Judie: Here’s how it all started. I got a press release from Kevin Doel regarding FlipSide, a new Windows Mobile MP3 Player which features “”Swooshing” Album Art as Part of Acclaimed Visual Interface.”

FlipSide, the MP3 player from Electric Pocket that has had BlackBerry users buzzing, is now available to users of Windows Mobile devices such as the Treo 700xw, Mogul, Ace, and Blackjack. The feature that has made FlipSide such an instant hit among BlackBerry users is its iPhone-like interface that allows users to visually “swoosh” through their music quickly and easily.

Navigating through music and selecting tunes is a simple process with FlipSide: scroll through the Album Covers, or flick through them using your finger on the screen, then click on the navigation button to open up a vertical list of the tracks. The spacebar is used to start, pause and skip songs, while the navigation button is used to scroll either left or right to either fast forward or rewind within a song.

While FlipSide comes with the features expected of any MP3 player, the feature that gets the most buzz is the attractive user interface that makes FlipSide both visually enjoyable and very easy to use. Its ability to “swoosh” through the full-color cover art of an entire music collection within seconds using the navigation control button makes FlipSide stand-out as both a simple and fun MP3 player. FlipSide downloads and displays the cover art of each album and even links to FlipSide Extras to provide biographies of the artists, recommendations for similar artists and more.

FlipSide for Windows Mobile plays music stored on memory cards in MP3 & WMA formats. FlipSide retails for $19.95 and a free trial download is available now from the FlipSide website at http://flipside.fm.

As I’ll usually do when I get a product announcement, I forwarded this release to the team to see if anyone might be interested in covering the item or reviewing the product…and then their emails started rolling in. It wasn’t long before we had another full blown GearChat Roundtable on our hands.

Sit tight; this one was a doozy…

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Well, even though my sample Skooba Skreener didn’t come before my business trip last November, it did come in time for the various holiday nonsense, so I was able to give it a good workout.

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I am continually surprised at the lack of external portable speaker gizmos for the iPhone. Plenty of them out there for the various iPods, of course, but the iPhone? There’s kind of a shortage.

DLO thinks they have the answer with their new portable iPhone speakers.

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Judie: I have alluded in the past to the fact that Gear Diary Team emails can be quite entertaining as well as enlightening. Sometimes we talk about meaningless subjects - like the press release that came through today for NBA Jersey air fresheners. Other times, we talk about things that we aren’t ready to put into an article, but that are on our mind.

Today Wayne kicked off just such an email which many of us soon chimed in on, and I thought it would be fun to let you all peek in on some of the stuff we talk about behind the scenes. Grab a cup of coffee (or tea), and come join our conversation…

Wayne: Did you guys see this writeoff — $ 29 BILLION — and bleeding 1 million + customers per QUARTER….

Is there any way that Sprint can remain independent? About the closest match now would seem to be Verizon who uses the same CDMA technology.

IMHO, aside from the technical problems, these guys really lost it with the Nextel acquisition. There simply was not any synergy between the technologies. They bought one of the most profitable niche players and literally destroyed them.

Now you could debate whether Nextel could stand along with their iDEN technology — but geez — $29 BILLION writedown….WOW

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Speaking of winning an iPhone, whether I win one or not, I’m going to get one when they come out, and do my durndest to have a a review in here for you Gear Diary folks.

Okay, yes, I’m jumping the guy a bit. And yes, I’m obsessed, I admit it. Forgive me. But I’m sick of Widows Mobile, I’m weary of the lack of development in the Palm hardware arena, and my birthday’s this month and I want a new toy, durn it!

So in anticipation of spending waaaay too much money and getting an iPhone, I’ve been creating a list of questions to ask Apple (if I get get hold of anyone there!) and things to review on the iPhone for Gear Diary readers. But it occurred to me (as I was suffering from yet another bout of insomnia) that maybe you folks might be able to help by providing me with some questions of your own.

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So I installed these games in Windows Mobile that I wanted to try out, see? And they didn’t work quite right, so I wanted to delete them. So first, I went into ActiveSync on my desktop, clicked the check-box, and clicked okay. They didn’t get deleted.

So next, I selected them in ActiveSync and clicked the “Remove” button. They still didn’t get deleted. Next I went into my Start menu in Windows and deleted them from there. Now there were deleted as far as ActiveSync was concerned, but there were still there on my O2.

So okay, I went onto my O2 and used the “Remove Programs” tool. It told me, “I couldn’t remove everything,” and though the icons for the programs were removed, they still showed up in the list of games (although nothing launched now, of course), only with the “generic” icon. So I searched through the folders on the device to find all the files associated with the apps so that I could delete them by hand, and did so.

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I’m just waiting on an iPhone.  (With apologies to Mick, Keith, and the boys.)

Okay, I’m a gadget junkie; I admit it.  That’s why I’m a contributor on this here Web ‘zine.  I bought the PalmPilot 1000.  I have spent hours and hours pouring over specs for PDAs, and personal media players, and “Origami” devices, and tested eBooks and convergent devices (like the O2 XDA Exec device-of-a-thousand-names).  So bear that in mind.  But I am not–not Not NOT–an Apple acolyte.  I like their products, and I admire them, but I’ve never owned them.  Never.  So bear that in mind, too.

But I’m waiting on an iPhone.  And I have gadget lust bad.

For one thing, I need a new cell phone.  I’m limping along on a Motorola v180.  It’s okay; I like flip phones, personally, and it’s small, and light, and pretty battle-hardened, but it’s showing its age.  It’s time for an upgrade.  And now here comes the iPhone, just in time for ol’ Doug to upgrade.

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Rounding off my list of the three personal media players (PMPs) that I plan to review–I’ve already done the Cowon A2 and the Creative Zen Vision W–it’s time for the Archos 604 WiFi. (I didn’t do an unboxing on this one, kids; sorry, I’ve just been too durn busy with “real” work.)

The Archos has specs very similar to that of the Zen Vision and the Cowon A2:

• 10.23 oz (290g)
• 4.3″, 480×272 screen
• 133mm (wide) x 78mm (high) x 18mm (thick)
• 30 GB hard disk space
• 5 hours rated of battery time
• built-in mic
• built-in external speaker
• A/V port
• standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
• WiFi (802.11g) connection

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If you read my intro to eBooks, you’ll know that I’m a big eBook fan. So I was really excited to get a look at the new Sony Reader, a dedicated eBook reader that uses the (new! revolutionary!) e-ink technology.

Look, I don’t know how revolutionary the e-ink technology is, honestly. I’ve been in the online doc game for a long time, and I’ve heard proselytizers try to sell me on e-ink, and I’ve never been very convinced. Maybe sometime, when they’ve got it working in color, and they’ve gotten it to be a little brighter, and you can use it to display moving images, then I’ll get worked up. But in the meantime, I have to admit that I’m in favor of regular screens. Sorry, e-ink aficionados; best to know my prejudices up front.

But still, I was excited when I opened that Sony Reader box. Here’s the specs of the Sony Reader:

• 6.9″ x 4.9″ x 0.5″ (175.6mm x 123.6mm x 13.8mm)
• 8.8 oz (250g) without the leatherette cover
• 6″, 800×600 SVGA display (4-level grey-scale)
• 64MB internal memory
• SD card slot
• USB plug
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Here’s the reader inside it’s leatherette “case” with the cover closed:

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Soon I will be lucky enough to review Sony’s Reader, an eBook reader by Sony.� But before I do and give y’all a review, I thought it might be nice to give folks a brief overview of eBooks, both on devoted devices and PDAs.

I’ve been in the online documentation game for a long time.� A long time.� I was writing online doc back in 1991, before the Web even got going, back when Acrobat wasn’t even a twinkle in Adobe’s eye.� So I have some pretty (ahem) strong views on online doc, eBooks, eBook readers, and what makes for a happy online reading experience.� And before I foist my opinions of the Sony Reader on you (and hopefully other eReaders, like the upcoming WordsGear, by Panasonic–sorry; Panasonic doesn’t have an English version out yet), I thought you might like a brief overview of the whole eBook/eReader deal.

Or maybe not.� In which case, move along!
I love eBooks. For one thing, while I don’t do a lot of travelling, I do enough so that it’s nice to have a big ol’ library of books handy on a pocketable gizmo that’s the size of (or smaller than) a paperback that I can take on a plane. If it can double as a game platform and/or a PDA, hey, so much the better. For another thing, being able to read in bed without having to juggle a booklight is a wonderful thing.

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