01:42 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

It's been a slow weekend, and I've been mainly busy with doing a few tweaks to our server. To keep you updated, here's a list of today's tastiest stories:

• Google Mobile Personalized Home [mobile.google.com] Google personalized homepage for your handheld
• Apple files 'Mobile Me' as U.S. trademark [yahoo.reuters.com] Is Apple taking over Palm after all?
• Palm Cuts LifeDrive's Price [brighthand.com]
• E-book porn: How far have we come? And where are we going? [teleread.org]
• Pocket UFO updated to V1.24 [smksoftware.ru]
• iTunes 6.0.2 - Spyware or not? [safer-networking.org] Related: Is Apple spying on us through iTunes?
• eReader discount [palmaddict.typepad.com] 10% discount valid through January 18, 2006
• Google PDA and Mobile Phone Versions of Palm Addict [palmaddict.typepad.com] MR Mobile - not pretty, but you could give it a try
• NewtonOS on Linux PDA [tow.com]
• E-read all about it [books.guardian.co.uk]
• Mobile TV finally gets moving [news.bbc.co.uk]
• Sharp W-ZERO3 mini-review [engadget.com] Related: Opera Mobile 8.5 for WM 5.0 leaked

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.

Announcements
MobileRead wins multiple 2005 Palm Addict Reader Awards!

Current E-Books Trends
Sony Reader CES roundup

E-Book Readers
CEO of a top 10 book publisher writes about e-books
Sony reveals pricing for its Portable Reader PRS-500

E-Book Webstores
Fictionwise 40% on any 2005 bestseller

General Chat
Are mobile devices the end of boredom?
HoloTouch touch sensitive holographic display technology
Is Apple spying on us through iTunes?
New weather forecaster uses E Ink
Palm Treo smartphone advances while handhelds evaporate
PDA247 celebrates its 4th birthday

iSilo/X
iSilo V4.3 released

Other Gadgets
Scobleizer's coolest CES gadget: Celestron SkyScout
Some pretty amazing TI calculator programs

Other Readers
µBook reader 0.9g beta released

Palm
Demand for Treo 700w above expectations
Interesting developers take on PalmOS
Is a new Palm LifeDrive imminent? (rumor)
Palm CFO to hold presentation today
Synching drug delivery with your Palm handheld

Sunrise
Sunrise XP alpha 2 released

WiFi / Bluetooth Technologies
Connexion to start airborne Internet TV

02:24 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

For a limited time, Fictionwise is offering a $40% Micropay rebate on any of its "2005 Top e-book titles." For instance, Michael Crichton's State of Fear is currently available for $3.99 after rebate.

Related: Sci-Fi and fantasy author Darrell Bain was picked as their "2005 Fictionwise eBook Author of the Year."

10:43 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Gowerpoint's µBook deserves much recognition for being one of the most complete e-book reader solutions available for Pocket PCs. Not only can it read a whole bunch of file formats (including HTML, TXT, RTF, and PDB) but it also offers a wide range of customization options including portrait and landscape display, choice of font type, color and size, and a completely skinnable UI. Version 0.9g adds support for embedded PNG in RTF files and includes various bug fixes.

You can download the trial from here.

Thanks to eyoung for the tip!

01:09 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We are delighted and honored to announce that MobileRead has won first place in the "Best Palm / PDA website" and "Best Palm Blog" categories of the 2005 Palm Addict Reader Awards, as well as earning a third place finish for "Best Palm Forum." We offer our sincere thanks to all of you who voted for us, and to all of those who participate in the MobileRead community to make it such a pleasant place to visit.

This is quite an honor coming from the "Grandfather" of Palm web sites, Palm Addict. They are most certainly the premier Palm web site, with an incomparable quantity and quality of content, plus a friendly informal community approach that has become endearing to Palm fans everywhere. They may have awarded us a couple of their first place awards, but we gladly remind all our readers that they are the true champions in the world of Palm web sites.

There are many categories of awards, with all the 2005 results here.

And please don't forget to do your voting throughout this year in the 2006 Palm Addict Reader Awards!

11:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm CFO Andrew J. Brown is going to hold a presentation at the Eighth Annual Needham Growth Conference in New York today. The presentation will start around 11am PST and can be watched live through this webcast.

10:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Businessweek runs an interesting story on how a modified Handspring Palm OS handheld can be used to wirelessly control an internal pump that delivers medicine inside your body. The so-called Personal Therapy Manager (PTM) handheld is a patient-controlled device with a screen interface that can sync with the company's programmable implanted pumps to deliver medicine, via catheter, to the fluid near the spinal cord -- a process known as intrathecal drug delivery.

I am sure people with certain kinds of chronic pain may be candidates for this drug delivery therapy. We only hope the software is bug-free, or this could quickly turn into a ticking time-bomb.

More on intrathecal drug delivery can be found here.

09:08 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Michael Hyatt is "the President and Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the ninth largest publishing company of any kind." That's the description from his blog, Working Smart. And he's been sharing some thoughts about e-books recently.

He has covered topics like GTD, Mac vs Windows, Tablet PCs and so forth in the past. Now he has shared some views on the new Sony and iRex e-book readers. Whenever a publisher shares anything on this topic, it's certain to be of interest because of the many ways e-book publishing might evolve. Leaders in the industry will have a lot to say about how it progresses.

He has gone on record now via the web with a very non-traditional opinion from a publisher. In particular, he even says "While most publishers will admit that reference content is better accessed on the computer, almost all believe that the traditional non-fiction book or novel will never be replaced with a digital equivalent. I say, 'baloney.' It's coming. The sooner publishing executives get their collective heads out of the sand and face the future, the better prepared they will be to meet it." I couldn't agree more.

About the Sony e-book reader he asks whether it might be the iPod for books. There is definitely content coming. "Jane Friedman, CEO of HarperCollins, says she plans to digitize her entire catalog and make it available through Sony’s online store. This will happen as soon as HarperCollins finishes negotiating royalty rates with authors."

With regard to that new Sony product, he reminds us that "Even if this doesn’t become the device that I predicted in my first post on this topic, this is definitely a story to watch. I think we are seeing the convergence of multiple interests that will eventually result in the right device. Again, traditional books will not disappear any time soon, but a shift is coming. Count on it—and get ready."

With regard to the iRex device, he says "In my opinion, this is still a long way from 'the tipping point.' However, this is the third such device I have seen in the last two weeks. I think this reflects an acceleration in this kind of hardware development. It will likely take several more attempts, but eventually someone will get it right. It’s only a matter of time."

Michael Hyatt is definitely not one of the publishers with his head in the sand. Instead he will likely be one of the publishers shaping the future of electronic publishing of e-books. I just hope he finds a reasonable balance between content DRM and user experience.

Be sure to check out his Working Smarter blog, but you can find some of his e-book related posts at these links for your convenience:
* The Death Of Traditional Book Publishing
* More Thoughts on the Future of Book Publishing
* iRex Announces an ePaper Device
* The Shift Toward Digital Continues
* Could This Be the iPod for Books?