Fonix Speech, an operating division of Fonix(R) Corporation (OTCBB:FNIX), an integrated communications carrier providing telecommunications services and value-added speech technologies, will demonstrate an upgraded version of Fonix VoiceCentral(TM) for mobile/wireless devices at 3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France, February 14-17, Hall 1, Booth C23.

Fonix VoiceCentral 3.0 is an interactive, hands-free software application for Windows Mobile, Nokia Series 60 and Symbian devices that provides users with “hands-free, eyes-free” management of their device — users dial contacts and access information simply by speaking.

Fonix VoiceCentral 3.0 now supports Italian speech recognition, expanding market opportunities for European mobile phone and PDA device manufacturers and mobile operators (language list also includes French, German, Spanish, Japanese and English). Fonix speech recognition is neural network-based, allowing for greater user accuracy rates and lower MIPS and CPU requirements.

Fonix VoiceCentral 3.0 provides the following new features and benefits: — Create commands: Users can now create commands such as “Play Music” or “Browse website.” — Minimize the display: Users can minimize the VoiceCentral display so only a small information bar is visible. — Add a contact: Users may choose to add a new contact to the database when dialing a number. — Sim card access: Users may call contacts that are stored on the SIM card as well as the PDA. — Improved user interface: Improvements include easy to use menus for more control and alphabetic search buttons to quickly find contacts or applications. — Improved TTS: The text-to-speech quality has been improved.

“Fonix speech interfaces run the developmental gamut,” says Tim K. Hong, vice president, Fonix Mobile/Wireless. “Fonix offers manufacturers a litany of possible solutions, from simple voice dialing solutions to complex multi-function capabilities. Fonix mobile applications enable manufacturers to develop devices ideal for people who want a better, safer and easier way to dial contacts and access email and other information.”

About Fonix Speech

The Fonix Speech Group, an operating division of Fonix Corp., currently offers voice technology solutions for mobile/wireless devices; interactive videogames, toys and appliances; computer telephony systems; the assistive market and automotive telematics.

Visit http://www.fonix.com for more information or call (801) 553-6600 and say “Sales.”

About Fonix

Fonix Corp., based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is an innovative communications and technology company that provides integrated telecommunications services and value-added speech technologies through Fonix Telecom Inc. and The Fonix Speech Group.

The Investor Relations Group

Investor Contacts:

John Nesbett or Gino de Jesus Andrea Faville 212-825-3210 mail@investorrelationsgroup.com or Fonix Elizabeth Sweeten, 801-553-6600

mediainfo@fonix.com

Well just like the title says, turn your pocket pc into and iPod with the pPod. pPod is a software that works exactly like and iPod but it puts it into your pocket pc. Not sure how long this will be around but its definitely a download for me! Also it looks as if it is a free download too !!!

Get it here

Always On Wireless, Inc., manufacturer of the portable WiFlyer(TM) wireless access point for dial-up, announced today that it has released a compatible version of its WiFlyer for NetZero(R), Juno(R) and BlueLight Internet services of United Online, Inc. a leading provider of consumer Internet subscription services.

NetZero, Juno and BlueLight subscribers can now add wireless Internet access throughout their home using a compatible WiFlyer at a purchase price of $149.95 with no additional service fees. Existing WiFlyer users can upgrade to this capability through a free firmware upgrade from the Always On Wireless website.

“NetZero and Juno are clear leaders in value-priced Internet services and market research indicates nearly 40 percent of dial-up subscribers currently use more than one computer at home,” said Rudy Prince, CEO and chairman of Always On Wireless, Inc. “Now NetZero subscribers can simultaneously share the same dial-up line using wireless Wi-Fi/802.11 networking while those with laptops can enjoy wireless freedom throughout their home – allowing users to email or surf the web from the kitchen, in the family room or even out on the patio. With this capability, the WiFlyer is now compatible with nearly all ISPs in the U.S. including the four largest – AOL(R), MSN(R), EarthLink(R) and now NetZero.”

In addition to this dial-up compatibility, the user interface of the WiFlyer has now been optimized for use with Wi-Fi equipped Pocket PC PDAs including the HP iPaq and Dell Axim.

“We’ve entirely redesigned the web interface of the WiFlyer to allow easy configuration directly from the smaller browser display of a Pocket PC PDA,” said Jason Love, WiFlyer product manager. “Now, users that prefer traveling with a PDA instead of a laptop can access the web wirelessly using a WiFlyer over either a dialup or broadband connection. In just seconds, they can easily select their ISP and local access numbers to allow instant emailing and browsing through their wireless Pocket PC PDA.”

The WiFlyer, which connects to either an ordinary phone line or Ethernet cable to deliver dial-up or broadband wireless Internet access, began shipping in October 2004 and has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications, including PC Magazine, BusinessWeek’s annual Tech Buying Guide, PC World’s Digital Holiday Shopping List, the New York Times, LAPTOP and others. The product targets homes, including vacation homes, with dial-up access to provide a convenient and affordable wireless access solution.

About Always on Wireless

AOW is focused on wireless Internet communications and has developed the industry’s first portable Wi-Fi access point optimized for both dial-up and broadband Internet access. The company’s executive team has many years of combined experience in telecommunications and networking products; notable successes including eFax.com.

For more information visit Always On Wireless here.

Contacts

Woodside & Associates, Houston Pam Woodside Cohan, 713-629-1771 pewoodside@sbcglobal.net or Always On Wireless, Inc., Houston Jason Love, 713-523-9334 jason@alwaysonwireless.com

NEW DELHI: Hewlett Packard India has launched its first 5-in-1 PDA phone, the IPAQ h6365 Pocket PC with mobile phone and camera. This handheld features built-in integrated three-way wireless capabilities.

Priced at Rs 29, 990, the finer points of this PDA rest in the four-way wireless (IrDA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and quadband GSM/GPRS) capabilities; built-in VGA camera; user-replaceable battery; speakerphone.

However, according to a CNet review, the IPAQ h6365 can prove to be bulky, with its keyboard not integrated, keys cramped and somewhat sluggish in its performance.

The IPAQ h6365 Pocket PC boasts of a large (3.5″), transflective color display, which the review says has a “washed out look”. Its rechargeable, removable Lithium-Ion battery (1800 mAh battery) lets users synchronize with their PC, print photos and documents, and more (via Bluetooth), states the press release.

“Keeping in tandem with the mobile revolution that is sweeping the nation, HP’s new line of iPAQs features capabilities that address the converging data and voice needs of mobile professional and consumers, allowing them to take full advantage of the rich digital services that today’s wireless networks provide,” said HP India handhelds country manager Sumeet Gurnani.

Source: Business Wire

How often do you purchase something from outside of your country? Often times it is difficult to determine what an item will really cost because of different currencies that are used. This little converter does a terrific job…and it’s free!

The XE.com Universal Currency Converter is the world’s most popular currency tool. You can perform interactive foreign exchange rate calculations, using live, up-to-the-minute currency rates.

To start, simply type the value of currency to convert in the amount box. You may include commas and a decimal point. Next, select the source and destination currencies using the scrolling selection boxes. Currencies that are obsolete — or that are being phased out — will be indicated by an asterisk (*). When you are finished, push the “Perform Currency Conversion” button, and the results of your conversion will be displayed.

For ease of use, the top ten currencies sorted by popularity are listed first. Next come the top 85 currencies sorted by country name. Special units and precious metals are listed both alphabetically as well as in their own sections at the end of this list. If you need more currencies, you can get every world currency through the XE.com Full Universal Currency Converter.

If you need more help, information is available on the three-letter currency codes, as well as world currency symbols.

This is an invaluable tool to have (or at least to have stored in you favorites) to give that extra added comfort of knowing how much an item will really cost.

You can find XE.com’s Universal Currency Converter here.

Our weekly podcast is avaliable. If you use this and copy the address into your aggregator. Now you should be all set and automatically download any of our podcasts on the fly. Just like setting up a season pass in tivo! If you would not like to use an aggregator you can download the direct link here.

Today Steve and I talk about hot news items and a possible new giveaway courtesy of Microsoft

Show links:

CNet 10 top gadets

No Wifi Sync in WM5

iPAQ 6325 shows up

iPAQ 4700 Rom issues

Support the troops

ieSpell

Remote Display

SanDisk Sansa Mp3 Player

Also Podcast Alley was nice enough to add us to their podcast search engine. I would love for you to check them out and if you feel you like the podcast it would be great to get a vote. You can vote for us by clicking this link

NEW now you can leave us a Skype Voicemail by clicking here

Leave us your name, city, state and question along with your email.

Today, 04:09 AM	#1
Registered User   Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 1	Calendar notifications (alarms) dont sound GMT time zone Any one have an explaination for this:- I had the same problem on an IPAQ 2210 and now have it with a 4700: 1) When a calendar reminder comes due, the reminder alarm (sound, LED and screen message) fails to activate (but regular ‘alarms’ work okay). This is the case whether the IPAQ is off or on. 2) Wakeuptweak etc doesn’t fix it, though it does appear to be the result of a ‘house keeping’ task going wrong. 3) If you run checknotification then some yearly calendar events are present, but none of the calendar events for that day. 4) If you temporarily switch time zones (say from UK – GMT to USA) and back again, then the calendar events for that day are ‘loaded’ (they appear in the ‘checknotifications list’) and they will sound, but the following day you’re back to the no reminder problem. Interestingly, when reminders do sound, they’re at the correct time, but they’re tagged with the wrong time zone time (eg if set for 8am UK, they’ll appear with the USA 3am ‘tag’) 5) If I permanately change time zone to USA eastern (GMT-5) then the unit works perfectly (at least for the 2 weeks I tried it), if I switch back to GMT (or to European – GMT+1) the fault always reappears the following day (at least the 4 times I’ve tried this) 6) I’ve repeated this following a hard reset and just syncing with outlook (i.e. it’s not caused by some other program I have loaded, it seems to be some combination of being on a GMT time zone, and the data I have in my outlook calendar Thanks

Today, 08:49 AM	#2
Moderator   Join Date: May 2004 Location: Saratoga, California Posts: 1,252	Welcome to Dave’s Ipaq. Have you checked the timezone on your PC? Make sure that it matches the timezone on your IPAQ. Regards, __________________ Laura Moderator, Dave’s iPAQ Dave’s iPAQ is not affiliated with HP Members Only FAQ Section . Have news? Submit it . Want to contact me? Use the contact form to send me an email. Want to support the site? Shop in our iPAQ store. NEW Dont forget our Podcast hotline telephone number in the US: 1-425-738-9506 available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Also dont forget to add us to your Podcast aggregator by clicking here.

Its funny but sometimes not all of the people you want to talk to are on Skype. Maybe they like spending money? Maybe they just havent heard about Skype? Either way, we don’t want you to stop talking to them. That wouldn’t be very nice. So the folks at Skype have come up with some services that make it easier to contact friends who arent on Skype. They call them SkypeOut and Skype Voicemail.

SkypeOut

SkypeOut is a low cost way to Skype friends on a landline or mobile phone. With SkypeOut you can call anyone anywhere in the world at local rates. Though dont forget to remind whoever you call, that once they are using Skype, you can call each other for free.

Skype Voicemail

Skype Voicemail is their new baby and they are very proud of it. Skype Voicemail doesnt cost much… just 5 Euro for 3 months or 15 Euro for a year and it can do all of the things that you’d expect from a voicemail service like take messages when you’re offline, busy on another call or taking a bath. We have also added a very clever bit that lets you record a voice message which you can then send. It’s handy for avoiding tricky conversations… like letting your boss know you won’t be coming in to work.

You can setup SkypeOut and Skype Voicemail and read more about them in their online store . There are lots of fancy Skype accessories in there too though unfortunately they have sold out of the Skype Chopper bike.

So you might be asking why did Jack put up a currency converter as a news item today? Well, this is just one example. Skype has become very popular and works on your iPAQ as well as your PC. If you decide to purchase some of their extras, you might want to use the converter!

While Michael is correct that a company’s first obligation is to its stockholders, he has missed a crucial point — if you piss off your customers, they’re likely to leave. As the HP Forum thread on this shows, many people will take exactly that approach — and they’ll stop buying other HP products, too. I recall reading that customers are about seven times as likely to tell others about bad experiences with a company than about good experiences, too. That won’t help HP’s stockholders, will it? As for the claim that all the features won’t fit, I don’t buy that. My iPAQ 5550 has a 17.4 MB iPAQ File Store, which is basically Flash ROM that hasn’t been used. Put the extra features there and reduce the size of my iPAQ File Store. Another alternative is to offer the Professional version as the upgrade, which leaves some of the programs normally in the ROM image out and supplies them as RAM-installable versions. That’s what Microsoft did with Pocket PC 2002 and, I think, Windows Mobile 2003.

As for HP’s claim that some applications won’t work in landscape in SE, so what? The user can switch back to portrait without a soft reset.

Even if the application crashes the iPAQ, so what? Not all Pocket PC 2000 applications worked in Pocket PC 2002, and Compaq made the upgrade available. Not all Pocket PC 2002 applications worked in Windows Mobile 2003, and HP made that upgrade available. In fact, WM 2003 was a much more “dangerous” upgrade, I thought, because it severely changed the operating system infrastructure (swithcing from Windows CE 3.0 to 4.2, for example). The claim that current programs exist for landscape mode is also full of holes.

First, many of Microsoft’s existing Windows Mobile 2003 applications won’t work well in landscape, requiring a switch back to portrait to function properly. They should work fine in the SE upgrade because they’ll be designed to work properly in both portrait and landscape mode.

Second, the existing landscape programs require a soft reset to switch modes, a significant penalty. I have dotPocket, but don’t use it for landscape mode precisely because I don’t want to soft rest while I’m in the middle of doing something.

To see examples of applications that don’t work well in landscape, see my dotPocket review.

The only feature of SE that may not provide a benefit to existing iPAQ users is the VGA support, but even that’s iffy. If the ability to scale fonts works in QVGA mode, even the VGA support will provide a benefit. Compaq and HP have shown in the past that they can offer challenging upgrades, and I’m sure HP could do it again. They just don’t want to.

Many people still won’t buy Toshiba Pocket PCs because Toshiba had a habit of abandoning users of recently purchased devices. They seem to have learned their lesson, and offered SE upgrades for the e400 and e800 series. (And the upgrades were free, too.) It’s too bad HP is going backwards, and will likely learn the same lesson the hard way.

Steve Silicon Valley Pocket PC

http://www.svpocketpc.com

While Michael is correct that a company’s first obligation is to its stockholders, he has missed a crucial point — if you piss off your customers, they’re likely to leave. As the HP Forum thread on this shows, many people will take exactly that approach — and they’ll stop buying other HP products, too. I recall reading that customers are about seven times as likely to tell others about bad experiences with a company than about good experiences, too. That won’t help HP’s stockholders, will it? As for the claim that all the features won’t fit, I don’t buy that. My iPAQ 5550 has a 17.4 MB iPAQ File Store, which is basically Flash ROM that hasn’t been used. Put the extra features there and reduce the size of my iPAQ File Store. Another alternative is to offer the Professional version as the upgrade, which leaves some of the programs normally in the ROM image out and supplies them as RAM-installable versions. That’s what Microsoft did with Pocket PC 2002 and, I think, Windows Mobile 2003.

As for HP’s claim that some applications won’t work in landscape in SE, so what? The user can switch back to portrait without a soft reset.

Even if the application crashes the iPAQ, so what? Not all Pocket PC 2000 applications worked in Pocket PC 2002, and Compaq made the upgrade available. Not all Pocket PC 2002 applications worked in Windows Mobile 2003, and HP made that upgrade available. In fact, WM 2003 was a much more “dangerous” upgrade, I thought, because it severely changed the operating system infrastructure (swithcing from Windows CE 3.0 to 4.2, for example). The claim that current programs exist for landscape mode is also full of holes.

First, many of Microsoft’s existing Windows Mobile 2003 applications won’t work well in landscape, requiring a switch back to portrait to function properly. They should work fine in the SE upgrade because they’ll be designed to work properly in both portrait and landscape mode.

Second, the existing landscape programs require a soft reset to switch modes, a significant penalty. I have dotPocket, but don’t use it for landscape mode precisely because I don’t want to soft rest while I’m in the middle of doing something.

To see examples of applications that don’t work well in landscape, see my dotPocket review.

The only feature of SE that may not provide a benefit to existing iPAQ users is the VGA support, but even that’s iffy. If the ability to scale fonts works in QVGA mode, even the VGA support will provide a benefit. Compaq and HP have shown in the past that they can offer challenging upgrades, and I’m sure HP could do it again. They just don’t want to.

Many people still won’t buy Toshiba Pocket PCs because Toshiba had a habit of abandoning users of recently purchased devices. They seem to have learned their lesson, and offered SE upgrades for the e400 and e800 series. (And the upgrades were free, too.) It’s too bad HP is going backwards, and will likely learn the same lesson the hard way.

Steve Silicon Valley Pocket PC

http://www.svpocketpc.com