04:06 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

More PDF-related news for today: The PDF file of US President Bush's Strategy for Victory in Iraq speech contains hidden in the document's properties the name of Peter Feaver, a Duke University political science professor.

The discovery that Feaver was the originator of the plan has stirred controversy in Washington. The New York Times has reported that Feaver co-authored an analysis of surveys regarding the popularity of the Iraq war with the American public and concluded that citizens will support the war, despite fairly heavy casualties, as long as they believe it will ultimately succeed.

My humble advice to the government: ban Adobe PDF and advocate open standards instead.

[via GCN]

03:15 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | iSilo/X

Darren, the mastermind behind my favorite e-book reader iSilo, just released the first beta of iSilo and iSiloX V4.3. While there's nothing new to report for iSiloX, iSilo adds the following new features and fixes:

• Support for interpreting the external document path as a space delimited list of possibilities when the first non-space character is a double-quote, where each possibility is enclosed within double-quotes.
• Document registration codes can now have a prefix of up to nine characters that can be entered by the user but will be ignored by the validation process. This allows document publishers to add their own custom prefix to document registration codes.
• [Windows Mobile] When in full screen mode with links active, using the action button to attempt to follow the current active link results in exiting of full screen mode.
• [Windows Mobile] On devices with VGA resolution screens, following a link to an external document results in an incorrect display of the toolbar, whereby the right part of the toolbar shifts to the left.
• [Windows Mobile] When selecting a different font to use for the monospace family, a monospace font is still used.

The beta for iSilo can be downloaded from here and the beta for iSiloX can be downloaded from here. And if you are new to iSilo make sure to visit this thread first for more information.

01:55 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

As if there're not enough reasons to despise Adobe Acrobat: it's bloated, it's slow, it uses a proprietary format incompatible with most other readers, it uses DRM, heck, it even spies on you! Now Nicholas found one more reason for us to shudder at the worst abomination ever dared calling itself an e-book reader: Adobe plans to merge Adobe Acrobat and Macromedia Flash into a so-called "universal client". Let's hope they'll provide a universal uninstaller with it.

[via InsideGoogle]

01:27 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Over in the land of the rising sun, people don't just talk about forthcoming e-paper technologies, but they actually experience it. Gizmodo spotted at Tokyo station an e-paper display which constantly feeds news updates via a wireless Internet connection. It's thin, it's bluish translucent, and it's bright as e-paper is supposed to be. Just to talk about it makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.

12:57 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

You knew it was only a matter of time until those Finns figured out a way to release their own BlackBerry device. Rafe sent word in that All About Symbian had a first look at the Nokia E61, a Symbian OS 9.1 smartphone equipped with a 240x320 display, WiFi, GPRS, 3G connectivity and a mini-SD slot (uh, no Bluetooth though).

The E61, I think, finally crosses the line between smartphone and PDA. Whether companies and sites are going to pigeonhole the E61 as a super smartphone or a PDA with a phone attached is immaterial. What we have here is a portable computer, which has a huge range of built-in applications and can be extended by third party developers -Nokia are no longer simply a phone manufacturer.

Save the trip to your local cellphone dealer - it ain't going to be out before early spring next year.

11:24 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BlackBerry maker RIM just received a patent in Europe for a drop-resistant handheld LCD display. Patent EP1603007 describes

A display for a handheld computing device that includes a display panel; a display circuit board carrying display electronics for the display panel; a cover assembly securing the display panel to the display circuit board; and a resilient layer adhered to the display circuit board for securing the display to the computing device.

It's probably only a matter of days before NTP is going to accuse RIM of infringing yet another of their patents.

04:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Not sure if it's scam or real, but Tad sent me this link where some private individual claims to have the Verizon-branded Treo 700w in stock:

I HAVE VERIZON TREO 700w IN STOCK!! THESE PALM TREOS ARE BRAND NEW WITH MANUAL AND DATA CABLE. COMES IN A WHITE GENERIC BOX BECAUSE THEY HAVE YET TO CREATE A RETAIL BOX. PHONE IS BRAND NEW, NEVER BEEN USED.

Considering that Verizon provided us with a sneak peak already, it cannot take much longer for the Treo 700w to become officially available; it's up to you whom you send your money!

UPDATE: Get notified by Verizon once the Treo hits their stores.

05:10 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Antoine has written me a note to let everyone know that after a period of downtime, Mobile Ministry Magazine is back up and ready to go...

"Just to let you know that MMM is back up. Being hosted by Lance at PalmFocus. Things should be nice and stable. Also look forward to Issue 3 sometime in the next day or so and new writers on board."

Thank you Lance for the assist. Time and time again we see the kindness and good will from so many of the great people in the mobile community! We look forward to more ongoing great content from MMM.