i Phone BUY

Too busy following in the tracks of Snow Leopard this week to keep up-to-the-minute on the rest of the Crave goings-on? Don’t fret. Here are just a few of the stories you missed.

• Sony upped the ante on its e-book readers with the Reader Daily Edition.

• And …

Now you can type in landscape mode!

(Credit: Screenshot by Daren Darrow/CNET)

The WebOS Internals crew on Friday released a virtual keyboard patch for the Palm Pre.

The patch modifies the operation of the onscreen keyboard that WebOS uses to insert symbols with the slider keyboard. The patch works well, but has at least one hang-up: You can’t use it for all text entry areas. It can be used to type a URL in a Web browser, but not to fill in forms on Web sites. Even with this issue, it’s better than not having a virtual keyboard, at least until Palm releases an update that includes one.

While there are a lot of steps to installing homebrew apps and patches, they are not difficult to perform. People new to the homebrew scene should just follow the instructions.

To install the patch, follow the steps that PreCentral posted on its blog. To install WebOS Quick Install, follow the steps in its forum.

Requirements: Palm Pre with developer mode enabled, WebOS Quick Installer or command line access to the phone.

(Source: PreCentral)

Nokia 3710

(Credit: CNET Asia)

Passionate cell phone geeks know that the Federal Communications Commission holds a treasure trove of information on upcoming handsets. This week the highlights are the Nokia 3710 and the Samsung SCH-M720.

Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not …

Originally posted at Dialed In Podcast

(Credit: Hercules)

For this week’s installment of the weekly Crave giveaway, we’re offering up the Hercules ePlug 200 Duo. The product is an Ethernet-to-powerline adapter set, and it’s ideal for anyone who wants to extend a home network into another room of the house without running extra …

Get ready for an Eee-book reader. Word came Thursday of Asustek’s plans to enter the hopping e-book market with an e-reader marketed under its popular Eee brand.

Samsung shows off its new e-book reader, the SNE-50K, in July. It's yet another company that joined the e-book reader …

(Credit: Iomega)

It’s back-to-school time, and this is something students might get to use without having to pay for.

Iomega announced Thursday the worldwide availability of the quad-drive desktop NAS server, the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d. EMC, the parent company of Iomega, simultaneously announced that as part of its Academic Alliance Program which has the participation of more than 300 universities and colleges around the world, each school will score a StorCenter ix4-200d NAS appliance.

The new NAS server–which is geared toward small businesses and home office environments–can support four SATA hard drives of up to 2TB each, making the combined storage amount up to 8TB. It supports RAID 5 and RAID 10 (a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0) as well as JBOD and is said to be so easy to use you can get it up and running via a few mouse clicks.

Other features of the NAS server include:

…

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Windows 7 isn’t officially out until October, but if you want to start an online backup service and make sure you can still use it once upgraded to the new operating system, Proxure has something to offer.

The company announced Tuesday the availability …

Spotify’s much-hyped streaming-music service has been given the green light by Apple’s iPhone app approval board, according to a report from U.K.’s Paid Content. Though the Spotify app has yet to officially surface in the iTunes App Store, an Apple spokesman made it clear that the app would be available “very soon.”

While the news is sure to excite Spotify’s current user base in Europe and the U.K., music fans in the U.S. have yet to experience what all the fuss is about, since the service is currently blocked on this side of the pond. Rumors abound that Spotify plans to open its doors to America before the year is though, but until then, the availability of an iPhone app isn’t doing us much good.

Beyond fanning the flames of American curiosity over Spotify, news of the app’s approval demonstrates an intriguing change of tactics for Apple. …

Originally posted at MP3 Insider

Nokia wants you to chat up a storm with its new N900.

(Credit: Nokia)

With its new N900 handset, Nokia is playing up the Linux angle.

Part cell phone, part computer, the N900 takes advantage of Nokia’s Linux-based Maemo operating system to offer multitasking, Web browsing, a touch screen, …

Originally posted at News - Wireless

(Credit: Altec Lansing)

Back in the 1980s, when portable audio was synonymous with “cassette tapes,” boom boxes were a mainstay of music culture. While luggable, battery-powered speaker systems still exist today, they tend to be somewhat dainty iPod speakers. Altec Lansing’s new Mix iMT800, meanwhile, aims to mix and …

(Credit: Sirius XM)

Like satellite radio, but don’t want to deal with the kludge-y “dock and play” satellite radios that clutter up your car’s dashboard? The XM SkyDock could be for you. It looks little different than your average iPod car charger, but the SkyDock has a satellite …

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

(Credit: XM Sirius)

Many (but not all) of the XM Sirius satellite radio audio channels are also available online to subscribers, for a small additional fee. The browser-based service is great for listening in those places where you don’t–or can’t–have a satellite radio rig set up, such as …

The Archos A5S, propped up by a wooden block during testing for FCC clearance.

(Credit: FCC)

Just when you thought Zunes and iPods would have September all to themselves, the portable video player powerhouse known as Archos drops off two new devices for FCC approval.

The Archos A5S and A5H …

(Credit: Twelve South)

If you want to use your MacBook as a desktop (and I don’t see why), there’s now an easy and pretty way.

Mac accessory maker Twelve South released BookArc, a metal stand designed to hold any Apple MacBook, from the MacBook Air to the 17-inch …