11:23 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Apparently Dubai-based Emirates Airlines started doing the same thing last month, but didn't get the media attention.

From the Associated Press:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — You can use your cell phone in the skies over Europe later this year under new rules that will allow air travelers to stay in touch — and raise the cringe-inducing prospect of sitting next to a chatterbox at 30,000 feet.

But don't expect to use your phone on a U.S. flight anytime soon.

The decision Monday by the European Union makes the 27-nation bloc the first region in the world to scrap bans on the use of cell phones in the sky. The EU insists the change will not compromise safety.

Cell phone calls will be connected through an onboard base station — think of a miniature cell phone tower — linked to a satellite and then to ground networks. A flight's captain will have the power to turn off service anytime.

Phone service will be blocked during takeoff and landing, EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said. That means using your cell phone will fall under roughly the same restrictions as using your laptop or iPod.

EU officials also say the system has been thoroughly tested. They say the calls will not interfere with flight navigation and will have additional safeguard to protect against terrorism.

As you might imagine, not everyone loves this plan.

Meanwhile, travelers are already expressing concern about another kind of disruption — noisy passengers. The friendly skies are one of the last refuges against shrill ringtones and yapping callers.

"If they use a mobile phone on long distance flights, it would be an inconvenience, especially at night," said Stein Smulders of Halle, Belgium, who commutes by train.

"But what about safety" you say? "Don't those nasty phone signals make planes crash?" The FAA is still holding to that line, but the EU says they have that little problem licked.

On European flights, installing a base station on the plane will allow calls to go directly to a satellite system, preventing phones from wreaking havoc with flight instruments by sending out signals indiscriminately, EU officials said.

I admit that I'm a ways from the day I earned my Electronics Engineering degree, but I seem to remember something about broadcasting being, well, broad. As in not directional (or discriminate, however that applies). But apparently in the EU (or at least over it), you can use a base station to suck all thos nasty broadcast signals into one spot so they don't bother anything.

Oh, maybe this clears it up:

Installing small base stations on planes helps ensure phones won't give off strong signals trying to connect with a tower on the ground. But Dave Carson, co-chairman of an RTCA Inc. committee studying wireless safety on planes for the FAA, said there was still a risk that a phone might try to connect with a ground tower.

Well, maybe a little.

Full story here, and a quick Q&A here.

Is this a final answer to the question of whether cell phones interfere with airplanes' systems? Probably not. Probably not even a little.

10:22 AM by Liviu_5 in E-Book General | News

The Kindle electronic book reader, now four months old, is another primary cog in Amazon's digital strategy. Sales across the book publishing industry are flat; e-books represent one possible future. But the first priority for Amazon is actually getting the device into people’s hands. The company has experienced constant shortages since the Kindle went on sale in December.

"We obviously want to get it fully in stock as quickly as possible," said Mr. Freed, vice president in charge of the Kindle.

Mr. Freed said that the Kindle was first and foremost a reading device, but that it could also serve as a platform for at least some of Amazon's other digital offerings. The device can play MP3 files and audio books from Audible, the online audio book retailer that Amazon bought last month for $300 million.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/te...l?pagewanted=1

Seems Kindle is here to stay for a while.

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Another week, another steady stream of mobile goodness here on MobileRead. Our authentic roundup of what's been going on:

E-Books - News

• Times and Guardian on book pirates
• Electrowetting color displays coming up in 2008

E-Book Devices - iRex iLiad

• Windows XP Running on the iRex iLiad!
• Card Games for your iLiad

E-Book Devices - Bookeen Cybook Gen3

• News from Bookeen about firmware upgrade

04:33 PM by searcher in E-Book General | News

It's somewhat similar to the E Ink technology, but it should have better colors than even future color versions of E Ink displays.

Related links: Liquavista mixes oil and water to produce a new display technology, Philips spins off Liquavista to start yet another e-paper venture

04:23 PM by Liviu_5 in E-Book General | News

Doom and gloom presented as "far fetched scenario" in the Times, and a much more grounded response from the Guardian:

Times Online: Internet book piracy will drive authors to stop writing

The Guardian: Book pirates ahoy

09:44 AM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Mobileread member yokos has ported the "Ace of Penguins" to the iLiad.

This is an excellent port including Solitare, Minesweeper, and Freecell just to name a few. If you're looking for a good time waster for your iLiad I definitely suggest checking it out.

The package contians: freecell, golf, mastermind, merlin, minesweeper, pegged, solitaire, taipei, and thornq.

Ace of Penguins homepage

Visit this thread for the installation file and continued discussion.

08:55 AM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

4/2 Edit: For those who don't know, this was an April Fool's Joke. The iLiad is setup to launch a VNC viewer on startup connecting to a windows computer.

I've been able to successfully port Windows XP to the iLiad!

This has been a project a long time in the making. A lot of people complain about the lack of functionality of the iLiad OS. Linux is great, but there aren't a lot of good application choices for it. So Windows is the obvious solution. With windows running, we can run a full featured Firefox, Mobipocket Reader, Adobe Acrobat, even Outlook!

It doesn't run very fast, and I had to modify XP's boot sequence to work on the iLiad, along with a custom display driver. But overall, I think there's a lot of potential.

Here's a video of it booting:

There are some more screenshots and pictures attached.

09:45 AM by HarryT in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

I wrote and asked Bookeen support what the status of the upgrade was, and got a reply about 2 minutes later (!) as follows:

The software upgrade will be available very soon. It should be available on the first week of April.
We will announce it on the blog and we will add a support link on our
website.

Best regards,
Bookeen Support Team