05:27 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Nokia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) have announced a new research facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts near the MIT campus where researchers will work together on a new vision for mobile computing. The Nokia Research Center Cambridge will be composed of about twenty researchers from Nokia and twenty researchers from MIT under the direction of a joint steering committee and will begin operations on January 1, 2006, according to the press release.

The collaborative work of the Nokia Research Center Cambridge will center on a view of the future where small handheld devices such as mobile phones will become parts of an "ecosystem" of information, services, peripherals, sensors and other devices. Research will address new user interfaces that incorporate speech and other modalities, new mobile computing platforms - including low power hardware platforms and wireless communication, as well as new software architectures. Researchers will also address new ways of managing information: The use of Semantic Web technologies - an extension of the current Web developed in part at CSAIL and at the Nokia Research Center - will enable devices to more intuitively and automatically understand interconnected terms, information and services.

This news in addition to the MIT Media Lab's Reality Mining Project could lead to incredible breakthroughs in for mobile computing devices that incorporate artificial intelligence. Handheld devices that predict behavior, are location and context-aware, and have improved vision and speech recognition capabilities could usher in a mobile computing renaissance.

Read the full press release here.

Related: Where are the intelligent handhelds?, Futurists make tech predictions

03:26 PM by MishaS in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

A new version of FBReader has been released and you can download it from a new place. I'm very sorry for not providing packages for the Nokia 770 yet... I was quite busy as of late.

New features in version 0.7 include:

• support for new file formats (plucker, ztxt, palmdoc)
• scrolling with overlaps
• configurable keybindings

Currently FBReader works on Sharp Zaurus with Qtopia-based ROMs and pdaXrom, Siemens Simpad with Opensimpad 0.9.0/Opie ROM and Linux desktops. A port for the Maemo platform is under development.

12:05 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The third article of the four-part "State of the Mobile Web" series is out and it covers the practical aspects of designing mobile-optimized websites. Links to the previous articles:

• Part One: State of the Mobile Web
• Part Two: Methods to the Madness

And remember css-discuss Wiki which is always a good place to start with for mobile web design.

11:17 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

While it has been quiet among the omniscient market gurus, they now strike back with their gloomy news around the handheld industry. IDC is claiming that sales of handheld devices continue to drop for a seventh consecutive quarter, with total shipments falling 16.9% year on year in Q3 2005.

#1: Palm, with a 22.7% decline year on year.
#2: HP with sales decreasing by 35.4% year on year.
#3: Acer with sales growing 421% year on year.
#4: Dell with a 13.9% decline year on year.

As always it's important to read the small print behind these numbers. For IDC, handheld devices do not include telephony but may include wireless capabilities that enable Internet access and text communication. In another words, the Palm Treo is not a handheld.

Meanwhile, research firm Canalys sees global shipments of smart mobile devices surging up 75% year on year, with handheld shipments falling 18%, and converged devices more than double in volume.

[via The Inquirer]

10:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Nothing you haven't heard before, just now you can read it in an official announcement that OSoft Partners has teamed up with the OpenReader Consortium to work on the first OpenReader-compatible e-book software. A quote with our friend David of Teleread:

Whether it's Google or a small online store, we're eager to help everyone adopt open standards," says co-founder David Rothman, OpenReader's strategy and external relations director. "We'll raze the tower of eBabel so e-books can be reliably read 500 years from now. Reading software may change over time but the basic electronic format can remain the same."

Related:
'Taking the fright out of e-books': The new OSoft-OpenReader partnership (Teleread)
OpenDocument and OpenReader: complementary steps toward freeing data (O'Reilly)

09:30 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

TranCreative has released an update of MagicButton, my favorite free taskswitcher for Windows Mobile. MagicButton V2.0 Build 51023 includes support to blend the color with Windows Mobile 5.0 gradients and adds two menu items to a one-click soft-reset and to open a list of running programs.

09:20 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Doug Turner released a new compiled version of the most promising Pocket PC web browser, Minimo CE.

Major items addressed:

• SmartPhone accessiblity.
• Improved scrolling support.
• Automatic form fill.
• Support for WinCE 5.0
• Adding a stub runner application to avoid loading two large processes.
• Improved popup window handling.
• UI Zooming
• Intergrated Search Toolbar

Also fixed:

• 309665 The arrows don't display on the scrollbars correctly
• 311899 Operating system Input select tool covers down scroll arrow
• 309338 new tab option
• 310971 Scroll bars are not sensitive enough
• 309674 Checkbox ticks are white with black background instead of...

Installer download
Cab file download

08:22 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

At Palm's e-book store (which is powered by eReader.com) you can get 10% off any e-book purchase if you enter the coupon LOATHSOME upon checkout. Valid until Dec. 7.

Thanks to PalmAddicts for the find.