My Internet Notebook

Via PRNewswire: Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (SNDA), a leading interactive entertainment media company, and Motorola, Inc. (MOT), a global leader in wireless communications, today announced an agreement designed to improve the way games are experienced and enjoyed on mobile devices in China. According to the agreement, Motorola will launch exclusive mobile versions of Shanda’s popular World of Legend and Magical Land online role playing games on specially customized Motorola E680g handsets.

If the deal is exclusive, it seems to me a better win for Motorola than for Shanda. Given the popularity of Shanda’s World of legend online game and Chinese youth’s habits of changing cellphones every 6 months, Motorola could get a sales boost to their E680g mobile phone. In the world of fasting moving innovation today, good mobile handset can only last so long, but addictive content (a.k.a. games) will last for a long time. On the other hand, Shanda probably also badly needs a power player in the mobile world to boost its image in the mobile gaming world. Plus, a mobile phone is a great platform for casual games, which is the direction of Shanda’s current strategy.

Ran across a survey by M:Metrics on Wireless Data Service Usage:

What’s interesting is that the combined multimedia consumption (music, video etc.) is only 4% of the cellphone subscribers. Not sure whether it is because users have shown no interests or just because the wireless data networks do not provide the appropriate bandwidth for multi-media content yet.

Still, industry insider such as Allen Beasley is still very (maybe a little overly) optimitic. His company, Redpoint Ventures, has invested in cellphone-TV programmer MobiTV, mobile-payment service Obopay and AirPlay, whose technology lets cellphone users play along with TV sporting events and game shows. With broadband wireless networks and handsets in place, “the explosion of the Internet is going to happen in the mobile space,” he says.

There was a press release today that announced a special promotion on a product that I worked on long and hard – Sales Anywhere for Salesforce.com

“Sales Anywhere provides anywhere, anytime access to Salesforce.com accounts on Windows Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry devices — with or without a wireless connection. Whether at a customer site or on an airplane, industry-leading ease-of-use and robust synchronization ensure that sales professionals always have quick and reliable access to their Salesforce.com accounts to maximize field productivity and effectiveness.”

What’s interesting to note is that Sybase (SY) stock price rose 2.36% in a broadly negative market today, which translates to about $45 million in market cap value. I would like to think that investors are still very much optimistic about Mobile CRM’s growth prospect, a strong area of iAnywhere Solutions. Being a part of this whole effort definitely feels good.

(This post is not a piece of investor advice, implicit or explicit.)

The famed SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, is leading a $12 million research project to design a mobile medics vehicle where robotic arms remotely controlled by surgeons treats wounded soldiers on the battle field.

“The result will be a major step forward in saving lives on the battlefield,” said Scott Seaton, executive director of SRI’s engineering and systems division.

Research fundng comes from the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“Designing the system won’t be easy. SRI envisions a small, mobile unit containing all the basic tools needed for field surgery. Those tools, manipulated by robotic arms, would be controlled by a doctor miles away, linked to the pod via wireless communications. ”

Reported by SF Chronicles this morning.

There seems to be a lot of complaints on internet forums that PocketPC Emulator – ActiveSync connection does not work. Some also complained that there is not enough documentation to explain how to trouble-shoot PocketPC Emulator – ActiveSync connection problems.

According to my experience, I didnot have any problems at all to make PocketPC Emulator – ActiveSync connection work, i.e. to establish a device partnership in ActiveSync. My only complaint is that the PocketPC Enulator is soooo slow.

If you are having problems connecting PocketPC Emulator with ActiveSync, see if my five step process helps you.