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Steve Jobs finally made it official. Giving his keynote address to start Macworld, he announced the Apple iPhone, ending years of rumors and speculations. Naturally, the rest of blogosphere is buzzing about the new gadget, and at least five people have IMed me today about it. Apple has stepped up to the hype, showcasing the smartphone's capabilities with a slick flash-driven produce site. People are going gaga over the Apple iPhone because of its features:

• 3.5" 320x480 touch-sensitive screen (no more keypad!)
• Runs OS X
• Comes in 4GB or 8GB
• Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), EDGE, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity
• Built-in 2.0 megapixel camera

Unfortunately, it looks like it'll be a while before the iPhone arrives on our shores. Cingular Wireless won exclusivity, and will start offering the 4GB ($499) and 8GB ($599) models with a two-year contract. The iPhone will become available in Europe near the end of this year. Asia can only expect the iPhone in 2008. Rico Mossesgeld also writes for The Smart PDA, a blog that provides daily info on Smartphones and PDAs.

My group at the office had a rather early Christmas Party last weekend and I was able to snag a 128 MB thumb drive as a gift (the limit on the amount on the exchange gift prevented the giver of the gift from giving me one with a larger capacity) . Anyway, since I don't usually store my files outside of my notebook, I decided to just create my own "mobile toolkit" on that thumb drive.

So, the first thing I did was to download John T. Haller's PortableApps Suite Base Edition to give me some leeway on what to install on the drive. Then with the Suite in place, I installed the following apps on the thumbdrive:

7-Zip Portable -- an open source file compressor decompressor
Angry IP Scanner -- an IP address scanner
ClamWin Portable -- an open source virus scanning utility
GIMP Portable -- the open source equivalent of Adobe Photoshop (only better)
HoverSnap -- a screen capture software
PIN -- a password manager
Portable Firefox -- best web browser bar none
Portable VLC -- open source media player
TrueCrypt -- open source encryption software extraordinaire

All the programs I have on my thumb drive are either freeware or free and open source (FOSS) and they allow me to work wherever I need to go. Most of them are available free at PortableApps.com

How about the m-ph.com readers... I wonder what they have on their thumb drives?

note: this piece was originally posted at my blog Talkin' Tech.

Apple is a hot item these days. Apple's sales have been rising and the MacBooks' (Pro and non-Pro) share in the laptop market is growing. Due to Apple's popularty and our love for our Macs, we at the Bloggy Network decided to open a new blog dedicated to--you guessed it!--Apple! Apple Gazette launched with a bang! Barely two weeks into the blog's existence and we've been DUGG to DIGG's frontpage seven times already to date. But what's really exciting with our launch is our gift to our Apple lover readers--our iPod Nano Giveaway.

It’s easy. Just subscribe to the AppleGazette RSS Feed, and start looking for the “word of the day

First came the rumors of a budget smartphone from Palm. Then a list of rumored specifications popped up here. Now it's official. Palm has now formally announced the newest addition to its line of smartphones, the Treo 680. So the rumors are true after all - but how accurate were they, really? Most of the specs posted before were pretty accurate. Memory is pegged at 64MB user-accessible - slightly better tha the 60MB rumored - but no news of how much memory is actually onboard. Dimensions and weight were hardly significant - fractions of a millimeter and 3 grams off. In most people's hands, the difference won't even register. What will register, however, is its color. The 680 will come in 4 different flavors: Orange, Strawberry, Coconut, and well - whatever flavor you can assign to gray. Officially though, the four colors of the 680 will be Copper, Crimson, Arctic, and Graphite. There's still no word on pricing, so we can't really determine what Palm defines as a "budget" smartphone. Personally, I hope it means under $300 (roughly PHP15k), but I know this is probably wishful thinking.

Hello folks. This is J. Angelo Racoma, and I'll be your guest blogger for the month of October. I'm a full-time professional blogger, wannabe tech evangelist, new media consultant, and a self-confessed MacHead. I write for ForeverGeek and BloggingPro under the Bloggy Network, and several local team blogs like Pinoy Tech Blog and the Man Blog. I also do some headhunting work for Enthropia (know any crack MMORPG writers?). Then, of course, there's my personal blog on techie and other interesting (or so I think) stuff, the J Spot. One of my latest projects is the Paypal for the Philippines campaign (have you signed up already?). Actually, I was supposed to have started blogging here last week, but typhoon Milenyo happened, and we lost power at home for almost six days! The only way I could connect was thru WiFi at the local coffee shop. And during the first few days after the storm, even that was difficult. The cafés and restos either had no power or the network connections were down. Sigh. Talk about a mobile lifestyle. It's great if you have the freedom to roam about and still be connected, unwired, untethered, unrestricted. But when you have to, then that takes all the fun away.

My fellow guest blogger Elber wrote about Palm releasing a "budget" smartphone, apparently called the Treo 680. Straight from palminsider.com comes more detailed specs:

• Palm OS 5.4.9
• Radio: GSM/GPRS/EDGE (GSM 850/900/1800/1900)
• Intel XScale 312MHz processor
• 320 x 320 color TFT touchscreen display 16-bit color displays up to 65,536 colors
• 128MB (60MB user accessible) non-volatile
• Bluetooth 1.2 (Support for Bluetooth stereo headsets)
• Speakerphone
• Hands-free headset jack 2.5mm
• Polyphonic MIDI, MP3, WAV & video ringtones (w/ vibrate mode and external ringer on/off switch )
• Microphone mute option
• TTY/TDD compatibility
• 3-way calling
• 0.3 megapixels - VGA Camera
• Standard SD card slot
• Removable 1200 mAH Lithium-ion Battery (Talk time up to 4.5 hours - Standby time 10 days)
• Infrared (IR)
• Size 111mm x 58mm x 22mm
• Weight 154 grams (5.4 ounces)

Keep in mind these specs haven't been confirmed, but hopefully Bluetooth really is built-in, and A2DP support wouldn't hurt too. A2DP allows you to stream music to your Bluetooth headset, meaning no more wires needed. Rico Mossesgeld also writes for The Smart PDA, a blog that provides daily info on Smartphones and PDAs.

Last March, Samsung launched a 32GB solid-state disk. A couple of weeks ago, TDK followed suit with their own offering. Unfortunately, these solid-state drives, as far as I can tell, are still prototypes.   The best feature of these drives, at least in my opinion, is durability. With no moving parts, solid-state drives are much less prone to damage from drops than current drives. Laptop drives, I hear, are more rugged than their desktop-bound cousins - but these babies are in a different class altogether. Like thumb drives and memory cards, you can toss these around without fear of losing data. If you think that's cool on a laptop, imagine having one of these drives in an iPod or any other DAP. I would get on a bike or go running with a flash-based MP3 player like the Nano, but I wouldn't dare do that with the larger hard drive based players. I wouldn't mind getting a large iPod for my complete music collection and a flash-based player for rough use, but a player with a large solid-state drive gives me the best of both worlds. I bet its battery will last longer too. Yes, another effect of having no moving parts is efficiency. They sip juice from batteries ever so slowly - supposedly consuming less than 10% of what current drives use. When these drives (as well as other technologies) come out, maybe we can start seeing laptops that run for weeks on a single charge.

Rumor has it that Palm will be releasing the Treo 680 as a low-end budget smartphone running the (beloved) Palm OS. Despite lacking many top of the line features (it is a budget PDA after all), it will retain the 320x320 display we've all grown to love.  It boasts of a robust feature set, including a 3MP VGA camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, and 3G capabilities. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'd probably be one of the first in line to get this.  I miss the Palm OS, and I would gladly give up my XDA iis.  No Bluetooth?  Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  It has an SD / MMC slot at least, right?  It only has a VGA camera, you say?  Who needs that when you carry around an 8MP dSLR everyday?  Why?  Hmm... I think that issue is meant for another post - or another blog even.  In any case, I can't wait for the Treo 680 to hit Philippines.

So now that Apple has released a new iPod Nano, expect vendors to come out with new cases to take advantage of the sales it's sure to generate. Belkin is trying to be first to the game, by releasing new cases for the media player:

• Acrylic Case (Pictured)
• Hard Flip-Top Case
• Neoprene Holster
• Canvas Flip-Top Case (Pictured)
• Canvas Holster
• Sports Armband
• Slider Case

Some of these cases are also available for the iPod Video (see the press release for more details). Belkin is also coming out with the Kickstand II, a display stand for the iPod Video. These accessories aren't available locally yet, but expect the local distributor of Belkin to pick it up soon. Rico Mossesgeld also writes for The Smart PDA. Check out his personal blog, Fool for Five.

Microsoft's Zune hasn't officially launched, but another player bearing an uncanny resemblance to it is now ready to hit the streets. Meet the MPF2110, Oriphe Industrial Limited's latest MP4 player. Obviously styled after the Zune, could the awkwardly named MPF2110 match the rest of the Zune's specifications? With no WiFi connectivity and a max capacity of 2GB, it doesn't even come close. We can be sure, however, that the prices will be just as different. One thing I'm wondering about though, is this: if the MPF2110 is already available, wouldn't the Zune be the clone when it comes out?