11:49 AM by Laurens in Miscellaneous | Lounge

From CNN:

Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.

Vonnegut is probably my favourite author. My favourite book of his is Mother Night, with Slaughterhouse Five coming close second. I also have fond memories of reading Sirens of Titan for the first time. Particularly the scene where the priest is doing a countdown of the 10 commandments. That was brilliant!

07:06 AM by Moonraker in E-Book General | News

A very interesting blog on this subject, well worth a read.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ook_marke.html

01:54 PM by Adam B. in iRex | iRex Developer's Corner

In case you've been living under a rock: FBReader is an e-book reader for Linux/Windows XP computers.

Changes since the last FBReader for iLiad port:
* Close FBReader with Upper Left (Home) Hardware Button
* Better screen refreshes
* Added "Go To Next/Previous Toc Section" actions. (Next Section Via Button on Toolbar. Should be setup to use up/down hardware buttons as well) This is very useful for CHM Files and documents with a table of contents
* Hardware Buttons are configurable via settings screen
* Opening of external http/ftp/mail links in external browser has been added. (should work with dillo)
* OpenReader book format has been supported.
* New encodings (Vietnamese, Korean, MacRoman, etc.) has been supported.
* Time and position text on indicator
* FBReader reads multi-body fb2 documents.

Standalone Installation

The first time you click the icon, it will automatically copy some iLiad specific settings to the /home/root/ directory, and launch the program.

For SD/MMC Users, Download: http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad...ndalonemmc.zip

For Compact Flash (CF) Users, Download: http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad...andalonecf.zip

The 'fbread' folder will need to be put in the root of your memory card. Simply unzip, run, and enjoy.

For a more native approach that will launch files directly from the contentlister, see this wiki page: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/ILia...e_Installation

Main features:

• Supported formats are:
  • fb2 e-book format (style attributes are not supported yet).
  • HTML format (tables are not supported).
  • CHM format (tables are not supported).
  • plucker format (embedded images are supported, tables are not supported).
  • Palmdoc (aportis doc).
  • zTxt (Weasel format).
  • TCR (psion text) format.
  • RTF format (stylesheets and tables are not supported).
  • OEB format (css and tables are not supported).
  • OpenReader format (css and tables are not supported).
  • Non-DRM'ed mobipocket format (tables are not supported).
  • Plain text format.

• Direct reading from tar, zip, gzip and bzip2 archives. (Multiple books in one archive are supported.)
• Supported encodings: utf-8, us-ascii, windows-1251, windows-1252, koi8-r, ibm866, iso-8859-*, Big5, GBK. Automatic encoding detection is supported.
• Automatically generated contents table.
• Embedded images support.
• Footnotes/hyperlinks support.
• Position indicator.
• Keeps the last open book and the last read positions for all opened books between runs.
• List of last opened books.
• Automatic hyphenations. Liang's algorithm is used. The same algorithm is used in TeX, and TeX hyphenation patterns are used in FBReader. Patterns for Czech, English, Esperanto, French, German and Russian are included in the current version.
• Text search.
• Full-screen mode.
• Screen rotation by 90, 180 and 270 degrees.

12:44 PM by NatCh in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

But if it's Linux, is it still a Palm?

Linux kerneled Palm Device planned for later this year

Before y'all get too excited, take note of this, so you get exited the way you really want to: the approach they're pursuing seems to be to use a Linux kernel, but to support the Palm OS on top of it. The idea being to main compatibility with (most, I'm sure) existing Palm apps, while using the more powerful and flexible Linux core to increase the functionalities of the overall devices. Of course the side effect is going to be a ready-made (and slavering to go) legion of home-brewers who will doubtless turn out more applications than you can shake a stick at. Even a large stick.

Now some details:

Palm will unveil a platform before the end of 2007 that runs the Palm OS on top of a Linux kernel, allowing the company to improve the performance and stability of its handhelds and smartphones, CEO Ed Colligan said Tuesday.

Palm will also continue to use Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS, which is in high demand by business customers and global telephony carriers. By continuing to develop applications on both tracks, Palm will extend its ongoing transition from selling PDAs to smartphones, Colligan said at the company's annual analyst and investor day in New York.

...

Palm does not intend to license the new Linux-based platform to other handheld vendors but will use it to upgrade the Palm OS, allowing it to handle simultaneous voice and data traffic while preserving its instant-on and instant application-switching abilities, Colligan said.

...

Palm also plans to increase the number of new products it launches in 2007 and 2008, said Mike Farese, senior vice president for engineering. Palm designers have created a reference design for a common smartphone platform, allowing them to slash development schedules even as they save money through high-volume purchases of shared components.

The common platform could also allow Palm to compete better with Apple's new iPhone. Colligan insisted he is taking the iPhone seriously as a competitive threat but that it will appeal to a slightly different segment of users than Palm products do.

Sounds like exciting stuff is coming from my favorite PDA company.

That about covers it, I suppose, except to note that they did specifically decline to comment on "rumor and speculation" regarding the possibility that Palm might be bought out by another company.

Source (and full article): InfoWorld

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Ah, the rumor mill -- what a boring life we'd all lead without it. According to sources close to DigiTimes, Prime View International (PVI), the Taiwanese company which acquired Philips' E Ink business in 2005, is pretty close to releasing their flexible e-paper to the market. In fact, if they get it out by mid-2007 as rumored, they will be ahead of the pack, before Plastic Logic, Polymer Vision and everyone else who promised us the freedom to bend or throw e-paper just like we'd do with normal paper.

Link: DigiTimes

11:29 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

When one thinks of e-ink, one thinks of dedicated e-book readers or signage. One thinks about upscale displays that are easy to read in direct sunlight. But the last thing that comes to mind is a budget device.

Well, Motorola released the Motofone F3 near the end of last year with an electrophoretic display, and wonder of wonders, it's a budget phone in the $30-$50 range. As was discussed previously, it pretty much just make calls and not much more.

Does this mean cheap e-ink e-readers are on the way? Maybe, but there's a big leap to get from a basic phone with a tiny and low resolution screen (2x6 characters only) to a fancy display like we see on the iLiad or Sony Reader. Just compare prices on small phones with OLED displays with the difficulty and cost of producing a large screen OLED TV. It just doesn't translate well... unfortunately.

More information is available at this review by The Register.

Thanks to Alex_d for the tip!

06:10 PM by sic in E-Book General | News

Institute for the Future of the Book (if:book) just released an alpha version of their content creation tool, Sophie.

Sophie's raison d'être is to enable people to create robust, elegant rich-media, networked documents without recourse to programming. We have word processors, video, audio and photo editors but no viable options for assembling the parts into a complex whole except tools like Flash which are expensive, hard to use, and often create documents with closed proprietary file formats. Sophie promises to open up the world of multimedia authoring to a wide range of creative people.

Download from here. There's also a cool video on YouTube that shows Sophie in action.

04:28 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Thanks to raevyn1 for reporting to us that computer security experts Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte are both proud new owners of the Sony Reader, which they discuss in their latest podcasts.

Links: Episode 85 (transcript), Episode 86 (transcript)

Some interesting topics were raised, including how the Reader helps visually impaired people, how it solves the problem of carrying heavy books during trips, the annoyance of DRM, how battery life plays an important part, and how E Ink is still new technology waiting to be explored.

Highly recommended listen even if you already know your Reader inside-out.