08:41 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmSource stock has been on the rise for the past few days and BargainPDA is speculating that Palm might be behind the stock movement by expressing their interest in buying back the software company. While this is clearly just a rumor, we'd like to hear from you whether or not you would compliment this potential buyout that could transform Palm back to a company as we once knew it.

07:20 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Update: Well perhaps we should be grateful about the fact that this image is a fake (nobody thought the depicted device looked any better than the X50). Thanks to the guy from Aximsite who uncovered the truth. Hold your breath and check out here to see where the photo was coming from (did anyone forget his deodorant, coz' that fake stunk!)

Say what you will about form over function, but we've never failed to be impressed by the sultry curves of Dell's Axim X50 series. Now if this photo is the real deal, the Axim X51 series, which recently received Bluetooth approval, will look strikingly similar, with only a few layout changes for the buttons. Judging from the size of the screen relative to the button area, the photo was made of a QVGA model.

Thanks to mrsaint!

06:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

It was the week that was. Here's what MobileRead's been talking about since last Sunday:

Announcements
MobileRead via Google Talk

Current E-Books Trends
A living book through E-Ink
Amazon Shorts: More proof e-books are going mainstream?
Research house and e-book seller bullish on e-books
TeleRead podcast on EarthCore

E-Book Readers
Sony Librie under the microscope

General Chat
Are we liable for comments by our readers?
BBC Book Reading Challenge Diary
British thieves use Bluetooth to steal laptops
Cell Phone Telemarketing is Coming to the US
Eight mobile technologies that slow down progress
Get classy outfits for your PDA with pdaStyles
Hand selected PDA-based RSS feeds
Manga comic surfing on the go
Matsushita is king with new Li-Ion battery
PDA247 Full of News Today
PDA247 offers Motorola RAZR V3 contest
TIVR promises fast H.264 software decoder for handhelds
Will your favorite file format last?

Link Swap
Google Talk (IM)

New Links
4INFO opens mobile web directory

Other Gadgets
Does the Nokia 770 have sex appeal?
Enderle predicts handhelds, not laptops, the future of personal computing
Intel + Blackberry = $
iPod + OS x86 = Microsoft's worst nightmare?

Other Readers
Manual for e-book readers - what's your opinion?
TomeRaider contest winners

Palm
Happy 6th Birthday to Palm Addict
MobiTV to offer live TV on Treo phones
PalmGear and PocketGear 10% discount
Palm Ramping Up for Linux-Based Devices
Palm Treo and Audi join via Bluetooth
Win a PDA of your choice and more at PalmAddicts

Pocket PC
Arvale II, how I hate you
BenQ P50 soon to be a Siemens P50?
Dell Axim X51/X51v gets Bluetooth approval
Google Desktop Search for Pocket PC
HTC Universal arrives at Engadget
Minimo CE V0.008 adds SSL support
Opera Mini for Pocket PC hands-on
Resco Explorer 2005 V5.20 released
Skype for PPC 1.2 beta released
StyleTap is one step closer bringing Palm OS to WM
WM 5.0 for HP hx4700 delayed until Spring 2006

Portable Audio/Video
Pocket Tunes and AudioBooks
Siemens to present "Mobile TV" via DVB-H
Tom's Hardware reviews iPod alternatives

Smartphones
Get a second life on your smartphone

10:31 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Both, PalmGear and PocketGear, are offering a 10% discount on any software you purchase from their stores. Use the code ESCAPE at checkout to apply.

Thanks to Sammy for the discovery. Also my congratulations to the entire team of PalmAddicts on their sixth birthday today. You guys rock!

10:14 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Biz Stone, cofounder of the blog site xanga and now Google employee, comes up with an ingenious idea that could give the term e-book new meaning: Think about a traditional dead-tree book that is somehow equipped with E-Ink (or any other e-paper technology, for that matter) and a WiFi receiver. So far, unimpressive. But then,

The story inside the book is collectively edited online just like Wikipedia. The on-board receiver picks up the signal and the e-ink makes the necessary edits. The result is a kind of living book. The story changes over time. So if you want to find out how the version of the story you are reading *right now* ends then you'd better not put the book down. It's like magic.

In other words, you could carry for instance a "paper" version of Wikipedia with you and be assured that its entries are always up-to-date whenever you have access to some WiFi connection. Does this sound realistic?

09:56 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Skype released a new beta of its Skype client for Pocket PC today. Version 1.2 emphasizes voice quality as well as new languages (English, German, French, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian and Spanish). Other new features include:

• Incoming voicemails
• Leave voicemail to users who are not voicemail subscribers
• SkypeIn and Voicemail status icons on start tab
• Windows Mobile 5.0 compatibility

Unfortunately, there's still no support for VGA and landscape mode. While voice quality has improved it still lacks compared to the desktop version. Overall an improvement to the previous beta.

09:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Imagine getting sued by a company over comments other people have made on your website. Scary? It just happened to SEO Book author Aaron Wall: If you boil it down to its essence, the plaintiff is claiming damages of $10,000 and irreparable harm due to comments that other people left on Aaron's blog.

Although I think Mobileread is doing a good job moderating inappropriate content, however this case may turn out, it's not clear what liability we're exposing ourselves to.

11:24 PM by Brian in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In technology pundit Robert X. Cringely's latest column, Bob throws out a pretty wild but plausible Apple strategy to disrupt Microsoft's domination of the desktop OS: Use the iPod as a bootable device to run OS X on PCs.

"Every one of those iPods is a bootable drive. What if Apple introduces OS 10.5, its next super-duper operating system release, and at the same time starts loading FOR FREE the current operating system version -- OS 10.4 -- on every new iPod in a version that runs on generic Intel boxes? What if they also make 10.4 a free download through the iTunes Music Store?"

While iPods are bootable drives for Macs thanks to Open Firmware, things are a bit different for PCs. The "host" computer would need a BIOS that supports booting from a USB device, or Apple would have to furnish a Knoppix-like bootable CD or DVD that would then run OS X from the iPod. Similar to IBM's SoulPad research project, your entire computing environment including your OS, applications, files, and so on would be available anywhere using your iPod and a suitable "host" computer.

Apple has stated that they are a hardware company, not a software company. This strategy wouldn't undermine their hardware sales as it would drive iPod sales and give the "iPod Halo Effect" a whole new meaning.