Way back when I was still using the Dell Axim, I discovered a fantastic leather case manufacturer, called Noreve (that is French for amazing leather cases)  OK, maybe it does not really stand for that…but it should, because they make some of the best cases I have ever used for mobile devices.  Now, they have released their latest lines, which include a beautiful new line of cases for the Kindle 2.  And let me tell you, I wasted no time getting one wrapped around my Kindle 2.  Hit the jump, and we will take a look.

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[This is a joint review between Doug Goldring of JAMM and Judie Lipsett ofGear Diary; it will appear simultaneously on both sites. Doug's comments are in black, and Judie's are blue italics]

The last time I used a non-touch screen version of Windows Mobile was the Motorola Q.  It ran Windows Mobile 5, and I quickly learned that the interface was nothing short of terrible.  That phone lasted about a week before I declared the phone completely unusable and gave it away to a friend.  That was then.  This is now: Windows Mobile 6.1.  And a lot has changed.

I’ve been using the operating system formerly known as Smartphone for years, starting with the HTC  Tornado (I-Mate SP5m) in 2005. That was followed by the Motorola Q, the HTC STR TRK, the  HTC 710 (Vox), the Samsung Blackjack, the Motorola Q9, the Samsung SGH-i620 , the Samsung Blackjack II, the Treo 500v, the  HTC S740 – AKA Rose, and more recently the Pantech Matrix Pro.

I have never felt that even the earliest Smartphone interface was terrible, in fact I generally found Smartphone to be a rock solid OS when compared to Pocket PC, as it required far fewer restarts. Over the years I have enjoyed watching the Smartphone (now called Standard) platform mature. With that said, I think that your bad experience with Smartphone was due to the Motorola Q being such a dog.

So, right off the bat, you can see that Judie and I are coming at this from completely different perspectives.  Anyway, I decided the time had come to give a non-touch screen device another try.  And what better device to check out than the HTC S740?

I agree that for anyone unsure of whether a non-touch Windows Mobile phone would work for them, the S740 is a great place to start.

Let’s take a look.

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With the current downturn of the traditional newspaper, more and more people turn to online solutions for their daily news needs. The burgeoning need for sales not at print level to maintain the growth of all major news providers, is becoming more dependent on online subscriptions via devices like the Kindle. It appears though that a lot of the major newspapers are happy with the way the Kindle, and many other e-readers in the same category, handle their content.

A few publishers are forging alliances with consumer-electronics firms to support e-readers that meet their needs. Chief among their complaints about the Amazon portable reading gadget is the way Amazon acts as a middleman with subscribers and controls pricing. In addition, the layout isn’t conducive to advertising

So not only is this about the Kindle, other players are stepping into the e-news arena, with digi-books!

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Thanks to our long time reader, Knaak, for sending in the tip on this one.  iBrowz from iStation is a pretty cool app and a different kind of RSS/news reader.  Rather than relying on RSS feeds, this one relies on Widgets to provide you with all the latest news, sports, and more.

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Over the past months we in the U.S. have seen a lot of things, but I think the most important change we’ve only started to see is the level of openness that has come from the WhiteHouse. Now we aren’t a political website, nor are we a religious website so any of that bias argument garbage you can keep to yourself. I really don’t care if you love Obama or don’t – this post is oriented at doing one thing, and that’s showing you how you can keep up with the goings on in the WhiteHouse even when you don’t have time to sit around and watch the news.

So, from the land of “did you know”, did you know the WhiteHouse has an official Flickr account? The picture above is of President Obama on the phone with Supreme Court Justice David Souter discussing his retirement this past Friday. Want to know what it looked like when Obama landed in Turkey? There’s a photo of that too. In all there’s over 300 behind the scenes photos of situations you’ve likely never seen before. Here’s a question… why is there a private study in the oval office? Isn’t his office?

Did you know there’s a WhiteHouse blog RSS feed? Well, there is and its a huge source of information regarding all things President Obama. Of all the sources of information there is, this is one of the most useful since they not only cover things like the weekly presidential address, but they also cover activities the president is taking part in, along with executive orders the president has issued. A lot of this stuff is flat out ignored by the main stream media so your chances of seeing it on CNN is somewhere between slim and none.

Prefer your information to be really mobile? How about some podcast action? You can grab the president’s weekly video (or audio) address along with some other podcasts like the regular press briefings that Robert Gibbs does.

Finally there’s a bunch of other sources you can use:

No matter how you feel about the current administration, there’s one thing it is bringing to the WhiteHouse and that’s a whole new way to find out information regarding what’s going on in Washington. If there’s one thing you do this weekend I recommend at least spending a few minutes and seeing how you can fit in one of these sources into your information flow. For far too long Washington has been this black hole, closed door session where people make decisions that affect all of us. I’m not saying you need to go join a protest march or become some kind of political activist, but the sooner we all come out of the darkness, the sooner we can move the United States back to a country people can look to and dream about the infinite possibilities their lives have.