Kevin Tofel of JKOnTheRun is going solar. He plans to run the iPhone for 30 days via a solar-powered battery pack. Good work Kevin. I’ve responded on my Solar-ultra mobile PC blog. The Solar ultra mobile PC Blog: Taking the iPhone off the power grid..

Nokia are going to get into the USB 3G stick market next year. 26 Million dongles are expected to be sold next year and if other reports are to be believed, half of those will be in Europe, one of Nokia’s strongest territories. “In particular European operators, such as Vodafone, are aggressively promoting and subsidizing dongles right now, because they are seen as a secondary device that provides additional revenues for carriers beyond a traditional handset,” said Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics. Pricing wars on the ‘sticks’ have already broken […]

You don’t often see netbooks rising this high on Techmeme but for the U.S. this is obviously a big (and good) story. Techmeme @ 8:20 AM ET, December 12, 2008.

Why is it that the media, online and offline, thinks that UMPC/MID segment is a failure due to smartphones and netbooks? Lack of understanding perhaps? Or am I just feeling sad and bruised from the the kicking the segment gets? There are more products in the ‘pro-mobility’ segment than ever. There’s more awareness than ever and as prices come down and feature-levels rise, there’s more happy customers than ever. In the world of online reporting, there’s always the desire to highlight a possible failure because, in general, it makes for […]

About 3,000 of you have already downloaded the Ultra Mobile Computing Guide that we published last month and the links have long-gone from the front page so here’s a quick ‘highlight’ article, just in case you missed it. Update: The guide is now only available online. Use the links below. Part One: ‘What is an Ultra Mobile PC.’ We give you a history of Ultra Mobile computing, show you how the devices break down into segments and show you what each segment is capable of. Part Two: ‘Details and Choices.’  […]

Engadget just posted a piece linking to the PR that confirms the rumored subsidized Acer Aspire One [Portal page][review] deal. Acer has signed AT&T as the carrier and the Aspire One will sell through Radio Shack for $99 with internal 3G starting December 14th. AT&Ts 3G network is HSDPA based. When we had the Aspire One for review, we noted the SIM card slot hidden under the battery, unfortunately the 3G radio was not yet being built into the netbook. Acer Aspire One goes official on AT&T’s 3G network – […]

As much as I hate seeing concepts that we don’t yet have the technology to create, I manage to remind myself that the market needs goals to shoot for, otherwise there won’t be innovation. That, and it is an excuse to look at some really cool looking gadgets… even if you have to pretend that they exist. Jkk has highlighted some interesting MID concepts from an Intel sponsored design contest in the Czech Republic this year. I really like this concept. Actually this one could potentially be produced. See the […]

My country-mates, the Germans, are quite the netbook nuts. They love a quality, good-value product (don’t we all!) and they’re also pretty damn good at doing their research. Sascha, the top man at EeePCNews.de is getting huge numbers at his German language site as a result of all this. When he goes live with a netbook unboxing he can count on about 300-500 concurrent viewers. I tried joining the live video and chat once and it was impossible to answer questions as the chat session was a constantly moving stream […]