Kinoma Notes

One of the coolest things about Kinoma software is its strong support for standards. Kinoma has always blazed the trail in supporting web and media standards on mobile.

The benefit of using standards is that Kinoma software works with hundreds of other standards-based products and web services. One great web services you can use with Kinoma Player is Yahoo! Pipes.

For example, let’s say you find a really interesting podcast feed that mixes blog entries and podcasts in the same feed. That’s generally considered a no-no, and it’s a problem since Kinoma Player 4 EX is a media player and so doesn’t support text.

The solution? Use Yahoo! Pipes or similar “feed remix” tools to create a feed that just contains stuff that Kinoma Player 4 EX can play. Here’s how:

• Go to pipes.yahoo.com and create a pipe
• Add a Sources > Fetch Feed module, and enter the URL to the source feed
• Add an Operators > Filter module, and “permit” the format extensions you want
• Add an Operators > Sort module and sort descending by date
• Connect everything up as shown below

Neat, huh? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg — what can you do with Yahoo! Pipes and Kinoma Player?

The famed Comic-Con International — the annual mecca for comic, videogame and movie geeks — just opened their doors to a record-breaking attendance.

The only problem? You’re not there! The show sold out before it started.

Happily, with Kinoma Player 4 EX you’ve got your own personal Comic-Con:

• Entertainment > Comics & Graphic Novels has been loaded with more great podcasts, including the official DC Comics podcast.
• The new Entertainment > Video Games category is all about PC and console video gaming, and features several podcasts each from 1UP and IGN.

You can even get a daily Comic-Con International fix — Entertainment > Comics & Graphic Novels > ComicMix is doing daily podcasts from Comic-Con.

By now, the exciting news has rippled through the Palm and Windows Mobile communities — Kinoma is preparing to release it’s first-ever Windows Mobile product.

Coincidentally, this week Palm released the Treo 800w, a great new Windows Mobile phone. It’s got a beautiful 320x320 screen, EVDO Rev. A and Wi-Fi, giving it the potential to be a great mobile multimedia device.

If you have a Treo 800w or are thinking about buying one, you’re definitely going to want to hear about our forthcoming product. Here’s how to be notified:

Go to kinoma.com, choose Palm and Treo 800w in the “Is my phone compatible?” widget, and then click the arrow. Enter your name and email address, and we’ll send you a note the day the new product is available.

Palm has just released an update for Treo 755p smartphones on Verizon.

No specific improvements are mentioned, but Palm says it “improves the phone application, stability and device usability”. Sounds good to us!

The firmware update will take a good part of an hour. Once it’s complete, follow steps 5-7 of my “grade-and-pave” article to ensure the fastest and most-stable Palm OS experience possible.

• Palm Treo 755p Software Update for Verizon
• The ol’ Palm OS grade-and-pave (or, how to clean your machine)

We just finished a substantial update to Kinoma Media Guide, designed to make it an even better resource for finding and playing the best mobile-ready media.

In some cases we’ve reorganized some categories to make more sense going forward. This post is the key to easily finding your favorites.

First, the 10,000-foot view:

And now, a couple tips for getting around:

• Tip #1: You’re probably going to be using the Browse by Provider category more than ever. It’s often going to be the easiest way to get to major media and web properties, from ABC to YouTube.
• Tip #2: Webcams, one of our customers’ favorite categories, is now in Travel & Weather.

As usual, this update is free and automatic for all Kinoma Player customers.

Remember that we make this guide for you. If you have favorite content that you can’t find in the guide, let us know by emailing us your feedback and suggestions at content@ plus our domain name.