It’s this part of the month once again – BrightHand has just released its mind share stats for December 08. As usual, the data is below…the figures in brackets indicate last month’s placement:

  1. Samsung Omnia i900 (2)
  2. RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530 (New)
  3. RIM BlackBerry Curve 8300 (4)
  4. iPod touch (6)
  5. RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100 (8)
  6. Nokia E71 (7)
  7. iphone 3G (returning)
  8. T-Mobile G1 (1)
  9. HTC Touch Diamond (3)
  10. LG Incite (New)

When breaking this down on a per-platform level, the platforms appear rather balanced. RIM and touchscreened Windows Mobile devices claim three places each, with Apple following suite with 2 (which means that all their devices are in the top ten). Nokia’s S60 platform manages to stay in with one device, as does Android – Palm OS and WM Standard devices have been decimated for now…

The folks at Resco’s currently do a huge blow-out sale in cooperation with MobiHand – IDGuard, News and Sudoku for Palm OS can be had at a 50% rebate by clicking the corresponding banners below:
idguard Resco IDGuard, News and Sudoku   50% off news Resco IDGuard, News and Sudoku   50% off sudoku Resco IDGuard, News and Sudoku   50% off

This promotion runs until the 6th of January. As usual, no strings attached…

We have replaced the original image in this article. Please read our Clarification and Apology re Image used in Chinese 3G article for further information!
Liangs calligraphy China opens itself to advanced 3G technologiesSo far, the Chinese wireless industry was limited to 2G and 2.5G networks due to its government’s reluctance to pursue a license for a 3G standard. This was understandable some time ago (they tried to develop their own), but is nothing short of total idiocy nowadays as WCDMA and CDMA2000 are widely established and a new standard is neither needed nor likely to receive manufacturer support (and let’s not talk about roaming).

Fortunately, the Chinese government is on its way to reason according to a recent Reuters report:


The council did not say when the licences would be issued by the Ministry of Industry of Information, but the industry minister has said it would happen by early 2009.

China has repeatedly delayed awarding the licences while it worked on the broader task of reorganising its telecoms industry, a task it began earlier this year.

As part of that reorganisation, the ministry has said China Mobile (0941.HK) would be awarded a licence for a TD-SCDMA network, a standard backed by Beijing.

In addition, China Unicom (0762.HK) would be awarded a licence for WCDMA and China Telecom (0728.HK) for CDMA 2000.

While I do not expect these networks to become fully operational for at least another year, this definitely is a great step forward for the Chinese wireless industry! The times of weird 3G restrictions on devices like the iPhone 3G should be gone for good…

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Unknown, editing by Tam Hanna

Logo JPG Magazine going down January the 5thI have always been a fan of the JPG Magazine – in case anyone of you is new to the topic: it is a magazine which collects the best user-submitted photographs by popular vote and prints them.

The resulting magazine can then be bought or downloaded as PDF: these 20MB PDF files have made excellent stress test files for PDF viewers in the past.

Unfortunately, it looks like the age of the JPG Magazine is over – I just received the email below:

Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media.

We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we’ve been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The photography on the website and in the magazine was adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail. Some things you may want to do before the site closes:

- Download the PDFs of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections. We’ll always have the memories! www.jpgmag.com/downloads/archives.html
- Make note of your favorite photographers. You may want to flip through your favorites list and jot down names and URLs of some of the people you’d like to stay in touch with. You may even want to cut and paste your contacts page into a personal record.
- Catch up with your fellow members. Our roots are in this humble flickr forum and we recommend going back to find fellow members, discuss the situation, or participate in another great photo community. www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/
- Keep in touch. This has always been much more than just a job to each of us, and we’ll miss you guys! We’ll be checking the account jpgletters@gmail.com in our free time going forward. We can’t promise to reply to every email (since we’ll be busy tuning up our resumes) but we’d love to hear from you.
- Stay posted. Although the magazine is ceasing publication, we’ll be updating you on what’s happening with your subscription early next week.

We’re soggy-eyed messes, but it is what it is. At that, JPGers, we bid you goodbye, and good luck in 2009 and the future.

Laura Brunow Miner
Editor in Chief

The Tamoggemon Content team wishes its peers well – we are sorry to see them go…

via nano small VIA rumored to plan dual core NanoCNET News cites a Chinese web site as following:

The dual-core version of the Via Nano 3000–due in late 2009 or 2010–may use a Fujitsu 45-nanometer or TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 40-nanometer manufacturing process, according to HKEPC. The Intel Atom is based on 45-nanometer process technology.

The Via chip may also include SSE4 instruction support, HKEPC said. Generally, SSE4 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 4) instructions speed up multimedia applications.

Via is also slated to bring out other improved Nano processors in 2009, according to the report.

As I never liked Intel too much due to the megalomania exhibited by many of their German and Austrian PR folks (keep in mind that fish always start to stink at the head), I am more than happy to see some competition heating up the netbook market…

The UK-based magazine Guardian has recently mentioned TamsPalm in one of their articles about Palm:


I think the bigger challenge is that the Palm economy has been in recession for a long time. Just read the last few posts on TamsPalm, a blog dedicated to the Palm OS. Tam believes that Elevation is “pouring money down the drain”. He links off to some posts from Palm software develper CreativeAlgorithms explaining why the Palm OS software market went into free fall in 2008. Tam is also concerned that Palm hasn’t seeded Nova developer tools to key developers so that Nova devices will launch without key applications.

The Tamoggemon Publishing team is very thankful for the mention!

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