Peek: the handheld that does e-mail, and only e-mail
[Via Silicon Alley Insider]
Posts with tag email

Remember those crazy sons of guns at patent holding firm NTP that ended up working RIM for a shade over $612 million? They're back at it, throwing lawsuits at AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon -- that's three of the States' four national carriers, in case you're keeping count -- for alleged infringements of eight patents involving mobile email. The firm seems to be something of a one-trick pony seeing how mobile email was the issue at hand with RIM and later with Palm; for a company that does nothing but sue other companies, two-thirds of a billion dollars seems like a plenty healthy bank account, but heck, what do we know? At this point, we're assuming that once they're done suing every company that's ever offered, used, or mentioned "mobile" and "email" in the same sentence, we'll finally be able to put this issue to rest -- but until that day comes, watch your back, folks, because NTP's back on the prowl.
As we noted last night, BlackBerry email is experiencing a service interruption of massive proportions, with the entire Western hemisphere unable to do the push email thing since 8PM EST on Tuesday. Things were supposed to be patched up by midnight last night, but apparently RIM is still trying to reset the system, and expects the problem to last into the morning. Even once the system is good to go -- and we are starting to here reports of some people getting their email -- it'll still take a while for RIM to process through the backlog of email, and the word is they'll be taking it slow as to not esplode the system again, so for all you CrackBerry addicts out there: you might be in for a wait, our thoughts are with you and your idle thumbs.
While most of the world simply takes what everyone else says at face value, there's always been a dark market for inconspicuous lie-detecting gadgetry for the overly paranoid, but researchers at Cornell University are hoping to take lie-detection to the next level by carefully analyzing emails and SMS messages for fibs. In a three-year effort to "compile a list of indicators of written deception," the team drew from some "40 years of research in linguistics and lies, including recent work in the context of computer media and reviews of Enron emails." By carefully inspecting word choices, verb tenses, and a variety of other textual factors, the software can purportedly use "contextual parameters" to spot lies, and they hope to market the goods to police agencies, upset spouses, and of course, corporate ethics committees.So if you're ever-so-suspicious significant other (or mischievous youngster) has just recently put down the Skype headset in favor of pounding out emails, rest assured, help is on the way.
Users of Windows Mobile 5 have been enjoying Direct Push for some time via AKU2 (from the manufacturers that have decided to offer it, anyway) -- but getting that always-fascinating corporate email beamed straight on down to your Palm OS Garnet OS device, on the other hand... well, that's novel concept, indeed. Palm has announced that an update for its 680 and 700p handhelds will be made available Monday to add automatic synchronization of email, contacts, and calendar with the Exchange Server of your choice. Cobalt, it ain't, but at this point we'll take what we can get.
It looks like Helio isn't the only game in town touting a MySpace partnership anymore, as Cingular has not only joined the ranks (well, solidified the friendship, anyway), but upped the ante in the process. While we learned about MySpace's integration with Helio (and the subsequent perks for members) awhile back, Cingular's deal promises a "more expansive" offering. So expansive, in fact, that users will be charged an extra $2.99 per month to upload photos taken on their handsets to their profile, read / respond to MySpace emails, update their blog entries, and search / view friend profiles on their handsets. Apparently, these not-so-outrageous niceties are costing users due to the "small Java application" that they can download, which presumably makes accessing these luxuries an easy and painless process. About "30 cellphone models" will initially be supported, with another 20 or so to follow suit, and while online videos aren't currently supported, that functionality should be launched "sometime in 2007."
Back in the
early 80s a man by the name of Geoff Goodfellow had an idea: to relay electronic mail from Arpanet to his alphanumeric
pager. He published his concept on an Arpanet mailing list in 1982 (he called his piece "Electronic Mail for
People on the Move"), and went on to found RadioMail in the early 1990s -- a wireless email service (surprise,
surprise). After working with such small clients and partners as Ericsson, Motorola, and RIM, Goodfellow left the biz
in 1996 and moved to Europe. But he was contacted in early 2002 by James H. Wallace Jr., a lawyer of patent-holding
firm NTP, who thoroughly researched Goodfellow's contributions to
wireless communications as they were gearing up to take on Research In
Motion. In fact, Wallace once introduced Goodfellow thusly: "Geoff's the inventor of wireless e-mail. My
client patented some of its implementation workings." The New York Times seems to think Goodfellow's prior art
should have been disclosed during the RIM / NTP dispute, but wasn't; that Goodfellow should have been available as a
fact witness, but wasn't. So why has no one ever heard of the talented Mr. Goodfellow? Because NTP paid him close to
$20,000 for "consulting" in 2002, which included several sessions with NTP's lawyers in noteless meetings, as
well as a contract and NDA that essentially barred him from discussing the case while it proceeded. You'll have to read
the Times profile for the full story, but whether or not NTP acted ethically (or illegally), or preyed on Goodfellow's
disdain for patents or his free-market attitude isn't exactly making the bad taste in our mouths from the settlement taste any better.
Ok, so you've dropped some serious green on
your Aston Martin
Edition Nokia 8800, diamond encrusted
iPod nano, and Samsung Q1 and you've
still got that mad spending jones -- what to do? How 'bout dropping another few hundie ($399 monthly) on an exclusive
millionaires24.com "Upper Class" email address. For that you get such pedestrian features as 512MB of email
storage with uh, "unlimited eMail traffic," 1GB file sharing, address book, antispam/antivirus, and just
about every other feature (and less) available on your run-o-the-mill, free email service. But if this is the kind of
hard posing you need to remember your social status, then have it son, and double-quick 'cause the service is limited
to only 10k of your well-heeled peers. Oh, just so you know, that "24" tacked onto the name means, well,
nothing apparently. The folks behind the service are just too cheap to buy the domain rights to millionaires.com. 'Nuff
said, eh?






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