05:34 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Remember Numenta? It's the company that Jeff Hawkins co-founded to develop and commercialize technology based on his views of how the brain works.

Anything that Jeff says is sure to cause a buzz in the mobile computing world because of his work with Palm, which changed the face of mobile computing and created the whole Palm world. He still has us wondering what he meant when he talked about a secret third line of business for Palm, that has yet to be revealed.

Well, Nuenta just sent me a newsletter that is also available here. It has a link to this whitepaper on Hierarchical Temporal Memory technology. The newsletter says "Our tentative plan remains to release a beta version of our toolset before the end of 2006. It is likely that our first developer symposium will be in 2007, giving developers a chance to work with the tools for some time before meeting together." So if you are interested to see what Jeff is up to, be sure to give it a look.

08:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

In an article on the future of journalism, Mathias Döpfner, head of Europe's biggest publishing house Axel Springer AG, elaborates how traditional publishing will continue to co-exist despite the increasing emergence of online media, and - this is what we love to hear - how print paper as an information carrier will be replaced by electronic paper:

Newspapers must focus on their own strengths, and that means being a horizon medium, creating and satisfying wishes and interests which readers did not even know they had. As in the past, this remains the newspaper's future, regardless of whether it is delivered on paper or electronic paper. One thing I am sure of is that the future of newspapers is digital. They will cease to be printed on paper as soon as electronic paper exists that fulfils the following criteria: it has to be thin, foldable and rollable, capable of reproducing high-resolution colour images, ensuring foolproof touch-screen operation, with no need for heavy batteries or chargers, and it must be cheap. Then we will roll out our newspaper out of a mobile phone or ballpoint pen. Then we will call up our subscription at the click of a button. Work on developing e-papers of this kind is well underway. Eventually - in five, ten or twenty-five years - we will distribute this electronic paper to our subscribed customers. Costs for paper, printing and distribution will sink dramatically - but our business model will not have changed at all. Information and entertainment for a range of target groups. In other words: exclusive news, independent opinions and captivating language. In a word: journalism.

You find the English translation of the full article over at signandsight.

05:17 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There's a great series now available on mobile messaging. Part 2 takes a look at MMS and says it seemed like a sure thing, but hasn't lived up to the hype. "...we take a closer look at MMS and related services and capabilities. MMS has mainly been identified with picture messaging, but there are other possibilities, including video messaging, instant voice messaging, one-to-many multimedia carrier promotions and so on. Specific applications include everything from sending pictures of yourself to on-the-fly dating services to real estate agents sending clients pictures of newly listed properties."

One reason is simply that not all phones can support MMS messaging. Some consumers may shy away because of bad early experiences, just like some customers are shying away from camera phones that are now starting to take "real" pictures with decent quality. Ease of use is also only now catching up.

Also check out the Part 1, which talks about the introduction of various messaging types along with voice services.

05:08 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Dean Takahashi is the author of The Xbox 360 Uncloaked:The Real Story Behind Microsoft's Next-Generation Video Game Console, and he has made it available through his publisher Spiderworks in both paperback and e-book form.

In an article, Why Write an E-book? he explains some of the advantages of an e-book. He was not sure about it at first, as I'm sure many authors are not yet comfortable, but he found that it is a technology that is here to stay and calls it a disruptive technology. It's a very thoughtful and interesting article, not quite as shallow as many that we see. Using his words from the article put into bullet points, he says that...

* The most vital factor was speed.
Other authors of hardcover books have told me that they had to finish their book as much as a year before it was in the bookstores. They had go through editing, await the bookseller buying process, set up a marketing plan, and then distribute the books into stores.

* The eBook can be updated with no extra costs.
If I find that many more sources come out of the woodworks, then I can incorporate their material into the book and resend it to the publisher. Printed books have to be reprinted and obsolete editions have to be returned, incurring shipping charges.

* You don’t have to worry about killing trees with eBooks.

* There’s no cost associated with shipping an eBook

* As a customer, you just pay with a credit card and download it to your computer. You get immediate gratification, compared to waiting for an online book seller to ship it to you.

* With the eBook, I was able to use more than 50 full-color photos. That would have been cost prohibitive in the paper version, which has black-and-white versions.

* You can embed hyperlinks in an eBook so that a reader can click on it live and visit that site immediately.

* You can quickly access the material in a nonlinear way, such as clicking on a chapter in the table of contents so you can move to that chapter quickly.

But he also points out some disadvantages like:

* Not everyone wants to read them on a computer.
<I'd say they should try a handheld or a nice e-ink book reader!>

* You can reach wider numbers of people, particularly casual purchasers, in a bookstore.

If you are interested in the book be sure to grab a copy... preferably the e-book version, even if it is in .pdf. They offer a sample for you to check it out before buying.

08:03 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | iSilo/X

A maintainance update of iSilo was released today with fixes for some fairly rare bugs. Although no new features were introduced in V4.32, iSilo is still one of the best and most popular e-book / offline Web readers out there.

You can download iSilo from here and its desktop companion software iSiloX from here.

05:47 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Have you seen Woot yet? It has sort of developed a cult following. I'm one of the early members, and Woot even sent me a certificate to honor the fact. I have bought quite a number of products there like my Toshiba PPC, even though (like eBay) the deals aren't quite as good now as in the early days when it was still relatively undiscovered by buyers.

Well, at any rate, if you are looking for mobile software, you are in luck this week. This innovative, er... copycat site is featuring mobile software. Check them out at Bits du Jour. May 15-20 is "Mobile Launch Week." Today's special is Pocket Informant for Windows Mobile for 40% off ($14.97).

Via Mobility Site.

05:36 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Kevin Kelly paints <free registration> a glorious picture of the ultimate library, already being created in a way. And he reminds us of the type of crowning achievement it would be for the human race.

"The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future."

He goes on to talk about how, for example, Google's scanning initiative and the technology currently available starts to make such an amazing feat seem actually within our grasps. If all the stars align, that is, so that DRM and IP law and other obstacles don't get in the way. The great library at Alexandria may have been destroyed by fire. What will stop us from another great universal library? Can it happen? Will it happen?

I hope so, but I think it's a long shot. The good news is that every step forward is an exciting development, and e-books and technology advancements are bringing amazing opportunities... like Project Gutenberg.

It's a wonderful time to be an (e-)book lover!

Via TeleRead and NY Times.

12:16 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It's official! Palm has announced an EV-DO (high speed data) PalmOS Treo 700p as expected. Verizon and Sprint will announce availbility soon.

The phone is also the first Palm Treo smartphone to include DUN capability (i.e. connect your laptop to the internet through the smartphone via Bluetooth or USB). Data plan prices are not yet announced.

There is 60meg available user memory, threaded SMS/MMS messages, Bluetooth v1.2, a 1.3 megapixel camera and more!

For some excellent coverage, check out Palm Addicts where there is product information, and much more.

There is also coverage at Brighthand and I'm sure a multitude of other sites already.

The Palm product page is here.

If you find good product information please feel free to add new links in this thread and let us know what kinds of great info you see.