01:20 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

You knew it was only a matter of time until the movie industry decided to take new "preventive" measures against inconvenient movie pirates. The Edingburgh Evening News writes today that at the Edinburgh Scotland Film Festival guests will be asked to hand over their phones for the duration of a festival screening. More dazzling even, the film distributors have hired "bag and tag" security companies that will do a thorough check of your bag and coat at the door, and confiscate any cell phone or recording device.

Charlotte Tudor, a spokeswoman for BVI, said: "The industry is very focused on combating piracy and we always try to protect screenings before an American release, as that is where pirates will want to strike. These people are criminals who are undermining the UK and international film industry, so we feel it is right to take these precautions."

So cell phone owners are criminals. I know for sure I'll boycott any movie theater or movie show where I'd be forced to hand over my cell phone.

12:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There is a new test-version of The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) available for download (download link). Changelog:

version 0.66c:
+Speex support
-AAC removed from official binaries because of intellectual property considerations
-Epson graphics controller fix
-Matroska codec info handling fix (h.264)
-PalmOS: stack overflow fix with some vorbis files
-WinCE: backlight handling fix
-WinCE: HTTP streaming fixes
-WinCE: Raw Framebuffer usage with QVGA smartphones

version 0.66b:
+Nexio XP30: Epson graphics controller mode
-ID3v2 fix in rawaudio
-OGG tags as UTF-8 coding
-PalmOS: m3u/pls playlist absolute path fix

The saddest news is the removal of AAC support in the current test version due to copyright issues. In near future, the only solution perhaps is to host a separate AAC plugin on a server located in Russia or the Netherlands. Until AAC is available again, if you are in dire need of AAC support, don't upgrade TCPMP any time soon.

11:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom demonstrated a beta video version of the VoIP software Skype that is currently being tested internally. He did not say when the product would be ready for release, but it definitely undermines Skype's attempt of becoming a big player in the "next year" application of video telephony.

As a side note, Zennstrom also admitted that Skype utilizes some of the user's bandwidth without the latter's consent. Not sure how the big telecos offering the bandwidth will think about this:

At one point, Zennstrom affirmed claims that Skype software uses some of the computing resources and available bandwidth on a connected PC to create super groupings of network identities or nodes without user permission. The executive explained that any such practice helped the software better locate a Skype user on the network. "If I can share my computer resources and not pay my phone bill, some people think that is a good thing," he said.

10:27 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Based on Colin's scoop on the illegal home-brew e-book of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Wired.com has a follow-up explaining that the Russian website used by the scanner team to host the ripped e-book received 80,000 hits (before it was shut down by Rowling's merciless lawyers, I assume).

The article also mentions MobileRead as a place where e-book "enthusiasts" can talk about the "miniscule" (quote Nick Bogaty from Open eBook Forum) e-book market. Of course, if publishers and authors alike continue to refuse the release of bestseller e-books, its market will always remain just a drop in the ocean.

04:46 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Mike Davidson demonstrates with a few lines of PHP code how you can transform your cluttered homepage into clean HTML code that is supposed to work better and faster with mobile devices. Not sure if this automated solution works for every Web developer, but it is certainly worth a try. That reminds me that we really need a better mobile solution for MR!

[via Stopdesign]

04:29 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

With Windows Mobile 2005 coming to our cell phones and PDAs soon, you may want to become accustomed to the idea of "persistent storage", which means that in future all of your personal data, user-installed applications, and updates are stored in non-volatile flash ROM memory. Mike Calligaro posted some interesting details on his MS Mobile Team blog:

• Why Persistent Storage Is A Good Thing
• More Persistent Storage Stuff part 1
• More Persistent Storage Stuff part 2

In Mike's own words: "No, there's nothing innovative about Persistent Storage. If a marketing guy tries to tell you otherwise, send him to me. But PS is a good thing." By September, we will hopefully know more.

04:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

eReader.com is flexing its marketing muscle this summer. Not only does the company currently offer a 20% discount on the purchase of one e-book, and a month-long free promo, but the company also decided to reduce the price of its eReader Pro software from $14.95 to $9.95. eReader Pro is available for several platforms and offers various advantages to the free version including support for reference e-books and various enhanced display settings.

03:57 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Sammy at PalmAddicts is reporting "eReader has a new promo that is good to save you money, use promotional code CUT to get a 20% discount off one ebook this week. Good offer I think."