09:47 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

eSnips is a free online file hosting service that offers 1GB of storage.

eSnips is the easy FREE way to snip, store online and easily share anything you want:

eSnips is currently in Beta and is only available to Windows users running Internet Explorer, but Firefox support is reportedly coming soon.

[SearchEngineWatch via Smart Mobs]

08:34 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The Authors Guild, a professional organization for published writers, has filed a class action suit against Google claiming the Google Print Library Project to scan and index the content of books violates copyright laws. From the press release:

The Authors Guild and a Lincoln biographer, a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States filed a class action suit today in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. The suit alleges that the $90 billion search engine and advertising juggernaut is engaging in massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers.

In response, Google has gone on the offensive in a post on the Google Blog, which includes in part:

Let's be clear: Google doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.

Google Print offers readers the ability to find books on subjects and keywords that would otherwise go unnoticed, thereby creating newfound demand for titles gathering dust in the truest sense of the long tail. It's a shame that the Authors Guild is clinging to innovation averse, old modes of thinking to the detriment of their members, the industry, and the readers of the world.

David Rothman at Teleread has more on the subject.

08:33 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I just wrote YahooMsg2RSS, a new tool which allows you to track Yahoo Finance message boards via RSS feeds. You can use it for instance to track everything that is going on in the Palm message board.

Your suggestions are always welcomed.

06:56 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Has technology affected our intelligence for the better or worse? Many would argue that technology has freed us from memorizing trivial information, allowing us to use our intellect in more meaningful ways. Others would argue that as we store more phone numbers, names, appointments, and to-do lists in our devices, our intelligence and memory are suffering the consequences. Do we rely too much on technology and use our brains less than we should?

C|Net has published the first article in a series on the topic of Intelligence in the Internet age. Several important figures in the technology field weigh in on the subject including Jeff Hawkins, the co-inventor of the Palm Pilot, Treo smartphone, and author of the book On Intelligence. From the article:

Working with the Treo handheld computing device he helped create, Jeff Hawkins can easily recount exactly what he did three years ago on Sept. 8, factor 9,982 and Pi, or describe a weather system over the Pacific Ocean. But without his "smart" phone, he can't recall his daughter's telephone number offhand.

Is technology making us smarter or dumber? Please vote in the poll and weigh in on the subject in the discussion thread.

Read the full article here.

12:24 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to the class action lawsuit (PDF, 37 pages) which has been filed in the state of California against Palm, the company has knowingly misrepresented the Treo 600 and 650 handsets as being "quick, dependable and reliable" devices. The suit claims that Treo devices fail at unacceptably high rates, are inherently defective and that Palm has not warned customers about the risks inherent in purchasing and relying upon a Treo as a mobile telephone and organizer.

In fact, these phones suffered from extremely poor sound quality and buzzing, choppiness, speakerphone problems, poor and broken screens, phone crashes, software crashes and electrical surges. When Palm replaced phones in response to these problems they replicated the problems by providing consumers refurbished phones subject to identical issues.

In short some people are very unhappy now and they want Palm to pay back five times the purchase price to each of them for punitive damages.

Palm stock price went down by a good 3% today.

[via PalmAddicts]

10:20 AM by Laurens in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

So, Palm did bid for Palmsource after all. The question remains: should we be happy now that Access won out? -Alex

PalmInfoCenter - Palm Attempted to Buy PalmSource:

BusinessWeek is reporting that Palm put a bid in to buy PalmSource. However, Palm was outbid by other companies and ultimately decided that the deal didn't make sense.

BusinessWeek - Palm Taps Microsoft:

The PDA makers plans to unveil a Treo powered not by the Palm OS software but by Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5. Could be a good move
...
As the only significant licensee of Palm OS, Palm Inc. was widely expected to buy back the software business -- and it tried. But major U.S. and European handset makers jumped into the bidding and drove the price too high.

Related: Q1 FY 2006 Palm Earnings Conference Call (live tomorrow at 5:00 pm ET)

08:53 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Reuters Labs is testing Audio News, a new free service turning Reuters news content into podcasts. Quality is quite good despite the fact that the podcasts consist of speech-synthesized rendering of the original text. Well, except for longer phrases, which occasionally give rise to some weird and warbly enunciations.

[via Scobleizer]

04:58 AM by Laurens in Miscellaneous | Lounge

BBC News - Long life mobile battery 'vital':

Top of the list for the most desirable feature of a next generation mobile device is not some fancy new function, but a battery that lasts much longer.

Two-thirds of mobile and personal digital assistant owners in a marketing survey across 15 countries said two days' active battery life was vital.