“As you know by now the i-mate JAQ was so ugly that even a mother couldn’t love it. Not to i-mate’s credit they are releasing a much more polished device that actually could pass for good looking…I just don’t see the appeal in this phone even for the lower price point they are targeting besides it being slim.”

*Yawwwnnn*. Sorry, couldn’t resist The quote above says it all - but if you’re really interested go on and have a look The (blurry) PDAL photos are here, and JAQ3s’ are here.

Delay in Treo approval is to blame for an expected second-quarter earnings shortfall, CEO says.

According to the Tekkeon, “With myPower ALL, you carry a single lightweight rechargeable battery to extend the play time on your portable DVD player, notebook computer, digital camera, camcorder, MP3 player and more.” That’s quite a claim, but can a power extender product really be this versatile? Read on to find… Read More

Neuros has generously offered us a second Recorder 2 Plus to giveaway to pocketnow.com readers! As a reminder…

The Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 Plus allows you to record digital media from TV, cable box, DVR, gaming console, or camcorder, onto a huge variety of flash memory formats: SD, miniSD, microSD, MMC, CF, and Sony MS Duo/Pro. The new ?Plus? model also adds 3GP recording.
Read More

CorePlayer is one of the most well-reputed 3rd party media application available for Windows Mobile. There are a number of fixes, additions, and updates in this latest release, so be sure to visit their site if you’re a current user. Some of the significant changes include the ability to save / load playlists, added equalizer profile management, and support for older versions of Windows CE. Check it out and give us your thoughts!

If any of you own the iPaq rw6800 and are having technical issues, you’ll want to check out this latest ROM update. There are around 30 fixes and 4 enhancements listed. The download itself comes in at a hefty 35MB. As is the case with any ROM update, be sure to back up all of your important data beforehand and of course, we’d love to hear your assessment afterwards!

“If you look at the history of portable recorded music, you can see a clear trend: first we had cassette tapes, then CDs. The pre-recorded music gave way to custom-burned CDs with the music the person wanted on it. Then came portable digital media players. The allure of digital audio players was simple: being able to carry more a lot of music in a single device. Since the first digital audio players made their début, we’ve seen a steady march toward higher and higher capacity storage. Today, the largest devices have a staggering 100+ GB worth of storage. Most people don’t have that much music to fill the player, but throwing more storage at the problem can only work for so long - and ultimately you’re still limited to the music that’s on the player. What if you eliminate the local storage factor, and instead stream the music to a wireless device? Suddenly having a lot of space for your music no longer matters. What if you allow the portable device to access a huge variety of music? That’s a game-changing idea, and it’s exactly what Mercora is looking to deliver.”

The Two Inch View has a nice write-up about Mercora, a new way to stream music to your device and thus free up users from requiring large amounts of storage space just to have a good music selection on their Windows Mobile Devices. While it may be slightly ahead of it’s time, it’s still a pretty neat idea.

‘Frank’, Microsoft’s front man for its new Windows Mobile ad campaign, gets a thorough going over by dogs, beavers and snakes, while keeping his hairdo straight and sending email. Wish I had that kind of dedication. Have a look at the outtakes at the bottom of the page, they’re better than the ads. MS has also given the Windows Mobile website a nice facelift - IMHO, the old version was a little disorganised. The new version is more tightly focused and should be of greater help to newbies.

“I have an admission to make: I have never really cared for the Palm OS interface. I can’t defend the position, other than to say that it is entirely a personal preference. So when I was asked to review the first Palm device to utilize MS Window’s Mobile 5 ?Phone Edition? operating system, I was a lot more enthusiastic: this is something I can sink my teeth into!”

When Palm released the Treo 700w running Windows Mobile 5 for Verizon, one of the primary complaints was its meager 32 meg of RAM. Dave Matson of Mobility Site takes a look at the Sprint version, the 700wx, which doubled the RAM. Hampered by lack of EVDO coverage in his home area, he still found a lot to like about the phone.

Here’s a list of various miniSD cards listed in Pricegrabber’s database, and the lowest price on each model. Clicking through to the vendor selling the product helps support this site, so if you’re interested in learning more about the product, click. Here are the five most popular miniSD cards and their prices according to Pricegrabber searches:

You can browse the miniSD card category to look for more deals.

Jason Langridge has posted information and links on two new mobility webcasts planned for this December. They’ll take place on December 11 and 12, with the 12th’s webcast focusing on an Office 2007 / Vista sneak peak. Neat stuff.

There?s no doubt that there are too many flash memory formats out there. SecureDigital, whether it be regular SD, miniSD, or microSD, seems to be taking hold as the preferred means of storage for many of our mobile devices.

There?s a new standard to remember ? you may have read about it ? called SDHC…. Read More

It?s always fun to take a step back in time ? it helps us seen how far we?ve come in technology, while showing us what still hasn?t changed. Mitchell Oke from Gear Diary takes a fresh look at the HP Jornada 928, one of the first handhelds to have cell phone connectivity, released back in early 2002.

It?s interesting that the J928 uses a processor that many newer devices still use today:… Read More

If you’ve got a Pocket PC Phone Edition and are concerned about the security consequencese of losing your device (and you should be), then you might want to consider beefing up your Phone Edition with some kind of theft alerting software.

The developers at Carty Studios have such a solution, Ultimate Theft Alert v3. Basically, the software keeps track of your SIM identification and automatically sends an SMS to your pre-defined destination if/when somebody inserts a new SIM card into the phone. Kinda nifty. You can grab a free trial or full version for $14.99 here (affiliate).

BONUS: Carty Studios wants to help you readers out with your security needs by offering a free license to five of you lucky folks! Here are the rules for entering this giveaway:

? Submit a post to this thread and mention at least ONE current feature you like about Ultimate Theft Alert, ONE enhancement you’d like to see or ONE short description of your greatest Pocket PC security tragedy.
? All entry posts must be made before 12:01AM EST on Monday, December 4, 2006.
? You may enter only ONCE (i.e., one post); multiple posts will be deleted and sent to the Seventh Dungeon of the Evil Goobleslug Emperor.
? The decisions of the judge(s) are final, especially those concerning his personal attire for the day.
? As always (say it with me): No Whining!

Good luck to all, and HAVE FUN!

Remember the Xda Zinc? Hopefully, you do, considering the Xda Flame stole the show all week long.

We have more snaps, courtesy of our pals over at DinarSoft. Follow on for more, and also visit last week’s thread for a recap of the specs. … [more]

“If there is an standard built-in application on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs that has been cursed as much as it is loved, it could very well be the Notes application. Notes has been around in the Pocket PC PIM (Personal Information Manager) since the early days of the platform with the idea and intention of being able to synchronize with your desktop’s Microsoft Outlook so these notes can be viewed and/or shared. While this worked by-and-large, the lack of features within the Notes application itself tended to make users shy away from it. The lack of features included things such as being able to bullet items, change font faces (bold or italic), easy exportation of files and many others. The answer for these needs and a more robust notes application has been addressed by PhatWare with their application PhatNotes Professional.”

Clinton has taken a look at Phatware’s latest Phatnotes version over at his site, and if you’re looking for a fairly good note-taking app, this review will prove useful in your search!

Thanks to all who entered the recent PPC Tablet 4.0 contest. Our Sultan of Swag, Brad Adrian, has picked the winners and they are: Dyvim, asims, c1oudrs, PPCRules, and Bruce Babcock.

If you’re one of the lucky five, congratulations! We’ve just sent you an e-mail containing details of your prize. If you missed out, you can still pick up a copy of PPC Tablet 4.0 for $19 from our affiliate software store. Thanks again, and expect more giveaways soon!

Here’s a list of various Secure Digital cards listed in Pricegrabber’s database, and the lowest price on each model. Clicking through to the vendor selling the product helps support this site, so if you’re interested in learning more about the product, click. Here are the five most popular Secure Digital cards and their prices according to Pricegrabber searches:

You can browse the Secure Digital card category to look for more deals.