02:38 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

In direct competition with Google for providing an online book search tool, MSN Search is teaming up with the Internet Archive to scan and digitize publicly available print materials, as well as to work with copyright owners to legally scan protected materials. Whereas Google has gone it alone, Microsoft is joining an industry coalition, the Yahoo-backed Open Content Alliance.

"With MSN Book Search, we are excited to be working with libraries worldwide to digitize and index information from the world’s printed materials, taking another step in our efforts to better answer people’s questions with trusted content from the best sources," said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president of MSN Search at Microsoft Corp. "We believe people will benefit from the ability to not just view a page, but to easily act on that data in contextually relevant ways, both online in the search experience and in the applications they are using."

By initially focusing on books in the public domain and by stressing the importance of respecting copyrights Microsoft clearly hopes to avoid similar legal issues that have recently plagued its rival Google.

The digitized content will primarily be print material that has not been copyrighted, and Microsoft will clearly respect all copyrights and work with each partner providing the information to work out mutually agreeable protections for copyrights.

Microsoft is doing something right here. While Google is still busy proving to the rest of the world that its intentions are good, Microsoft is forming new alliances to find better ways of balancing publisher and author rights with global accessibility.

11:43 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

In an attempt to catch a share of the growing market for mobile multimedia devices, Sharp has developed LQ035Q7DH06 (PDF), a new 3.5 inch QVGA TFT-LCD screen promising excellent contrast, color saturation, and readability in a wide range of ambient environments.

"As the market for handheld electronics continues to grow, the need for improved visual performance and longer battery life in small form factor displays becomes critical," comments Kraig Kawada, senior director of display products for Sharp Microelectronics. "Sharp's new 3.5 inch LCD incorporates high brightness and exceptional color saturation resulting in superior viewing, while also using high-efficiency LEDs to minimize power consumption"

Availability: Nov 2005

[Sharp press-release]

06:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Christopher sent in the news that Everything Treo is celebrating the launch of their new website (excellently designed, btw!) in form of a giveaway. To win a free unlocked Treo 650 check out this link.

09:38 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

According to an article at Wired.com titled Futurists Pick Top Tech Trends, future mobile devices will have better usability, improved natural speech recognition, and more social networking capabilities. In the article, a futurist discusses how more and more features have been added to our mobile devices at the expense of simplicity and usability. Future devices will be designed with more emphasis on ease of use while limiting features to those that are the most commonly used. Simply put, usability will make a comeback.

The problem, says Ian Pearson, futurist in residence at British Telecommunications, is that most people buy a device for a particular purpose. They neither want nor care about all the extra capabilities.

"We've done 20 years of adding functionality, and 99 percent of that functionality isn't needed," Pearson said. "There will be an enormous market over the next several years for really simple stuff."

More mobile applications that help us communicate and keep in touch with our friends, family members, and co-workers are coming, according to the article. Two current mobile social software applications (MoSoSos), Dodgeball (which was recently acquired by Google) and Playtxt, as well as mobile location-based services and mapping applications like Earthcomber and KMaps are examples of what's to come.

Futurists also predict that more mobile services will take advantage of improved natural speech recognition in the future.

Speech-recognition technology will be instrumental in enabling new mobile services, said Ronald Gruia, author of the blog Technology Futurist and emerging communications program leader at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. In recent years, speech software developers, in particular Nuance Communications, which until recently went by the name ScanSoft (SSFT), have gotten much better at what they do. Gruia believes it's only a matter of time before speech-enabled mobile apps for tasks like composing e-mail while driving can be commonplace.

Read the full article here.

Related: Editorial: Where are the intelligent handhelds?

10:04 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Hard times are on the way for Internet pirates. The German portal provider Librie.de is now using digital watermarks to protect their audio data. When an audiobook is downloaded, invisible marks are embedded in the file as a permanent code identifying the legitimate purchaser.

The protection system employed comes from the Fraunhofer Institute, where researchers have developed a technology for hallmarking audio data. The MP3 files are modified so slightly that it is imperceptible to the human ear. This automatic process is comparable to the insertion of noise or a minor distortion of individual frequencies. A software program is able to read the markings in subsequent copies of the file. This allows online content providers to hide a customer reference code, for example, "between the lines". The end user remains totally unaware of what is happening.

The idea is, if ever an illegal copy appears somewhere on the Internet, this watermark leads directly back to the original purchaser. And if you want to believe the researchers, the protection even survives transmission on analog broadcast media or tape recordings made from a loudspeaker.

(Attached image shows how the information concealed in the watermark of an audio file lies in the mid-frequency range of human audition)

[via Fraunhofer press-release]

05:56 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Commissioned by RIM, the German Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology is going to conduct a security review of the BlackBerry device. RIM's decision for an independent review comes only two weeks after the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) had issued a security warning to BlackBerry users in Germany.

All messages sent and received with the BlackBerry in Germany go through RIM's data centers located in Egham/UK. Arguing that under British law it'd be easy for British officials to gain access to all logs and stored data - e.g. for the protection of the British economy - the BSI worries that sensitive information could fall in the hands of the wrong people. RIM dismisses the allegations, maintaining that it's virtually impossible for them to share information to third parties, because data is not stored on their servers but only forwarded from there to the final destination. In addition, the forwarded data is encrypted using popular AES or DES3 encryption to prevent illegal eavesdropping, so the company claims.

Although for mere mortals AES encryption might be sufficient, it's important to note that the German government uses another method, SINA-VPN (with Libelle encryption), for securely transmitting sensitive data.

[via Heise Security]

04:58 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

One year ago it would have been close to revolutionary for a mainstream app like AvantGo to add RSS support. This time around though we are just stifling a yawn. Nevertheless, there are good things to say about their new services as you can read in this PalmAddict article:

There are many obvious uses for it, but I use it to get quick, easy access to all the latest postings on PalmAddicts. The PalmAddict RSS Feed takes much less memory on my device and much less time to load than the actual site and the mobile site, and I can easily follow links in the posts when connected with WiFi or my IR modem.

03:06 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Speaking of contests, there's another one sponsored by Creative Algorithms in conjunction with Palm Addicts and PDA 24/7. Win a PDA or your choice by entering the contest here.

Thanks to some "creative" work by marketing guru Justine Pratt, along with a great product and support, Trip Boss is becoming well-known as a premier solution on PalmOS for travelers.

(From Shaun at PDA24/7. A great site, by the way. Whether you follow PalmOS or Windows Mobile, you'll find lots of interesting news on a daily basis.)