08:43 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

In September, children at the Bi-Cultural Day School in Stamford, Connecticut, began participating in a pilot program by Sony to bring its Reader to classrooms.

The devices, provided by Sony, are uploaded with books from Sony's ebooks.connect.com. Included are classics such as Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Now, instead of lugging around a pile of books, students carry only the slim Reader. Students can scroll through the menu on the Reader's six-inch screen and turn the pages of the books with the push of a button.

from:
http://newsblaze.com/story/200709261...ublishing.html
http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7161

The Teleread article is much better.

04:38 PM by NatCh in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Thanks to MobileReader petermillard for the tip-off on this one.

From a press release dated yesterday ,(my copy must have gone astray -- have to check the spam filters) Palm has announced a new line of smartphones, the Palm Centro. It's compact and it's cheap ($99 through Sprint), oh, and it comes in Red and Black!

Designed for individuals and traditional mobile phone users looking for a better way to manage their professional and social lives, Palm, Inc. and Sprint today introduced the Palm® Centro™ smart device, at $99.99. With voice, text, IM, email, web, contact and calendar capabilities, a full-color touch screen and full keyboard, Centro brings Palm simplicity and organization to customers who want to stay connected with co-workers, friends and family. Centro will be exclusive through Sprint in the United States for 90 days and is available in onyx black or ruby red.

"Palm Centro has the power of a broadband smartphone at the price of a standard 12-key phone," said Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer of Palm, Inc. "People looking to have all their contacts and calendar at the touch of a button, plus YouTube streaming videos and the Internet can now get it in a small, cool design with the trademark Palm ease of use. If you're thinking about stepping up to a smartphone, the Palm Centro should be your choice."

It looks to me as though they're aiming to make smartphones more accessible to those who may consider current models too complicated.

Additional Palm Centro Features and Benefits

-- Superior Phone - Centro's touch screen and keyboard, combined with the simplicity of Palm OS, make it easy to use key features such as one-touch speakerphone, conference calling, ignore a call with text messaging and Bluetooth(R) connectivity.

-- Easy Text Messaging - Centro's full keyboard makes typing out complete messages fast and easy when sending text, pictures, audio and video clips. Plus, Centro keeps all your conversations in a chat-style view, just like IM, so you can see the entire conversation unfold.

-- Personal and Corporate Email - New users to the smartphone category now have an easy mobile email solution using Microsoft Direct Push Technology(5) for delivery of Outlook email as well as personal email, such as Gmail, AOL and Yahoo.

-- IM with AIM, MSN, or Yahoo! - Compose messages quickly and easily with a full QWERTY keyboard. Instant message your buddy list with direct access to Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger or AOL's AIM service.

-- Web Browsing - Fast and easy web access on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network at fast EvDO speeds. The full keyboard and touch screen provide quick access to online information. The built-in Google Maps application offers fast access to directions, traffic updates and local search.

-- Multimedia - "Sideload" songs and manage music easily with Sprint Music Manager. Centro is the first Palm phone to include PocketTunes Deluxe, a $39.99 value. Shoot pictures or video with the built-in digital camera.

From the Product Page:

Specs

• Display: 320x320 pixel Transflective color touchscreen, supports 16-bit color (up to 65K colors)
• Radio: Dual-band CDMA2000 EvDO backward compatible with 1XRTT and IS95
• Platform: Palm OS 5.4.9
• Bluetooth® Wireless Technology: Version 1.2
• Memory: 64MB available user storage
• Camera: 1.3 megapixels with 2x digital zoom and video capture
• Battery: Removable 1150mAh, lithium-ion 3.5 hours talk time, up to 300 hours standby time
• Expansion: microSD card (up to 4GB supported)
• Conector: Multi-connector
• Dimensions: 4.22" (L) x 2.11" (W) x 0.73" (D); 4.2 oz
• Colors: Ruby and Onyx
• System Requirements: Windows® XP, Windows Vista™, Mac OS X v10.2-10.4

Software on device

Bluetooth®, Calculator, Camcorder, Camera, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Memos, Documents to Go® Professional Edition 10, Downloads, Google Mobile Maps, HotSync®, Instant Messaging, Nuance Voice Control, My Centro, On Demand, Phone, Pics and Video, PocketTunes™ Deluxe, Quick Tour, Sprint Mobile Email, Sprint Store, Sprint TV, Sudoku, VersaMail® 4.0, Voice Memo, Web (Blazer® 4.5), World Clock

Nothing too surprising in the specs, a bit light on memory, but with a micro SD slot (a new move for them), that's really not an issue.

So, folks, what do you think about the new Palm on the block?

Press Release ...... Product Page

09:58 AM by HarryT in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

The BBC are reporting that a new software update from Apple leaves "hacked" iPhones permanently inoperable.

The story reports that:

On Monday Apple issued a statement in which it said many of the unauthorised iPhone unlocking programs caused "irreparable damage" to the device's software.

That warning has now proved correct as many owners are reporting their phones no longer work following installation of the update.

01:08 PM by wgrimm in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Read an interesting article with the above title at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ook_marke.html.

Here are Charlie's conclusions:

"So, it's time for me to advance some tentative conclusions about why the commercial ebook market is broken:

Most current ebooks are grossly overpriced relative to their utility to the reader. eBooks are actually disposable literature, like mass-market paperbacks only more so.
We are not going to see cheap ebook readers any time soon because publishers need them, but consumer electronics manufacturers don't.
Readers won't buy expensive ebook readers because they're reluctant to pay over $25 for a novel at the best of times. Only bundling a metric shitload of high-value content with a reader will make it attractive.
Insofar as there are no lending libraries or second-hand bookstores for ebooks, ebook piracy is the equivalent niche to those traditionally tolerated outlets.
Historically, only 25% of readers paid into the authors revenue stream. A 75% piracy rate may therefore be seen as a continuation of business as usual.
The pirates are not motivated by profit but by a poorly-understood social phenomenon connected to status in a gift-giving forum.
We do not know what ebooks are worth to readers, but the relative lack of Baen product in the usual places suggests that if unencrypted ebooks are readily available at an affordable price (i.e. less than an MMPB) then demand for the pirate edition will be reduced."

I agree, and still believe that some adventurous publishers should start marketing their backlists in non-DRM'd format, with buyers given online space for their libraries in case they need to re-download. And price the ebooks at 5 bucks or so. DRM sucks, but readers might even accept DRM of the sort that ereader.com has, as long as switching from device to different device is supported.

07:52 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

Bookeen sent word in that the release of the Cybook Gen3 e-reader will be delayed until October due to "slight adjustments in the final steps of mass production." On the positive side, they also reported that, unlike previously suggested, support for Adobe PDF will now be included in the initial release.

Related: Video Demo of the Bookeen Reader, Cybook Still Available in September?

04:51 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

For the past 18 months, well-respected sources tell AppleInsider, a small team of Apple engineers have been at it again, this time tapping the company's revolutionary multi-touch technology as a foundation.

...

Externally, the mutil-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin "slate" akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720x480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple's existing multi-touch products -- the iPhone and iPod touch -- like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.

from:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...he_newton.html

08:29 AM by Liviu_5 in E-Book General | News

Check out this article:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...sic-store.html

While not technically about e-books, it has a lot of interesting things (not that we do not know them by and large) about e-content. For example:

"There are a few restrictions. One of the biggest is that there's no redownloading of tracks; you'd better make a backup, because if you lose a song, you'll have to purchase it again to get another copy. Such a policy has an obvious analogue to Amazon's CD sales. If you purchase a Tim McGraw CD and your NPR-loving uncle "accidentally" cracks the disk in two, you are out of luck; Amazon won't send you another copy. In this sense, then, music downloads are treated like physical property.

But they are not property. In fact, what you have purchased is only a "non-exclusive, non-transferable license" to each song. Because you have not actually purchased something physical, Amazon's terms of service explicitly forbid both re-selling and lending. With a CD, of course, you can do both quite legally. Digital downloads can be cheaper and more convenient, but there's no legal way to extract value from them when your tastes in music change. Caveat emptor."

12:14 PM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Taken from the company's i-to-i blog.

A quick preview of some of the features and functionalities that you can expect in software release 2.11.

1. Definable Startup behavior
   You are now able to define the startup behavior of the iLiad, like opening a certain folder or loading the last read document.
   
2. Stylus Calibration
   You can now re-calibrate your Stylus via the iLiad settings menu. This feature was developed as a community project with the help of community developers.
   
3. Improved Connection Manager
   The Connection Manager has been improved to make it easier to find and connect to wireless networks; in addition we have also added support for the dial-up functionality of modem CF cards (GSM-data, CDMA).
   
4. Time zone Selection
   You are now able set your local time offset to GMT so that your scribble files will show the correct local time.
   
5. Timed content download and device wakeup
   With the Timed Connect you will be able to let your iLiad connect to the iDS at a set time. In case the iLiad is switched off it will wake up, connect to iDS, download any available content and power down again afterwards.
   
6. Multi Delete in Contentlister
   You can now select up to 6 items in the Contentlister and delete them in one go.
   
7. Generic CPU frequency scaling
   In order to save power, the CPU frequency has been scaled down when the processor is idle. Saving about 10% battery life.
   
8. Forward/Back buttons in PDF viewer
   You can now easily navigate through PDF documents using hyper links via the forward and back button.
   
9. Added Spanish language support
   The iLiad interface will now also support the Spanish language, in addition to English, German, French and Dutch.
   
10. Improved Mobipocket support for HTML-based content
    The Mobipocket viewer will offer better support for more HTML-based content, including converted CHM files.

Software release 2.11 is scheduled for Wednesday 26th of September