05:46 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

With a top-rate seven-inch color display and very long battery life, the Archos AV700 makes the perfect portable video player for those who can afford it (list price: $899.99, minus 13% Amazon discount). Tom's Hardware had a hands-on, and concludes:

Its giant screen with good image quality, ease of use, and quality sound haven't convinced you yet? Well, maybe its battery life will - 3 hrs. 53 min. with video or 27 hours with audio. You'll have to admit that being able to watch two movies in an airplane without ruining your eyes while getting the most out of the latest Hollywood special effects is tempting. True, for a few hundred dollars more, you can get a real portable computer with DVD player. But if you don't intend to work during your vacation, the Archos will fit into your bag without weighing down your luggage unnecessarily. Do yourself a favor and buy it, or put it on your gift list.

05:09 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | iSilo/X

Our friend Samuel from Mexico worked on a new automated web service that has prefetched news clips - including BBC News, NYT, C|Net - for download in iSilo format. As long as neither iSilo nor Plucker/Sunrise come with some kind of mobile connectivity, this is your best chance to grab the latest news while you are on the go.

The news clips are updated daily at 10:30am (Central Mexican time, which is UTC-5 summer time if I am correct).

04:39 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

It's not very easy to tell exactly what you are buying at the iTunes store, or Naptster and other online music stores. People are jumping in with a lot of money under the impression that they own the music they pay for. But the EFF points out that this assumption is naive, and copy protection makes the reality quite different than the marketing sales talk.

For example, did you know that "For a monthly subscription fee, the Napster Unlimited music rental service offers you the ability to stream and download as much as you like from its entire catalog. If you miss a monthly payment, the DRM renders the downloaded music unplayable." Miss a payment and all that music you think you own is no longer available to you. You were just renting.

Get past the marketing talk and find out exactly what you can and can't do with the most popular online music services with the EFF DRM guide.

(via Slashdot)

04:11 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

The Creative Commons Wiki started to catalog "some rights reserved" content, which includes a list of books by a few SF authors who have, in addition to publishing their books through traditional methods, released Creative Commons-licensed copies of their work.

If you know of more CC-licensed SF books or fiction in general feel free to add it (though not every freely available book is CC-licensed).

[via SF Signal]

02:16 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Oh what a tease. Check out these photos Peter took of the HTC Universal. And to leave us with no doubt of the beauty of this device, he also posted answers to the most important questions you might have about the HTC.

[via Scobleizer]

04:28 AM by Chaos in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The Register is reporting that there's a possibility of an iPod phone next week. The much-rumoured iTunes/iPod phone has been much discussed over the past few months, including reports that it would be released in August (which, since August is over, evidently were false - there's, as always, a possibility that this isn't true either - but it looks more promising).

It's been an open secret for a while now that Apple wasn't going to let Sony Ericsson's "Walkman phone" become a market leader in the new market for a combined music/comms toy. Word on the street says that the new phone/player will be announced next week, Sept 7th.

Particularly interesting is The Register's analysis of the iTunes/iPod phone possibilities, including a rather sharp critique of the current music-playing phones, and their ease-of-use factor (or lack thereof), which the iPod is currently renowned for.

Not to put too fine a point on it, what makes the iPod different from other music players isn't the cool design; it's that clever navigation "wheel" plus (maybe less crucial) the big storage capacity.

Neither is possible in a phone.

[Get] any of the new generation of MP3-playing phones, and see how "easy" it is to find a particular music track. Hint: don't try this while driving. You will hit a tree.

12:14 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

According to the Register, "Norway's best known IT export, DVD Jon, has hacked encryption coding in Microsoft's Windows Media Player, opening up content broadcast for the multimedia player to alternative devices on multiple platforms."

It's a breakthrough that is probably viewed by some as a step toward chaos and anarchy, and a new roadblock for downloadable video paid content. But many others consider Jon Lech Johansen a hero on behalf of the consumer for his fight against annoying DRM schemes.

(via Slashdot)

06:46 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Palm Addicts writes that "Treo owners have been waiting forever for this and a lot of us, myself included, had figured this was just vaporware. But TeoBits is now selling the Enfora WiFi sled: 'The Enfora Wi-Fi Adapter for the Treo 650 allows Treo 650 Smartphone users to access Wi-Fi hotspots to surf the Internet and send and receive email at high-speed over wireless LANs....'"

The WiFi sled includes WEP capability, and costs $150. You can read more about it here.