07:48 PM by scythe000 in E-Book General | News

Gizmodo writes:

The READIUS has a slightly different design than the prototype, with a 5-inch flexible display that actually rolls up around the phone, allowing it to be stored when not in use. The phone is manufactured under Polymer Vision, which is partly owned by Philips. The Dutch company has yet to release complete specs for the phone, but the READIUS is advertised as having a large display and great battery life. With a mid-2008 release, we won't have to wait too long to test this e-reader, mobile phone mash-up.

Wow...now if this were color, I'd go for it.

Related: Polymer Vision: rollable e-paper is finally on the roll

03:57 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

You sent us your tagline entries, we narrowed 'em down, now its your turn to take care of biz. Go and vote for your favorite MobileRead taglines; then cross your fingers for the lucky person who's gonna walk away with $50 more in his or her pockets.

And to further exercise your democratic right to select a winner in our contests, make sure you don't forget to vote for the best MobileRead logo (also includes details about the voting process)!

03:38 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hey everybody, we know we're way overdue for the results of the MobileRead logo and tagline contest, but we wanted to make sure it was done right. The number of submissions was so overwhelming (with over 90 logo and 140 tagline entrants) that we felt we needed to narrow it down to a somewhat more reasonable size (which was tough, thankfully, Bob and I are finally speaking to each other again).

As you know, the Amazon Kindle Reader is the grand prize for the best logo and $50 goes to the winner with the best tagline. But because we appreciate your kind patience in getting this contest together, we are also throwing in MobileRead t-shirts for the winners and the second and third runner-ups in each category.

And now... let the voting begin! First vote for the logos you like best, then visit this poll to vote for your favorite taglines. The polls will be open for the next few days with a final announcement before closing. And no cheating, ok?

PS: Remember, you can vote for more than one logo.

PPS: The winner will have a final chance to revise and improve the design. Smaller things, like font-type, can easily be adjusted after the contest. Keep this in mind when voting and feel free to share your suggestions.

09:23 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

PDFZone has presented an array of available solutions for viewing PDF files on mobile devices. Any solution is going to be limited with a small screen and generally non-reflowable text, although certainly some PDF documents can be reflowed.

Here's the lineup they provide:

Palm OS

* Dataviz Documents To Go Premium Edition Version 8.0 (Cost is $49.99, or upgrades for $29.99).
* Picsel File Viewer

Blackberry

* Terratial DocHawk (subscription web service)

Symbian OS
(Nokia Series 60 smartphones, including Nokia 6660, Nokia 3650, Nokia 7610 and the Siemens SX1.)

* mBrainsoftware's Pdf+
* Picsel File Viewer
* The Dataviz product listed under PalmOS. It also runs on Symbian OS-based UIQ and Symbian OS-based Series 80 devices.

Windows Mobile

* Cerience Repligo Professional
* Picsel File Viewer

You may be thinking that Adobe offers some mobile PDF viewing software also. Probably true, but unless things have drastically changed, for most people it isn't really worth using.

See the PDFZone article for futher information about these alternatives.

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

Feast your eyes on some of the discussions from this week at MobileRead...

E-Books - News

• Fictionwise says eReader format is safe
• Steve Jobs on the "iPod of reading"

E-Books - Elsewhere on the Net

• Freebie e-book: Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb
• Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" set free

E-Book Devices - Sony Portable Reader

• New firmware for the Sony Reader 505: SOON!

E-Book Devices - Amazon Kindle

• Amazon Kindle - a threat to our First Amendment rights?

E-Book Devices - HanLin eBook

• Hanlin V9 Early Review & Photos

E-Book Devices - Future E-Book Devices

• iriver e-book prototype device at CES 2008

Mobile Devices - General Talk

• Nifty little gizmo powers gadgets from audio jacks!

Mobile Devices - Handhelds and Smartphones

• Remembering Palm OS Cobalt - Two smartphones that were almost sold

Mobile Devices - Others

• MacBook Air's Battery can be swapped in a thrice!

05:41 PM by NatCh in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Does music really charge you up? Now music can charge up your gear!

I ran across this little dilly in the Continental Airlines in-flight magazine (hey, I have to do something during the take-off/landing electronics moratorium ). An outfit called Inflight Power has developed a little do-hickey to charge up batteries from any audio jack.

Their target application is obviously charging things on airplanes, but the principle should work with anything that has an audio jack: boom-boxes, televisions, even your computer or those cheap clock-radios hotels tend to like to provide.

How does it work? Well in their words:

Simply by plugging in the cable to the passenger seat headset jack, the cable converts the audio output into regulated USB power. Our new version adds an optional battery BOOST to increase the power supplied and offer continuous power.

So, reading between the lines, this thing takes an audio output signal (which is just low-power AC when you come right down to it) and converts it to USB grade DC to charge up whatever you plug into it.

It does seem a bit pricey, starting at $35 with no adapters (and of course they have bundles), but not all that pricey.

I can't find any size specs on it, but it looks like it's a bit bigger than four AA batteries would be.

It caught my attention, partly because it's just such a clever notion, but also because I can see it as a good potential solution to lots of travel-charging needs, particularly when traveling abroad: less need to worry about adapters when anything with an audio jack will do.

What do y'all think? Dandy Do-dad? Or a solution in search of a problem?

05:21 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Using commonly available tools, the MacBook Air's battery can be removed and replaced in just three minutes!

AppleInsider is reporting that replacing the MacBook Air's "non-user-replaceable" battery can be done in just three minutes with only a single size 0 philips-type screwdriver.

Due to its ultra-thin profile, Apple's new MacBook Air was designed with an integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery that is not user-replaceable. Though this has caused some initial concern amongst potential adopters, AppleInsider has learned that the replacement process is quite trivial.

According to people familiar with the new-generation notebook, there are no special tools or knowledge required to swap out the MacBook Air's battery, which Apple has billed its "thinnest ever" in a product. Instead, the process requires a single size-0 type philips screwdriver and some diligence.

Once flipped upside down, the MacBook Air's bottom cover is easily unscrewed and removed, providing immediate access to the battery cavity. From there, the battery can be unscrewed from the chassis with the same screwdriver and unplugged from the circuit board with a simple tug -- it's not soldered to the board.

Apple is reportedly planning some sort of battery replacement program/service for batteries on out of warranty Airs (reported cost $129), but if it's this simple, they may not have many takers, assuming that batteries become available (as they always seem to do).

What do y'all think? Does this change anyone's opinion of the Air? Have they learned from their iPod experience, perhaps?

Original Source (via MacDailyNews)

02:17 AM by adinb in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

"The Future of Ideas" is now free for download thanks to Lawrence Lessig and his publisher, Random House.

The only downside is that the download is limited to a PDF version; anyone up to the "format shifting"?

From Lawrence Lessig's Blog:

After a productive and valuable conversation with my publisher, Random House, they've agreed to permit The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. You can download the book for free here, or above.

This means all four of my books are now CC licensed. Code (v1) was licensed under a BY-SA license; so too, Code (v2). And Free Culture and now The Future of Ideas are licensed under BY-NC licenses.

I am particularly glad that The Future of Ideas is now freely licensed. That book hit the stores 2 weeks after September 11. I'm glad it now has a chance to flow a bit more freely.

Thanks to Random House (and Basic Books, and Penguin) for being open to this experiment. I hope we'll have some useful data to report about its effect.