Kindle owners are familiar with the difficulty they face managing large book libraries on the device. It can be a frustrating experience paging through a long list of books on the Kindle, and that is not a good thing for such good customers to deal with. Amazon feels your pain, and are promising an OTA update early next year to make large libraries easier to deal with. It is interesting that in this social networking age, Amazon chose to inform customers via its Kindle Facebook page.

E-book readers with color screens are getting closer to reality, with efforts by Qualcomm leading the way. Its Mirasol technology uses ambient light to power the display, and like e-Ink screens power is only needed when the page is refreshed. Qualcomm expects to see readers using the color screens start appearing in the market next year.

Opera Mobile has long been one of the best browsers on the Windows Mobile platform, many would claim it is the best, and the newest version has cemented that position. Opera Mobile 10 has updated the user interface to make it less cluttered and easier to use, while making improvements to the browsing capabilities of the program. The new interface is optimized for touchscreen navigation, bringing good usage benefits to current smartphones. Tabbed browsing and the Speed Dial features add to the full-featured usage of Opera Mobile. It is no wonder that Opera Mobile is the default browser on HTC phones.

Office 2010 is in full preview mode, and the new mobile version of the next Office suite is now available for Windows Phones. The suite can be obtained through the Marketplace, and is restricted to phones running WM 6.5.

• Fuze Meeting: Share everything you see with everyone in high definition, anywhere on any device.

Although I promised myself I wasn’t going to spend time running Google’s Chrome OS right now, I got the bug. Thanks to gdgt who put an image together, I’ve spent about 15 minutes tinkering with it in VirtualBox. Chrome OS is definitely bare-bones right now and slow in a VM, but any performance judgements should be considered irrelevant right now. Two thoughts came to mind as I got my hands dirty: who is this for and what can make it successful.

As far as the first question, Chrome OS is for someone like me — someone who spends 98% of their day in a browser. Or it could be for everyone else, provided they use it in the manner intended. Is it meant to replace a daily operating system for most people? No more so than a netbook would be a replacement for a high-powered workstation. It’s simply not that kind of tool. Chrome OS is intended for quick access to the web on a portable notebook-like companion device. Think of it as the environment and device you’d go to when you don’t want to boot up a full OS but you want a larger screen and keyboard than your smartphone has.

So what can make it successful? There are several factors, but one of the key ones is what makes Firefox so useful — extensions. As Mozilla’s browser has shown, you can do quite a bit in a browser with the right tools. And oddly enough, while Chrome OS doesn’t yet support extensions officially, you’ll see in my video that I have a few installed anyway. That’s my first look and first thoughts. I’ll have plenty more to say as the project matures.

Note: because I couldn’t resize the virtual machine or Chrome OS, I recommend watching this video in full screen and in the HD version when it becomes available.

Even though I had fun running OS X on a both a netbook and a touchscreen UMPC, a couple of weeks with the operating system turned semi-frustrating. Ironically, it was for the same reasons that Windows was a hassle on UMPCs when they first hit: the desktop operating system isn’t designed to fit in a space under 1280 x 800 or so. Does it fit? Yup. Does it work well? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending on the dialog boxes you see. It simply required too much tweaking to use on a full time basis for me — not to mention that pesky licensing issue.

UNEASYsilence peeped a pair of modified bits from Apple’s latest Bluetooth Update and word is that they add touch scrolling to 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows. Although geared for using Windows in Bootcamp, folks are reporting success on non-Apple hardware as well. So far, it’s reported that vertical scrolling is working in a few apps like Firefox and Internet Explorer 8, but no multitouch mousing is here yet. If you’d rather not go the hacked route, Microsoft’s own Sidewinder X8 mouse driver could do the trick as well. I haven’t had time to try either method yet, since I don’t run Bootcamp. I have paired the Magic Mouse with the Windows 7 partition on my netbook though, so I expect a little hackery later today.

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HOSTS: James Kendrick (Houston), Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia)

TOPICS:

Matt’s back from möbius with a handset rundown
Maybe Pocket PC isn’t such a bad name, after all
Hands on with the HTC HD2
Kevin has a 3.5G wireless broadband secret he’s been holding out on
Google’s Chrome OS explained

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• Automatically Synchronize Photos, Videos, Music and Other Selected Content – you can set Pogoplug to monitor drives for media so you don’t have to manually add the files. New content from iTunes, Windows Media Player and iPhoto is supported.
• Drag-and-Drop Music and Photo Slideshows – once you create a slide show with drag-and-drop, it’s easily sharable with anyone via the web, right through a browser.
• Easier Sharing with Pogoplug Address Book — after sharing your data with someone, Pogoplug remembers their contact information for future use, even if you remove the share.
• Global Search Across Multiple Drives and Pogoplugs — want to share data but you’re not sure which of your drives has it? Pogoplug can search all of them at one time. And if you have multiple Pogoplugs on the same account, it will even search across the devices.
• Organize Your Music, Photos and Videos — Music media is easier to browse with automatic displays sorted by album, artist and genre, complete with cover art. Video previews are shown live thumbnails.
• Play movies directly from my.pogoplug.com, or even to the iPhone — Video streaming from a Pogoplug is supported on most cameras, video cameras and mobile phones. You can also share movies for viewing over the web or with an iPhone.

All in all, this sounds like a solid step forward for the Pogoplug. Are there other options for these functions? Sure there are: Orb, Windows Home Server, various web storage and file synchronization services come to mind. But the ease of use and super-fast setup is what I found valuable in my testing of the original Pogoplug. It’s a product that doesn’t require any technical know-how of what’s going on — it simply works after the short setup. Pogoplug is now available for pre-order directly from Cloud Engines.

On the way out

I sent out (or am sending back today) a couple of gadgets that I’ve had fun working with. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s played a useful role for me and the multitouch screen was a lot of fun. The T400s proved something to me that I’ve long believed, that using a multitouch screen on a standard laptop is uncomfortable and doesn’t provide much benefit.

Reaching to touch the screen on a laptop is unnatural. While Windows 7 has nice touch features incorporated into the OS, and I really like them, I didn’t like using them on a standard notebook. This is strictly a personal opinion, and as I often say mobile devices are intensely personal. I’m sure that many will find touch on a laptop to be a wonderful tool; I’m just not in that group.

I do find that Windows 7’s multitouch features are outstanding on a convertible notebook, but only when the notebook is in slate mode. It is so natural to work with touch on a slate, and I recommend that everyone try it out if possible. I can’t state strongly enough how much sense it makes to simply tap on the screen with the fingertip to make something happen.

I was sorry to see the ThinkPad go, as I found it to be a great laptop. That ThinkPad keyboard coupled with the large screen was a great way to work. It was very thin and light, which was icing on the cake.

Today the Motorola Droid goes back to Verizon, and I will definitely miss it. It’s not without its quirks, but it’s a good smartphone with a lot going for it. It will be even better when Verizon gets that odd time-stamp bug squashed so the auto-focus camera works as advertised.

While using the Droid I found myself depending quite heavily on Google Maps Navigation, it became my primary navigation tool. The ability to have the satellite view overlaid on the map was a powerful aid to turn-by-turn navigation. I was able to see major highway exchanges and overpasses before getting to that point in the route, and that was helpful. I can’t wait for Android 2.0 to get rolled out on other phones so this navigation is more widely available.

The giant arrives

The good folks at Acer were kind enough to let me take a look at the Aspire 8940G, and it arrived just a few days ago. The notebook is simply massive, with the 18.4-inch widescreen calling for a wide body. That big screen is simply gorgeous, bright and vivid as on any notebook.

I’ve made it clear in past columns how important keyboards are to my work, and the Acer keyboard is very good. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable and it is possible to type very fast. It’s also nice that the keyboard has the 10-key pad, something I didn’t realize I missed until I had one at my disposal again.

I will be continuing my evaluation of the 8940G and sharing that experience. My arms will get a good workout, if I carry it around much.

Getting ready for the onslaught of e-book readers

Whether you like dedicated e-book readers or not, a lot of them are about to hit the market. We’ve got the Kindle and multiple Sony Readers now, and by early next year we’ll have quite a few other readers on the market. These will have different size screens, so everyone should be able to find the right size for their needs.

I’m not a big fan of e-Ink screens, I have the original Kindle but I rarely use it. I don’t like the grayness of the page background, and the slow, flickering page turns detract from the joy of reading books. I find standard LCD screens give me a more pleasurable reading experience, as I can control the brightness, color of the page background and the font. I do a lot of reading in low lighting conditions, and LCDs do a better job.

I have been using different gadgets around the Manor for reading e-books, the primary difference being screen size. I wanted to get a feel for what size device yields the best reading experience for my tastes. I have used a couple of phones with their small screens: the Droid and the iPhone 3G. I used eReader Pro on both phones and found both of them to work as expected. I preferred the iPhone with eReader, mainly because the Android version on the Droid doesn’t display pages with full justification. I found uneven lines to be a bit distracting on the Droid.

I also tried reading with several UMPCs, and even a larger Tablet PC. The Viliv S5 was a good reader due to the 5-inch screen, and it was small and light enough to be comfortable to hold for extended periods. I tried two 7-inch devices, the Viliv X70 and the S7. These two UMPCs are the same size, although one has a keyboard and the other none. The 7-inch screen was just about the perfect size to duplicate the reading experience I would get from a paperback book.

I was a bit surprised to find that overall, I preferred the S7 over the X70. The X70 is a pure slate device, so I thought it would be more comfortable to hold for longer periods. What I found was that the S7 in slate mode, even though it is a full convertible UMPC, was more comfortable to hold. The plastic case of the S7 was lighter than that of the X70, and the edges smoother on the S7. The S7 became my favorite device to serve as an e-book reader.

I also tried the ThinkPad x200 Tablet PC in slate mode, and while the 12-inch screen approximated the page size of a hardcover book, I found it too heavy to use for long sessions. I did like the big screen and the touch controls, but not for those long reading periods.

e-Books of the week

One of the brightest moments for voracious readers is discovering a new author whose novels turn out to be a joy. I had one of those moments this week as I discovered a couple of novels by John Philpin. The Murder Channel and Dreams in the Key of Blue were mystery stories I really liked. They feature forensic psychologist Lucas Frank, a sharp guy who unsuccessfully retired from the Boston legal scene but keeps getting dragged back in. Both books were exciting and well told by Philpin, and I’m looking forward to picking up his other work.

Wrap-up

That’s the week as it went down at Mobile Tech Manor. It was a fast moving week, and I hope you enjoyed sharing it with me. Until next week, take care.

TomTom for iPhone gets voicevoice (TomTom) — $99 for an iPhone navigation app is a bit steep for me, but there are some new features to help justify the cost. New are the iPod player controls for music use,  text-to-speech functionality, and advanced lane guidance. Sounds good, but all the lanes by me are single lanes.

Motorola Motus takes a fuzzy picture (AndroidGuys) — I’m not talking about the camera of the phone — the picture of the actual handset is fuzzy. It looks like a Motorola CLIQ with a foldout, flat keyboard to me. Rumored specs show support for both T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s 3G frequency, but it’s way too early to make that determination.

Google News refreshed for mobiles (Google) — iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre devices get a new edition of Google News. The update includes a new, customizable “Jump To” menu, making it easier to get at the news you want. First take my iPhone? I like it — it’s snappy and I can get at what I want in fewer clicks.

Image Credit: Tech Radar

Google’s Chrome OS might have the focus today, but Qualcomm made sure that people don’t forget about Android. The company showed off a smartbook concept made by Quanta and powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. Although this is the same chipset running in some high-end smartphones, the Snapdragon chip isn’t underclocked — it’s powering Android on the full 1GHz speed on the Cortex-A8 architecture.

Bill Timmons of Qualcomm envisions smartbooks in the same price range as a smartphone, but I think that’s a tough challenge, barring the subsidy factor. While the devices have the guts of a smartphone, there’s still a larger display to pay for. If these devices are too close in price to netbooks, I suspect that netbooks will win out with most consumers — people will perceive the fuller featured netbook running the familiar Windows OS as a better value. Anything over $200 and I just don’t see smartbooks becoming successful. And while I was leaning towards Chrome OS boosting the slow starting smartbook market, the lack of application support brings me back to Android as a potential operating system for smartbooks and netbooks.

Oh no he didn’t take the 18.4-inch Acer Aspire 8940G notebook to the local coffee shop. Oh yes he did, and it’s been an adventure from the get-go. First up, I had to find a bag at Mobile Tech Manor that the giant laptop would fit in and close. I must have tried 5 or 6 bags before I realized that if I ignored the special laptop pouch within a giant Targus backpack I have and put it in the main compartment, that it would then fit and close.

Then I had to haul the 10+ pound notebook to the car, and to the coffee shop without breaking my shoulder. Once inside the shop, I had to pass over many tables until finding one that was big enough to actually handle the giant laptop. Once that was done I was all set, and I’m working away with this gorgeous screen. Battery life is looking to be between 2.5 and 3 hours, not bad for such a powerhouse with an 8-cell battery.

The keyboard is delightful, it is a cross between a chiclet style and a “real” keyboard. The keys are flat, but have full travel unlike chiclet keys. Having a 10-key on board is taking me back to the old desktop keyboards, and it’s useful as can be. I am successfully fighting the urge to fire up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, that would be too much for the crowded shop. It sure would be fun, though.

This week saw the rollout of webOS 1.3.1, and it was largely a rollup of fixes and minor tweaks. One of the most significant changes in the new release, to me anyway, is the inclusion of browser cookies in the backup. That means your browsing information survives a rebuild and restore, which is great news. Yahoo! users will now love the synchronization with webOS as it was added to the mix. The change in webOS 1.3.1 most discussed is the one that isn’t there, Palm apparently decided to throw in the towel in the wrestling match with Apple over iTunes compatibility. This update is the first by Palm that didn’t reverse the most recent iTunes update to block webOS phones from syncing with iTunes.

In happier news for Palm, the Pre was named by Consumer Reports as one of the top products of the year. The Pre placed eighth on the CR list of top smartphones, behind the iPhones (3GS and 3G) and the BlackBerry Bold.

Google held their developer and press event today to show off the upcoming Google Chrome operating system. The source code for Chrome OS is open source and available as of today, so theoretically, you can build your own Chrome OS. However, the actual release isn’t planned until late in 2010.

Some takeaways from the live stream that I watched:

• Every application in Chrome OS will be a web-based application — there won’t be any local apps installed
• You can pin shortcuts to apps in the browser
• Fast boot times (under 7 seconds) will be partially due to the light environment, but also due to the requirement for Solid State Disk storage
• No mention of smartbooks; Chrome OS looks targeted solely for netbooks
• Support for X86 and ARM, so there’s still hope for smartbooks running Chrome OS
• All Google apps you see today will look and behave exactly the same in Chrome OS
• Android apps will not be compatible — remember, no local apps installed.
• Google will actually sell the netbook hardware work with partners on the hardware that runs the operating system
• Main use case for Chrome OS requires connectivity, such as Wi-Fi. Google is planning for 802.11n support
• Chrome OS devices aren’t intended to be your primary machine. Google assumes you have a second computer at home or work
• Google was coy on device pricing but said to expect prices that customers are used to today. I take that to be around $300 to $400
• Local user data is simply stored in a cache. The book of record for your data will be on Google’s servers
• You won’t need a Chrome OS machine to use it. Most all of the Chrome OS features will be baked into the Chrome browser.
• Interesting approach to security: “Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot.”

There’s more info to digest, which I’ll be doing over the afternoon. Suffice it to say, Chrome OS isn’t an “operating system” by traditional standards. This is more of a paradigm shift to determine what an OS is and a way to get consumers more reliant on the web where possible. In some sense, I feel that this is more bare-bones than I wanted to see. But that feeling comes from how we’ve defined an operating system up to now. I’m planning to step back and re-think my point of view because I’ve always felt that I can live in a browser. I did it before for 60-days with a safety net — the question now is: can I do it without the net?

The Verizon Droid is soon to be returned to the kind folks there who sent me this evaluation phone so it’s time for a video look at the phone. The Droid is the Android 2.0 slider that is thin and light, and sports an industrial design bent. In the video I show the responsiveness of the Droid, the hardware and give a feel for the web browsing experience. I also show the camera function, including how long it takes to focus and shoot.

I have been impressed with the Droid, and will be sad to see it go. It is a very capable smartphone compared to the many I have tried. I find it is easily the best phone on the Verizon network currently.

I’m on a bit of a camera kick this morning. Just after I scored a $299 Panasonic 1080p camcorder from Amazon today, I caught Sal Cangeloso’s thoughts about BorrowLenses.com – a camera lens rental service. I’ve been using my Canon EOS Rebel T1i for months, but only with two lenses. The standard 18-55mm kit lens is a good starter lens, but I’ve added a Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens as well. I’m in the market for a fast telephoto, but they don’t come cheap and that’s where BorrowLenses comes in.

For one week, Sal rented a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 II USM for his digital SLR at the cost of $74 plus shipping and optional insurance. While that might sound like a large sum for a week’s worth of use, this particular lens would cost you $1,900 to purchase. So with that perspective in mind, I think the rental rate is quite reasonable. Some of the telephoto glass I’ve been longing for will easily set me back over $1,000. And if the lens doesn’t really meet my needs, I’m either out that $1,000 or I have to deal with selling it at some discount. From where I stand, a small up-front rental fee is cheap insurance to ensure that I like what I’m planning to buy. Note that some brick-and-mortar camera shops offer lens rentals, so BorrowLenses isn’t necessarily unique. However, Sal’s experience appears very positive, which is good enough for me.