Collaborative Communications for Bluetooth PDAs

"Inventop (www.proximitymail.com), a Bluetooth solutions developer, last week announced the availability of ProximityMail 1.0, a collaborative communications application for Bluetooth PDAs that is designed to enhance the way localized communities of people network, communicate, and collaborate.

It is built on a technology platform called BluePing Network, which turns groups of Bluetooth PDAs into a spontaneous "random area network" without any additional infrastructure -and extends the effective range of Bluetooth.

Users can create and subscribe to groups, broadcast, or send private messages and initiate contacts with other people in the same geographical proximity. Unlike other point-to-point networking or messaging products, such as SMS, IM, or email, ProximityMail allows users to communicate anonymously to groups of users, without knowing a specific user's PDA ID, phone number, or email address....

'Proximity Mail demonstrates how an application can be used to create a small local community of Bluetooth wireless technology users without compromising user privacy. Socket continues to work with Inventop to advocate the use of Proximity Mail which can speed the adoption of Bluetooth technology.'

Business travelers, business development managers and sales professionals could use ProximityMail at networking events like conferences and trade shows. Trade show organizers and exhibitors could potentially use ProximityMail to carry out their proximity promotional campaigns. At wireless "hot spots", such as your local mall or airport, ProximityMail can provide a link to coupons and other promotional information." [allNetDevices Wireless News]

Airport Kiosks to Offer Movie Downloads

"Air travellers will be able to download feature films and computer games to a handheld computer using a service to be launched first at US airports this summer.

Customers will be able to insert their computer's removable memory card or chip into slots in the kiosks, to download films, music, games, electronic books and newspapers....

The service will be available for handheld computers running Microsoft Pocket PC or Palm operating systems. A range of memory cards and chips, including Flash memory cards, Sony's Memory Stick and IBM's Microdrive, could be used in the kiosks....

A typical feature film will take less than three minutes to download, and one megabyte of memory will store a minute of film, says Pocket PC Films, the company that will supply the movies in a compressed format. Games and books will have a much quicker download time.

Pocket PC Films currently sells feature films and other video content on CD-ROMs. These cost between $9.99 and $49.99, but movies will cost slightly less through the new kiosks, nREACH says. Similar kiosks will also be installed in shopping malls and other retail outlets." [New Scientist]

My first thought was to ask who on earth would want to watch a movie on a screen that small. Then I realized what a godsend this would be at the doctor's office with the kids, when I'm stuck at the airport, or even just in meetings.  ;-)

So I guess I'm geeky enough to look forward to this. I wonder if libraries can use something similar to circulate digital videos from within the building (over the net or via wireless would be a whole other ballgame).

New Mobile Phones Showcased

"An anonymous reader writes: "This is a report at VR-Zone showing many new and upcoming models of mobile phones with features like color LCDs, GPRS and digital cameras built-in from major Telco companies like NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Kyocera, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. 3D Graphics animation software design houses for example discreet, NewTek and Alias|Wavefront and video editing card manufacturers like Pinnacle and Canopus have their booths there too." There are too many links to list here separately, but I especially liked the pictures of products from NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson." [Slashdot]

Toshiba's iPod Competitor [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

Interesting, it has a removable 5 GB drive. Assuming that it's in a format that allows you to put in a larger sized drive, and the 5 GB is more a matter of price to market consideration, you'll be able to fit all your data on a small removable disk, and since the disks are the same size/format as PC cards, I imagine you could easily swap them out as needed. Given that Kensington's version of these disks can handle up to 200G of operating shock, I think there is little to worry about in terms of dropping/data loss.

[Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0206/18.toshiba.php