09:34 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The internet is full of interesting web sites. And the world is full of wonderful gadgets. Tell us how you found out about MobileRead and/or your favorite gadget!

While MobileRead is a thriving destination on the web, we don't really expect the average person on the street to know about us. Still, new people find us. How did you come? Web search, link from another site, word of mouth?

This is a great time to thank our wonderful friends out there like Sammy and the rest of the nice folks at Palm Addicts (my favorite Palm site), Shaun at PDA247 (who has a whole suite of pda sites), James and Kevin over at JkOnTheRun, David Rothman at TeleRead Blog and so many more of the wonderful people with sites that help people to find us by picking up our stories or making mention of us. Of course, it helps to have stories picked up by some of the giants of tech news, too. Like the good folks at Engadget, Gizmodo and so many more.

But there's a similar mystery surrounding our discovery of cool gadgets. How do we find out about them? Even those of us that read tech news all the time continue to discover really neat devices, and wonder why we didn't see it before. Not long ago, I discovered this small convertible tablet PC. Together with it's upcoming replacement. They now have a new place in my tech fantasies. Yesterday, I mentioned the OQO in passing to a friend, because I had seen it in a movie. It was delightful to see that it was new and exciting to him.

E-book readers (as well as PDAs and other types of mobile gadgets) are probably not found the same way a new model of car is discovered. The advertising is not the same, and so they may not be the subject of water cooler talk. Maybe you found your favorite device by seeing one, or from a web site or friend, or maybe even a newspaper or magazine ad. How did you first hear about it?

Join in the conversation. Colorful personal stories are all the better!

10:49 AM by nekokami in E-Book General | News

This could end up having interesting implications in the eBook world:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6095612.stm

"A think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books."

Later quote:
Report author Kay Withers said: "The idea of all-rights reserved doesn't make sense for the digital era and it doesn't make sense to have a law that everyone breaks. To give the IP regime legitimacy it must command public respect."

Now that's common sense. It's not in case law yet, and it's only one country, but it's a good start.

06:20 AM by CommanderROR in More E-Book Readers | iRex

There are dark clouds on the horizon for all of us who bought an iRex Iliad and hoped to get Sony Reader- or Hanlin-like battery-life.

After our member Malder1 had caused quite a stir with his comment in this thread, I put the question up on the iRex Forums here and asked for some answers from the iRex team.

The answer is there, and it has no good news. Basically, it boils down to "the iLiad was not designed to hibernate or suspend to RAM/FLASH".

What this means is that if you want to use your Iliad for casual reading, maybe 5 minutes or 10 minutes when you have a short downtime you'll have to do a full and time-consuming power-up and power-down every time and probably also navigate your way back to the book you had last been reading.

How an oversight like this could ever have happened with a 650€ device is beyond me. iRex, I'm heavily disappointed!

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

It looks like the IDPF is finally starting to move a bit...

The Press release doesn't really go into too much detail, but it seems that the new standard is finally becoming real. You can about read it here.

Maybe this will be our new DRM format for the iRex Iliad?

Thanks go out to DoctorBri for this tasty bit of news!

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

Is it really Sunday again? Hoorah! Time to dig in to another digest of MobileRead delectables

E-book Devices, iRex iLiad
M-edge cases for the iRex Iliad and Sony Reader now available
iRex iLiad patch V2.7.1 closes security holes
Yantai Daily readers review the iRex iLiad

E-book Devices, Sony Portable Reader
Mike Cane changes his opinion and becomes a Sony Reader fan

E-books, Content
Suggestion to authors: Alternate online publisher

E-books, Elsewhere on the Net
37signals' Getting Real as free online e-book
ManyBooks.net has a mobile site version

E-books, News
Will you miss library buildings if libraries ever go online-only?
Hacks for iRex iLiad and Sony Reader round-up
Adobe has new hope for e-books with Adobe Digital Editions
Plastic Logic's flexible e-paper may be available in 2008

Miscellaneous, Announcements
Projects/files maintenance proposal

Mobile Devices, General Talk
Turn your mobile device screen into a mirror

01:19 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

The great free book resource, ManyBooks.net now has a mobile device friendly version called mnybks.net. It's perfect for grabbing a new e-book while you are on the go with an internet connected device. In fact, if your device has an SD card reader, you can even pop a Sony Reader friendly version onto an SD card and then plug it right into the Reader.

E-books are not usually huge files, but always be aware of any data charges that might pile up.

Via David Rothman at TeleRead.org.

Update: As noted in the discussion below, the functionality is currently limited to .jar files right now, with the typical cell phone and WAP browser being the initial target audience.

05:40 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Details are still pretty slim, but we know that the crew over at iRex Technologies is working on forging alliances with publishers to bring some content to your iLiad device. According to a press release (PDF) sent out by the company today, Chinese Yantai Daily is going to deliver their daily newspaper titles as e-paper editions.

"iRex Technologies BV has always focused on a B2B approach, with the end user clearly in mind. Newspapers are an excellent application for our unique electronic-Paper based reader and people will find out that it also serves their needs for their own document reading, book reading and also notes taking, says Hans Brons, CEO of iRex Technologies BV." We expect more newspaper companies to follow this example in China."

Before you get too excited: our terrible Chinese (i.e. Babelfish) leads us to believe that we're dealing here only with a trial of 300 participating readers.

Got a comment? Please post in this thread started by MobileReader yokos.

[via TeleRead]

12:31 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Mike Cane has updated his original review of the Sony Reader -- starting off with an outright retraction: 'I am now formally retracting that first sentence: "Let’s get this out of the way first: you do not want to buy it."'

3 of 4 parts of the review are posted so far:

http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/1...r-part-1-of-4/
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/1...r-part-2-of-4/
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/1...r-part-3-of-4/

It's not up yet, but logic suggests that this is where the fourth part just might be when it does show up:
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/1...r-part-4-of-4/

So far, it seems to be a pretty thorough look-see.