12:23 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If you have hawk eyes or simply the desire to do everything small, check out Picard's latest version of The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) for Pocket PC and Palm OS. Changelog for the past few updates:

version 0.66j:
-language CS updated by Triple T
-WinCE: codepage handling fixes
-WinCE: stereo mode (swapped,join,left,right) fix
-PalmOS: Treo650 exit crash fixed (Treo650 screen blanking feature removed)

version 0.66i:
-language CHS updated by coool
-another mpeg4 problem fix (from 0.66g)
-PalmOS: plugin memory leak fix (from 0.66g)
-Win32: floating point mpeg audio layer1/2 fix (from 0.66g)

version 0.66h:
+PalmOS: Treo650 screen blanking (?)
-mpeg4 artifact fix (from 0.66g)
-fix mp3 silence after seeking (from 0.66g)

11:02 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

There are a couple of contests going on at the moment that may be of interest to you if you are feeling lucky!

The Palm Addict Fall Forum Hamper Constest. Up for grabs are prizes including:
- InnoPocket Case
- $200 towards software
- Sammy's Tungsten T5
- Sammy's Tungsten T3
- Sammy's Tungsten TT
- Palm Bluetooth WiFi Card
- Palm WiFi Card
- Loads of cases and other accessories
To win, join the PA forum and start posting.

And over at PDA24/7, you can enter the Competition-a-Day to win by responding to a thread with a great answer. Up for grabs today are a copy of Trip Boss for PalmOS (enter here), and a copy of Mastersoft SuDoku for Windows Mobile (enter here).

08:17 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

It is with greatest pleasure I announce that Laurens has officially joined the team of Mobileread. Please help us warmly welcome him to his new position!

Most of you who are familiar with Plucker know Laurens for his work on JPluck and its successor Sunrise. Sunrise allows you to convert regular websites and newsfeeds for offline reading with Plucker on your handheld.

As we add Laurens to the editorial team, we are gaining a wealth of knowledge as well as the inside scoop from an experienced developer's perspective. Laurens has long been a kind and respected member of the mobile computing community, and it's a delight to have him officially join us as part of the team.

05:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

A new study is being launched which will investigate the current state of e-paper technologies and their prospects for commercialization. The project is targeted for completition in March 2006 and will try to answer the following questions:

• What is e-paper?
• What does e-paper do? What does it not do?
• What do people want e-paper to do?
• How far can e-paper go?
• What media are impacted the most, least and when?
• Who has e-paper now?
• How close are other introductions and applications?

The draft proposal (PDF) already contains a wealth of information, and if you can spare $4,975, make sure to sponser this project!

[read press release]

02:46 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmAddicts is having a new contest with mouthwatering prizes such as various Palm Tungsten models, $200 towards software, and more.

Make sure you don't miss this easy opportunity to win. All you have to do is start posting at their forums.

10:22 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Teleread is linking to an amusing yet not-to-far-from-the-truth story how someone contemplates the potential dangers of reading e-books on a Tablet PC. Basically he is worried of having a 6.5 lbs PC fall on his nose while reading a good novel. Ouch!

I prefer to lay down on the sofa and use a light-weight PDA for reading e-books. Of course not everyone agrees here and may either not like the sofa (could hurt your back) or the small PDA screen (could damage your eyes). So I am curious... what is your personal technique for reading e-books without jeapordizing your health?

09:38 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Once again Peter Rojas is our lucky guy of the day as he got his expert hands on Intel's Ruby handheld. Features include eight hours of battery life, built-in wireless, a QWERTY keyboard, a low-voltage Pentium processor, the ability to automatically change screen orientation when you rotate the device, and an active digitizer display so you can run Windows XP Tablet PC Edition on it.

Sceenshots look gorgeous and I'd be almost willing to trade in my notebook for this gem.

More over at Engadget.

09:19 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

People at NoctemWare must have a creepy kind of humor as they think it's fun to port something as complex as Quake 3 Arena to the Windows Mobile platform. Well, they did it, and even better, they've already announced an upcoming version 1.1 with hardware acceleration support (for the Intel 2700). And looks like hardware acceleration is badly needed: On a Siemens SX66 phone with 400Mhz, the developer achieved a mere 6-8 FPS.

You can download the port and follow the instruction from here.