07:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Seriously Robert, you should not mess with us like that... I almost cried my eyeballs out! Scobleizer on the "iReader":

Anyway the device looked just like the Sony Reader, except it was white. It also was slightly longer than a Sony Reader cause it’s has a keyboard, Blackberry style, at the bottom of the device. It also has a red stripe along the side that contains an innovative navigation device so you can click on certain parts of documents, or links in those parts, to visit other pages. That “iStrip” is what makes it possible to read RSS feeds and click on links.

But that’s about where the similarities with the Sony Reader end. The device has nice, large buttons on either side of the screen to go forward and back between pages. It also has a keyboard. And, comes with some really unique software that go way beyond what Sony offers.

Read the rest of the story if you can take it.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Welcome to another digest entry of MobileRead, where we transform the profound into the bite-sized.

E-book Devices, Future E-Book Devices
Polymer Vision Readius - aka Cellular Book - video demonstration
So now we can put the battery in *front* of the display?

E-book Devices, iRex iLiad
iRex to expand B2B activities / speaks of possible IPO
iRex iLiad development enviroment on VMware image

E-book Devices, Sony Portable Reader
Complete Sherlock Holmes

E-books, News
"Gutenberg 2.0: le futur du livre" / iRex demoes Mobipocket on iLiad
Video from CeBIT 2007: iRex Iliad, HanLin V8 and M218A
Zune Player turned into an e-book reader
E Ink VP becomes U.S. Display Consortium chairman

E-books, Reading Software
Adobe Digital Editions adds compatibility for OS X 10.4.9

Mobile Devices, General Talk
Powercast
Microsoft's new Mobile Browser: Deepfish

Mobile Devices, Handhelds and Smartphones
Palm Receives Stay from NTP Lawsuit

Mobile Devices, Others
Mobile computing - What is "mobile" anyway?

02:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in iRex | iRex Developer's Corner

Adam, our friendly iLiad developer who is still waiting for his bricked device to be returned, uploaded a shiny VMware image for us -- preconfigured with all the tools you need to develop and debug apps and games for the iRex iLiad. This image can be used on any PC on which the free VMware Player is installed (or any of the non-free VMware products such as VMware Workstation or ESX Server).

For more, including download links and discussion, check out Adam's post.

Related: Wikipedia entry on VMware.

04:38 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Hoping to Make a Splash in the Mobile Browsing Pond

Apparently MicroSoft sees its next big opportunity in the Mobile arena. They're looking to capture part of the market with a browser that doesn't rely on webpages being formated for the mobile device. Sounds like a grand idea to me.

According to Microsoft, Deepfish is a new type of mobile information browsing experience, aimed at preserving the rich layout and full form of documents on mobile devices while providing novel ways of effectively navigating that content on small screens. Deepfish's unique interface enables you to zoom in and out of page, quickly getting to the areas you are interested in without screen length after screen length of scrolling. And because the layout is preserved, navigation menus, lists of search results or news headlines, and other elements that might have been bent so thoroughly to fit the usual single column layout that they were no longer legible can now be browsed simply and easily. A consequence of Deepfish's multi-resolution approach to browsing pages is that it loads a thumbnail of pages initially and then only what is needed for more detail when requested or in the background as you browse the initial the view, resulting in substantially quicker load times for most pages.

But lest you get the mistaken notion that MicroSoft wants to play well with others:

Of course, Deepfish will only be available for Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, requiring at least WM 5.0.

Deepfish is purportedly built on the groundwork laid by Seadragon Software (which MS recently acquired), and makes some pretty interesting promises:

Deepfish provides users with a full "as-designed" view of virtually any Web site on their mobile device and looks as you would expect it to on your desktop, allowing much more of the Web to be easily viewed on a mobile device than is possible today. The interface lets users zoom in and out on the parts of a Web page that interest them in an intuitive way, making it easy to use these large-screen formatted pages on a mobile device. On current mobile browsers, it can typically take up to a minute or more for a Web page to render, however the Deepfish architecture only loads the user-specified portion of the page, providing much quicker page-load times, as detailed information is only retrieved as needed or in the background.”

Full Article here.

01:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

The details are still pretty slim, but it seems that iRex is finally kicking into overdrive to deliver the iLiad device into the B2B world. MobileRead member Martijn sent us a link to a Dutch article and he also kindly provided us with the following English summary:

• Starting in May 2007, electronic editions of two Dutch newspapers (NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant) will become available on the iLiad device.
• iRex hopes to raise additional capital, either in a new financing round, or possibly (emphasis on possibly) by going public.
• 10'000 iLiad were sold last year and the company hopes to sell 100'000 units this year.
• iRex is in negotiation with airlines companies such as KLM Royal Dutch to get their flight personnel to use the iLiad.

11:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

E Ink Vice President Michael McCreary has been elected chairman of the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) board. The USDC is a public/private partnership with the focus on flat panel display research. While this news may not be of particular interest to anyone, I believe it's an important step for E Ink to gain further momentum in the display market.

"I look forward to leading USDC’s governing board, which has played an enabling role in the electronics display industry through its R&D and business development programs," said McCreary. "Now, there are exciting opportunities to further extend display capabilities, as well as drive development of new processes in related areas such as the FPO [flexible, printed and organic electronics] arena. The USDC will be at the forefront of these new technologies, providing even more substantial value to its private-sector and federal partners."

For more, check out the official press release.

12:41 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

See-Through Plastic Batteries
From the Sci-Fi channel's Tech Blog:

Apparently, some really smart folks over in Japan have come up with a way to make a transparent plastic battery, which is allegedly fast charging, long lasting, low leakage loss, etc., etc., etc.

But this isn't your normal rechargeable battery that you have to replace in a year or two — the flexible plastic has been specially treated to retain its charge over much longer periods of time. The three scientists who developed the polymer claim it has a life exceeding 1,000 rechargings. Even more impressive is the claim the battery can reach full charge in only a minute.

This is all still quite experimental, of course, but there you go.

Full article

11:19 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Putting aside the issues with reading from a small three-inch LCD display, this actually sounds like a good idea: Some guys figured out that you could use the jpegbook tool, which converts text content into JPGs and was originally created for the Sony PSP, also for making e-books available on the Zune player. It probably won't win any hearts and minds of hardcore e-book readers, but for the casual MP3 listener who also likes to carry some text, this seems like a suitable solution.

[via jkOnTheRun]