Not a notebook or a netbook or a UMPC (or any of the other variants). I’ve come to realize over the years that the current classifications and niche computing devices are missing out on one form factor and the current attempts to fill it are pretty horrible.

Current devices like the iPhone or the Touch Pro are limited – they are too small to be “computer” replacements yet they don’t work really well as phones either. They are a compromise and perhaps the solution is to pair a more basic featurephone with a very portable device that’s actually useful.

What I want is something the size of an A5 notepad with a touch screen covering the whole of the front of the device – no need for a keyboard or extraneous buttons (they would be flush in the bevel or on the edges along with any ports) that I can interface with using a pen (similar to my UMPC) but with enough battery power to easily last a full day and enough processing power to deal with handwriting recognition and speech recognition.

This device would need WiFi and Bluetooth to enable it to pair seamlessly with my Cellphone and a headset. The headset would ideally be able to connect to both the notepad and the phone – so I can dictate to the device, break off and answer a call and the continue to control the notepad while listening to music from it, all seamlessly.

The connection to the phone would be ideally be more synergistic than just being available as a modem. Ideally transition from WiFi to the phones 3G data would be seamless (let me set preferences but it should be smart enough to take the optimal data path) so I can always stay connected. Beyond that the phone and the notepad should be aware of each others status so when the phone rings my music pauses, caller ID information is displayed on the device and I can hit and answer button on the screen or the phone and route the call to my headset, the phone or speakerphone on the notepad, and text/MMS messages could be composed and read on either. The notepad should be able to access the phones camera to record images or video (as well as having a built in one) and via a standard USB connection they should be able to share power as needed.

There’s no reason the phone shouldn’t have limited internet capabilities (web browsing, email, a social networking client, GPS mapping) and, of course, some games so it’s a useful device in it’s own right but it’s primarily a phone. At the weekend for instance people might not want to take both devices but a smart-enough phone to keep them in contact would be the right balance.

Using software that has learnt lessons from the iPhone UI and Microsoft’s Origami Project and InkSeine the device would need to work with pen (both for tapping as well as handwriting recognition), finger (gesture control) and spoken input. Applications like Outlook and OneNote would need optimizing for maximum usability on a screen this size and layout with these input methods but simpler cut down versions would help performance and battery life.

Accelerometer, light sensor and on-board GPS would open up other possibilities for control, and of course being able to use a dedicated Bluetooth keyboard (or the phone keypad or an on-screen keypad) to extend the ways you can interact with the device.

Not only would this device offer a more practical replacement to the iPhone and N80x type devices it would also be a platform for Amazon to extend the eBook capabilities to – much like they have extended the Kindle Reader to the iPhone.

Coupling a device like this with a service like Mesh and Exchange Active Sync to ensure your data is always available (and offload processing of things like search indexing to the cloud) and live updates (weather, stocks, traffic for mapping etc) and you have an ideal personal companion device.

In fact, with a standardized mount / connector architecture you could check your schedule on it over breakfast, slot it into you car and use the GPS to route you to your appointment (with live traffic updates) and via the connector have it monitor ODB-II information to remind you you’re running low on fuel and suggest the cheapest gas station or remind you that you’re due a service soon (maybe add a task to your to-do- list!)

In William Gibson’s Virtual Light Yamazaki takes his notebook for granted. I just want one now ;) Maybe it’ll need a kinetic charger to keep going as long as I want, but the rest shouldn’t be too hard…

I’ve been using Skyfire for a while now and I’ve been pretty impressed so far (especially as they added Silverlight support for the Olympics) – although I’d used it initially on a 3G Touch device I’ve been using it a lot recently on my trusty 2.5G non-touch Shadow smartphone and for most things it’s become my browser of choice.

The good news is that there’s now a new release (with no waiting list for folks in the US if you’re not already on the beta program).

As well as the Silverlight support (I can now show people the Silverlight powered slideshow of my car on my phone!) it has improved performance and stability (as any new release should) and has added a really handy combined search/address bar (similar to what appears on Chrome or in Internet Explorer if you type a “?” followed by the words you want to search) to get you where you want to go quickly.

It still has some small hiccups with sites requiring text entry (though again that has improved significantly in this release) and performance with really interactive / Ajax heavy sites suffers because of the network and translation lag – but it does a better job than any other browser I’ve tried on a Windows Mobile phone up to this point.

They set out to bring the PC web experience to the constrained mobile platform and while the iPhone may get a lot of credit for their WebKit implementation Skyfire opens up options for plugins such as Flash and Silverlight that may be slow in coming to other platforms.

With the advent of Safari on the iPhone there’s been a bit of a shake-up in the mobile internet experience – or at least the expectations.

Out of the box Windows Mobile comes with cut down version of Internet Explorer called IEMobile (aka PocketIE) which, while reliable, is getting a little long in the tooth.

IEMobile is based on IE5 so there are many sites that can take advantage of the capabilities available on mobile devices today. With the advent of IE6 for Windows Mobile things should only get better.

Of course, that’s in the future – what can you do today for a better browsing experience?

Opera

Opera has been offering a couple of options for mobile browsers for a while now.

OperaMini works on any phone that has Java support and is ideal for lower powered devices or phones with smaller screens or slower connection as they offload a lot of the layout to their servers and only send an optimized view to the device. Obviously this limits functionality and causes some compromises with what you see.

Opera Mobile is a native Windows Mobile application so is a much richer application than Opera Mini. It offers a number of advantages over IEMobile – not least of which are tabs and much better Javascript support (I use this page as a quick test for javascript and ajax support).

Opera Mobile is a good enough app that some handsets are now shipping with it as the default, pre-installed browser. For the rest of us, it’s available (30 day trial and then US$24)

NetFront from Access

Access technologies have a long and fairly interesting history. They have been developing their mobile browser platform for some years – initially on PalmOS and now extending to other phone and embedded platforms, including Windows Mobile. As an interesting aside Access actually purchased the PalmOS assets and continue to develop that platform.

NetFront is usually only available pre-installed by OEMs but until August 31 you can play with their Windows Mobile Concept version on any device (they’re asking for feedback so I guess they’re serious about the platform).

Rendering is fast and very fluid. On the same page it does a marginally better job than Opera Mobile – delivering a page very quickly and making scrolling, zooming and navigating very natural. The browser shows a floating transparent pane that shows the whole page and where you are so you don’t get lost.

On the SGH-i780 this does a great job. On the slightly faster HTC Advantage (X7500) I was surprised at how fast it was rendering and scrolling and actually overshot a couple of times!

Despite it’s good points it is a little rougher around the edges than Opera Mobile – some problems selecting links and the javascript/ajax test failed (I’ve sent that feedback to them).

Which is the best?

Both of these browsers actually do an amazing job. When you take into account the connectivity and processing power of a typical Windows Mobile device anything close to the desktop experience is pretty awesome. Hopefully the IEMobile 6 team are having a very good look at these to see where the bar is for on-device rendering. Microsoft have announced that both Silverlight and Flash will be available so hopefully we’ll start to see full support for these become available over time.

But on-device isn’t the only solution as demonstrated by Opera Mini and the Microsoft DeepFish research project.

SkyFire

Currently in limited beta Skyfire promises “the PC web. Real Fast. On your phone."

Similar to DeepFish and Opera Mini they direct traffic through a proxy and optimize it for deliver. Going beyond those similar services they re-work the content to actively deliver the very interactive features desktop users take for granted – ajax, dynamic HTML, java and fully functional Flash – yes, even all those youTube videos can now be experienced just like on your desktop!

One of the features I really like about it is the ability to zoom in to any part of the page, or zoom back out to see the overall context. It reminds me of the Hard Rock memorabilia experience – as you zoom in the detail resolves as additional data is transmitted.

I was very impressed with SkyFire on touch devices like the TyTN II, it was when I used it on my Shadow – dare I say it’s an iPhone like experience on a smartphone!

It’s in limited beta while they finish the product and get to grips with the scaling (pushing all that traffic through their servers is going to take some management) but go to the site and sign up to get in the queue.

So, which is the best?

After having used all of these alternatives for some time now I don’t have one firm favorite. The ajax support in Opera Mobile is a big positive. The speed and ease of use in NetFront makes it hard to pass up. The “full” experience in Skyfire makes it perfect for some content (though I tend to avoid it for very "forms” intensive sites)

All of them promise great things for the future as competition on the platform, and with Safari on iPhone and browser on some of the UMPC and MID devices is going to make things better for the typical user.

In the past I've used SyncToy to keep files on a couple of computers and my iPod in sync so I was pleased to discover a new version that's even smarter is now available in beta for us to play with.

So, what's new? Lots that what....

• Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition
• True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions
• Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching
• Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden)
• Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off
• Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points
• Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface
• The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases
• Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation
• Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder
• 64-bit compatibility
• Folder pair rename
• Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents created under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded
• Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from My Documents to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup
• Removed combine and subscribe actions

So, stop reading and go and have a look.

If you just want to keep machines in sync automatically over the internet then check out FolderShare - a Windows Live service currently in Beta to keep files in sync and allow web access (secured of course) to any files you designate. Not to be confused with SkyDrive of course - that's a cloud storage space for you to dump files in manually... no synchronization, just convenience!

As I've mentioned before I'm a fan of Pandora and I've been following some of the issues around the SoundExchange Royalty Rate battle.

Initially I thought that the only option was for Federal Govt to rein in SoundExchange to ensure any increase was fair and equitable but thanks to a strong proponent of Objectivism I'm finding out that there's more to the story and more ways to solve this problem.

I suspect the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes, but I certainly feel some form of facilitator is needed simply to ensure the process can scale. How the facilitator would be funded and overseen... that's a whole new can of worms!

Thanks to Darren for the perspective, and thanks to AppScout for pointing me his way.

Every time you use the internet to find a website you're using a Domain Name Server (DNS) to actually locate the physical server. The DNS is what translates the nice friendly URL (eg offbeatmammal.com) to the IP address which identifies the actual server.

The problem is that the DNS service isn't that clever, and hasn't changed much since its inception. It doesn't help with spelling mistakes (eg google.cmo or googel.com) and it doesn't do anything to protect you from phishing attacks

Well. That was until a year or so ago, with the arrival of OpenDNS. Up until then most DNS services have been provided by ISPs simply delivering a replication of the available information with no intelligence or added value. OpenDNS offer two very valuable 'add-ons'.

The first is typo correction. If you make a common mis-spelling for a URL that doesn't have a legitimate site assigned to then the OpenDNS service simply corrects your spelling behind the scenes and you go where you meant to.

The second is an active anti-phishing solution. Using information from third parties such as SpamHaus OpenDNS checks the request and warns you if you're heading into trouble. Because the check happens at the server there is no delay while a browser plug-in goes off to check if the site is good or bad.

As OpenDNS have a very sophisticated caching solution, with none of the requirements of the legacy DNS providers (and because it's their business after all) their DNS servers are very fast.

OpenDNS is very simple to configure. In fact, there is no software to download or install as every network capable computer (no matter what operating system) can simply be set to override the default ISP provided settings with the OpenDNS server settings (there are also options for quickly setting up home and corproate networks in a totally transparent way) - it took about 30 seconds when I switched my laptop to use their servers.

Although the OpenDNS service is free to end users they will be making money by delivering sponsored results if you type in a non-existent URL that they can match in a similar way to Googles AdWords.

While the idea behind OpenDNS isn't new, unlike solutions like DNS Redirector it's free and doesn't require an install.

At the moment the OpenDNS service doesn't include additional services such as ad blocking or customization (eg specific over-rides for suspected phishing sites or common typos) but over time I can see this service evolving. For now however it's a great little solution all of its own....