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.

04:39 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Tech-On (via I4U) has more specifics on Matsushita's prototype of the next Sigma e-book reader. It uses a 5.6" LCD XGA screen with a crystal-clear resolution of 210 ppi. The reader can not only display text, but also supports images and video as well as audio (voice and music). The Li-ion battery is good enough for a 6-7 hours lifespan. It is expected to become available in July 2006 for under ¥40,000 (~ USD $360).

Click here to read Colin's original news on this reader.

03:38 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

llium Software released an highly anticipated update for NewsBreak, a news feed and RSS client for Windows Mobile. NewsBreak V1.1 adds custom icons, Today Screen support, and many other usability improvements and fixes. In addition, the update adds new features for users of Windows Mobile 5.0.

The upgrade is still free for existing registered NewsBreak owners and can be downloaded from here.

I am still torn between Egress and NewsBreak - both are wonderful feed clients for Pocket PCs.

09:41 AM by pruss in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I've added one or two font new Alethe font sizes to my FontSmoother and released it as version 1.46:
http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?xyz=90288

I then updated my supplemental Fonts4OS5/FontSmoother Alethe font package--it now has 69 font packages (it used to have 36):
http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?xyz=103428

The animation below shows some of the new Alethe fonts sizes in FontSmoother, and a bunch of other fonts, some included with FontSmoother and some converted with Quick Font Make.

09:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Official photos from the PalmSource Mobile Summit & DevCon 2005 event are now available:

http://www.palmsource.com/events/dev...=ind&day=pics1

08:51 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Noel L. Griese is not happy with the current eReader Everyday in July promotion. In the ebook community he lists several points of what he thinks went wrong with the promo:

1. Difficult to find the free eBook offer because poorly promoted on site home page.
2. Even at the free eBook page, it's difficult to find the hyperlink to the offer.
3. Offer requires a convoluted registration process.
4. Requirement for a credit card number to download the book likely to make customers leery.
5. Download won't work if you've set your browser to block cookies.
6. PR person who wrote the announcement took a week's vacation immediately after the release was issued, leaving no one to answer queries form the press or customers.
7. The free eReader version doesn't automatically open the downloaded eBook when the eBook is clicked.
8. Unlocking and opening the free eBoook requires another convoluted process involving credit card entry.
9. Neither the free nor the premium eReader is anywhere near as good as the Microsoft or Acrobat readers. Biggest defect in my opinion is lack of powerful justification. Regardless of what legible typestyle used, many lines of type leave big gaps that slow down the reader.
10. Process for downloading the free version of eReader is not easy to find or understand.

My comments:

1. Promo shows in the first top banner on the eReader frontpage. It was also previously announced in a press release.
2. A click on the book cover brings you to the offer.
3. Any suggestion to make the registration process easier?
4. Requirement for credit card is necessary for publishers to enter the promotion. The downloaded e-books are tied to the hash code of your credit card, which makes it less likely for someone to pirate them later.
5. It's easy to enable cookies for selected sites.
6. Cannot comment.
7. I am glad it doesn't. Took me a while to find out how I turn off Adobe PDFs inside my browser when attempting to download PDF files.
8. See my comment in 4. why this is necessary.
9. Many users would disagree with you here. I don't know of many who use Microsoft Reader or Adobe Acrobat on their e-book reading devices and prefer the two over eReader. Anyways, what does this comparison have to do with the promotion?
10. A pair of reading glasses might help. Also see my answers to 1. and 2.

Don't forget that Mobileread offers a RSS feed for the current eReader Summer Promo.

07:41 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Remember the OpenBerg project? The OpenBerg Reader is an open-standards-based, multi-platform eBook reader, based on Mozilla technologies. It'll be available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, as well as other platforms if enough people are interested.

David Teller has announced in the ebook community that the first alpha version for OpenBerg Reader Milestone Release 1 is now complete. You can already download the current source code from the cvs tree; installers and binaries will be made available soon.