10:10 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Mobile Sites

The Washington Post reports that "Google yesterday unveiled a mobile version of its personalized home page for subscribers to its service and updated its mobile Google Maps feature to include live traffic updates. Yahoo Inc. last week announced that its Yahoo Go for Mobile, a Web application that combines e-mail, search, address book and local information programs, would be preloaded on millions of Motorola handsets."

There's bound to be more and more interest in providing mobile web services as the number of web-enabled phones multiplies. Even more importantly, people will start using those features on the phones they own. That's a huge audience across the world.

Google describes Personalized Home for Mobile this way - "Personalized Home puts information that you care about on your mobile phone. It's a quick way to access your Gmail inbox, news headlines, local weather, stock quotes and RSS feeds when you're on the go."

Google Maps for mobile is pretty neat, but still doesn't support some handsets like the PalmOS Treos.

Yahoo Go for Mobile looks nice, but at first glance I'd have to say it's hard to tell what the advantage is above and beyond WAP access to the previously available Yahoo portal.

All in all, it's exciting to see more interest in the mobile web, and I guarantee that we are only just getting started!

09:58 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Media players are getting to be big news these days, and that makes the rumors hot also. It is true that many handheld devices are becoming quite competent at video playback, but dedicated devices usually have much better screens and much larger storage capacities.

Reported specs for these Archos players include the following for the 404:
* 30GB hard drive
* TFT 3.5" display with 4:3 aspect ratio, and 320x240 resolution
* 100x77x15mm size
* 190g weight
* Support for MPEG-4, XVid, DivX, WMV video
* Support for MP3, WMA, WAV audio

The upscale version is model 604, which has a bigger screen:
* TFT 4.3" display with 16:9 aspect ration, and a 420x272 resolution

From GadgetCentre News, where you can find the whole scoop as well as links to the original Swiss news site with the leak.

06:43 PM by Stuart Young in E-Book General | News

TheStreet.Com are reporting that Audible the popular Audiobook provider will continue to supply Itunes with Audiobook content. The company has approximately 16000 titles and other podcast content available via Apples music store. It's reported that 22% of the Audiables sales come Via it's deal with Apple. Company stock has remained buoyant since the news was announced on the 1/8.

11:51 AM by Stuart Young in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

More info on the much hyped.. Rumored.. Prayed for: Apple iPhone.. A thread over at iPodwizard reports they've joined the Kronos Group. Becoming a member means Apple join the ranks of mobile giants: Symbian, Sony Ericsson, Samsung etc. This move could mean several things. Either they are working on developing software which will become part of a phone by a third party, or - as many people hope - it means they will indeed bring out their own mobile phone handset. And if this happens, it will definitely cement Apple as being a Consumer Electronics's business as opposed to a Computer company which they are traditionally viewed as.

05:04 PM by Stuart Young in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I was chatting to Alex recently, regarding e-book piracy. An it got me thinking, how many of you Mobileread(ers) actually know where to get illegal e-book content from? No, this thread isn't for trading links, etc! However given the fact devices like the iLiad are now available, I'm sure we'll be seeing more about this type of content theft in the news.

Example: do you own a hard copy of a book, and then "found" an e-book version online that you could have downloaded to your e-book device?

Related: Harry Potter 6 e-book already being pirated!

04:44 PM by Stuart Young in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Another eBook DRM format was announced in San Francisco recently. The outfit known as www.seecrets.biz launched their third DRM system with the usual fanfare. The system uses "RSA 8192-bits keys to deliver protected content by e-mail":

'"Every e-mail address is unique. So is the manufacturer's serial number for hard disks. We use this combination to prove idenitity. This is the same as a person's address and the physical house. Privacy issues are not compromised using this model," said Sarah Seecrets, managing-partner at Seecrets.Biz.

Original press release available here.

11:01 PM by Stuart Young in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Walt Crawford over at EContentMag.com has written another interesting piece on the state of the 2006 eBook market. The article begins by giving a brief history of the market back in 2000. - Detailing the movers and shakers of the time and where they are today. Although the story ends on a low point with Walt saying "despite a recently reignited interest in eBooks, particularly given the much-hyped Sony Reader, the market has largely floundered" It will be worth keeping an eye on the follow-up story to see where he goes with this.

Read Walt's article here.

12:09 AM by Stuart Young in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

This weekend gossip around the web once more concerns our friends at Apple. Rumours of the Apple mobile phone have surfaced from two separate sources. The first came via engadget on the 29/7, this concerns a regular photographer for apple who has worked on a recent photo shoot and it quoted as saying he took photo's of the "the sleekest, sexiest damn phone he's ever seen." Next up it seems some tech savvy person has found clues to a possible forthcoming phone in the recent ipod Updater 28/6. Appleinsider report the following strings of text were found in the updater code:

"t_feature_app_PHONE_APP" application and variables such as "kPhoneSignalStrength," "clPhoneCallHistoryModel," prPhoneSettingsMenu," "prPhoneSettingsMenuView," prPhoneEnableSetting" and "prPhoneMenuItem."

Of course this may all mean nothing, but then again it could mean something. With the next big Apple conference looming in August the gossip may prove to be fact. Watch this space.