MobileViews Blog

Day: August 7, 2007

  • Is a Pocket PC Good Enough to be a Podcast Recording Device?

    Every now and then I toy with the idea of catching up with the rest of the world and starting a podcast. But, being a mobile geek, I would, of course, prefer to record it using a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. The question is: Would the sound quality be good enough for podcasting? So, I created two audio recordings to help me decide. If you visit my new alternate multimedia blogging site, you can listen to a 30 second test recording found at the link below…

    Audio Recording Test

    This web site has a built in audio player. So, you don’t need to download anything to hear the test recording.

    The recording consists of two pieces. I recorded the first part using a Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 USB headset/microphone. The second part was recorded using a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC. Both recordings were made in the same room with a large Voronado fan blowing in the background to simulate a noisy environment. Both recordings were made using 16-bit 44KHz mono setttings.

    Only two transformations were applied to the recording. First, the combined audio file was sent through the GigaVox Levelator to even out the volume differences between the two recordings (the Pocket PC recording was much louder than the headset recording). Second, the resulting WAV file was transcoded to a MPG audio file to reduce its size.

    The USB headset recording is much quieter (you don’t hear the fan as much) than the Pocket PC recording. But, I think the overall Pocket PC sound quality is decent enough to use for short podcast recordings. And, the ambient sound might even add a bit of real-life to the recordings (vs. a somewhat sterile but quieter USB headset recording).

  • Information Week’s Smartphone Browser Shootout

    Information Week has an article comparing a bunch of smartphones’ browsers at…

    Smartphone Browser Shootout: Palm, BlackBerry, HTC Vs. iPhone

    It’s quite a long article (6 web pages), so I’ll save you some reading and tell you the conclusion is a lot of fawning over the Apple iPhone and a bit of dissing the Treo (Palm OS version), Blackberry, and T-Mobile Wing entrants. Don’t neglect to read the comments at the bottom of one of the pages (the same comments are at the bottom of each web page). They are quite interesting themselves.
    Although I don’t haver an iPhone, I am a huge admirer of it myself. But, is its browser that much better than everything else? I think it may be. I can’t speak for the non-Windows Mobile devices. But, I’ve been a huge critic of Mobile Internet Explorer for years. It has essentially not made any progress in being able to view “normal” sites (sites not reformatted for mobile devices) or even https secure sites well. Microsoft needs to take a hard look at its mobile browser if it wants to stay in the game.