08:38 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Marco Casario is a developer that "intensively collaborates with Adobe Italy as a speaker and promoter of several events and roadshows." One might not really expect him, therefore, to be very interested in making the mobile browsing experience better -- Adobe's Acrobat Reader and Flash formats are notorious for being hard to deal with in mobile browsers.

Nonetheless, Marco has written a summary of the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help us understand how to make the mobile web better.

There's also a link in that W3C document to the W3C Mobile Web Initiative Field Trial. "Although many mobile devices can already access the Web, actually browsing the Web from a mobile device is often a frustrating experience. Users normally find that their favourite Web sites are not accessible or more difficult to use on their mobile phone compared with their desktop computer. Content authors have difficulties building Web sites that work well on all types and configurations of mobile phones that offer Web access. The W3C Mobile Web Initiative will initially focus on two areas: best practices and mobile device descriptions."

It's easily to agree with the basic sentiment driving the work: "Mobile access to the Web has been a second class experience for far too long." - W3C Director and Web creator, Tim Berners-Lee.

Via Wireless-Watch.

07:30 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In a shocker for handheld fans looking forward to some help from fuel cells, EE Times UK is reporting that fuel cells are not going to be any help after all.

Due to heat issues associated with miniaturization, the real barrier is not generating more power, but being able to use it more efficiently because of heat dissipation problems.

"As more functions are embedded in the mobile phone, the communications industry is facing a power consumption problem — and unfortunately it is one that cannot be answered by the fuel cell or other battery alternatives, according to Yrjo Neuvo, formerly executive vice president and CTO for Nokia Mobile Phones, who now serves as a technology advisor to the company."

"Smart phones are leveraging multicore architectures to get the performance they need, Neuvo observed but said fuel cells are not really any use as a mobile phone cannot consume more than 3 W to 6 W depending on its size, as it would then require active cooling. As active cooling is not an option better system and IC design must be the ways forward, as they have been before, Neuvo said."

Also, we find that while mobile communications has been moving from predominantly analog circuitry to digital circuitry, it has begun to reverse itself. The digital circuits are shrinking and the bulk of the microchips are going to be dominated now by analog RF components. The situation gets worse when we get SDR ("software defined radio" which allows it to support any radio standard simply with programming changes).

03:24 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Cool Tools has highlighted an interesting approach to finding the best web news based on concensus web article selection.

Kevin Kelly says, "I hypothesized that soon there would be a meta-site that would aggregate all the consensus filters into one. The next day Thomas Marban from Austria wrote me to say that he had already written one, called PopUrls. I've been using it daily for the past month and its great.This single page now replaces my need to directly read Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Slashdot, BoingBoing, NewsVine, Metafilter and all the others that I subscribe too. This one page encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from 15 consensus filters, and top thumbnail images from the social sites Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. The hive mind on one screen."

Read the full article to see exactly how he uses it. No word yet on how well it might integrate into mobile solutions. Anybody already find a good way to use it on a handheld?

Update: It seems I left out the direct link... PopURLs.

03:19 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

According to World eBook Fair, the "World eBook Fair Collection shelves more than 330,000 PDF eBooks in 100+ languages, [and] contains 90 of the finest eBook collections published on the Internet today."

Much of the content is probably overlap from Project Gutenberg, and unfortunately they have chosen to present the content in PDF format. But it still looks interesting, and includes an online search index on the main page... "Enter the author's name or the title of the book... You may also search the Full Text content for a 'Word Search'... Over 330,000+ PDF eBooks and eDocuments to choose from."

In addition, it looks like you can also download the entire collection for free starting July 4th. Actually, they may mean that each book in the collection is available for free download, rather than one complete download as offered by Project Gutenberg downloads. Interestingly, Project Gutenberg may have grown so much that their content may only allow for a "best of" collection even on DVD!

From Digg.

05:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Michael Mace not only has profound insight in the mobile tech industry, but he is also a talented writer. In his latest editorial Mike systematically analyzes why e-books, although so far they have been a failure in the consumer market, are ready to pick up steam. Some issues he raises:

• inefficiency in the traditional publishing industry
• lack of (financial) incentives for authors to write more books
• high price of e-books
• few new e-books are published per year
• consolidation among book retailers drains profits from independent bookstores
• decline of the short story market
• books going out of print
• insufficiency of e-book devices (contrast ratio, screen resolution)
• book piracy.

My favorite quote:

So most of the value added by publishers is logistical - they manage the complicated production process, get the book placed in stores, handle returns, and so on. If the printing and bookselling process is bypassed, the value-add of most publishers goes away. And so, perhaps, does the publisher.

12:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Today Opera released the second incarnation of its popular "Mini" browser for Java-capable mobile devices. New features include support for downloads, skins, multisearch, speed dial and visual navigation. The press release has a full list of changes and improvements.

You can download Opera Mini 2.0 directly to your mobile phone at no cost via this URL.

05:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

They appear to be unsubstantiated, but since we specialize in unsubstantiated rumors around here, consider this speculation, from a guy who calls himself stockoperator_1999:

Sprint retail outlets will be receiving the 700W on Friday May 12th for a Monday May 15th launch. No final confirmation on the 700P yet. (Launch date or carrier)... The odds are looking like Verizon will get the 700P first around the same time Sprint gets the 700W. (Sprint will get it also, it's just a matter of when... I'm hearing May 28th, which is 2 weeks after the espected Verizon launch.

Related: Sprint Treo 700w expected to arrive earlier

04:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In light of RIM's familiar pattern of patent disputes, Barrons Magazine downgraded the Blackberry maker today and predicted a positive momentum for the direct competitor Palm.

We are downgrading Research in Motion given the new patent dispute and evidence Palm continues to garner share at Research in Motion's expense. We note the earlier remarks of Research in Motion management that the NTP lawsuit was not impacting business in light of the subsequent sharp miss for the last reported quarter. Mobile software player Visto filed suit against Research in Motion Monday for an infringement on Visto's patents for synchronization of mobile e-mail messages. After the close, Research in Motion issued a press release saying Visto's patents were invalid because of prior art. Research in Motion further asserted it may counter sue against Visto for infringing on Research in Motion's patents. We do not expect the dispute to be heard in court until late 2007. In our opinion the outcome of the lawsuit is highly unpredictable, but we can predict with a fair amount of certainty that it will be distracting to Research in Motion's management.

Meanwhile, Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM, rejected the patent suit, saying that Visto is using a "brazen strategy" which would not distract his company from rolling out a raft of new products and partnerships this year.