The iPad seems to be situated right in the middle of the smartphone and laptop category as far as functionality goes. No other ebook reader on the market currently or coming out this year except for the enTourage eDGe can be placed in the same category. Most are specifically ebook readers with some added online capabilities.

The clear, 9.7 inch high resolution color screen looks very nice to me and the fact that it is a multi-touch screen is great for a screen of its size. Some of the other features that stand out for me are:

• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• iPad version of the Apple iWorks software available
• Compatible with thousands of existing iPhone and iPod Touch software
• 10 hours of battery life on one charge
• Multi-touch screen. No stylus required which can scratch the screen and is easy to misplace

Many ebook readers will be available within the coming months to compete with the popular Amazon Kindle ebook reader. From what I have read thus far, The feature set and the competitive pricepoint will be very hard to beat. The enTourage eDGe at a suggested retails of $490.00 certainly will battle with the Apple iPad but due to its lack of third party software on the Android platform will have a huge disadvantage.

I am looking forward to trying the iPad once my local Apple store has one available.

Source: USA Today

Image Source: Apple

It is always more exciting when you can share your fond memories with others by sending your pictures to friends and family. www.flickr.com is a popular site though there are dozens of many others out there too. Keep in mind most FREE sites like Flickr limit you to the number of photos you can have or the total storage you have available. This means you must delete old pictures as you start to run low on storage space. This can be lots of work and in many cases too much work to maintain once you get into 100′s of pictures.

When considering a new camera, always take the time to look at the software if at all possible. A percentage of the purchase price for the camera goes towards the cost of the software included. Manufacturers state the software is included FREE of charge but in reality it is not FREE for them to develop. A good camera dealer will have a PC available for you to try the software that is included with the camera. If not, at least ask the sales person what features are included. This are the key features I would recommend you have in the editing software to make life real easy for you.

1: Auto adjustments of exposure (contrast and brightness) and color. Best option is when you can select each adjustment individually to see if you like the change or not before finalizing the change.

2: Red eye removal with one click.

3: Batch processing. Meaning you can apply the same feature to a number of images at once. This process can be a tedious and time consuming if you had to open each picture, modify and save separately each time. Having the ability to select multiple images and apply one change to all selected like a new size, orientation or file name will save countless amount of time.

4: Blemish removal. The ability to remove small unwanted areas by selecting the  region to replace.

Most camera manufacturers allow easy downloading of the software for FREE thereby allowing you to try the software before buying any camera. You may want to spend some time downloading and trying a few especially if you are not able to decide on a camera just by the hardware features alone. Keep in mind the programs are maximized to work with their own hardware therefore do not try to mix different hardware and software manufactures.

If you use Windows Vista or Mac OS X, you can always use the built in Photo software as an alternative. On Windows, you can use Windows Explorer and the Windows Photo Gallery. On Mac OS X, you can use iPhoto r purchase a more feature rich program called Aperture2.

Now that Microsoft has announced a new online mobility store to compete with the Apple iTunes store. The war for the shrinking disposable income will begin. In the end, the battle will not only be between the different operating systems and hardware only. A good percentage of iPhone and iTouch users are not happy with how the iTunes store operate. This frustration also translates over to the software developers that must wait months for their newly completed title to be approved and made available for access on the iTunes store. Developers will soon have a non Apple store where titles can be made available for sale quickly and potentially with a greater return in profit. This is done via a third party installer called Cydia. Cydia will allow you to choose from a number of different download sites and even from sites that will be offerring commercial titles for purchase.

I have been an avid developer on the Windows Mobile platform and there has never been any limitations on how or where a mobile title was available for download. Either a title can be downloaded as a standard PC file and synced over to the mobile device or installed directly on the device via a CAB file. The Windows Mobile developer has always had the ability to sell their titles via their own online store and indirectly via stores like Handango, Clickgamer, PDAMill and many others.

Mobility Products in Canada

I have always admired the Apple mobility products from afar. Being in Canada means that we have typically been 2 – 3 years behind the United States in access to innovative products from around the world. The conservative nature of the big carriers and business in general within Canada means, the “Wait and See” attitude is always front and centre.

With the increasing number of foreign investment and foreign company takeovers in Canada means that more aggressive marketing and leadership is starting to appear in Canada. I truly hope this trend to be market leaders in new technology continues and we start to see more innovative products created around the world become available in Canada quickly. Many techies have always taken advantage of travel to the States to purchase mobile products months and even years before hitting the Canadian marketplace.

I have been waiting for the Eye-fi product to be released directly in Canada and it finally arrived via Black’s Photo around November of 2008 according to Eye-fi. I have not seen it yet locally in any of the Black’s stores but is available online. This at least is a great start to see an exciting product available in Canada less than 12 months after being widely available in the States. More companies can learn from a fast growing company like Eye-fi and penetrate the Canadian market where many tech savvy users exist.

Yesterday Jack @ Experience Mobility blogged about the latest Microsoft announcements. One announcement was about the new mobile device category called Windows Phone. Not sure if this is just an added category or if this will replace all existing categories. We went from a Pocket PC Phone edition device which had a full touch screen to a Smartphone which has no touch screen. Now with the Windows Phone, it seems like we are back to the full touch screen again. When will this flip flopping end? It must be a nightmare for current Windows Mobile device developers to support all the categories. Seems very costly now to support the older Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Professional and the newer Windows Phones. All have different versions of the Windows CE operating system and uses different screen sizes. Until the actual Windows CE v6.5 versions of Windows Phone come out, it will be hard to tell if these will be a really hot device or a total flop for Microsoft. From my former days as a Microsft Mobile MVP, I was under the impression that the touch screens would disappear and the Smartphones with no touch screen would be the wave of the future for Microsoft. Looks like Apple wins the battle again and sets the standard with the multi-touch touch screens. 

 Palm Pre

The Palm Pre could be my next purchase down the road. I currently have a Palm Treo 700 wx which runs the Windows Mobile operating system. I like the hardware but not too crazy about the software though. After all these years working with Windows CE devices starting from CE version 2.0, I am losing interest very quickly in Windows whatever by Microsoft. Microsoft can rename it to Windows Phone but in the end it is still Windows CE V7.0 and it has many of the inherent problems of the old Windows CE with just cosmetic surgery. At least Palm now has learned its lession like how Apple decided to scrap its old desktop operating system and replace it with a brand new one called OS X. The Palm Pre seems like a completely new beast underneath and is a welcome change. I am looking forward to seeing the Palm Pre. Hopefully the operating system will be as robust as the hardware.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBwM2U77F2c

iPod Flea Promotional Video

Carrier branded phones have never been a huge plus for me.

1. To get a good hardware purchase price, the carriers expect at least a 2 year contract commitment with many asking for 3 years. This is just too long.
2. Hardware is locked to work with the original carrier only thus switching to another carrier later is a pain having the phone unlocked for another carrier. The original carrier will not unlock the phone for use on another carrier.
3. The originating carrier typically installs custom software that rarely works as advertised and most do not work with other carriers and cannot be removed easily.
4. Low resale value since the phone is locked to that one carrier like AT&T.
5. Poor technical support from the carriers when issues are Smartphone hardware specific.

Currently AT&T is the only carrier that handles the Apple iPhone. Does this mean, others will eventually carry the Apple iPhone when AT&T discontinues the iPhone in a few years? This will be good news. The other positive side to this I can see is if AT&T eventually only carries one Smartphone line, This will open the market for independant dealers to sell unbranded smartphones with the Apple, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android and other operating systems that will work better with AT&T overall. More unbranded devices can mean a higher margin for resellers on hardware and the added carrier subscription plus overall the pricing for hardware should drop too. Devices should be available from more local dealers I feel if other carriers follow AT&T.

Sure, support will not be available from the carrier but this has always been the case with devices not sold by the carriers. At the end of the day, manufacturers of the smartphone devices must sell their products regardless of direct carrier support through branding is available or not. It will be interesting to see if current users of AT&T will stay with AT&T or leave in the end.