Got a spare few minutes? If so, take a listen to the rather strange but colourful AAS Podcast #84: AAS Insight #32 - Chat, 6220, Golf, App Store

Multimedia from All About Symbian

Philippa is our current Queen of Questions, and here is another one from her. Does it really matter what your phone looks like if it does the job?

With the launch of iPhone/iPod touch apps and MobileMe push via firmware 2.0 I've been a bit like the proverbial kid in the candy store for the last week. I've been very happy with my iPhone in general but now I have the opportunity to make up for the bits of functionality I've been missing since moving from a PIM based device. Sensibly I first looked for a ToDo list program and quickly found a free one which was more than adequate for my basic needs. Other freebees included the Evernote Beta (which is very good), Facebook (which seems to offer less functionality than the mobile web interface) and a silly Bubbles game which my 1 year old likes and of course sucks the life out of the battery.

However, when moving onto the paid apps my main problem has been reining in my enthusiasm. It's so easy to buy the apps via iTunes and it can be very easy to click and download without thinking too much about the purchase. I grabbed iZen Garden without really thinking and it really is a bit of a rip off. Sketches is a decent enough doodle pad which I'm happy with. One great purchase as far as I'm concerned is AcidSolitaire. This has a nice symmetry to it as it was the first third party application I bought for my Clie T625. I wonder how many more of the great Palm tools and games I'll soon be able to buy.

What is missing (probably deliberately) is hack utility type applications. By this I mean apps like the wonderful Butler for the Treo which allows you to schedule connectivity and switch certain sounds on and off automatically.

The other new functionality for MobileMe subscribers is push for email, calendars, contacts and bookmarks. Unfortunately, to say it has teething problems is an understatement. In the first few days I had about 4 emails actually pushed to my iPhone out of a MUCH larger number. Calendar synchronisation is buggy with an extra appointment appearing on my phone for no reason and a repeating event not repeating. It was at least almost instantly pushed though! Contacts syncing slowed the contacts app down terribly so I've switched that off for now. I do hope this is sorted out soon because the potential is wonderful. Apple have at least given a free 30 day extension to subscribers by way of an apology.

Despite these hiccups I would say that my iPhone has gone from a fun and pretty useful device to a genuinely useful device for both business and pleasure. There are still a few things missing like video capture and and document editing, but I can't honestly think of anything else I would rather use at the moment. It feels like the Zen of Palm all over again. PHILIPPA.

The battered company is entering a new phase and could conceivably still save itself—but the cost could be its soul.

It's a strange thing to watch a company slowly and painfully destroy itself.

I thought about this a lot while reviewing the Palm Centro, specifically the cobalt blue Verizon model that the carrier just introduced. The device is quite good—with its 3G capability, small size, and killer $99 entry price, the Centro is a great entry level smartphone.

Palm recently said that it's well on the way to shipping two million Centros by the end of 2008—they've already sold over a million of them just on AT&T and Sprint alone.

Palm also threw third-party developers a bone with the introduction of the Virtual Developer Lab. That lets programmers rent hourly remote access to the company's devices for software testing. Palm is charging developers $100 per month, and $13 to $16 per hour, for this service.

Much has been written about Palm's questionable decisions and failed product efforts in recent years. I don't need to rehash all of them here. But it's a truly strange situation when you have a company that is selling "open" devices with abandonware hard-coded into them... Read all of Palm's Death Spiral over at SDC.

I finally managed to download some eReader eBooks to my iPhone and selfishly decided to download my entire selection of purchases, which turned out to total 239 books! I hadn't realised that I had spent that much with one company, I want some free shares now!!!

Anyway, how many eBooks have your puchased since owning mobile devices?

PrettyMap 5.2 and PrettyEarth 5.2 have been released

• Managing user maps has been rewritten and it is much faster
• Modified GUI that handles user maps
• A new export file format, GPX, is available
• It is much easier to move user points to their desired locations, or remove them (using context menu items)
• Support for synchronization of user maps against a remote SQL database with OpenGIS/PostGIS extensions, and visualization on a web page is available upon request

Channel Intelligence, a company based in Florida, filed a lawsuit for patent infringement in Delaware on Tuesday against a long list of startups and other companies and individuals who have one thing in common - they offer wish lists for products people may want others to buy for them. The complaint is embedded below. Our understanding is that many of these companies don’t yet know they’ve been sued, as the documents are still in the process of being delivered to them.

The patent in question, No. 6,917,941, appears to cover the invention of creating a list of things in a database. It was issued in July 2005. Defendants include Lemonade, Scott Aikin, de Brun Design, Listafterlist, MindValley, My Life Registry, On My List, Remember The Milk, Shimon Rura, Stylehive, Sprout, Chad Van Norman, WhiteStripe, WishCentral, WishList and Zlio. Channel Intelligence alleges that none of the defendants have licensed their patent to create lists. In a database.

Notable in their absence is Amazon,, Ebay and most other large etailers, all of which maintain wish lists for users. As far as I know none of them license Channel Intelligence’s patent, but we’re checking on that. More likely: Channel Intelligence isn’t prepared... More at TechCrunch. Thanks to Justine.

The more complex and clever the smartphone operating system and third party software, the more likely it is that it will feel like a computer to some degree. Windows Mobile has been sold on its similarity to the Windows desktop experience for years, and this is a ploy that has worked well.

HTC has made attempts to tart up the Windows Mobile experience and Sony Ericsson is also adopting this approach, but it is just window dressing on an operating system that shows too much of its complex innards to the user. I love Windows Mobile and still believe it to be the best mobile OS on the market, but even I am starting to enjoy a mobile OS which protects the user from the workings of the smartphone of which the iPhone and Symbian smartphones are perfect examples. They are quick, stable and tend to give the user a mobile phone experience above the smartphone workings.

Palm OS is another example of a mobile operating system that hides the smartphone side well, but as we all know is far too overdue for an upgrade. Palm OS is dead in the eyes of many people and barely creates a second thought in the minds of many who used to use Palm OS for many aspects of their lives.

The newer feature phones are getting smarter every day and are starting to catch up to the traditional smartphones in terms of functionality. There are so many clever phones on the market in 2008 that the few which have their roots embedded in the smartphone world suddenly look like relics from a bygone age.

In my view Windows Mobile has to change a LOT to compete in 2008 and of course Palm OS also needs a huge makeover. Even Symbian is starting to look a little dated in some respects, and the expected touch screen update will make a big difference to its commercial appeal but I do wonder if the whole smartphone industry is about to turn on its head and change the way we view it after so many years tucked away in a little niche market.

We get lots of emails at PDA247 concerning our coverage of smartphones and the mobile industry in general, but following a series of negative emails concerning our Palm coverage I have decided to explain the reasons behind the changes you see once and for all. For some reason that I cannot fathom, some people do not understand how web sites work. This is one I received yesterday-

Open Letter to PDA247 (quite a lot of the spelling etc. had to be tweaked to make it readable:))

I have visited your site for lots of years and enjoyed the regular updates and comments. In the past year things have gone downhill and as a Sony Clie owner I find little reason to visit any more. The Palm news is slow and the Clie news does not exist! If you cant be bothered to post news why would I visit???

Other sites are drifting away as well. Palmaddict is dominated by iPhone stuff and pictures of celebrities and the Palm news there is very poor. Why bother keeping the “Palm” bit in your names if you cant be assed to post Palm news???

I do not like the adverts. You and Palmaddict have lots of adverts and they get in the way of the news and hurt my eyes. If I want a headache I will listen to loud music instead of your continuing negative comments about Palm who started this industry!

Either take the site down or give up. Palm and Clie users deserve better than this!!!

Dominic

Open Response to Dominic

Thanks for your email Dominic in which you have completely misunderstood everything that is happening in the PDA industry, and obviously have no understanding of how websites work.

We cover as much Palm news as there is out there and the fact that there is little can hardly be blamed on PDA247 and Palm Addict. If little software and few machines are released we have little to report. We will do all we can to continue to support the Palm community, but posting only positive comments about Palm helps no one. We have witnessed a stream of poorly made devices that either have significant deficiencies or are lagging behind in terms of features, and that needs to be noted.

Clie news is of course rarely mentioned because the Clie devices have not been made for many years. As for the adverts, do you think we spend many hours updating the sites for the enjoyment of it? Of course, we choose to do so but have to pay for the hosting and other costs that go with running a site. If you expect every site to have no adverts and to only post news that suits you, then you will have a long search trying to find one.

Finally, if you are unhappy with the sites you visit you have some options open to you-

1) Stop visiting or provide ‘constructive’ feedback.

2) Build your own site or blog and post what you like to read

3) Try to think about the wider market. Websites often have to go with the flow and cover the more popular aspects of any industry in greater detail than the smaller areas.

If Palm makes a big comeback and we start to see new software and hardware being released, we will be here to cover it. Palm247 is going nowhere and we will hang on as long as Palm does.