So, as many of you know I’m a tiny bit of an iPhone fan. I spend a lot of time on my iPhone reading and writing emails, checking RSS feeds and all kinds of other stuff. You may also know that just a short while ago we had a review unit come in for a Pantech Matrix Pro and that came to me. I did the best I could, and while I loved the hardware, after a year+ of iPhone OS I couldn’t handle the pitfalls of WinMo… So I sent my review unit to Doug.

Doug, as all of you know is a Winmo guy. Well who knows why, but he went out and bought himself a Nokia E71 NAM around the same time I got the Pantech. As luck would have it, Doug didn’t really like S60… So here we were two people with two bits of hardware we loved but OS’s we just didn’t.

We may not be rocket scientists, but luckily it didn’t require them for us to figure out that maybe we should swap and see if that worked out better. Doug has had the Matrix Pro for a few days now so I’m sure you’ll see his impressions coming soon. I on the otherhand just got the E71 yesterday… And I’m lost.

So if you’re an S60 fan, I’d love to hear how you’re making the OS work for you. I’ve got some cool stuff setup already, but any tips and tricks you’ve got I wanna hear em…

oh… And i typed and published this whole post on the E71. The keyboard isn’t too shabby….

Posted by Wordmobi

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.

Alright, well we got our winner (Congrats Kevin!) but that doesn’t mean your shot at getting a new Matrix Pro of your own for the low, low cost of free is gone. Below is a list of the sites still running or have yet start promotions!

MediaBlab (27-Apr 01-May)
Smartphonethoughts (28-Apr 02-May)
Mobilityminded (29-Apr 03-May)
The Gadgeteer (30-Apr 04-May)
Geekzone (01-May 05-May)
Techie Diva (02-May 06-May)
Bostonpocketpc (03-May 07-May)
GearDiary (04-May 08-May)
MobilitySite (05-May 09-May)
AbsoluteWindows (06-May 10-May)
Mobilejaw (07-May 11-May)
Experiencemobility (08-May 12-May)
HackCollege (09-May 13-May)
Gear Live (10-May 14-May)

I started a little adventure recently. One which I mentioned lightly a little while ago, and that’s my trek into the e-book world. I have bought a nice Sony e-book reader and so far I’ve been pretty happy with the purchase. But what just happened today has got me a little miffed about how open of a platform e-books can continue to be. To be honest one of the reasons I bought the Sony was how open it was. I can dump almost anything on it and nobody can take the stuff away or turn off my account. The ability to tell me I’m not allowed to read something (like can happen with the Kindle) just isn’t an issue (mostly) with the Sony. But today, the chances of this nice open world for e-books and their readers just got a whole lot smaller.

Lexcycle has been acquired by Amazon.com!
Mon, 04/27/2009 – 13:00 — marc

We are very excited to announce that Lexcycle has been acquired by Amazon.com!

It has been an amazing experience to see Stanza grow out of our brainstormed ideas into one of the most downloaded iPhone applications. Throughout this period we have attempted to listen to and innovate for our customers to provide a great ebook reading experience.

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.

We are excited to join forces with a company that has innovated on behalf of readers for over a decade and is a pioneer in ebooks. Like Amazon, we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead for ebooks and we could not think of a better company to join during this exciting time.

As always, we encourage people to ask questions or provide feedback through our forums at http://forum.lexcycle.com or directly to us at info@lexcycle.com.

Best,
Marc, Neelan and Abe

So I’m wondering where the purchase of LEXCYCLE by Amazon is going to lead Stanza. I mean lets be perfectly honest here, there’s very little to gain by Amazon from leaving Stanza alone. So, I see this going one of two ways:

1.) Is Amazon going to roll the Stanza application (desktop & iPhone) into their existing Kindle infrastructure… ie. take the desktop app, the ePub technology and toss the rest away or

2.) Is Stanza going to gain the ability to read the .azw format and purchase books OTA from Amazon?

What do you think? Can this possibly be good for the e-book industry?

EDIT: We’ve received some emails that the survey had stopped working. Well, it had. But its ok again, so if you couldn’t register before… try again. Sorry!

I’ve been promising it for weeks now… and here it is! Your chance to win one of the biggest prizes we’ve ever given away on JAMM – A BRAND NEW Pantech Matrix Pro! Not only that, but you’re getting a $100 service credit for AT&T!

Normally our contests are pretty easy to live with, and I didn’t really want to change the format too much, but I did want to make you work a tiny (and I mean tiny) little bit. So, keeping in the theme of “The Power To Be You”, I’m asking everyone to complete a (very) short survey that will help JAMM keep YOU happy.

CONTEST DETAILS: This contest is open from April 25 until April 29 at 5pm pst. On April 29 at 5 PM MST, I will close the contest. All those that complete the survey will be entered to Random.org to find a winner (ONE person will be chosen randomly). The Winner will be contacted on April 29 after 9 PM MST and be given 24 hours to accept the prize. We will make a congratulations post once we have a confirmed winner. ENTER THIS CONTEST BY Clicking Here to take the survey..

RULES: Sorry everyone has to have rules…

Prize package:

What are you waiting for? Take the survey!

Read More …