Tuxtops

Is the day near when you will get music on your BlackBerry and e-mail on your iPod? The idea of an 'AppleBerry'? partnership between Research In Motion Ltd. and Apple Computer Inc. was floated yesterday by Peter Misek, an analyst with Canaccord Capital Inc., who last year accurately predicted a partnership between RIM and Intel Corp.

The next update of Symbian's S60 platform won't support its previous resolutions of 176x208 or 352x416. It will only support QVGA, VGA and HVGA. They make some talk about being more compatible, but that's one part of the story. The other part is that ordering custom resolution LCDs is more expensive.

We've known that Fujitsu-Siemens have had plans to release a dedicated navigation device for a while now - the Pocket Loox N100 based on WinCE. Finally details of the device have appeared on their website.

Jørgen Sundgot gets to grips with Nokia's E60 business phone, fully loaded with a high-resolution display that - gasp - does landscape mode, connectivity up the wazoo - and no thumbboard. What's the verdict?

Imagine a device which has perhaps everything that a very compact device with a Windows Mobile operating system can have. High-speed processor. Decent memory. Nice display. Slide-out QWERTY keyboard with automatic lighting. Integrated 2MPix camera with the option to adjust the focus manually. Integrated IrDA, Bluetooth and WiFi module. But above all a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS (HSDPA) module for high-speed dating. Yes, the new HTC Hermes offers it all and then some.

These vaguely defined "dictionary" devices never really caught on here in the States, but they're quite the thing in Japan, and it's not hard to figure out why with the specs on display in this Papyrus ASV Pocket Dictionary PW-N8100 from Sharp.

A couple of years ago this would have sounded crazy, but SanDisk, which is probably best known for flash drives and memory cards, just put out one of the best MP3 players on the market. Yeah, I know, I'm just as surprised as you are, but after spending a few weeks with the new 4GB Sansa e260, part of SanDisk's new Sansa e200 series, I'm going to be sorry to send this one back.

Snom reports that two of its Linux-based business VoIP phones have completed interoperability validation with a commercially supported version of Asterisk, an open source IP PBX (private branch exchange) and application server offered by Digium. Additionally, Snom has joined Digium's partner network, it says.

Opera Software has released Opera Mobile 8.6 for Windows Mobile, offering Pocket PC owners a fast and user-friendly Web surfing experience on their devices. Opera Mobile 8.6 for Pocket PC takes full advantage of the larger screen and higher resolution of Pocket PC devices by offering tabbed browsing and surfing in horizontal landscape mode.

Opera has announced a new version of its SDK (software development kit) for embedded devices such as TVs, set-top boxes, portable media players, and game consoles. Opera 9 for Devices, due in Q4, will add support for "Widgets" -- small, standalone, Web standards-based user interface elements that can "interact with Web applications and Web services without requiring developers to write native code."