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

There's been a whole heck of a lot of stuff happening this week. Purvey the below for your pleasure.

In the News
A ringtone that only a kid could love... or even hear
DRM causing difficulties for libraries
E-books, the new frontier of advertising?
Freedom from paper celebration
iRex and other presentations from the digital publishers conference
Jim Baen, sci-fi publisher, suffers stroke
LG Philips demoed a grandiose 14.1" E Ink display
MLB Colorado Rockies study game film on iPods
Sony Vending Machines
The top 9 ways to secure mobile devices
The unknown power of a cheap phone
Why smartphone sales are up, but application sales are down

iRex iLiad
iRex iLiad available for preorder to everyone (who is invitated)

Mobile Browsing
Minimo CE 0.016 released

Palm OS
How to:Mac Dial Up Networking with a Verizon Treo and EV-DO
PalmAddicts Videopodcast #1 is now available
PalmInfocenter Treo 700p review

04:12 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I don't know how we could have missed it, but a couple of days ago, Doug Turner announced a new build of Minimo CE, the down-sized Mozilla browser for Windows Mobile devices. Items addressed:

• stability and clean up release
• better support for VGA
• better software keyboard interaction
• homebar and Full Screen supported via preferences
• ability to select storage download locations

You can download the binaries of Minimo CE compiled for WM 4.2 and 5.0 as an installer, zip file, or cab file.

03:09 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Not with a bang but with a whimper iRex opened their online store today. Although it's still not officially announced, as our savvy readers pointed out, you can now preorder your own iRex iLiad e-book reader for 649 Euro (plus 20 Euro for shipping). *bummer* turned out I was a bit too euphoric -- you still need to be "invited" by iRex in order to complete the pre-order.

Watch out though: the iLiad is not expected to be in stock before the last week of June, and iRex doesn't exactly have a good track record of meeting their deadlines.

[via Engadget]

01:06 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

It is with sadness that we report on a serious stroke suffered by Jim Baen. Cory Doctorow has this to say about Jim, "Baen Books publish many long-running series, and were true pioneers in producing non-DRM, freely available ebooks of their print editions, correctly intuiting that giving away electronic books sells printed books. Jim and I have corresponded and I've always been impressed with his shrewdness, kindness and commitment to writers and the field."

According to information posted by Julie Cochrane, a Bean author, "Jim Baen is in the ICU after a stroke, it is serious, Toni [Weisskopf] and a relative are there with him. Now you know as much as we do about his condition. Baen Books is functioning under the very detailed emergency plans that Jim has in place."

I'm not sure the prognosis, but most certainly we offer our best wishes to Jim and his family, with hopes for a full and fast recovery.

Via TeleRead.

12:47 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Video iPods have come to Major League Baseball, and not just for fans. They are now being used by the players to study game film. Apparently, they have become quite popular.

"The Rockies began using video IPods after this year's spring training, when a team video coordinator realized that players could review clips of their swings and opposing pitchers more easily than on their laptop computers. 'We're always looking for ways for our players and staff to more easily access video,' said Mike Hamilton, the Rockies' coordinator of video coaching. 'We had a couple players who already had the video IPods in spring training, and I think they bought them thinking it would just hold more music or a video clip or something like that. Now most of the guys who have gone out and got them bought them exclusively for baseball. That's all they have on it.' Now more than a dozen Rockies use a video IPod, including perennial all-star Todd Helton, who can view five seasons of his best swings on the 21/2-inch screen. The Florida Marlins also have started using the technology. 'It's a neat gadget,' Helton said. 'You get to look at all your at-bats and the upcoming pitchers. And you can keep it right in your locker, and it doesn't bother anybody. I'm a video guy ... I can look back on certain periods when I was feeling good to see what I looked like.'"

No word yet indicating when the first NFL playbook will be ported to e-ink book readers.

From WashingtonTimes<free subscription req'd>.

11:03 AM by sUnShInE in E-Book General | News

Soda? Check. Candy bar? Check. MP3 Player? Wha?!

Bob posted recently about the Zoom Shop vendy's. And you've probably heard about or remember McDonald's RedBox DVD dispensers. Well, now Sony's gotten into the game.

Sony is testing the waters by placing high-tech automated vending machines in 3 malls across the United States -- one each in Atlanta, Santa Rosa, and Boulder, CO, and they plan to increase that number to 10 by the end of 2006. The thinking here is that these machines are much cheaper to roll out and maintain than a fully-staffed store in a mall. In fact, they are being referred to as ‘robotic stores’.

The stores will offer 50 different items including PSPs, digital cameras, CD players, games and DVDs. While Japan is already home to gadget vending machines, it’s rare for a high-end consumer electronics brand such as Sony to sell its gizmos and gadgets in this way. However, the company expects the unusual sales tactic to work, due to a combination of well-placed machines and brand recognition.

It will be interesting to see how consumers react. Something tells me this would work better in an airport or a train station than in a mall.

Via AJC (subs req)

10:27 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Smartphone sales are up. That's pretty much common knowledge these days, whether we have good data or not. Just like we are convinced that sales of traditional PDAs are slowing down. But do we really understand what is really driving the increased smartphone sales, and who's doing the selling? Probably not.

Even more interestingly, it turns out that there is a general understanding by mobile device software developers that software sales are dropping off despite strong smartphone sales. So what's going on?

Michael Mace provides a great analysis and some answers in his lastest Mobile Opportunity post, Why are mobile application sales dropping? You don't want to miss his article, but here's the bottom line: "

* Palm OS and Windows Mobile, taken as a whole, are not growing. That probably accounts for the decline in app sales on those platforms.

* Smartphones in general are less likely than handhelds to drive app sales. The more handhelds are cannibalized by smartphones, the tougher the application sales process becomes. This would worsen the effect of the flattening demand for Palm OS and Windows Mobile.

* The platform that is producing lots of smartphone growth[, Symbian,] isn't currently a big driver of sales of sophisticated apps."

So smartphone sales growth is driven primarily by Symbian, but people don't even think of Symbian phones as an application platform. PalmOS and Windows Mobile sales are not growing. To make matters worse, many smartphone sales for PalmOS and Win Mobile are for replacement/upgrade purchases, so the buyer already has the software he or she needs. It will be interesting to see how things change in the next few years as the product quality and market penetration increase.

Iimportant note: DON'T PANIC!

We are talking about current trends. The marketplace will work everything out. There is a tendency for mobile fanatics, myself included, to get easily worked up into a frenzy whenever anything seems to infringe upon our private fantasy of a perfect future for the mobile device industry. Life isn't perfect and it never will be. The mobile device industry isn't perfect and it never will be either. But it will be great, nonetheless.

To put things in perspective, the mobile device world is still one of the hottest technology topics, and boasts outstanding growth, especially if you include mobile technology outside of smartphones. It seems that everything is going mobile these days. What a wonderful time to be a mobile device fan!

Don't forget all the doomsayers about the PC industry. There were hurdles and obstacles and uncertainties just like for mobile devices. At first, people said nobody would ever want to use computers. Then experts talked about how expensive they were. Then when the price came down, experts said that nobody could afford to make and sell them anymore because there was no profit in them. Then it was said that the market was saturated and volumes would continue to fall. But the desktop computer is one of the greatest technology success stories of our era, and the same thing will be true of mobile computing solutions in the future. Don't worry, this is going to be a wonderful ride!

Postscript:
I have learned that Mike is not only a fascinating writer and speaker, but that it's impossible to get his input on a topic and not have it affect the way you view the topic. He seems to plant thought seeds that grow into all kinds of new ideas that tumble around in your cranium like in a cement mixer. Fresh perspective is a rare, but wonderful commodity. So if you are interested in mobile computing, be sure to keep up with his blog, Mobile Opportunity. If you are interested in business strategy, be sure to follow his book writing blog, Stop Flying Blind.

07:25 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

During the SID 2006 in San Francisco LG Philips LCD demonstrated the prototype of their 14.1-inch flexible e-book display. As if the E Ink-based display with a 1280x800 resolution, 16 gray scales, a 10:1 contrast ratio and a 180 degree viewing angle wasn't already impressive by itself, according to LG Philips, it was developed using conventional TFT process technologies and should therefore be less expensive for display manufacturers to produce.

And if we were to believe them, we'd have to see the first commercial products using this display to appear in or after 2008. Which begs the question for all you large-screen addicts: Can you wait for two more years or are you going to itch to the iRex iLiad reader (assuming it'll be available before that time)?

[via Tech-On]