03:50 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

I found an ebook that I had previously gotten from a Microsoft giveaway from a long time ago. While I'm not a big fan of the Microsoft DRM scheme because you get so few device activations, the reader is nice. Well, I followed a link from in the book and discovered a free eBook creation tool for .lit ebook creation. You can read the results in MS Reader.

The software comes in three versions, standard, publisher and SDK. Standard is available here, and is free.

MS Reader is not especially popular with pda users because it's Windows/WinMobile-only, and the DRM is very restrictive. But it's always nice to have a full toolkit at hand.

02:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Sorry for the database outage we were experiencing for five minutes. I hope the issues have been resolved.

06:55 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I've never successfully used more than one pda device at a given time. The great advantage of a pda has always been that it's there and has up-to-date information. And I don't believe there's a good way to manage the synching of shared content across dissimilar devices.

For example, if I have a Treo 650 and a LifeDrive (I do have a Treo, but I still drool over LifeDrives) then I might not pick up the LifeDrive too often. Ebooks are my favorite way to read, but I don't want to have to page through a book looking for the last page I saw, so I don't want to read a book from muliple devices. Same with a video. I usually only watch portions at a time, and use my TV at home anyway. Similarly PIM info is only useful in the central location.

I suppose I could use the LifeDrive for web browsing via wifi, or games (I don't really play games on my pda anymore), or as a reference book. But to be honest, I'd rather browse the web with my pc, and it's not worth keeping a device charged just for reference works.

What I wish we'd see is some built-in synching funtionality that can handle multiple devices. You can't just synch everything because it might not be compatible, or might not all fit on the small device. But if you could specifiy items to share like a Handyshopper database and Outlook info and eReader/iSilo content and bookmarks, it would allow me to actually pick the device I want for the particular day. If I didn't need a phone one day, I'd sure love to be able to carry a bigger screen.

So basically, I'm wondering how other people are using multiple devices, and whether anyone thinks we'll ever have true multidevice synching.

06:40 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Don't forget that Sammy and his crew at PalmAddicts is also running a contest this summer which runs until September 5th. Read more about it here!

06:26 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Just ran across this guide from our friend Michael Mace on the PalmSource web site. Unfortunately, the guides don't have a last updated date on them, so some are a bit out of date, but it's quite a bit of information there including links to some interactive fiction readers and some free interactive books.

04:06 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

From the press release via PalmAddicts we read: Today marks the date palmOne, Inc. becomes Palm, Inc. The company today begins trading under the symbol PALM, formerly traded under the Nasdaq ticker symbol PLMO. Accompanying the name change is the release of a new company logo, which will begin appearing on products this fall.

Let's hope PalmOne hasn't been too occupied with the design of their new logo to forget what we are really expecting from them

03:39 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

The guys from Fujitsu Labs developed a 0.8mm thin color electronic paper where the screen image is stable and fix even when there is no electrical voltage applied (the company says it stays "semipermanently"). What sounds like the holy grail of the display industry is the work of three cholesteric LCD (Ch-LCD) layers. Matsushita is already using monochrome cholesteric LCDs developed by Kent Displays in its e-book reader.

Update: Deviceforge reveals that Fujitsu is expecting to commercialize the display by early 2007 and the company claims that "proprietary Fujitsu technology ensures that screen color is unaffected even when the screen is bent or pressed with fingers, [and] because the screen image does not require repetitive updates to be maintained, the screen does not flicker."

[via Tech-On ]

02:27 AM by MishaS in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

I'd like to mention FBReader 0.6.3, an open-source e-book reader for the Sharp Zaurus with 240x320 or 640x480 screen resolution (Qtopia-based ROMs or pdaXrom). Originally it was written to support the FB2 format (an XML-based format quite popular in Russia), however it now also support plain text as well as a subset of HTML (HTML images are not supported yet). The reader also supports GZIP and ZIP archives.