Austin Lane

Austin Lane recently attended a Palm Select Developer Summit in San Diego, California, and was able to preview the new Palm Foleo mobile companion.  This is the first of a new type of mobile device that is not a laptop, tablet pc, smartphone or PDA, but is called a mobile companion.  This device functions in tandem with your smartphone or internet-enabled phone to provide a full-sized QWERTY keyboard and a 10 inch, 1020×600 dpi resolution screen.  Already able to synchronize email with the Treo smartphone, developers are quickly announcing and releasing additional products for file-sharing, remote desktop access, multi-media players, and more.  A review from Brighthand includes a great video hosted by YouTube, and gives you a good idea of the look and feel for the new product offering.  While some reviewers feel that this product has a limited market, the marketplace is quickly coming up with creative applications, such as a possible use at coffee shops so that customers don’t have to bring in their own laptops for the wi-fi experience, or for classroom use by students to take notes or view on-line study materials.

This has been a nearly 5-year long brainchild from original Palm founder Jeff Hawkins, and could represent the next great wave of the mobile computing experience.  Austin Lane will continue to consider possible applications in the enterprise market.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am and is filed under Email, Internet, Mobile Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.