Day: June 4, 2006

“Software tends to bloat over time. It has happened to PC software and it seems to be happening to our product. I’m actually very proud when there is courage in the organization to drop some old features and I want to encourage doing it more often, especially when better usability is achieved. One example is dropping of Wallet application. Now we have also decided to drop resolution support for 176×208 and double of that from 3rd Edition FP1 onward. QVGA is becoming widely used standard resolution in smartphones. Display component prices are dropping and supporting reduced set of resolutions makes life in platform development easier, less verification and testing and I’m sure it helps also in 3rd party application development and testing. There is an inbuilt scalable UI framework in the platform need for it is not going away. Market demand is for higher resolutions such as HVGA and VGA and platform is developing to this direction. We also have to keep in mind that platform is flexible and our customers, licensees, can finally implement something different and use scalability function. Nokia 5500 is a good example about this. It has 208×208 display resolution. I see feature dropping, SW cleaning, very positively. Then there is solid ground to build up new functionality. To bloat it again someone would say.” via blogs.s60.com

“Noticeably smaller than the first-generation model, the Gigabeat S boasts a 2.4-inch, 320×240-pixel, 65,000-color QVGA screen; an excellent FM tuner with 30 autoscannable presets; and a video-out jack. Directly under the portrait-oriented display are the Back and Windows Start buttons, which takes you to the main menu no matter what you’re doing and, for example, without pausing a video that you are watching. The cross-hair-style, five-way primary controller is tactile and delicate–basic navigation on the Gigabeat S is a breeze, though the controller is placed a bit low, thanks to the elongated screen. The placement of the iPod’s Click Wheel is more natural.Most other buttons are on the Toshiba Gigabeat S’s right spine. We criticized an early version of the Gigabeat because the small buttons were unlabeled. Now they are, and they include (going from top to bottom) power, a dedicated volume rocker, and reverse, play/pause, forward. As with the Cowon iAudio X5, the placement of the play controls away from the primary navigation isn’t the most intuitive setup, but on the other hand, it’s nice to have two distinct controllers: one for playback and the other for menu navigation. iPod users don’t get purely dedicated controls.” Read this review here:

“Help Gold Miner Joe explore the legendary four-shafted gold mine in this cartoon-style jump and run game. Collect the gold and be sure and avoid the sneaky Kentucky brothers who won’t hesitate to fire your rump full of salt. Yeehaa! ” Gold Miner Joe for Palm / PocketPC is the official port of Arcade Lab‘s “Gold Miner Joe” for PC and Mac: http://www.arcadelab.com/Check out this nice game at www.viex.org

“Microsoft is continuing its slow assault on the VoIP market by signing a new deal with LG-Nortel to work together on VoIP products based on the next generation of WinCE. LG-Nortel is a joint venture between Nortel and cell phone manufacturer LG Electronics. The deal between Microsoft and LG-Nortel is a memorandum of understanding (MOU) covering joint research and development, marketing, and licensing for WinCE 6. It extends an existing agreement between the two companies in which LG-Nortel developed a WinCE 5-based multimedia SIP phone. The final agreement will be hammered out over the next several months, when designs for new WinCE 6-based IP phones will be announced. WinCE 6, code-named Yamazaki, is Microsoft’s new development environment for the next generation of smart devices and smart phones. The announcement is not getting much press, but this is a much more important deal than most people realize. Microsoft hasn’t gotten a great deal of traction in the mobile phone market, and it’s only just starting to make noise about VoIP. ” Read more here:

“Handmark has really given ol’ Tetris an impressive facelift this time around. Attractive splash title & high score screens give a positive graphical impression from the start. And, yes, the fancy Roger Dean Tetris logo is still present in this version… Nicely drawn static backdrops showcase typical Russian scenes (Kremlin, outer space etc) during the game. A minor annoyance that cannot be toggled off is the distracting checkerboard patters in the block well. The Tetromino blocks are nicely shaded for a slight 3d effect with smooth animation during block rotation and dropping. Another disappointment was when I realized the actual playfield & game graphics were designed only for 320 x 320 screens. Tetris 2.0 “supports” HVGA 320 x 480 screens but it only minimizes the DIA area while leaving black borders at the top and bottom of the screen. Perhaps Handmark intends Treo owners as the primary purchasers of Tetris 2.0? At any rate, while I was really hoping the game would utilize the full screen size on my Palm TX a bit better, it’s still a huge improvement over Tetris 1.x on Palm OS. .” Read this review at palminfocenter.com