04:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

It seems Aussies have a different relationship to their paper books than most other folks do. The Age has an exceptionally interesting article where Monica Dux talks about the pleasures of reading paper books versus e-books. On the one hand, she envisions a rosy future for e-reader technology, with screens that resemble normal paper, download access to unlimited content, and intelligent user interfaces. On the other hand, she maintains that for most people, including herself, "the idea of replacing traditional books is as unthinkable as taking the body out of the sex act, so carnal is their attachment."

The author mentions various pro-paper book sentiments:

• Emotional attachment: you must be able to feel, smell and (uhm...) listen to books
• Separation anxiety: readers cannot be more than five minutes away from a real book without developing a stomach ache
• Location flexibility: the "3 B's" - bed, beach and bath
• Bookshops: you got to worship the temples in which books are housed.

But Mrs Dux doesn't stop here. In fact, she explains that most of these emotional aspects could be addressed by further technical improvements of e-readers (why has no one yet considered a clear waterproof slim-case for the iRex iLiad?). And she summarizes very nicely:

It is likely that printed books will persist and even thrive. Yet it's wise to be clear about what it is that motivates our desire to retain them. Otherwise we dedicated readers leave ourselves open to the danger of becoming literary anachronisms, as the mainstream world embraces the new technology and we who exalt the book as well as the text are ironically left with an inferior way of consuming our beloved words, blinded to the grander purpose to which books are dedicated: reading.

03:53 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

LG Philips LCD has shown off an E-Ink based 14.1-inch WXGA flexible e-paper during Information Displays (IMID) 2006 in South Korea. If you feel a sense of deja vu over this announcement, you're not alone. It's the same gorgeous display the company demonstrated two months ago, and the specs are also still the same: 16 gray scales, 10:1 contrast ratio and a 180 degree viewing angle. What we didn't know until now was the display's response time, and at 300ms it certainly won't win any horse racing games. Instead of making their displays increasingly larger, E Ink should be well advised to make them faster first.

[via Mobile Mag]

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

Feast your eyes on some of the discussions from this week at MobileRead...

Announcements
E-Readers Around the World gallery launched

Elsewhere on the Net
SciFi e-books at Project Gutenberg

Formats and Conversion
E-book creation links

In the News
Bookpac - new Berlin based e-book company gearing up
Don't lie on your mobile phone
Library audiobooks on the web
News dump of display technology stories
Nokia bring firmware updates to the masses

iRex iLiad
iRex listens to us and opens up its specs! Flashing soon possible.

Mobile Browsing
When RSS feeds are overwhelming... drowning in 75,000+ unread items!

Mobile Sites
Social sites popular with mobile users

Others
Why will people want UMPCs?

Palm OS
Benoit Hervier:How I become an independant PalmOS developer
Happy 7th Birthday to Palm Addicts!
PalmSource shows off new ALP Linux Platform

Recommendations
Free e-book about London ambulance service

Sony Reader
hyperstruct's LibrieFox 0.1.0 released

Windows Mobile
Official HTC Wiki goes Live

06:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We're happy to report that the E-Readers Around the World photo gallery has opened its doors. The gallery will serve you to display your e-book device in the wild and share photos with other e-book aficionados from around the world.

Whether you're currently on a jungle expeditions in one of the Amazon River tributaries, sunbathing in Italy, or just sitting in your own backyard, take pictures of yourself and your e-book device from just about anywhere and share them with us. Photos can be commented on, viewed by device, or by location, by date, by top rated, or even searched for to see where you think others may have been with their reading devices.

Within the next few days and weeks, we'll pick random MobileReaders who upload picturesque or just plain funny photos. Those of you who get picked will receive a $20 gift certificate from an e-book store of your choice (Fictionwise, eReader.com, or eBooks.com).

Links:
The Gallery
Submission Guidelines

Note: Should there be anything wrong with the gallery, like weird error messages or broken uploads, please let us know. If you have login problems, try clearing your MobileRead cookies or contact us.

01:31 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

I've been thinking. Believe it or not, that does happen every now and then! And the inspiration came from a great post over at JkOnTheRun by Kevin Tofel. He addresses the low rating given to a UMPC device by the Sydney Morning Herald. Like most of the mainstream press, the Sydney Press just doen't get it.

As a big fan of UMPCs, I also think it's appauling the way the mainstream media seems to be so unwilling to understand that this is a new class of device, and that it can't be compared to a laptop, and that it's just plain neat. But the mainstream press isn't the problem. We techies love it because it's really neat. It gives us a small form factor, but with a screen big enough to do "real things." And it has a tablet pc interface at a great price (relative to the cost of tablet PCs).

How about business people and the general public? This is an expensive device. And it will still be expensive when it gets down to the target price range of about $500. It's not the sort of thing many people will leave laying around in the living room to browse the web occassionally. It's too expensive, it needs to be maintained with the latest software patches, and it has to keep getting recharged. You have to wait to boot it up because it's Windows-based. And it's one more thing that will be old technology in a year or two if you don't drop it and break it first!

It's no wonder that the mainstream press isn't really high on the device. They are looking at the average user and what the entire owning experience would be like for them. A laptop has all those same issues, but there are very compelling reasons to have one. They can do the same things they can do on the well-understood and much-used desktop PC, but they have the ability to do it anywhere. MS office, email, design work, writing, etc. The reasons to use a PC are already well-known and entrenched, and it's simple to understand the benefit of a laptop - you can use it anywhere. So even though laptops are more expensive and have to be maintained and accessorized, people still have a strong reason to buy one. Mobility, plain and simple.

What about the UMPC? Let's take a look at what should be the ultimate and most convincing argument for a UMPC's relevance and worthiness - Microsoft's own description of the device and why you want one.

The overview says "With small, lightweight, carry-everywhere hardware designs, you can connect and communicate, accomplish any task anywhere and at any time, and be entertained and informed wherever life takes you." But doesn't that sound like it's covered by a smartphone and a laptop? No motivation there.

If I was marketing for Microsoft, I'd remind people of how ubiquitous and useful the paper planners from Franklin and Day Planner. How about taking that portability, usefulness, ease of use to the n-th degree, and top it all off by giving it the ability to do what a laptop can do for you? At least people can relate that way to something they know about. All of a sudden it's useful in a way they can grab hold of in their minds, even if they don't have a grip on what it all means yet.

Let's look at what else Microsoft has to say if the reader really wants to dig into the details and hasn't already decided that the device is worthless.

Now we're getting into the sort of usage scenarios talked about by Kevin Tofel. Communicate: Wifi at the airport, connect through a Bluetooth phone, e-mail and IM, photo sharing before the vacation is even over. Now we're talking! That sounds pretty cool doesn't it? But somehow, I think that even that looks abstract on the web page if you aren't a techie.

Next up is Accomplish Tasks: Do anything your desktop or laptop can do in Windows, have a trip navigation system, and don't worry about the input because there are lots of ways to use various forms of real and virtual keyboards or by writing on the screen. Again, a nice list that nobody will ever see.

Getting into multimedia, they move on to View/Listen/Play: Sync all your favorite music, photos and TV shows, buy music and movies for immediate download, check news and sports scores, and choose from a huge selection of Windows-compatible games, but have the added advantage of being able to use a stylus for simpler control.

The rest is just basic info that needs to be described about the SW/HW platform. But isn't this the sort of information that should be very briefly provided to the press? I wonder if it is, and how it's presented and packaged. If they did it similar to what I've written above (but filled out and prettied up), then I think people might start to have some Eureka! experiences about how cool this could be. And they might then start to be more open to things like mind mapping software and One Note software.

The public and the mainstream media don't understand the UMPC and keep comparing it in the wrong way to laptops (saying it's too underpowered, the screen too small and input is hard). But maybe the problem is with Microsoft and UMPC sellers. With the rollout of a new class of device, doesn't the burden fall on them to help us understand why it's relevant? They clearly haven't done that very well.... yet. Instead they seem to fall into the failed pda marketing approach of a long list of what it can do, or even worse maybe no list! Techies love that. Normal people don't!

Most people will cringe at spending over $1000 for a high-tech gadget that either looks like a bad laptop or a high-powered electronic pad of paper. Yeah, I know it does more, but Archos makes a better PMP, and iPod is a better mp3 player, etc etc. We have to get past all the little "cool things" people might want to do on it, and find the practical benefit by characterizing it in a way that they can relate to. Or at least something that UMPC can do that other kinds of devices can't. Primarily that means it's more portable than a laptop, and yet it can do everything a laptop can. Yes, the input might not be as easy if you don't have a keyboard attached, but screen input is not meant to be for the novel writer, and keyboards are available. And will eventually be integrated.

People didn't understand why a mouse is useful. But it caught on pretty well eventually. In fact, back in the early '90s I was working heavily with spreadsheets and put in a request for a mouse to easy the navigation. It went all the way up to the CIO and he rejected it, saying that it would not be approved unless I could find research that proved it improved productivity. I guess he wanted to stop it right there, and prevent an onslought of requests from all those Win 3.1 users that want all the latest gadgets. Well, I went out and bought one myself, and the gadgets won out in the end, didn't they!? Maybe touchscreens will become widely popular also. It's too early to tell, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised because it doesn't need to add too much to the cost and with the right future software support and applications it can be very enabling.

So for UMPC, and the general computer-competent public, there is still a big open question that needs to be answered -- "What's the point of a UMPC?" As I have showed above, Microsoft has already done much of the thinking about the reasons for a UMPC. But it hasn't been communicated effectively to the press and the public. That's why I think the media has such a problem reviewing it. There's some truth in what they say based on their perspective.

So why do we want a UMPC? Someone needs to tell us in a way that makes sense. Who's going to step up to the plate and get the message out?

11:48 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

We would like to congratulate our good friend Sammy McLoughlin, and all of his team over at Palm Addicts on their 7th birthday. That's quite a feat for a blog!

This excellent Palm site has not only thrived by keeping the Palm community entertained and informed, but Sammy has also been a behind the scenes force, generously helping to encourage and support many Palm-related web sites, developers and others in the Palm world.

In a remarkable show of support, Ed Colligan and the folks at Palm have also been very kind to join in the celebration, honoring this day by giving away a Black Tie edition Treo 650 this weekend. "Ed Colligan and the team at Palm would like to say Happy Birthday to Palm Addict by providing today's giveaway. Today's giveaway will run into tmrw [Sunday] (sic). So we are giving away a Black Tie Edition Palm 650 to one lucky winner. Also included with the Black Treo Giveaway is VoiceIt Technologies’ Suite of applications, which are pretty awesome and you get the full run down here at VoiceIt Technologies website but the suite includes VoiceSecureIt, VoiceNavIt and VoiceDialIt."

You have until midnight Sunday. Enter by sending happy birthday wishes to Sammy and the gang in an email to sammymcloughlin@gmail.com. Be sure to put "GIVEAWAY" in the subject line if you want to be entered in the contest.

Happy Birthday Palm Addicts. Well done!

12:53 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I'm a technology news junkie. If there was nothing else more important, I could spend all day reading tech, science, business and political news. And it would be a delight. I've also found that RSS feeds are a wonderful way to force feed the news without taking too much time. With a web-based rss feed reader like Bloglines, you can even keep everything in sync no matter where you read the stories from.

But have you even found that, say after a vacation, you have hundreds of unread stories? It overwhelms you and takes all the fun out of it. I've had that experience, but I'd have to say that it was never before as bad as it is now. I've got over 75,000 unread items waiting for me!

The number started this morning at less than a hundred, which is a typical sort of unread story count for me until recently, and that much only takes a few minutes to get through (not counting the time to read the especially interesting stories that I read directly from the originating site). But by late morning it was over 50,000 new items, and now I'm at a record 76,385. I'm afraid to refresh and watch it go even higher!

Yes, this is definitely an anomaly. I use Bloglines, and it's my favorite feed reader. As I said, it's web-based, but it's also wonderful for reading from a connected pda or smartphone like my Treo 700p. It would take a lot to get me to move off of Bloglines because it's so nice and has become so familiar and convenient for me.

Bloglines has had some recent issues keeping the feeds refreshed and updated properly. They have a wonderfully responsive help desk, and promptly sent me a very nice note explaining the situation. One more reason I want to stick with this great and free service.

Today, I think it's safe to say that the refresh problem has been solved! No lack of news here. So my plan is to pick out my favorite site feeds and skim for the best stories very quickly. Less than 30mins. Then I'm going to take the unread items and mark them all as "read". If I was really organized, I'd have my feeds prioritized and listed in that order. But like most of us, I'm not quite that obsessed with being organized. So it will have to be a good guess with a quick scan.

I used to feel guilty marking my feeds as "read" when I hadn't looked at them yet. (Of course, that's read as in "they are no longer marked as 'unread', not as in "set aside to make sure you read them later". Bloglines has a separate feature for that, called the Clippings.) There's something unfinished, and improper about doing that isn't there? Isn't it cheating? Almost a lie? And won't I take a chance on missing that spectacular story that I will have wished I had seen?

Turns out that if something is that important, others will pick up on it and I'll be seeing it for days and weeks anyway. And it feels wonderful to see the unread items count at 0! I suppse I should probably pare down my list of more than 250 feeds, but that takes time, so it will have to wait for another day.

Moral of this story... Every now and then be sure to clear your RSS inbox and mark all your feeds as "read." You'll thank me for it, and you'll feel much better!

05:59 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Branko Collin, who is apparently associated with Distributed Proofreaders, has written the following about the new availability of SciFi e-books at Project Gutenberg.

"Not too long ago Project Gutenberg started publishing sci-fi books from the Golden Age of science fiction (1950s - 1960s); we can do this because of non-renewed copyrights. Authors include H. Beam Piper, Andre Norton, Terry Gene Carr, Ray Cummings, Lester Del Rey, Murray Leinster, Carey Rockwell, and more. You’ll discover a completer list with links at The Thunder Child, a web magazine for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, named after the famous ironclad from Wells’ War of the Worlds."

What a great addition to an already amazing e-book source!

From TeleRead Blog.