyborg image of wearable computers, but in fact these devices are becoming more powerful and more wearable all the time.[citation needed] The most extensive military program in the wearables arena is the US Army's Land Warrior system,[citation needed] which will eventually be merged into the Future Force Warrior system.[citation needed]
Contents
1 History
2 Commercialization
3 In fiction
4 See also
5 References
6 Other references
7 External links

History
Broadly speaking, the first wearable computer could be as early as the 1500s with the invention of the pocket watch.[citation needed]
The first device that would fit the modern-day image of a wearable computer was constructed in 1961 by the mathematician Edward O. Thorp, better known as the inventor of the theory of card-counting for blackjack, and Claude E. Shannon, who is best known as "the father of information theory." The system was a concealed cigarette-pack sized analog computer designed to predict roulette wheels. A data-taker would use microswitches hidden in his shoes to indicate the speed of the roulette wheel, and the computer would indicate an octant to bet on by sending musical tones via radio to a miniature speaker hidden in a collaborators ear canal. The system was successfully tested in Las Vegas in June 1961, but hardware issues with the speaker wires prevented them from using it beyond their test runs. Their wearable was kept secret until it was first mentioned in Thorp's book Beat the Dealer (revised ed.) in 1966 and later published in detail in 1969. The 1970s saw rise to similar roulette-prediction wearable computers using next-generation technology, in particular a group known as Eudaemonic Enterprises that used a CMOS 6502 microprocessor with 5K RAM to create a shoe-computer with inductive radio communications between a data-taker and better (Bass 1985).
In 1967, Hubert Upton developed an analogue wearable computer that included an eyeglass-mounted display to aid lip reading. Using high and low-pass filters, the system would determine if a spoken phoneme was a fricative, stop consonant, voiced-fricative, voiced stop consonant, or simply voiced. An LED mounted on ordinary eyeglasses illuminated to indicate the phoneme type.
The 1980s saw the rise of more general-purpose wearable computers. In 1981 Steve Mann designed and built a backpack-mounted 6502-based computer to control flash-bulbs, cameras and other photographic systems. Mann went on to be an early and active researcher in the wearables field, especially known for his 1994 creation of the Wearable Wireless Webcam (Mann 1997).
In 1989 Reflection Technology marketed the Private Eye head-mounted display, which scanned a vertical array of LEDs across the visual field using a vibrating mirror. 1993 also saw Columbia University's augmented-reality system known as KARMA: Knowledge-based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance. Users would wear a Private Eye display over one eye, giving an overlay effect when the real world was viewed with both eyes open. KARMA would overlay wireframe schematics and maintenance instructions on top of whatever was being repaired. For example, graphical wireframes on top of a laser printer would explain how to change the paper tray. The system used sensors attached to objects in the physical world to determine their locations, and the entire system ran tethered from a desktop computer (Feiner 1993).
In 2002, as part of Kevin Warwick's Project Cyborg, Warwick's wife, Irena, wore a necklace which was electronically linked to Warwick's nervous system via an implanted electrode array. The color of the necklace changed between red and blue dependent on the signals on Warwick's nervous system
Commercialization
The commercialization of general-purpose wearable computers, as led by companies such as Xybernaut, CDI and ViA Inc, has thus far met with limited success. Publicly-traded Xybernaut tried forging alliances with companies such as IBM and Sony in order to make wearable computing widely available, but in 2005 their stock was delisted and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid financial scandal and federal investigation. Xybernaut emerged from bankruptcy protection in January, 2007. In 1998 Seiko marketed the Ruputer, a computer in a (fairly large) wristwatch, to mediocre returns. In 2001 IBM developed and publicly displayed two prototypes for a wristwatch computer running Linux, but the product never came to market. In 2002 Fossil, Inc. announced the Fossil Wrist PDA, which ran the Palm OS. Its release date was set for summer of 2003, but was delayed several times and was finally made available on January 5, 2005. Timex Datalink is another example of a practical wearable computer.
Evidence of the allure of the wearable computer and the weak market acceptance is evident with market leading Panasonic Computer Solutions Company's failed product in this market. Panasonic has specialized in mobile computing with their Toughbook line for over 10 years and has extensive market research into the field of portable, wearable computing products. In 2002, Panasonic introduced a wearable brick computer coupled with a handheld or armworn touchscreen. The brick would communicate wirelessly to the screen, and concurrently the brick would communicate wirelessly out to the internet or other networks. The wearable brick was quietly pulled from the market in 2005, while the screen evolved to a thin client touchscreen used with a handstrap.

In fiction
One of the most well known instances of wearable computers in fiction is that of James Bond, usually - but not only - in the form of a watch.
In Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, a minority of people known as "gargoyles" wear computers for information gathering.
In David Brin's science fiction novel Earth, many people (especially the elderly) wear "video" glasses on which they can record criminal or anti-social behaviour and send the images directly to the police etc.
In the manga and anime Dragon Ball series, the Scouter is a Head-mounted display worn over one eye to determine the relative strength of combatants.
In the 2004 Robin Williams film The Final Cut an implant called a 'Zoe' chip was placed into new-born infants so that their entire lives would be recorded and could be replayed after their death.
The 2006 Vernor Vinge novel Rainbows End deals with a near-future society in which wearable computing has reached a level whereby individuals who "wear" are at all times fully integrated into both the "real" world and the Internet, and in which users may customise their experience of the world, seeing and hearing and feeling what they choose to.
Cookie from Ned's Declassified has one. The screen is in his glasses, the mouse in his hand, and a printer in his back pocket.
In the movie The Tuxedo Jackie Chan is using a state-of-the-art spy suit with an advanced wearable computer and electronics.
In the movie Resident Evil the computer techie wore one on his arm.
In the animated television series Futurama, the captain of the ship, Leela, wears a computer on her wrist.
In the video game series Splinter Cell, the main character Sam Fisher has almost always used a wrist computer called an OPSAT on his wrist.
In the anime series Dennou Coil, the main characters live in a city prevalent with Augmented Reality, and wear glasses that function as computers.
In the Mars trilogy series by Kim Stanley Robinson, most of the Martian populace wears a cellphone/pda/laptop combination called a wristpad. Wristpads take the place of modern-world cellphones.
In the anime and manga series World of Narue, the title character uses a headband computer, called a connector, to control a spaceship in orbit.
In the video game series Fallout, the main character wears a wrist top computer called a PIP boy.
In Torchwood and Doctor Who, Captain Jack Harkness has a 'Wrist strap'. This is a wrist mounted device that can interact with pretty much any other computer device.

source : Wikipedia

In-vehicle computing and Fleet computing

2008-06-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Many commercial and government field forces deploy a ruggedized portable computer such as the Panasonic Toughbook or larger rack-mounted computers with their fleet of vehicles. This requires the units to be anchored to the vehicle for driver safety, device security, and user ergonomics. Ruggedized computers are rated for severe vibration associated with large service vehicles and off-road driving, and the harsh environmental conditions of constant professional use such as in EMS, fire and public safety.
Other elements that enables the unit to function in vehicle:
Operating Temperature: A vehicle cabin can often experience temperature swings from -20F to +140F. Computers typically must be able to withstand these temperatures while operating. Typical fan based cooling has stated limits of 95F-100F of ambient temperature, and temperature below freezing require localized heaters to bring components up to operating temperature(based on independent studies by the SRI Group and by Panasonic R&D).
Vibration: Vehicles typically have considerable vibration that can decrease life expectancy of computer components, notably rotational storage such as HDDs.
Daylight, or sunlight readability: Visibility of standard screens becomes an issue in bright sunlight.
Touchscreens: These enable users to easily interact with the units in the field without removing gloves.
High-Temperature Battery Settings:. Lithium Ion batteries are sensitive to high temperature conditions for charging. A computer designed for the mobile environment should be designed with a high-temperature charging function that limits the charge to 85% or less of capacity.
External wireless Connections, and External GPS Antenna Connections: Necessary to contend with the typical metal cabins of vehicles and their impact on wireless reception, and to take advantage of much more capable external tranception equipment.
Several specialized manufacturers such as Gamber Johnson and LedCo build mounts for vehicle mounting of computer equipment for specific vehicles. The mounts are built to withstand the harsh conditions and maintain ergonomics.
Specialized installation companies, such as TouchStar Pacific, specialize in designing the mount design, assembling the proper parts, and installing them in a safe and consistent manner away from airbags, vehicle HVAC controls, and driver controls. Frequently installations will include a WWAN modem, power conditioning equipment, and WWAN/WLAN/GPS/etc… transceiver antennæ mounted external to the vehicle.

Limitations of mobile computing

2008-06-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

Insufficient bandwidth
If the user needs access to a network such as the internet on the go, they must resort to slow wireless WAN systems primarily intended for telephone use. Higher speed wireless LANs are only available in specific sites.
Security standards
When working mobile one is dependent on public networks, requiring careful use of VPNs.
Power consumption
Since the grid can not be used, mobile computers must rely entirely on battery power. Combined with compact size, this means unusually expensive batteries must be used
Transmission interferences
Weather and terrain problems as well as distance-limited connection exist with some technologies. Reception in tunnels and some buildings is poor.
Potential health hazards
Potential health damage from cellular radio frequency emission is not known yet. However, more car accidents are related to drivers who were talking through a mobile device. Also, cell phones may interfere with sensitive medical devices.
Human interface with device
As HMDs are still uncommon, screens are often too small. Keyboards are impractical, especially one-handed, and alternate methods such as speech or handwriting recognition require training.
01. GH Forman, J Zahorjan - Computer, 1994 - doi.ieeecomputersociety.org
02. David P. Helmbold, "A dynamic disk spin-down technique for mobile computing", citeseer.ist.psu.edu, 1996
03. MH Repacholi, "health risks from the use of mobile phones", Toxicology Letters, 2001 - Elsevier
04. Landay, J.A. Kaufmann, T.R., "user interface issues in mobile computing", Workstation Operating Systems, 1993.
05. T Imielinski, BR Badrinath "mobile wireless computing, challenges in data management- Communications of the ACM, 1994 - portal.acm.org
source: Wikipedia

Mobile Computing

2008-06-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

Mobile computing is a generic term describing one's ability to use technology while moving, as opposed to portable computers, which are only practical for use while deployed in a stationary configuration.
Many types of mobile computers have been introduced since the 1990s, including the:
01. Wearable computer
02. Personal digital assistant/Enterprise digital assistant
03. Smartphone
04. Carputer
05. UMPC
source : Wikipedia

Reference Book On Mobile Phone

2008-06-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

1. Agar, Jon, Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone, 2004 ISBN 1840465417
2. Ahonen, Tomi, m-Profits: Making Money with 3G Services, 2002, ISBN 0-470-84775-1
3. Ahonen, Kasper and Melkko, 3G Marketing 2004, ISBN 0-470-85100-7
4. Glotz, Peter & Bertsch, Stefan, eds. Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society, 2005
5. Katz, James E. & Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, 2002
6. Kavoori, Anandam & Arceneaux, Noah, eds. The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social Transformation, 2006
7. Kopomaa, Timo. The City in Your Pocket, Gaudeamus 2000
8. Levinson, Paul, Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything!, 2004 ISBN 1-4039-6041-0
9. Ling, Rich, The Mobile Connection: the Cell Phone's Impact on Society, 2004 ISBN 1558609369
10. Ling, Rich and Pedersen, Per, eds. Mobile Communications: Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere, 2005 ISBN 1852339314
11. Home page of Rich Ling [5]
12. Nyíri, Kristóf, ed. Mobile Communication: Essays on Cognition and Community, 2003
13. Nyíri, Kristóf, ed. Mobile Learning: Essays on Philosophy, Psychology and Education, 2003
14. Nyíri, Kristóf, ed. Mobile Democracy: Essays on Society, Self and Politics, 2003
15. Nyíri, Kristóf, ed. A Sense of Place: The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication, 2005 16. Nyíri, Kristóf, ed. Mobile Understanding: The Epistemology of Ubiquitous Communication, 2006
17. Plant, Dr. Sadie, on the mobile – the effects of mobile telephones on social and individual life, 2001
18. Rheingold, Howard, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, 2002 ISBN 0738208612
source : Wikipedia

Mobile Phone Terminology

2008-06-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

Related non-mobile-phone systems
Cordless telephone (portable phone)
Cordless phones are standard telephones with radio handsets. Unlike mobile phones, cordless phones use private base stations that are not shared between subscribers. The base station is connected to a land-line. Increasingly, with wireless local loop technologies, namely DECT, the distinction is blurred.
Professional Mobile Radio
Advanced professional mobile radio systems can be very similar to mobile phone systems. Notably, the IDEN standard has been used as both a private trunked radio system as well as the technology for several large public providers. Similar attempts have even been made to use TETRA, the European digital PMR standard, to implement public mobile networks.
Radio phone
This is a term which covers radios which could connect into the telephone network. These phones may not be mobile; for example, they may require a mains power supply, they may require the assistance of a human operator to set up a PSTN phone call.
Satellite phone
This type of phone communicates directly with an artificial satellite, which in turn relays calls to a base station or another satellite phone. A single satellite can provide coverage to a much greater area than terrestrial base stations. Since satellite phones are costly, their use is typically limited to people in remote areas where no mobile phone coverage exists, such as mountain climbers and mariners in the open sea.

Mobile Phone Impacts on Environment

2008-06-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

Like all high structures, cellular antenna masts pose a hazard to low flying aircraft. Towers over a certain height or towers that are close to airports or heliports are normally required to have warning lights. There have been reports that warning lights on cellular masts, TV-towers and other high structures can attract and confuse birds. US authorities estimate that millions of birds are killed near communication towers in the country each year.[56]
An example of the way mobile phones and mobile networks have sometimes been perceived as a threat is the widely reported and later discredited claim that mobile phone masts are associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which has reduced bee hive numbers by up to 75% in many areas, especially near cities in the US. The Independent newspaper cited a scientific study claiming it provided evidence for the theory that mobile phone masts are a major cause in the collapse of bee populations, with controlled experiments demonstrating a rapid and catastrophic effect on individual hives near masts.[57] Mobile phones were in fact not covered in the study, and the original researchers have since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, mobile phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted their results and created "a horror story".[58][59][60] While the initial claim of damage to bees was widely reported, the corrections to the story were almost non-existent in the media.
There are more than 500 million used mobile phones in the US sitting on shelves or in landfills [3], and it is estimated that over 125 million will be discarded this year alone. [4] The problem is growing at a rate of more than two million phones per week, putting tons of toxic waste into landfills daily. Several sites including TradeMyCell.com, ReCellular, PaceButler Corp and MyGreenElectronics offer to buy back and recycle mobile phones from users.

Mobile phones and driving safety

2008-06-12T15:03:00.001-07:00

The use of mobile phones by people who are driving has become increasingly common, either as part of their job, as in the case of delivery drivers who are calling a client, or by commuters who are chatting with a friend. While many drivers have embraced the convenience of using their cellphone while driving, some jurisdictions have made the practice against the law, such as the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Officials from these jurisdictions argue that using a mobile phone while driving is an impediment to vehicle operation that can increase the risk of road traffic accidents.
Studies have found vastly different relative risks (RR). Two separate studies using case-crossover analysis each calculated RR at 4,[49][50] while an epidemiological cohort study found RR, when adjusted for crash-risk exposure, of 1.11 for men and 1.21 for women.[51]
A simulation study from the University of Utah Professor David Strayer compared drivers with a blood alcohol content of 0.08% to those conversing on a cell phone, and after controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, the study concluded that cell phone drivers exhibited greater impairment than intoxicated drivers. [52] Meta-analysis by The Canadian Automobile Association [53] and The University of Illinois [54] found that response time while using both hands-free and hand-held phones was approximately 0.5 standard deviations higher than normal driving (i.e., an average driver, while talking on a cell phone, has response times of a driver in roughly the 40th percentile).
Other research has found that using a mobile phone while driving may reduce the driver's concentration and reaction time. People in or near their 20s who use a mobile phone while driving have the same reaction time as 70-year-olds. Studies have shown that talking on a phone can reduce the cognitive resources that the driver can apply to the driving task, and may thus lead to dangerous situations[citation needed].
Driving while using a hands-free device is not safer than driving while using a hand-held phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[49][50] epidemiological studies,[51] simulation studies,[52] and meta-analysis[53][54]. Even with this information, the State of California recently passed a cell phone law that requires drivers who are 18 years of age or older to use a hands-free device while using the phone in the car. Moreover, this law also restricts drivers under the age of 18 from using a mobile phone at all. This law goes into effect on July 1, 2008 with a $20 fine for the first offense and $50 fines for each subsequent conviction. The consistency of increased crash risk between hands-free and hand-held phone use is at odds with legislation in over 30 countries that prohibit hand-held phone use but allow hands-free. Scientific literature is mixed on the dangers of talking on a phone versus those of talking with a passenger, with the Accident Research Unit at the University of Nottingham finding that the number of utterances was usually higher for mobile calls when compared to blindfolded and non-blindfolded passengers,[55] but the University of Illinois meta-analysis concluding that passenger conversations were just as costly to driving performance as cell phone ones.[54]

Mobile Phone Impacts on Human health and behaviour

2008-06-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Since the introduction of mobile phones, concerns have been raised about the potential health impacts from regular use.[31] As mobile phone penetrations grew past fixed landline penetration levels in 1998 in Finland and from 1999 in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the Scandinavian health authorities have run continuous long term studies of effects of mobile phone radiation effects to humans, and in particular children. Numerous studies have reported no significant relationship between mobile phone use and health.
Studies from the Institute of Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute and researchers at the Danish Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen for example showed no link between mobile phone use and cancer.[32] The Danish study only covered analog mobile phone usage up through 1995, and subjects who started mobile phone usage after 1995 were counted as non-users in the study.[33] The health concerns have grown as mobile phone penetration rates throughout Europe reached 80%–90% levels earlier in this decade and prolonged exposure studies have been carried out in almost all European countries again most reporting no effect, and the most alarming studies only reporting a possible effect. However, a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of 4,500 users found a borderline statistically significant link between tumor frequency on the same side of the head as the mobile phone was used on and mobile phone usage.[34]
One study that reviewed the link between cellphones and sperm quality found that heavy mobile phone users (>4 hours per day) had significantly less viable sperm (WHO morphology score was less than half of the lower time mobile phone users).[35] A prospective study of 13 normal men found that significantly increasing their mobile phone use (>6 hours each day for 5 days) caused a marked short-term reduction of sperm quality.[36]
Men who use mobile phones on a regular basis lose about 30 percent of their active sperm cells. Those who carry their mobile phones in pockets of their pants are putting their potency at great danger. Scientists say that even in sleep mode mobile phones are harmful.[37]
This is considered to be a thermal effect, since the testes are vulnerable to heating by RF energy because of poor circulation and heat is known to have adverse effects on male fertility.[38] Also the thermal from the mobile phone proliferates the bacteria on the key pad. By the study of some research, bacteria on the keypad is more serious and fatal to human health than bacteria in the toilet. The eyes are the other part of the body known to be poor at dissipating heat. Experiments have shown that short duration exposure to very high levels of RF radiation can cause cataracts in rabbits.[38] The non-thermal effects of RF radiation are an area of active study.
A 2007 study by Prof. Bengt Arnetz and colleagues of Wayne State University and Uppsala University, and Foundation IT’IS, USA, and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, funded by the Mobile Manufacturers Forum and published in "Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS) Online" reported higher incidence of headache and also disturbance of normal sleep patterns following mobile phone use.[39]
Early in 2008, Michele Froment-Vedrine the President of AFSSET (an independent but state-funded French health watchdog), advised that parents should not give small children mobile phones.[40]
Study of the University of Szeged, Hungary showed that mobile phones carried in pockets of pants and/or worn on belts could result in loss of quantity and quality of active sperm cells by men.[41]
Safety concerns
As of 2007, several airlines are experimenting with base station and antenna systems installed to the aeroplane, allowing low power, short-range connection of any phones aboard to remain connected to the aircraft's base station.[42] Thus, they would not attempt connection to the ground base stations as during take off and landing.[citation needed] Simultaneously, airlines may offer phone services to their travelling passengers either as full voice and data services, or initially only as SMS text messaging and similar services. Qantas, the Australian airline, is the first airline to run a test aeroplane in this configuration in the autumn of 2007.[citation needed] Emirates has announced plans to allow limited mobile phone usage on some flights.[citation needed] However, in the past, commercial airlines have prevented the use of cell phones and laptops, due to the fact that the frequencies emitted from these devices may disturb the radio waves contact of the airplane.
On the 20 March 2008 an Emirates flight was the first time voice calls have been allowed in-flight on commercial airline flights. The breakthrough came after the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the United Arab Emirates-based General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) granted full approval for the AeroMobile system to be used on Emirates. Passengers were able to make and receive voice calls as well as use text messaging on today’s flight. The system automatically came into operation as the Airbus A340-300 reached cruise altitude. Passengers wanting to use the service received a text message welcoming them to the AeroMobile system when they first switched-on their phones. The approval by EASA has finally put to rest that GSM phones on certified aircraft types are safe.
In any case, there are inconsistencies between practices allowed by different airlines and even on the same airline in different countries. For example, Northwest Airlines may allow the use of mobile phones immediately after landing on a domestic flight within the US, whereas they may state "not until the doors are open" on an international flight arriving in the Netherlands. In April 2007 the US Federal Communications Commission officially grounded the idea of allowing passengers to use phones during a flight.[43]
In a similar vein, signs are put up in many countries, such as Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., at petrol stations prohibiting the use of mobile phones, due to possible safety issues.[citation needed]
Etiquette
Most schools in the United States have prohibited mobile phones in the classroom, due to the large number of class disruptions that result from their use, and the potential for cheating via text messaging. In the UK, possession of a mobile phone in an examination can result in immediate disqualification from that subject or from all that student's subjects.[44]
A working group made up of Finnish telephone companies, public transport operators and communications authorities has launched a campaign to remind mobile phone users of courtesy, especially when using mass transit—what to talk about on the phone, and how to. In particular, the campaign wants to impact loud mobile phone usage as well as calls regarding sensitive matters.[45]
Many US cities with subway transit systems underground are studying or have implemented mobile phone reception in their underground tunnels for their riders. Boston, Massachusetts has investigated such usage in their tunnels, although there is a question of usage etiquette and also how to fairly award contracts to carriers.[46][47]
The issue of mobile communication and etiquette has also become an issue of academic interest. The rapid adoption of the device has resulted in the intrusion of telephony into situations where this was previously not known. This has exposed the implicit rules of courtesy and opened them to reevaluation.[48]
source : Wikipedia

Mobile Phone Business models

2008-06-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

Tariff models
When cellular telecoms services were launched, phones and calls were very expensive and early mobile operators (carriers) decided to charge for all air time consumed by the mobile phone user. This resulted in the concept of charging callers for outbound calls and also for receiving calls. As mobile phone call charges diminished and phone adoption rates skyrocketed, more modern operators decided not to charge for incoming calls. Thus some markets have "Receiving Party Pays" models (also known as "Mobile Party Pays"), in which both outbound and received calls are charged, and other markets have "Calling Party Pays" models, by which only making calls produces costs, and receiving calls is free. An exception to this are international roaming tariffs, by which receiving calls are normally also charged.[citation needed]
The European market adopted a "Calling Party Pays" model throughout the GSM environment and soon various other GSM markets also started to emulate this model. As Receiving Party Pays systems have the undesired effect of phone owners keeping their phones turned off to avoid receiving unwanted calls, the total voice usage rates (and profits) in Calling Party Pays countries outperform those in Receiving Party Pays countries. Consequently, most countries previously with Receiving Party Pays models have either abandoned them or employed alternative marketing methods, such as massive voice call buckets, to avoid the problem of phone users keeping phones turned off.[citation needed]
In most countries today, the person receiving a mobile phone call pays nothing. However, in Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States, one can be charged per minute, for incoming as well as outgoing calls. In the United States and Canada, a few carriers are beginning to offer unlimited received phone calls. For the Chinese mainland, it was reported that both of its two operators will adopt the caller-pays approach as early as January 2007.[30]
While some systems of payment are 'pay-as-you-go' where conversation time is purchased and added to a phone unit via an Internet account or in shops or ATMs, other systems are more traditional ones where bills are paid by regular intervals. Pay as you go (also known as "pre-pay") accounts were invented simultaneously in Portugal and Italy and today form more than half of all mobile phone subscriptions. USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan and Finland are among the rare countries left where most phones are still contract-based.
One possible alternative is a sim-lock free mobile phone. Sim-lock free mobile phones allow portability between networks so users can use sim cards from various networks and not need to have their phone unlocked.

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