Jason Brooks

As wireless networking continues to expand across the enterprise, it is important that IT departments evaluate the effects of these technologies on system security and arrive at ways to integrate them into established security frameworks. Companies now face an assortment of wireless networks, including LANs, powered by the IEEE 802.11 standard; PANs (personal area networks), […]

With a touch-sensitive display, new Web clipping capabilities and four times the RAM of the device it replaces, Xircom Inc.s Rex 6000 MicroPDA represents a significant advance for the Rex product line and is a viable competitor in the low-end handheld device market. However, although the Rex 6000s PCMCIA card form factor makes the device […]

In his keynote at the Bluetooth Developers Conference earlier this month in San Jose, Calif., IBM Distinguished Engineer John Karidis impressed me with a display of the companys Bluetooth-enabled Linux wristwatch. Karidis used the prototype watch, which runs a stripped-down version of the Linux 2.2 kernel complete with X11 graphics, to control the slides he […]

Two recently released applications—Cutting Edge Software Inc.s QuickOffice 5.0 and DataViz Inc.s Documents To Go Professional Edition—can significantly extend the functionality of Palm OS-based devices by enabling users to view and edit word processing documents and spreadsheets, including those created in Microsoft Corp.s Word and Excel. Both applications, however, require that these documents and spreadsheets […]

Now that Palm is repackaging itself as a software and operating system company, it is following the leaders by charging for its OS upgrades. A few weeks ago, Palm made Palm OS 3.5 available to users as an upgrade for $15—the first time a new Palm OS wasnt a freebie. Most Palm-based handheld computers are […]

If the concept of extending e-commerce further into the physical world through the use of bar codes is going to take off, bar-code readers will have to be mobile. A few months ago, my colleague Jim Rapoza torched Digital:Convergences CueCat bar-code scanner for several reasons. The scanner is designed to read bar codes placed in […]

Omnisky Corp.’s Internet service and Minstrel S wireless modem extend access to e-mail and the Web to users of Handspring Inc.’s Visor handheld devices, and in eWeek Labs tests, the pair did so simply and effectively. However, due to operating system incompatibilities, the Minstrel S Springboard module, which shipped last month, can be used only […]

We’ve always been puzzled as to why Handspring Inc.-which designed the Visor handheld with an eye toward expandability-chose to “hard-wire” the Visor’s operating system and core applications in ROM. Apart from the Visor’s Springboard expansion slot, perhaps the biggest difference between handheld devices produced by Handspring and Palm Inc. is the type of ROM on […]