The 4-Gig Handset Hard Drive and Asian Television

I spend a lot of time talking about handheld devices (those all-in-one machines that start as phones, double as PDA, and soon will triple as multimedia devices). Clearly (in my view), consolidated devices will become a staple of the digital Everyman.

When I was at VTV: Varsity Television, we were constantly on the phone with wireless companies that were looking for short video clips which could be packaged together and sold across wireless networks. Our biggest drawback – or one of them – was that you needed a device with some storage capability if you were going to really make a business out of this.

It’s with that backdrop that I pass along these two stories, which Web intern Brittany Sauser wrote about today:

1) Palm’s new LifeDrive has a 4-gigabyte hard drive that contains all the software and programs of previous PDAs, along with applications that allow users to listen to music, watch videos, and look at photographs. Equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth wireless communications, the device allows its users to connect to the Internet in hotspots, according to this CBS News article.

2) A Singapore television station is making its romantic drama series, PS I Luv U, available in three-minute episodes on 3G mobile handsets. The mobile show will launch throughout Asia, but already handset makers are trying to develop video-ready programming that can be aired on wireless networks, according to this Reuters article.