10:50 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Update: The second book of the Rifter triology is also available for download.

Sci-Fi author Peter Watts has released Starfish, the first book in his Rifter series, under a Creative Commons license. Since the author doesn't mind the redistribution and transformation of his work, I attached HTML, iSilo and Plucker versions (updated!) of the book to this post for your convenience. From Publishers Weekly:

Set in the early 21st century, Watts's debut describes a future when the search for energy leads to the tapping of geothermal sources deep in the ocean, as in the Pacific's Juan de Fuca Rift, near Canada's Northwest coast. The maintenance workers of the dangerous underwater power plants are selected for their psychotic tendencies, which enable them to forget their previous lives on dry land, and are then surgically altered to survive the intense pressure of the sea's abyssal depths. These changes, which render the workers amphibious, also leave them less than well equipped to face the threat of powerful, archaic bacterialike creatures that proliferate at the ocean bottom and use human hosts to carry them upward to dry land, where their superior DNA could render our species obsolete...The novel's pacing is excellent, making this, overall, a good bet for beach reading.

[via SFSignal]

09:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Hitachi presented at a private show their idea of future e-paper technology. Expecting to hit markets by April 2006, the 13.1 100dpi monochrome display will feature 802.11b WLAN technology and enough space for a secondary battery. Although valuable treats to equip a e-book reader with, the technology has one caveat: it takes about 10 seconds to switch from one screen image to the next.

09:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Rather than wait for the official translated version, hundreds of eager Harry Potter fans from Germany have bought an English copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and translated the book into German themselves.

Only 45 hours and 22 minutes after the English book had hit stores, the "Blitzübersetzung", or draft translation, of Harry Potter und der Halbblutprinz was complete. Under the rules of the collective, only those who contribute by translating or proofreading may see the final translated version. The official German edition of the sixth Harry Potter is due to be published by Carlsen Verlag on 01 October.

The community site has managed to avoid being shut down by the publishers because it claims a "private" status as a member forum and promises not to sell or distribute the translations beyond its circle. Clearly, this does not guarantee that one member could potentially leak the translated book onto a new Internet site - as if by magic.

08:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Resco released Resco Radio V1.0, an audio player for Pocket PC dedicated to streaming internet radio broadcasts. The player supports MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, is capable of storing the streams in MP3 format, and includes a scheduler for recording broadcasts while you are away.

Until now I've used the free GSPlayer for streaming Internet audio, but I'll make sure to give Resco Radio a spin. Resco does some fine Pocket PC software!

Thanks to Shaun from PDA247 for the great find.

03:09 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Free Software for Busy People is a book written by Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, in which the author explains why ordinary people will benefit from open source and exactly how to make the switch. The book is available as a $24.99 paperback or as a free download (PDF).

[via Download Squad]

02:51 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

True, we are still not even close to the penny, but PalmSource stock (symbol: PSRC) made a dangerous dive last Wednesday undercutting for the first time the $8 mark (see screenshot).

A few weeks ago, former PalmSource CEO David Nagel announced that he was planning to throw 116,388 PSRC shares on the market. Perhaps this is not a big deal as the sale would only amount to a total value of less than USD 1m at current stock price. On the other hand, it might not be a comforting signal to investors if the former CEO of a company is so hasty in selling his stocks. Surely he cannot be that much in need of cash considering that he has made roughly USD 10m in the past 3-1/2 years through sign-on bonuses, salaries, other bonuses, severances and stock sale proceeds.

02:06 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to Rich Hall from Pocket PC Mag, the next fifth version of Windows Mobile to be released as the first ROM upgrades next month represents a "significant upgrade," for three reasons:

First, they [Microsoft] wanted to improve end user’s productivity by giving them faster access to information and better productivity tools. Second, they want to enhance the user’s multimedia experience and give them more options to use media to personalize their devices. Finally, they wanted to make it easier for manufacturers to build, brand, and differentiate the Windows Mobile devices they create.

[via PalmAddicts]

04:08 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The oracle of research firm Gartner reveals that mobile phone sales will surpass one billion handsets a year by 2009. It also said that smartphones are the fastest-growing category, with sales expected to exceed 200 million devices in 2008. Read more over at PalmAddicts here and here, summarized by PA newcomers Joshua Burdick and Paul Biba.