Slightly old news, but there has been an update to the great dictionary, kanji tool and word procesing software for Windows CE based PDAs has been released. A whole host of updates included and more planned. The full list can be found on the Pocket PC Japan mailing list from Glenn himself.
There is a great if slightly old article on greggman.com about using Windows CE PDAs to study Japanese with lots of references to JWPce.
Ratoc Systems have announced a Compact Flash USB host card which with the right drivers will be compatible with keyboards, bar code readers and flash or removable memory storage devices. The CNET Japan* Review mentions that it is not yet compatible with CD-RM drives or hard drives ... hopefully this is on the way in the future. The good news for some Pocket PC owners is that they already have USB host functionality via the cradle or and add on cable that doesn't use a valuable card slot. Hopefully as this card opens up USB host functionality to more Pocket PC users a lot more interesting more supporting devices will hit the market.
* Sadly CNET Japan will be ceasing business at the end of the year. It has been a great sight for up-to-date tech news from Japan and overseas in Japanese and I'm sure will be missed.
I can't remember how long ago it was since I tried the 30 day beta trial of the Access NetFront Browserfor Pocket PCs, but the Japanese version is finally on sale. (There is no information on their English web site about the product yet except a short press announcement so all links are to the Japanese site). You can see from the Pocket IE comparison table that the product is claim to fame is it's support for a wide range of standards. They also make a lot out of the multiple window functionality which admittedly is a missing needed feature in Pocket IE. Although the support for all the latest and greatest standards is good and there are a few other nify features I'm really dubious how many people are going to be willing to pay for this extra functionality unless there is some sort of realted killer app. The only sites I miss not having on my Pocket PC are www.rikai.com and www.jisyo.org but when I tried NetFront with these two pages it didn't perform any better than Pocket IE. Luckily there will be a trial download so you can try it yourself. Post to the mailing list and let everyone know how you find it.
A couple of interesting headlines I saw today in the PocketPC peripheral genre. Pretec are claiming they can provide CompactFlash cards with a capacity of up to 3Gb. At $2,499 I'll be waiting for a price drop before buying but I'm sure this evolution will make lower capacity CF cards cheaper. In separate news Hitachi announced they will be releasing half size MMC cards. This is certainly evolution rather than revolution and I'm not sure there is really a need for yet another format when MMC/SD cards are already so small. Soon they are going to be too small to handle. Wonder what the inventors will come up with then? Finally a note that SD card prices continue to drop slowly in Japan with 256MB cards at 16,500 yen and 512MB cards at 36,900 yen.
If you are interested in this subject there are an increasing number of sites out there. PDAbook sells books which are compatible with the T-Time Reader software which is bundled with many Pocket PCs in Japan and is specially designed for reading Japanese text. Kunikuniya also has a book store and I just came accross this interesting looking software, G-Book (see graphic below from the site), which seems to be a combination of multimedia, navigation and e-book software.
As a none native Japanese reader I wish that I could find a Japanese e-book reader that had a good integrated Japanese-English or even Japanese-Japanese dictionary.
Using the Air "H Compact Flash communications card, not only can you get a flat rate 128kbps data connection, but you can also use your Pocket PC PDA to make and receive calls. The PDA will receive calls even when switched off. Of course there will be issues like battery life that will make it a less than perfect product, but it's a big step in PDA-Phone convergence and shows the strength of the Pocket PC which is primarily a PDA device.
ATOK a popular Japanese character input method will be available for the Pocket PC from November 22nd. I couldn't find any good information in English on ATOK so if anyone has any links please post them to the mailing list.
Just as a rumor posted here reported here last month, NTT DoCoMo have announced they will be selling a 'tsukaihodai' (flat rate) package for their wireless modem (PHS) cards. The price will be 4000 yen/month.
Another Pocket PC Pocket PC hardware barrier broken by Toshiba - today they announced a new model of the Genio - the e550GX - with 128 MB of RAM! They also announced the SD-Audio compatible e550GS which comes with a headphone and remote control set for music fans and a WLAN jacket for the Genio e550G series. Any more interesting details will be posted here later in English but for now check the Genio e web site in Japanese.
Toshiba has released a ROM update for Pocket PC 2002 versions of the Genio e. The Pocket PC 2002 update features are an update to Windows Media Player 8.5 which features smoother playback; a new today theme called Bliss; tab key functionality in Pocket IE and Microsoft Server ActiveSynch client. On the hardware side support has been added for Sony's memory stick adapter for use in the PC card jacket and support for Matsushita's SD-CF adapter in the CF card slot
After installing the update all data stored in RAM is still there, but you should not restore the device from a backup created before the ROM was updated. Therefore it is advisable to install the ROM on a device set up you are happy with and back up as soon as the ROM update has been performed. Toshiba's instrcutions are very detailed and I wouldn't upgrade without reading them carefully and following them exactly. Personally as non of the update features are very major I'm going to wait a couple of weeks as a precaution just in case there are any problems with this update.
Finally, Toshiba's software for the Bluetooth SD card has also been upgraded to version 3.0 featuring a number of new features.
I've created a small web page specially formatted for Pocket IE. The content is different from here and you will automatically be redirected there if you visit www.pocketpcjapan.com on a Pocket PC, but if you want to cheat and view in a normal browser the URL is http://www.goes-mobile.com/Pocket PC Japan/. If there is any other content you would like to see there let me know at andrew @ pocketpcjapan.com
I created it using a very well designed, easy to use and free interface provided by www.goes-mobile.com
Okay, not just Japan related but every Pocket PC user should know about this. Not only do Pocket PC Magazine provide an encylopedia of Pocket PC software, they also have annual awards and the best products in each category are voted on by Pocket PC experts. This year's winners have just been announced. If you are looking for some software I would highly recommend you save yourself some time and start here. Huge thanks to Pocket PC Magazine for providing this excellent resource online.
Note that subscribing to the print edition of Pocket PC Magazine is not ridiculously expensive, even including the postage to Japan. They also provide an electronic format for PCs in the highly useable Zinio format and a MS Reader version (although unfortunately Pocket MS Reader is not compatible with Japanese Pocket PCs). In addition to all the online information they have the magazine is also full of useful more in-depth articles.
I'd overlooked this until today, but Ectaco's Japanese<->English dictionary will work on English Pocket PCs! Not only that, but It looks like a nice dictionary as well ... one that is designed for native English speakers rather than native Japanese speakers. From the pictures shown here you can see various keyboards and lookup systems. It's a bit pricey at $49.95. (Update: Since I posted this a mailing list member informed me that the same application is available at www.handango.com for $14.95 - great value! :-) There's a 10MB trial version which gives you access to 10% of the entries and you need 7.5MB free on your Pocket PC to install it.
(Thanks to Jack Halpern of www.cjk.org for asking me to test the Arabic dictionary which prompted me to take a second look at the Japanese one as well).
See CNET Article (English machine translation) for details.
