09:44 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion has stumbled upon a way to read most of the O'Reilly Hacks Series books using Google, and has posted a how-to. According to Steve, this hack will work for other books as well *for now*. Oh, the irony...

Read the full article.

09:23 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Mobileplay has launched a beta version of their service, offering free content and location-based services for users of Palm, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices.

Mobileplay delivers ad supported news, weather, stock updates, sports scores, blogs, casual games, trivia, movie times, travel information and other content free to users. Content partners include The Weather Channel, Gawker Media, AP Digital, BusinessWeek Online, PC World, The Sporting News, and USA Today. Movie listings and Fodor's hotel and restaurant reviews will be added in January. By combining mobile content with mobile social software (MoSoSos), Mobileplay allows users to tailor their content and share it with friends and family members.

To find out more about Mobileplay, including a list of supported devices, check out the Mobileplay website. Treo users can download Mobileplay over-the-air at http://mpota.com

Press Release

10:21 AM by TadW in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Doug released a new build of the Mozilla-based browser Minimo for Windows Mobile. 012 addresses the following issues: 17% smaller, overall performance improvements for StrongARM, boomarks, native SSL, UI cleanup.

You can download it from here.

07:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you missed our frontpage news at any point this week, here is the best way to catch up:

Current E-Books Trends
Teleread's six e-book predictions for 2006
Xerox pulls the plug on e-paper

E-Book Readers
More details on the Iliad ER 0100 e-book reader

E-Book Webstores
Fictionwise 20% discount on any e-book purchase

General Chat
Merry Christmas to all of you
Microsoft rumored to offer movie downloads
Surveying the Digital Future

Other Gadgets
1GB CF cards reviewed by AnandTech
Mobile Gazette's Best/Worst List of Mobile Phones

Other Readers
Adobe Reader 7.05 warns before spying on you

Palm
3D Mines from Toyspring
FontSmoother 1.60 released (with built-in font selector)
Linux Q&A with former PalmSource developer
Palm Treo 700w launches on January 5th, 2006
Sign up to PalmAddict's Newsletter

Pocket PC
Free holiday games for Pocket PC from Clickgamer
Microsoft buys Opera Software (rumor)
Which Windows Mobile device should I buy?

Portable Audio/Video
Pandora personal streaming radio stations
The state of Mobile Video

07:12 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Check out David's six e-book predictions for 2006. Certainly, 2005 hasn't been the year of the e-book yet. There's reason to hope that next year is going to be a lot better. For one, there's the Iliad ER 0100 e-book reader for which we predict a brilliant career in the coming months. And let's be honest, we're all sick to death of the iPod, it's irritating ads, the washed-up rock star cross-promotions. Let's consider a new mobile trend... how about the Apple iEreader?

06:06 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

During the holiday season Fictionwise is offering a 20% discount on *any* e-book you purchase through their store. PalmAddicts has the details.

05:57 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Rumors swirl about Microsoft planning to step into Apple's turf by launching a subscription-based movie download site. According to MacRumors, the service would presumably offer either unlimited downloads or one with a high limit for a flat monthly fee similar to Napster's present music subscription service.

We cannot prove if there's any substance to this story; it should be noted that the source of this rumor is a Mac enthusiast who probably has the Apple logo tattooed on his ankle.

[via MobileMag]

04:57 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Adobe has quietly updated their Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.5 to pop up a dialogue box when a PDF document is trying to track your usage with the spying software by Canada-based Remote Approach. Earlier this year we made the shocking discovery that since version 7.0, Adobe could be spying on you if the creator of an Adobe document wishes to do so:

Through some small JavaScript code that is embedded in the document Adobe Reader is reporting back information including the fact that you've opened the document (which has a unique identifier), your IP address, and which viewer version has been used. The information is submitted over port 80 using HTTP, so it is unlikely that a home or office firewall would, in a normal configuration, block the activity, unless the firewall administrator is attempting to block Web browsing.

Get the upgrade from here.

[via The Age]