02:39 PM by Stuart Young in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Whilst mooching around the web for a story to post, I came across this piece from the Wired Magazine, written way back in March 2001.

Under the agreement, Philips Venture Capital and Philips Components will invest $7.5 million in E Ink to help advance research and development. In return, Philips Components secured exclusive global rights to manufacture and sell handheld devices using E Ink's technology. The companies plan to develop a prototype later this year that they expect to be available to consumers by 2003.

E Ink hopes to use Philips' global reach to seep into the handheld display market, which is expected to exceed $10 billion over the next few years

Many things in the article still hold true, but it makes you realise how long it can take to successfully launch a new device. Even though the iLiad is finally out, iRex held off a major launch until the bulk of the features were ready, and initially only B2B users got to order one. It is however worth pointing out that Sony did manage to bring the Librie to market in 2003, although the official release was limited to Japan.

Original article "E Ink: Your Hands Will Thank You" by Kendra Mayfield available here

02:30 PM by Bob Russell in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

So you have a Sony Librie and don't want to just read DRM'd books in the Sony format? The iLiad isn't the only e-ink reader that you can create your own Gutenberg books on.

Makezine has a nice tutorial on creating e-books for the Sony Librie. As we all know, when there is a will there is a way, and the article shows how to do the conversions using an application with a GUI interface, and a mod to use it in English. So if you have managed to get your hands on a Librie for the e-ink screen and convenience of a portable reading device, you have a huge library available to you at the tip of your fingers.

The rest of us are still longing for the new e-ink readers that will be joining the iLiad and Librie on the market.

01:18 PM by Bob Russell in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Project Gutenberg is the primary online repository for public domain book text. The size and quality of the collection is staggering. So it's no surprise that the availability of these books is often one of the driving motivations for purchasing an e-ink electronic book reading device. One can get many of these texts already formatted for your device at ManyBooks. This would be the natural first place to look for iLiad owners, or Sony Librie owners as well. And outside of the e-ink domain, there are also iPod notes formats and pda formats as well.

But suppose the book is not available already packaged up in pretty form for the iLiad? You could certainly just read the text form, but you might just want to create an iLiad version yourself. If that's what you want to do, then be sure to check out the very thorough conversion tutorial over at TeleRead Blog.

In this step by step tutorial of converting from Gutenberg texts to iLiad-formatted pdfs, Branko Collins guides you through requirements (it looks to me like you don't have to be on Windows OS), acquisition of the texts, reformatting them, adding page numbers and producing the final result.
Branko points out that the process is also flexible enough to support creation of other e-book formats or even paper books from the pdfs.

This is not the sort of thing that you will want to do if you just want to read immediately. But if you want to produce a quality document for a better reading experience, this might just be the ticket for you. It may also help you to understand why a publisher might charge customers to offer a nicely created public domain e-book. An e-book is more than the words contained within it.

As we find people starting to invest the time to create well produced public domain (or privately authored) e-books, we'll also have to start discussing how these e-books can best be shared with the world. I'm not sure what ManyBook's policies are with respect to submissions, but I do know that if this work is invested into creation of e-books, the results deserve to be shared with all!

07:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Missed some of our big mobile stories this week? Time to catch up:

Elsewhere on the Net
"M-edge" e-book reader covers
eReader 10% discount through 9/20
Phillips 'In Touch' Message Board - Concept Design

In the News
Amazon Kindle may promote competition - Sony Reader not before end of year?
dotReader alpha release next month with future iLiad support possible
E Ink patent hints that colored e-paper is on its way
Explore banned books with Google Book Search
International Display Research Conference 2006 in Ohio next week
Manipulated PDF exploits Adobe Acrobat flaws
Times Reader 0.1.0.00 beta released (screenshots attached)

Other Readers
Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows released

Others
Amazon E Ink reader?
Amazon joins the E Ink club with Amazon Kindle
Simplereader v0.11 for Sony Librie released
Sony Mylo - Finally an interface that works

Sony Reader
More news on the PRS-500 aka Sony Reader
PRS-500 info from Sony President Stan Glasgow

Windows Mobile
New Treo 750v released by Vodafone for Europe

05:57 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Next week is going to be a good week to visit Ohio. Whether you are an inquisitive student or a peripatetic scientist, you'll have the opportunity to take part in workshops focusing on future display technologies (such as e-paper) at the hands-on International Display Research Conference (IDRC) Sept. 18-21 at Kent State University's Liquid Crystal Institute.

Regular non-member fee for attenting is $75, but only $5 if you are a student.

05:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Security specialist David Kierznowski published an article revealing two possible backdoor techniques for fully patched versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Professional. It includes everything a wannabe hacker needs to know to exploit your computer: proof of concept code and backdoored PDF documents.

The first attack is simple and affects both Adobe Reader and Adobe Professional. It involves adding a malicious link into the PDF document. Once the document is opened, the user's browser is automatically launched and the link is accessed. At this point it is obvious that any malicious code be launched. It is interesting to note that both Adobe 6 & 7 did not warn me before launching these URLs.

The second attack involves utilising Adobe's ADBC (Adobe Database Connectivity) and Web Services support.

At least as a temporarily solution you may want to switch to one of the alternative PDF Readers out there, which are, from what I've heard, not exploitable this way.

Related: Adobe Acrobat subject to remote exploit

[via Full Disclosure Mailing List]

04:59 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Our friends at Palm Addicts have digged out the latest discount you can apply when purchasing e-books from eReader.com. It's valid through September 20th.

Punch in this week's Promo Code H3LLE9 to receive a 10% discount off any eligible book that you purchase.

07:15 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Sony has launched a new product category with the release of the new Mylo (my life online). It's a "WiFi broadband communication and entertainment device". It feels smaller than a typical smartphone, but has the advantage of being a WiFi device. That means broadband connectivity without the overhead of a cell radio, and as Sony puts it, "all play and no work."

This nifty little gadget slides open to reveal a very usable thumb board for typing, and no matter how many bad user interfaces you've seen in the past, this device proves that it can be done well. It's simple and fun to use. It feels so nice when the keyboard slides in and out that you might find yourself addicted and doing it unconsciously. And it has a fun looking colorful interface that actually makes it easy to use at the same time. I've seen too many flashy looking screens on devices that just get in the way of usability. This one is flashy and fun, but keeps it simple and easy to use.

There's some cool technology and design there like a 320x240 vibrant color screen, 1gig memory, expansion card slot (unfortunately it's a Memory Stick slot), and of course the slideout keyboard.

More about the specs and the device in general are available from the Sony press release, but I think it's a lot more than the sum of it's parts. Sony has put this together in a way that people can communicate through email, instant messaging, interaction on web sites, even by Skype internet phone calls. The device is clearly about simplicity and usability. If you have a wifi connection you can surf the web. HTML surfing, not just that WAP stuff.

But most importantly, we have to note that large text files can be stored on the device which makes it a great little e-book reader for public domain e-books. You'll need decent eyesight because the font size is pretty small, but it's not prohibative, especially for younger users.

With the web browser and an online RSS feed reader, it should be a pretty good news reader device also.

When they say "fun" they aren't kidding. There's something fun about holding the device and looking at the screen, or using it to watch a video (regular MPEG4 files can be watched). Like I said, it's more than the sum total of the technology. I had heard comparisons to the Nokia 770 before, but I don't think that's a good analogy anymore.

The Mylo target audience is the 18-24 year old market, and this is likely to be very well-suited to them. Sophisticated enough to be useful, and simple and flashy enough to create interest. There's a lot of wifi available in homes these days as well as hotspots. The "kids" don't have to tie up the main PC to be online.

It has a user replaceable battery that can play 8 hrs of video, 45 hrs of mp3s, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at. The price is $350, but you get a lot. Besides a quality device, you get a Skype phone which nearly justifies the purchase all by itself. They started shipping yesterday, so they are now "in the wild" and hopefully we'll see them showing up at hotspots everywhere.

My personal preference is for power over "fun" or simplicity, so it's not quite the device for me, but there's a lot to be said for fun and simplicity. This might even be a device that introduces people to the technology and creates a gadget lover for life. It's also something that can be used more carelessly than a $600 smartphone that needs to be treated with care, and which requires a lot of maintenance work. The mylo is more of a "grab it and go" device.

I was surprised quite a bit by how nice it is. I thought it was going to be another curiousity that didn't really have a usefulness. Not so. I think it's a great new product category that will increase technology awareness for mobile devices. That's a very good thing in my book!