12:26 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Jan from PalmAddicts found a peculiar way of how to spend your next trip to the Caribbean: get together with a bunch of geeks, pack in your wireless laptop or PDA, and drink many Pina Coladas on "exciting" technology conferences all the while cruising on a luxurious ship.

More over at GeekCruises and this NYC article.

11:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Everyone please join me to wish David aka hacker a Happy Birthday and all the best for the future! I think I speak for everyone else when I say that I am very happy and proud to have you being part of our community!

Tonight I'm going to open a bottle of vintage red wine and drink a toast on you

Alex

11:24 AM by hacker in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Another goldmine of ebook-ready material I just stumbled across...

http://freeprogrammingresources.com

And this is an older one, but still a good one:

http://www.techbooksforfree.com/

If you make ebooks out of these, please contact the authors with your works, so they can continue to embrace further creations of the same type. Also make sure you obey any copyright or licensing restrictions on the works you convert.

05:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Thanks to Mrs Rowling's insistance not to release an electronic version of the new Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, underground e-book pirates have already began to do the work for themselves.

Bookstores across the globe simultaneously flung open their doors at GMT 2301 on Friday night to allow Harry Potter fans all over the world to snatch up the latest volume of the boy-wizard's adventures. Some of them didn't start reading the paper book right away; instead, they went to the next scanning device and started running their OCR software on little Potter.

In a joint-effort the pirates are now meeting in dedicated IRC channels with imaginative names such as #pottermania or #potterwork to spread the work of scanning and proofreading. As of right now, at least chapters 1-6, 8 and 12-13 have been scanned and proofread, and are already available for download on multiple (mostly Russia-based) web-servers (txt and html). My guess is that it will take at most another 24 hours for the entire e-book to leak to the Net.

I don't condone copyright piracy. But it should be clear, even to JK Rowling, that there's always going be piracy no matter what you do. The best way to minimize would be to release an official e-book version. Maybe with Harry Potter Book 7?

Update: I've already received several private messages asking me for links to the illegal e-book. Please don't send me any more messages of this regard... I am sure Rowling's lawyers would not know mercy.

Update 2: It's done, the complete e-book has been fully scanned + proofread, in about 12 hours after the hardcover book had hit the stores.

Update 3: Pirates made available a net.radio audiobook version of the new Potter novel. Read more about it over at Teleread.

Update 4: Copies of the e-book already spotted on eBay. Tsk.

03:11 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Got a note from David at TraxItAll to let me know about a new version. I was delighted to spend some time with him in San Jose at the PalmSource MobileSummit, and he showed me his very cool tracking program. There are other options out there, such as using a spreadsheet or a more complicated program, but the bottom line is that if you want to keep track of something, you want to do it simply, and that's where his program excels.

Here's the scoop straight from the source...
-----------------------------------
TraxItAll is an all-purpose software tracking system that does what no other program on any platform can do automatically: it tracks anything that matters to a user on a daily basis.
This makes it an ideal goal-setting tool for exercise, diet, business, or any other area. It can also be used to track general statistics such has health matters, currency values, and stock prices.

The heart of the system is its unique, patent-pending counting method. For each item the user wants to track, he or she selects one of three types of counting.

COUNT: How many times did something happen on a given day? For example, how many sales calls did I make? How many customers did we have? How many miles did I run? How many cigarettes did I smoke?

YES/NO: Did a particular thing happen or not on a given day? For example, did I work out? Did our family have dinner together?

AVERAGE: What was the level of a particular thing on a given day? For example, what was my weight? Blood pressure? Blood sugar? A stock price or currency value? When did I wake up or go to bed?

In the past, tracking such items required users to create complicated spreadsheet programs. Now TraxItAll automates both the data-entry and reporting processes.
-----------------------------------

The program is $20, but there is a free 30-day trial available, as well as an online slideshow. You can find it at www.TraxItAll.com, but it is no longer available via thePalm software reseller sites. While he didn't make any mention of it to me, one has to assume that he found the large cut taken by software sales portals to be pretty steep and/or the terms too strict.

01:48 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

In another terrible twist, DRM just got even more imposing. Slashdot is reporting that the upcoming version of Windows desktop OS (Longhorn) will allow content providers to require an approved display.

The technology is "a new feature in Longhorn entitled PVP-OPM (Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management) which detects the capabilities of the display devices you are using and manages how (and if at all) content is sent to it. In short, this means that if Longhorn detects that your monitor is not 'secure' enough, then your premium video content won't play on it until you buy one that is. Who gets to decide? The content providers of course."

More money for content providers or will this just ruin their market? Time will tell.

01:33 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmFocus is a great Palm site that is worth a visit. Besides their nice T5 and Treo 650 software compatibility lists, they have good solid news, a software store, good reviews and more. And Lance, who runs it is a very nice guy in addition.

Today they are announcing "PalmFocus will begin an exclusive monthly newsletter in August. The newsletter will include news, reviews, tips, giveaways, and discounts that will not be available anywhere else... The form to fill out in order to receive the PalmFocus newsletter is always located in the left hand column of our home page. To be taken there, click here."

I'm signing up today!

01:21 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Engadget is reporting "These portable solar chargers may be a bit on the pricey side ($150 for the 6.5-volt model, $275 for the 12-volt), but it looks like that’s the price ya gotta pay to be an evironmentally conscious geek. Both PowerPocket models will fold up to stash away in your bag and come with full array of adapters to accomodate most any electronic device you’ve plunked down on. Apparently the 6.5-volt model will charge most devices—like PDAs, MP3 players and digital cameras—in 2-4 hours, with the 12 volt PowerPocket cuts that down to 1-3."

More info here.