More handheld links/movies for the pocket pc

Thanks to everyone who responded to the blog questionnaire!

Here are a few more links for the webliography. I am posting them here
and will add them to the more permanent list on the right. Thanks to
the librarians who sent this information!

University of North Carolina Health Sciences Library (http://www.hsl.unc.edu/guides/focusonpda.htm)

VCU Libraries PDA Resource Page (http://www.library.vcu.edu/tml/bibs/pda.html

This great update on pocket pc movies from Mark Glissmeyer of PDAsupport.com(thanks, Mark!)
Isn't it amazing to think you can watch movies on a pocket pc?

"All the things I ordered for those PDA movies arrived last week, so I was able to test them out a bit and here is what I found:

The SanDisk SDDR-31-01 USB Imagemate CompactFlash Card Reader works very well at transferring movies to my compact flash card. It takes about 2 ½ minutes for a 100 MB movie to load using this USB card reader, vs. about 10 minutes [or longer] with drag and drop. If anyone transfers large files [or many files like music] to memory cards then a product like this is great. No hotsync needed!



I also received the third movie pack “Fright Night”. This one contains three movies; The Terror which is a semi color movie of 111 MB in size and 80 minutes, Carnival of Souls B&W 87 minutes 104 MB, and The Vampire Bat B&W 71 minutes 87 MB.



I first watched the Africa Screams movie from the “Funny Flix” pack and it looked very good for black and white. This was the only movie though from this pack that would fit on my 128 MB CF card. I earlier thought another movie from that pack “His Girl Friday” would as well but it was a tiny bit larger than my memory card. So without a larger 256 MB memory card only one of the movies on this pack loads unfortunately to my card.



I also ordered a Play Pack for the Pocket PC from Microsoft that was only $5 [It’s free but with a small shipping charge of $5 or so]-



http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software/pocket/pporder.asp



And this has three movies as well-



The Inspector General 1 hour 41 minutes 150 kbps 110 MB color

The Young Master 1 hour 30 minutes 150 kbps 97 MB color

To Kill a Mockingbird 2 hours 9 minutes 93 MB 100 kbps B&W



These movies are longer, the first two are in vivid color, but run at slower bit rates so fast action can be a bit blurry occasionally [all the movies from Pocket PC Films ran at a faster196 kbps]. But these three do fit on a 128 MB memory card individually and are very good movies too. I think if anyone is interested in full length movies on a PDA then this is a great pack to order from Microsoft to see how they look. It also has a few music videos and other things to go along with it. Of the three other movie packs I own I like the “Fright Night” one as well from Pocket PC Films and would recommend it too.



I ran these movies on a newer Compaq iPAQ 3765 with 64 MB RAM and had no problems whatsoever. When I ran the movies on battery power I had to run it on power saver mode [no backlight] to see the full movie. It seems to consume about a third of a charge for each hour of movie usage. On external power there was no problem obviously [using full backlight as well].

If I find any other movies like this I will let you know. And feel free to share this with your readers if you like. "

Mark also shared a press release from Palm about an exciting educational handheld project in
New York:
"I also noticed this release from Palm today you might find interesting. Looks like 5000 Palm handhelds for educators-



http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=no&TICK=PALM&STORY=/www/story/06-03-2002/0001739376&EDATE



SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM) today announced it expects more than 5,000 Palm(TM)
handheld computers to be purchased for a three-year grant program designed by
the New York State Council of School Superintendents, the School
Administrators Association of New York State (SAANYS), and the State Education
Department (SED). The program was developed to help education leaders
throughout New York state begin to explore technology as a catalyst for
organizational growth and student achievement."

Jenny, Teri, Tom, Peg, Ginny, and Carol: Do you think we could get something
like this for Illinois libraries? :)