04:28 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Over in the land of the rising sun, where paper is already so passe, Sony is planning to almost triple the number of popular manga comics offered for cell phone use. According to Business Week, for 315 yen ($2.90) you can download up to three manga titles out of 300 a month.

Cell-phone comics use a technology called Comic Surfing, developed by Tokyo-based venture firm Celsys, which takes viewers through manga stories at a carefully calculated speed and sequence. The manga frames are specially formatted to fit on tiny mobile phone screens. Pop-up frames and vibration during action scenes add to the drama. Cell-phone comics with preprogrammed sound effects are also coming soon, said Toppan Publishing spokesman Katsunori Onishi.

Thanks Gadgetguru for the tip!

02:54 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

"Chris Loxley, 26, is reading all 17 books on the prestigious Booker Prize longlist in 21 days for BBC Four's Bookered Out show. He is writing a diary of his progress for the BBC News website."

Booker Longlists, Booker Diary, Bookered Out. I'm not quite sure what it's all about, but I'm pretty sure there's a book reading challenge involved.

You can follow his progress at the Booker Diary page at BBC. I like books, but that's a bit much!

02:25 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

UPDATE: It seems like this may have been a hoax that PalmOne has passed on to us in its Treo newletter. According to About.com, it's an urban legend, as indicated by Pitcher23. I'm sure we'll get this sorted out in time, and determine whether or not the info is legitimate.

If you are like me, it may have just seemed natural that telemarketing calls don't come on your cell phone. But that's a convenience in the U.S. that seems to be short-lived.

According to a Palm Treo Newsletter from PalmOne, "[font=verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Very soon, cell phone numbers will begin being released to telemarketers. To help avoid those annoying and potentially expensive calls (yes, you will be charged for them) be sure to register your Treo smartphone number with the National Do Not Call list. Just call 888.382.1222 from your smartphone to protect your number for the next five years. Or register at their website: https://www.donotcall.gov/[/font]"

I'm on the Do Not Call list for my home phone number, and I can attest to the fact that it helps. But there are so many exemptions that I certainly am not free from sales calls. To be getting a telemarketing call that I also have to pay for is really not something I look forward to.

Some people are starting to fight back. For example, at AntiCall, where they ask people to call the telemarketers and provide numbers to do it hoping it will waster their dollars on long distance charges. Just symbolic, but reflects the growing frustration.

No doubt we will see two trends as a result...
1) People will become extremely rude toward telemarketers
2) No one is going to answer their cell phone unless caller id shows it's someone they want to talk with.

Spam, telemarketers, slogs, popups, viruses, trojans, ... where does it all end?!

01:14 PM by Brian in E-Book General | News

Amazon.com Books has recently launched Amazon Shorts, "short literary works delivered digitally for 49 cents each". These e-books are previously unpublished short-form works of 2,000 - 10,000 words, fiction or nonfiction, offered exclusively by Amazon.com. Shorts are available in electronic formats only (PDF, HTML, plain-text e-mail) for viewing with a compatible viewer or for printing.

From Amazon.com:

Amazon Shorts are never-before-seen short works from a wide variety of well-known authors, available only on Amazon.com. Try a new genre or a new author--there's something for everyone. Amazon Shorts are:

* New short-form literature from top authors for only 49 cents
* Delivered electronically; there are no printed editions
* Yours forever after purchase; save or print and read at your
convenience

More information about Amazon Shorts can be found here.

This is great news for e-books readers and authors alike, and it will likely help expose e-books to the masses. It's also a relief to see Amazon.com use standard formats without the use of restrictive DRM.

[via Palm Addict]

Brian

08:35 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

We know it's emotionally draining to hear so much good about the screen of the Sony Librie without actually owning one of these babies. To make things worse, you can now enjoy two incredible close-ups of this beauty taken with a Intel QX5 USB microscope. Do you have any idea how fuzzy and pixelated the same display would look like using a boring LCD screen?

08:01 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If you are exhausted of the repetitiveness of real life, you should perhaps keep an eye on Hong Kong based Artificial Life, which is planning to launch a multiplayer online role-playing game for 3G phones in Q4 2005. At least in the virtual world of this game, you have the chance to step into a broad-shouldered man with jackboots and a flowing cape dash across the mud, travelling through a "futuristic cityscape", where you can, beside solving game puzzles, "chat and interact with computer-controlled characters as well as other human players."

Players of the game can select a virtual persona for themselves and inhabit and live in a simulated virtual city. When navigating through the virtual city, users can contact and interact directly with other players in real time, have live real time chats with other human players or chatter bots, enter and explore virtual buildings, use interactive objects and co-operate with others to solve certain tasks or to avoid certain threats. The game is expected to become a widely popular new type of interactive mobile dating game.

[via New Scientist]

11:22 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

It's not that we believe every single word research house Gartner says, but this time we really hope they are right: following their estimates, at the ongoing growth rate of e-books, "by 2010, more people will be reading e-books than the old-fashioned paper variety." At least this is what M. Foltran, founder of e-book store eBook Impressions, likes us to believe by extrapolating current growth digits over the next five years.

Thanks to volwrath for the tip!

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Here are the highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

Avantgo
AvantGo planned outage

Current E-Books Trends
McGraw and Zinio offer digital textbooks at half-price
Pirated e-books via Digg.com
VitalSource attempts iTunes for e-books

E-Book Webstores
Fictionwise back-to-school discounts
Fictionwise Sale

General Chat
Beta Testers Wanted for Fish Tycoon for Windows
Cell phones as radiation sensors
Free mobile RSS reader preloaded with mobile blogs
Google Has Your Data: Should You Be Afraid?
Google WiFi?
IBM's Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding ready for market
Intel working on Mini-x86 for PDAs
JOCA brings Wikipedia to your cell phone
Mobile war smoulders around internet UI
Security magazine on PDA attacks

New Links
Skweezer upgrade includes mobile searches

Other E-Book Resources
John Ringo SciFi e-books for download

Other Gadgets
Free Cyberpunk on Sony PSP

Other Readers
Adobe Acrobat subject to remote exploit
TomeRaider contest at Mobileread

Palm
Another 5 Minute Palm Podcast
Fossil Wrist PDA bites the dust
GSPDA PalmOS SmartPhone Available Worldwide
Interview with Donna Dubinsky
Opera Available for Treo
Palm's Secret Plans Cracked
PalmAddict podcasts via iTunes
PalmSource revenues remain strongly dependent on Palm
Unofficial Palm Addict Podcast #1
Why PalmSource could rank top again thanks to Linux

Pocket PC
College Students Trade Textbooks for Pocket PCs
Dell Axim X50(v) A05 ROM reposted
HP iPAQ hw6515 previewed by PC Mag
HTC Tornado aka Qtek 8300 previewed
Windows Mobile Team on video tour

Portable Audio/Video
iPOD Killer? Sony's New Walkman Bean Players

RepliGo
RepliGo Professional for BlackBerry