02:13 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Every so often eReader offers some daily free ebooks. It's a mixed bag, though. Some people are frustrated by free book selections that are in the public domain anyway. But for others like myself, it's fun to check every day in hopes of finding some good ebooks in eReader format (which is my favorite reader for full length ebooks) and discovering some new authors.

Chances are there will be one or two nice books for every taste, whether it's sci-fi, horror, romance or whatever. I've discovered some great authors from free eReader books, including Michael Connelly, Christopher Reich. So the various giveaways and book bundles seem to be working as a marketing ploy on me. And some of other free ebooks that I haven't gotten to yet are very promising also, like Pirate Hunter from a previous daily giveaway.

It looks like there will be some good authors in this batch that might just get you hooked and buying multiple titles. Here's the scoop from today's eReader newsletter....

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Free eBooks Starting Tomorrow!
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It's that time of year again. Come back everyday to eReader to find a special
free eBook by such big-name authors like James Patterson, Harry Turtledove,
Erica Orloff, Roger Zelazny, Warren Adler and Darrell Bain.

Look for more information at eReader.
The promo link with the free books is here. (Thks Alex!)

07:43 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Astraware is making quite a name for itself by providing some excellent games on mobile platforms. The newest release is a game called Chuzzle. The web site says that "Chuzzles are googly-eyed little balls of fur that giggle, squeak, and sneeze as you push them." And in playing the game, you "Group three Chuzzles of the same colour together and watch them pop in a flurry of fur."

I'm not much of a game fanatic, but I have to admit that this one has my attention. And if you love to pop packing material bubbles, this looks like the ultimate game for you!

You can find more information and a trial version at the Chuzzle page.

06:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Shaun of PDA247 is suffering from the "Treo thumb": Since I have been using the Treo both of the ends of my thumbs have become tender and recently quite sore. I have never had this with any other keyboarded PDA- XDA, Psions, KJAM etc. and wondered if I am the only one.

Although never had I suffered from a sore thumb myself, sometimes I can sense pain in my hands when using a PDA for a long period of time (especially when I curl up in front of a cozy fire thrilled with the prospect of reading a good e-book). Can anyone share some pointers on how to alleviate the pain and avoid future injury?

Related: "BlackBerry thumb" syndrome affecting mobile users

05:51 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Not sure how I could've missed it earlier but PalmAddict's Andrew Davis wrote a very complete review on the OQO model 01+, a device that doesn't exactly fit the description of a handheld nor that of a notebook device. The review, which is composed of three parts, concludes:

All in all, in my opinion the OQO rocks! I love it. I now have an OQO in one pocket and my Treo 650 in the other. I have the utmost in portability and have internet access, my documents, and programs, etc with me all the time. I couldn't be happier... well, at least not til they come out with a better version of each. And that said, there are rumors of a 2nd generation device due out from OQO sometime this year. If it happens, I'll definitely be getting one and I'll donate my current OQO to a worthy Palm Addict reader... so keep watching PA on a daily basis!

05:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I received word from Picard today that he's been working on a native H.264 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) plugin for TCPMP, the popular multimedia player for Windows Mobile and Palm OS. Until now, AVC-encoded video clips were played through a stripped-down version of the ffmpeg library the ffmpeg plugin that comes with TCPMP.

You can download TCPMP V0.71b and the experimental AVC plugin from here. Note, however, that this is the first test release and it doesn't support a couple of AVC properties yet, such as CABAC and weighted prediction. Picard is also still working on adding WMMX support for Pocket PCs.

Other changes in V0.71b include: msvideo1 and cinepak decoder included, DIV3 decoder artifact fix, http/mms streaming fix (WinCE).

Related: TCPMP/Betaplayer sets standards with AVC support

04:08 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

If you are interested in the technology behind electronic paper, you should visit E Ink's newly opened support portal where you can download the latest source code of their ThinSpace project (which refers to the OS used in the prototyping kits). They've also started a community forum where people can come together to discuss the kit, the development of open-source e-book software, and electronic paper technology in general.

03:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Following the previous technical preview released two weeks ago, Access has made available NetFront 3.3 TP 1.03. Although I don't know anything about the changes, I do know that this is the pretty darn best effort of a fine Web browser for Windows Mobile.

Dowload link here

12:54 PM by Laurens in Archive | Sunrise

I'm pleased to announce the first alpha of Sunrise XP.

Sunrise XP is a reworking of Sunrise. I'm no longer pursuing a commercial venture for this product and am releasing it as freeware.

Highlights

• Completely rewritten. Smaller, faster and no Java required!
• Streamlined interface.
• HotSync conduit

Requirements

• Windows XP / 2000 / 2003.
• Pentium II or better
• 128Mb RAM for common websites. 256Mb for larger documents.
• HotSync Manager 4 or 6. (Should also work without HotSync installed, but does not work with older HotSync versions.)

This is a bare-bones release, with a small, but useful feature set. The purpose is to gather user feedback. It is not suitable as a replacement for Sunrise 0.42 yet, primarily because it has no support for RSS/Atom feeds, but it should be good enough for converting your favourite web sites.

Of particular note is the reduced memory usage compared to the Java version. You should be able to convert large documents without running into the dreaded "out of memory" error.

That all said, it's still alpha quality, so expect some issues, possibly major, show-stopping ones.

Features not yet available in this alpha:

• RSS/Atom feed conversion.
• URL rewriting.
• Automatic updates through Windows Task Scheduler.
• Plain text conversion.
• Wizards for setting up SXLs and documents.
• Basic CSS support. (Fonts, colors, visibility.)
• Firefox extension.
• SDL import for migrating settings from Sunrise to Sunrise XP. (See post below for an intermediate solution.)
• Help documentation.

These features will be made available throughout the next few months with a stream of monthly alpha and beta releases. (The next alpha is due in the first week of January.) The final 2.0 release will be in late Spring at the earliest. I'm following a strict roadmap for this product and have to make the best of the little time I can spend on it, so don't be disappointed if your feature requests are rejected. I might even get round to finishing work on the PPC version of my viewer (which uses its own format) and release a cut-down version of that as freeware eventually, but this is not a real goal at present since I'm preoccupied with other work.

Update:
Alexander was gracious enough to let me host the file on MobileRead. I also fixed a bug in the generation of URL info for large documents. This release is marked "alpha 1a".

Download:
sunrisexp-2.0-alpha-1a-setup.exe (780Kb)
No longer available. Download alpha 2 instead.