06:44 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

e-Books really are getting popular - if you look at students in academic libraries at least. Don't believe me? Check out these stories about the University of Texas at Dallas:

*E-book use on the rise at University of Texas at Dallas–but keep in mind the caveats
"An increase in total online use of e-books by document from 29 percent of print in 2004 to 58 percent in 2005."

* Report: Academic Library eBook Usage Surging
"... the top-circulating ebook was ‘checked out’ 47 times in a month, and the top print book was 1.4 times."

It's a wave of e-book interest and usefulness that can't be stopped!

06:15 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I have a broken Verizon Treo 650, and I've decided to replace it. Well, it's not completely broken, it just can't hotsync very well because something inside the phone has a loose connection by the hotsync connector. It has been a nuisance for a while, and every time I wanted to sync, it was an adventure to make the connection by pushing and pulling just right. Only one of my hotsync cords worked at all, and it always took all that fussing.

Well, I have phone insurance through Verizon, underwritten by Assurian. In fact, it's handled so separately that when I called Verizon Wireless support, they gave me the Assurian phone number, and my phone info (you need a date of purchase and a model number to file a claim).

This was the time to act because of three reasons:
1) I'm getting very annoyed with the bad connection
2) I will probably be getting a Sprint 700p if it comes out soon, has a reasonably priced data plan, and gets decent reviews.
3) I wanted to set up a Palm Desktop at work with a ShadowPlan-only (plus RepliGo) sync to handle my project information and work to-do's which need some more organization to keep up with.

So I called Assurian and they really surprised me. I couldn't understand the words being spoken by the rep very well, but other than that it was a very smooth process. My connector (or even a lost phone) is covered in my several dollars a month insurance fee. Even better, I think it's the same price for a cheap phone or a Treo, so I think I got a decent deal and it really paid off.

What did I have to do? Not much. Tell them the problem and the phone info. The model was in stock, and they are expressing the new or refurbished one overnight so I'm supposed to get it tomorrow at work. It includes a prepaid label for me to send back my phone. The charge was $50 for everything, and they even cover 2 incidents per 12 month period or annual billing period, so I'm not completely out of luck if my phone breaks again.

Despite a recorded message saying if I didn't return my phone promptly I would be charged up to $100, I was told by a rep that they would charge up to the retail price of the phone if I didn't return the bad one. They told me that when I asked if I had the choice of simply paying $100 and keeping the bad phone. Unfortunately, that wasn't a real choice for me. Oh well.

I asked a bunch of questions like:
* Can I keep my old battery? (I'm afraid of getting a stale one that won't hold a charge very well.) Answer: Yes, but be sure to return one. BTW, is there an easy way to compare and pick the best battery without two long battery draining exercises?
* Will it be like new if I get a refurbished one? (Mine is pristine and I don't want one with a scratched screen.) Answer: It should be like new and you shouldn't be able to tell it's been used. If it isn't in that condition, call them back.

I don't remember all my other concerns, but everything sounded fine. I had been wondering if it was in my best interest to pay that much and take my chances on a refurbished one, but it sounds fine. Who knows? I might even get lucky and get a new one!

I'm going to have a full backup with BackupBuddyVFS, and will update the ROM on the phone if necessary before I restore. Hopefully, there won't be any mismatched system files and I won't have to reinstall everything.

So far so good! I'll let you know later in Part 2 how it really goes.

07:07 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

If you have a large collection of e-books, mp3s, photos or video files then you probably know what I'm talking about.

In physical bookshelves, it's a lot easier to browse through the books and find what you are interested in. Granted, if you know the author or title, maybe it's not so bad in an electronic library. But if you just want to look through the books and find one that appeals to you in your current mood, a list of directories and filenames is often a turn off. Especially for a non-tech person!

Martin Geddes writes writes that there's a "problem with the all-digital future. Those physical artifacts are how we organise our data. The shoeboxes full of old pictures determine some kind of chronological order and grouping. Even the different sets of photo print delivery covers tell you something — that holiday is in the Boots photo processing jacket, this one in the mail-in Fujifilm one.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty in throwing out the artifacts along with the data stored upon them? A stack of CD cases gives us opportunity to browse, and doesn’t need yet-another giant-screen remote to operate. Yes, the artifacts could maybe do with a little shrinkage in size. But I don’t see her manipulating the 10,000 song MP3 jukebox when she can’t read yet."

I agree wholeheartedly, but I don't think the problem is (for the most part) the difference between physical storage and electronic file storage. I think the problem is that the standard electronic interface for content right now is missing. It has defaulted to directories and filenames because there are no standards for doing this.

This situation is probably one of the motivations behind a physical device I saw that emulates digitally the bookshelf browsing experience. Not sure where I saw it, but it seemed a bit silly at the time. Now I'm starting to think this may be the reason for it. A way to make the browsing experience more meaningful and rich once again, because with digital media it has been lost.

Update:BibiloRoll is the device that I was thinking of. It is a bit mysterious, but somehow helps you when reading multiple books and doing comparisons. Strange. But may not be quite a virtual bookshelf despite the picture. And there seem to be other devices. Thanks to David Rothman at TeleRead for helping me find this info!

But I don't think it will be long before we see some more effective ways to store and access various libraries of e-books and other types of content in some standard format with a simple and pleasant interface. At least I hope not.

06:33 PM by Bob Russell in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Microsoft and NewspaperDirect are teaming up to provide a service that offers newspapers on demand for mobile viewing on a UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) such as the new Samsung Q1. A full list of titles can be found here, and it is a long list with multiple languages. Newpaper direct already provides online newspaper viewing, so this is a natural evolution of their services. In fact, they currently have hundreds of newspapers and expects the list to grow rapidly.

The press release indicates that it is:
* The first media content provider for Ultra-Mobile PCs
* Building on NewspaperDirect's multiple newspaper delivery
channels

The service is aimed as "the emerging mass market of typically young and technology savvy subscribers who wish to read news and access content while on the move."

It's not clear whether the agreement with Microsoft is to include reader and content access software with UMPC devices, or if it is in order to convert the software properly for UMPC devices, or maybe some different purpose altogether, but it does sound promising for mobile reading.

Related: Back in March we brought you news from TeleRead and Engadget that Microsoft was interested in making the Origami a e-book reading device, and these are some early fruits of their push in the mobile content arena. I'm sure more is to come.

Via OrigamiPortal

09:11 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

For as long as I can recall, e-book readers have provided tools for bookmarking, highlighting, and annotation. But that didn't stop Microsoft from applying for (in 1999) and the US Patent and Trademark Office from granting (just recently) a patent for a "Method and apparatus for capturing and rendering text annotations for non-modifiable electronic content". Non-modifiable content refers to content whose consistency is for various reasons not allowed to change. DRM-protected and copyrighted works come to mind.

The invention works like this:

• A user selects some kind of anchor object (which can be text or a graphic) in the document to locate where he wants an annotation to be placed.
• The software determines the file position in the document associated with the selected object.
• The user adds his annotation (which may include highlighting, textual notes, drawings, etc.) and, eventually, returns to reading the document.
• Meanwhile, the annotation is being stored along with the file position in a separate, linked file. Alternatively, the non-modifiable document may include a write-enabled portion with the annotations being added to it. The underlying document remains in an unmodified state.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, I cannot blame you. There is nothing new about this invention, nor does it require a particular technical understanding. Mobipocket uses external "information storage" files (.mbp) to keep track of annotations (including bookmarks, notes, custom links, drawings, modifications, highlights). Vade Mecum stores annotations and highlighting in separate files in the program's metadata folder. To name just two, and I am pretty sure other readers work similarly. Whoever granted this patent in the USPTO administration must have been smoking some bad granola at the time.

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

My goodness, is it Sunday again? Well, for those of you who've missed the highs and lows of MobileRead over the past seven days, this is your one-way ticket to catch up:

Announcements
Forum under construction

Elsewhere on the Net
2006 World e-Book Fair

In the News
Barrons downgrades RIM, upgrades Palm
Fuel cells won't help handheld devices
Nano-skins to provide bendy and flexible e-paper
Palm working on joystick for handhelds
Research In Motion sued, once again
Why the situation is ripe for e-books

iRex iLiad
iRex iLiad hi-res closeups

Link Swap
Finding the best web sites

Lounge
Palm Addicts meet up July 16h

Mobile Browsing
Opera "Mighty" Mini 2.0 released
Summary of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

Others
Revamped Pepper Pad may be coming soon

Palm OS
Sprint Treo 700w to launch May 15th?

04:48 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Only once before can I think of a handheld that included anything like a joystick, and that would be the HP 4700. But I hear less about how wonderful that touchpad was, and more about how HP made a huge design mistake.

Well, Palm has a patent (US Patent Nbr 6806865) which has a nifty way of integrating a joystick on a handheld into the d-pad, using the tip of a stylus attached as the controller. There's no reason to expect it to show up any time soon on devices, but it's always fun to consider the possibilities. (Make the jump to the full article for a full-sized diagram.)

09:00 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Internet tablets are consistently drawing early excitement, but never seem to live up to the hype. Most notably, we've seen the Pepper Pad and the Nokia 770 devices create a lot of interest, but they just don't appear to be wildly popular.

The makers of the Pepper Pad are hoping to change that situation with the upcoming release of Pepper Pad version 2 this summer. If you recall, the original Pepper Pad is a sturdy and easy to use Linux-based wireless device for web browsing, music and video, ebook reading. It has about 20gig storage, and is meant to handle these sorts of activities well, not to be a laptop or tablet PC replacement. It's most distinctive feature is the split keyboard the is thumb operated with a hand on each side of the display.

The new version was spotted by Mobile Tech Review, at the Connections show where they had the opportunity to meet with Pepper. The new model is going to be slightly smaller, and will sport a 7" display with 800 x 480 resolution. It will lose the SD card slot, but will gain 2 USB 2.0 ports, a faster processor, and will run "version 2.6 of the Linux Kernel with the Insyde BIOS (no more MontaVista embedded)."

It will also be cheaper than the original Pepper Pad, coming in at about $500 instead of the original model's $849 list price. This one might just be coming into the sweet spot for internet tablets, and with a large enough screen to be desireable for the general user.

But like the upcoming Origami devices, it probably still suffers from anemic battery life. The original version only got about 2 hrs for surfing or watching video. E-Book reading was better on that first device (with the display dimmed), and provided about 5hrs of activity. But that's marginal at best, and it's hard to imagine that it will have been doubled or tripled with the new device.

Unfortunately, as a result, this device may repeat the same old pattern... lot's of excitement generated, but not really something that people will want to buy and use.

So the suspense continues - who will be the first to not just climb partway up the mountain of user acceptance, but reach the peaks of a wildly popular internet tablet that sells well and is loved by users? Coming soon I hope!