03:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Sony Librie owners can now download the first DjVu-compatible e-book reader for their reading device. DjVu (pronounced "déjà vu") is an open format designed to store scanned images and documents. Compared to other formats such as JPG or PDF, it offers better compression ratios while still preserving crisp and legible text. You can read more on DjVu here.

Update: arivero, the gifted programmer of DjVu Reader, lives among us and for some inexplicable reason we totally missed his prior announcement. Sorry 'bout that.

[via Make Blog]

03:28 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Anthony Reed modeled and rendered a cell phone based on E-Ink technology. Gizmodo has the blurb:

The idea is that the user can customize the front face, phone pad, turn it into a QWERTY keyboard, MP3 player or whatever. I think the thinness of this device is a bit much to expect given the proposed functionality, but not outside the realm of the one-day possible.

03:15 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Yes it's not the first time we've told you that Opera Mini is officially available for download, but this time Opera means it for real by officially starting their Opera Mini campaign. What's new is that you can now download the latest java applet of Opera Mini through the download wizard and a WAP browser is no longer required.

[via Download Squad]

02:43 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Though Google is equipped with all the niceties a mobile warrior could dream of, sometimes you have to wonder why they make it so difficult to locate them all. In an editorial entitled Tons Of Uses For Google On Your Device, Ed Hansberry details how to use various Google goodies with your mobile device, including Google Mobilizer, Gmail, Froogle, Local Search, and Google Maps. It's a great starting page for everyone who wants to find out how to view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, check e-mails, or get driving directions while on the go.

09:57 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I was in a hurry this morning. In the rush to get out the door, I forgot something. Thank God it wasn't my whole Treo, but it was close. I forgot my SD card. It sits at home in my card reader attached to my PC, and I'm too far from home to go get it.

That means all my iSilox clips with news, weather, movie listings, daily devotionals and so forth are not in my pocket today. It means that I have no videos or ebooks or mp3s in my pocket. It means that many of my reference materials are not available. I have no dictionary with me. No Bible. Just the basic PIMs. Heaven forbid I end up with a long wait somewhere on the way home like a grocery store line or a car service department.

Now, I have to admit that I don't really need any of that, other than the mp3s and maybe a video to watch at lunch. I may go out for lunch with some friends anyway, and I don't have time for the other stuff until I get home. So why is it such a big deal, and why do I feel so naked?

Basically, given a choice between doing something on a mobile device or another way, I'd choose the device almost every time. It just feels good and makes everything more enjoyable. It's a fascination that doesn't even have to be practical. I could get not a single benefit from a pda and I think I would still use one and enjoy it. I'm just as excited about these little computers now as I was when I saw the very first programmable calculators and home computers. Even remote access teletype machines from the 70s that actually allowed you to write and run programs.

So, yes, mobile devices are fun for me. But suppose I had left my Treo at home altogether. Oh my, what a disaster that would be. Now we're talking real issues, that even a "normal" person might relate to. I would not have had my schedule, my address book, my memo notes, my passwords. No phone, no shopping list. You know - the stuff a regular person might get a pda for. Heck, it would be kind of like back in the 80's before I discovered Franklin Planners. How did I ever do it?

For me, a mobile device is a lot like ATMs and microwave ovens and the internet. Once you get used to having one around, it's hard to imagine life without it. If you're the geeky/techie type, it can easily become one of the great joys in life. And if you are not the techie type, you may just be scratching your head for a long time trying to understand what the fascination is for people like me!

06:40 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It seems that there is a pretty significant bug in Pocket Word. According to a post in PPC Magazine's blog, in some cases if you enter "->", which is not uncommon in documents, you will crash Word and lose all your work. This apparently applies to both WM2003 and WM2003SE. The additional resources listed below may have information about whether or not it applies to WM2005.

More information is available here:

PPCMag
Pocket PC Thoughts Forum Thread
IPAQ HQ
Axim Site
PPC Magazine
First Loox
Brighthand

10:27 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

A research center at Nokia is working on an open source project that would literally make cell phones into web servers. You might think it's a big crazy and that they are biting off more than a phone can chew, but listen to the background they provide. "For quite some time it has been possible to access the Internet using mobile phones, although the role of the phone has strictly been that of a client. Considering that the modern phones have processing power and memory on par with and even exceeding that of webservers when the web was young, there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones and why people could not create and maintain their own personal mobile websites." It makes a lot of sense.

Right now it's just an experiment. They specifically say "The software is currently used inside Nokia as an experimentation platform."

You can read more about the project at the Nokia research site.

(via Digg)

05:22 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Has anyone noticed that most digital rights protection schemes seem to be broken pretty quickly? Especially the big boys. DVD CSS protection, MS .lit e-books, various MP3 protections like for iTunes and others. It seems that they all get broken, and I'm sure the new hi-def video standard DRM will be broken also.

Most likely this is being applied mostly for personal use of content. I would like to think that piracy is not the main usage of these utilities. But I can't even advise breaking DRM for personal use because there may be laws restricting usage depending on where you are, and how literally you interpret the law. It has been argued by famous "Jon" that DRM is not about piracy anyway, but about licensing and controlling of hardware manufacturers. And others have pointed out it's not about piracy but market segmentation -- once you adopt their standard, you don't buy from a competitor because it isn't compatible.

But what I really wanted to point out in this editorial is that the one obvious example of a DRM that isn't broken (yet) is the eReader DRM. What's remarkable about this exception is not that eReader DRM is so unbreakable that no one has been able to do it. What is remarkable is what appears to me to be the distinguishing feature that causes it to be left alone... it is remarkably user friendly!

With eReader, you can install on Palm or PPC or other eReader platforms, they have free versions of the reader software and you can even loan it to a friend if you are willing to type in your credit card number into their device. (No, the credit card number is not even stored there, it's just used on the fly to create a hash code to verify the credentials.)

So could it be that the DRM schemes that serve the customer the best, and show reasonable flexibility in their impositions, are also the ones that are less likely to become targets for avoidance. That would be another argument supporting the fact that DRM is making criminals out of the average consumer.

Well, with our knowledgeable audience here at MobileRead, I'm sure someone will find some other examples that are lesser used DRM schemes that have not been broken, and some may want to argue that the only reason eReader has not been hit is because they are not big enough yet. Certainly it's not the scale nor does it have the negative image of Microsoft.

Maybe I can't prove it, or even convinceingly argue the point, but I sure like to think that DRM schemes that come close to being fair and reasonable are the very ones that will not face the onslaught of cracking software that some of the more onerous DRM schemes will face.

I wonder what others think about this eReader exception to the rule?

P.S. No... this article is most definitely NOT a call to crack any DRM software. There's no reason to think this particular one is an especially challenging exercise, and the protection restrictions are quite reasonable relative to other protections schemes. It's the DRM I choose for purchases myself. So the only time we might really need a cracking utility is if eReader goes out of business. Let's hope that never happens, and that e-books are more and more successful every year!