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What is “Burgerama”? “Burgerama” is a career ladder climbing game plus crazy
economics strategy and a puzzle from Ballshooter Games.

“Burgerama's” main character is a humble young man who just got a job at a fast-food chain.You'll have to follow him the entire way from being a janitor (cleaning toilettes is not fun) to the chain's BIG BOSS. Don't deny yourself the pleasure of building a virtual career and enjoy your real-world achievements, while guiding the young main through difficulties and challenges. It will make you real happy,We promise!

You can count days left until “Burgerama” is released on your fingers. We are looking for ambitious men and women, who want to participate in beta-testing.
Take a look at “Burgerama” and let us know.

One more thing, you can get “Burgerama” right now only for $7.95, but be in a hurry because it will cost twice more after release.

Two Stunads & Co. is proud to announce SpaceTime, a revolutionary mathematical application for the Pocket PC empowering your mobile device with 3D animated graphing and more mathematical capabilities than a TI-83 Calculator.I was informed that this program will be released sometime at the end of this month. I really am looking forward to this program.

Reference: Two Stunads & Co.

I have put together an article which goes over some of the new devices which will be arriving on the market in the next few months. I also included some info on the new PocketPC operating system.

Read article @ http://www.ppczone.net/ppcnew.htm
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According to PocketPCitilia another new HP Ipaq is coming soon. This one is supposed to be called the HP Ipaq 5550 and will include PocketPC 2003, 128mb Ram, 48mb Rom,SD,Bluetooth and Wifi. One of the most interesting things is the ROM size which is 48mb which could mean any current devices with 48mb ROM will be upgradeable to PPC2003.

According to Brighthand it’s possible the new Ipaq could be available on May 30th.

“In late March, the FCC gave its approval for Hewlett Packard to begin offering a new line of Pocket PCs, at least one of which will have built-in Bluetooth wireless networking. A few days ago, High Tech Computer, the company making the device for HP, sent a message to the FCC asking that the approval documentation be taken down because the devices won’t be available for some time…Plus, the FCC posted the exact request for confidentiality on its site, which reveals what might be the release date for these handhelds. The letter says, “because these two products are still confidential to market until May 30, please set aside the FCC grant.” Later it says, “please also un-set aside these two grant[s] so that the information is back on the FCC website on May 30.”

There is also a user over on the Brighthand forums which says he has seen and held the new device.

More info here

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About a month ago, a rumor surfaced that Hewlett Packard was in the process of developing the iPAQ h2200 series Pocket PC. The FCC has granted permission for the release of these devices, which will offer built-in Bluetooth wireless networking and SDIO support.

At this point, it appears that there will be at least two models in the h2200 series, one of which will have integrated Bluetooth and one which won’t. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless networking standard used to allow devices to connect together without wires. It’s frequently used to allow a handheld to use a mobile phone as a modem to connect to the Internet. An increasing number of Bluetooth-enabled devices are coming on the market, such as GPS receivers, hard drives, and keyboards.

The screen used with the h2200 series will be a transflective TFT LCD with 64K-color support. It will have .24-dot pitch and 240 by 320 pixels.

These will be dual slot devices offering a CompactFlash slot and an SD/MMC slot which will have SDIO support. SDIO will allow these slots to handle peripherals besides just memory cards. This includes wireless networking cards, digital cameras, presentation tools, and more. It is not yet known if this series will be a part of the SDIO Now! program.

Unlike the iPAQ h1910 series, these models look much more like the traditional iPAQ design. However, it is not known if these can use the expansion sleeves designed for other iPAQs.

Source:PPCnewswire

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A start-up company says it has developed a way to make fuel cells out of silicon, a change that potentially could increase the performance of cells and make them easier to manufacture.
As far-fetched as it might sound, fuel cells for cell phones or notebooks will likely emerge in the market next year and grow in popularity. Unlike microprocessors, hard drives or memory, batteries are not continuing to improve at a rapid, predictable rate. This is forcing tech companies to seek alternatives or products that will complement batteries.

The twist developed by Neah Power Systems essentially replaces the polymer membrane inside fuel cells with layers of porous silicon, said David Dorheim, CEO of Neah.

Current fuel cells produce energy by creating a chemical reaction between methanol and oxygen. Electrodes draw those substances toward a plastic membrane, and when they come in contact with the membrane, the methanol breaks down and releases electrons, which are then funneled to power the host device. The byproducts of the reaction eventually recombine with the electrons to form water and carbon dioxide.

Full Story @ news.com
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What are some of the coming analog ideas for wireless?
“At Berkeley they are looking at a 10 gigabit-per-second radio with an onboard variable length inductor that can change its personality. You walk into the red carpet room at the airport and your PDA or your personal computer starts sniffing the air to see if there is a 2G, or a 2.5G, or 802.11b network. It covers the spectrum and it picks the cheapest path to the IP backbone and configures itself to be that radio. Let’s say you’re doing something that’s voice intensive. It will still keep sniffing to see if another protocol gets introduced that is even cheaper. “

When National Semiconductor decided to challenge Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the market for low-end microprocessors in 1997, CEO Brian Halla teased a group of skeptical analysts, saying they probably thought he had been sprinkling testosterone on his corn flakes.

And even though National’s acquisition of Cyrix turned out to be a bad bet, Halla recovered from the blunder and returned the company to its roots in the analog chip business.

Analog chips capture sound, light, temperature and other real-world data and convert it for electronic equipment. Even though the analog business has been hurt during a prolonged industry slowdown, Halla expects a turnaround by the late spring. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but he believes the revival will be triggered by a technological transformation in which analog chips become the workhorse component in the downloading of images and graphics from the Internet as well as for wireless transmissions of data signals.

In the process, Halla expects analog chips will displace the zeros and ones that have formed the heart of the binary language used in personal computing for most of the last couple of decades.

“The only things on the face of the planet that use zeros and ones are microprocessors and digital signal processors,” he says. It’s fine to do zeros and ones for spreadsheets and that’s why the PC uses the least amount of analog. But we’re not doing spreadsheets anymore.

More @ news.com
Source:PPcnewswire
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EUU3 or service Pack 3 for PocketPC 2002 has been released to the OEMS. It will include a new Media Player version 8.5 which will support media player 9 content. There is also supposed to be Xscale optimizations include for devices with Xscale processors which could drastically improve performance on these devices.

It will likely be released in November as the OEM’s have to add certain features to support their devices like device specific drivers.

Source:pocketpcthoughts.com
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“Philips Electronics is using the Ceatec 2002 exhibition to give a recently developed miniature optical disc and drive its first major public showing and the company couldn’t be happier with the reaction from the Japanese public.

The discs, called small form factor optical storage or SFFO, are intended to replace memory cards in future generations of mobile electronics products and so have to be very small. In the case of Philips’ prototype system, the discs are 1.2 inches in diameter but can hold up to 1GB of information.

“Usually Japanese companies come to Europe and show us their miniaturized technology but here we are showing them ours,” said a beaming Jos Bruins, marketing director of the company’s DVD and Super Audio CD products, as attendees made good use of magnifying glasses supplied by Philips to allow them to examine the prototypes.

Philips announced development of the system earlier this year but Ceatec marks the first time it has been widely displayed….”

Source:Pcworld.com
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