04:37 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

On the off-chance that you haven't heard about Project Gutenberg before, it's a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute full texts of public domain books in open formats. WSJ interviewed Project Gutenberg's founder Michael Hart and reveals that he was approached by Google one year prior the official announcement of Google Book Search.

I talked to Google a year before Google's big announcement [in December 2004]. … They approached us. They sent us an email saying, "Hey, we'd like to talk to you." They let us tell them about all that we were doing. It took place at the big Google headquarters in Silicon Valley. They gave us a free lunch and everything. They were very polite, but very business-plan oriented. At a certain point, they sort of talked us out the door. So I heard about [Google Book Search] along with everybody else. Same with Yahoo.

So Google didn't want to work together with Mr. Hart. According to the latter, the search engine company decided for a different approach:

Google is working from the top down. It's very centralized. Project Gutenberg is the opposite: It's decentralized, it's grassroots. From the consumer's point of view, if you're trying to get a quotation from a book, you could get the book from Project Gutenberg and cut and paste, say, the whole "Hamlet" soliloquy. On Google, you can't. Also, ours is totally non-commercial. You won't find advertising on any of our pages.

08:48 AM by TadW in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

It's World War II and you are B.J. Blazkowicz, the Allies' most valuable agent. So begins the story of one of the most debated games in history. Some dude completed a Pocket PC port of Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. This port includes support for accelerated graphics, sounds and music. To play the full version of the game, you need to own the PC version and copy the data files into the game folder on your Pocket PC.

08:26 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Still sweating out a few last-minute Christmas gifts for friends and family? Make sure to stop at eReader who currently runs various discounts on e-book purchases. Use the promo code PREDATOR to receive a 10% discount each book (valid until December 12th), and use the promo code BEST to receive a 20% discount off one book your purchase (valid until December 15th). Cannot be used in conjunction.

[via PalmAddict]

08:05 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Treonauts got their hands on the Treo 700w and they celebrate the event with a couple of juicy photos. They also confirm that Treo 650 users who'd like to switch can stick to their existing accessories, since fortunately Palm decided not to change the proprietary dock connector port.

07:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Gosh we've talked a lot this week. Here's your weekly round up of MobileRead's events.

Current E-Books Trends
The Holy Bible on USB stick

FBReader
FBReader 0.7.1b is released

General Chat
Blockbuster vs NetFlix: A comparison and review
In Tokyo e-paper is already so everyday
Odeo brings podcasting to the masses
US Government stumbles over PDF document

iSilo/X
iSilo and iSiloX V4.3 Beta 1 released

Link Swap
Mobile Ministry Magazine site is back up

Other Gadgets
RIM invents drop-resistant LCD display

Other Readers
Bloaty Adobe Acrobat to integrate bloaty Flash

Palm
1src Podcast #53 available
Boxwave ClearTouch Crystal hands-on review
New York Times interviews Palm CEO
On Pocket PC fans' anti-Palm smear
PalmAddicts Podcast #25 available
Palm Treo 700w manual and photos on FCC website
PDA247 podcast on Palm-to-Pocket PC conversion
Technology Review examines Palm's timeline
Treo 700w available on the greymarket?

Pocket PC
Engadget had a sneek peek at "Photon"
HP to outrace Palm with a debut in China
Microsoft targets low-cost PDA phones
Turn your Pocket PC into an iPod
WM 5.0 Direct Push Email is out but probably not for you

Portable Audio/Video
Custom podcasts from RSS text feeds

Smartphones
BlackBerry-like Nokia E61 previewed

10:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

New York Times scored an extended interview (reg req.) with Palm CEO Ed Colligan. The highlights:

• Ed doesn't believe BlackBerry service will be discontinued
• Though he believes RIM-NTP battle could benefit his company to grab more market share
• Palm's competitive advantage over RIM is the wide range of available applications
• Ed confuses "open platforms" with "well-supported industry standard platforms"
• He avoids to directly answer whether his company has looked into open-source
• He implies that the current status quo of mobile open-source suffers from bad user experience
• Apple iPod is a competitor in the sense that people often weigh their purchases of handhelds against MP3 players
• Music applications won't necessarily converge with phone and organizers
• Phone-capable handhelds is a bigger growth area than dedicated organizers
• "When you see our next-gen product, it has a high-speed radio in it, literally bringing kind of broadband connection speeds to the device. It totally changes the dynamic of how accessible the Internet is as an information access point wherever you are and whenever you want to get access to it."

03:16 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

DigiTimes has published a report stating that Microsoft plans to team up with Taiwan ODM handset makers to optimize its Windows Mobile OS and to manufactore low-cost PDA phones.

Microsoft has already exchanged ideas about the potential project with its major partners in Taiwan, including High Tech Computer (HTC), Quanta Computer, Asustek Computer, Acer, Mitac International, and BenQ, the sources noted.

Some producers are less optimistic in their ability to produce PDA phones under US$300 and they say it'd take two more years for to become economically feasable.

02:54 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Have you ever wanted to listen to your RSS text feeds instead of having to read them? Here's a solution that you might be interested in.

From Jon Aquino's Mental Garden, "Audiolicious is a Windows program that lets you turn any RSS feed into a podcast. It uses text-to-speech to convert the feed's webpages into MP3 files."

He goes on to describe the procedure to convert (on your Windows desktop) from RSS feeds to your very own mp3 podcasts from computer generated speech.

Apparently, after pondering the less than spectacular podcast content and reflecting on the great text content, it didn't take too much to spur the idea. It turns out that Audiolicious was the result of the simple question "What if I used text-to-speech to convert these textual webpages to podcasts that I could listen to during my daily commute?"

Personally, I'm not sure if I could endure the computer voices void of proper emphasis and inflection, but it is an intriguing idea. Especially for mobile devices.