29/12/2000 Happy New Year! Just a quick "thank you" for visiting TopPocket.com - 2001 will see much more
regular and infomative updates appearing here - so stay tuned.Click on the images on the right for info and links. Rod. rod@toppocket.com 2001
Well, as the year 2000 draws to a close, what do we have to look forward to in 2001? Sharp are talking about a new push in their Zaurus range of handhelds while Dell and Toshiba are also talking about
releasing Pocket PC based machines in the latter part of the year. These announcements are sure to make the handheld arena much more interesting during 2001 Handspring Those guys 'n' gals over at
Handspring
have really got the handheld thing sussed. They have released some seriously cool add-ons based on their Springboard technology over the last few months that literally transforms their Visor handhelds into completely new machines. Add to this the fact that numerous third parties have also announced innovative Springboard modules and your humble Handspring Visor can now become a digital camera, or mobile phone, become a GPS device or have a fold-up keyboard or 'Gameface', (complete with joystick!), attached. Yes - other handhelds can do some of these things, but not with the grace of the Visor. From what I've heard, 2001 will be an explosive year for Handspring - with further hadware introductions and innovations that will make the industry sit up an look.
Handspring have also just announced that they will purchase Bluelark whose core products are the Blazer and BlueSky Web browsers designed specifically for handheld machines. Donna Dubinsky, who introduced
the original Palm
organiser before moving on to found Handspring has stated that the Internet and web browsing will become a key application on Handspring's future devices. Bluetooth
This technology will start to take a foothold in 2001. Even Apple
are making ready with a string of Bluetooth related announcements over the coming months. Expect to see most, if not all, Mac products incorporating Bluetooth chips by the end of 2001.Apple are due to
show a sub-notebook at January's Macworld San Francisco. This is still shrouded in secrecy but it may well be the long awaited mobile device that Apple have been working on for some time.
26/09/2000 The Phage... Reminds me of something out of Star Trek: Voyager. However, in the 'real World' it's
the very first Palm OS virus. It's actually known as PalmOS/Phage and can infect Palm applications as they're copied onto an infected machine and executed. If these infected programs are then copied to other
machines, (say via IR), then these machines will also become infected once any of the programs are executed. 2/09/2000 Forget Viruses, say hello to Weeds! Well, well, well… seems like everyone's talking about viruses
on handhelds, now! The major anti virus companies are starting to address the situation and seem to be gearing themselves up - Symantec are the latest - they've developed an anti-virus that works on the
Palm OS...That's handy because - following hot on the heels of the Psion/Epoc malware that we recently brought you
details about - we've recently also had the 'Liberty crack' This trojan pretends to be a "crack" for an application called "Liberty" which allows a PalmOS device to run Nintendo
GameBoy games. The crack is supposed to convert the shareware version of this program into the full registered version. It's just a shame that as soon as it's run, it attempts to wipe the Palm OS machine
clean! No-one really knows what the future will hold as far as trojans/viruses etc. are concerned when it comes to PDAs. As PDAs are so different to 'normal' desktop machines, maybe the viruses on them
will turn out to be markedly different from what we're used to seeing. In fact, maybe we won't call them viruses at all - maybe we'll call them 'Weeds'. I mean, weeds tend to spread quickly and stifle
their surroundings - which is exactly what could happen in the limited constraints of a handheld device.Also, much like the weeds in my back garden, they'll be something that we'll just have to learn to put
up with. What do you think? Either way, let's hope that our anti-virus friends are hard at work on some serious Weed Killer. :o) |
