08:01 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

In the following slideshow presentation Roger Sperberg explains how to develop Plucker e-books for the forthcoming Nokia 770 using the Plucker distiller. Nice presentation, though only partially inspirational since Roger talks more about how to navigate an e-book reader than about the actual e-book transformation process.

[via Teleread.org]

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

Current E-Books Trends
Are e-books the future?

E-Book Conversion
TinyStock's PDF2Doc conversion tool

E-Book Readers
Cybook PDF viewer beta
Sony Librie as a virtual game board

E-Book Webstores
RSS feed for eReader's e-book promotion

General Chat
Bookbutler online book meta-search engine
Do you sweat with your PDA?
Ewan Spence Makes Mainstream Media!
Greetings from Dubrovnik
Laplink Software takes a stand on P2P technology
My Awesome Ebay Story
Podcasts on your handheld (how-to)
Supreme Court Rules Against Grokster

MobiPocket
Mobipocket Reader V5.0 Beta released

Other E-Book Resources
"Stranger Things Happen" in iSilo format
"The Art and Science of Web Design" free download
Podiobooks.com to subscribe to audiobooks as podcasts
War of the Worlds in Plucker format

Other Gadgets
RIM quarterly profit more than doubles yet disappoints
Sandisk BookLocker aka FlashCP DRM-based USB stick

Palm
Mossberg reviews the PalmOne LifeDrive
PalmOne scores a quarterly profit thanks to Treo device
PalmOne Zire21 wins Catalyst Award 2005
PalmSource posts 4Q profits and to cut jobs
Plug Forward Express 1.1 For Treo
Quicknews Endorsement
Tapping the Market: How powerful should a PDA be?
The Awkward Smart Phone Grows Up
Trip Boss & Date Wheel Bundle Deal
Win a PalmOne LifeDrive from PalmGear

Pocket PC
Dell Axim X50(v) A04 ROM update
Egress V2.3.0 adds Bloglines and NewsGator support
Motorola's WM-based "RAZRberry" aka "Franklin" details
Opera 8 for WM 2003 Smartphones released
ozLooxSpeaker enables VoIP speaker for PocketLoox
Plumbin Frenzy released for Pocket PC
Pocket Slides 30% Off
PPC Mag's Best Software Awards 2005 nomination
TCPMP/Betaplayer sets standards with AVC support

Portable Audio/Video
iPod poses a security risk (including how-to)
iTunes 4.9 released - with podcasting support!
Playaway self-playing audiobook player
Why Not "Reverse Podcasts" for iPod?

Smartphones
TrafficEdge Displays Critical Traffic Information in Real-time.

08:52 PM by Brian in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Podscope is the first search engine for podcasts.

TVEyes, which has been indexing television and radio broadcasts since 1999, crawls the web with Podscope looking for podcasts and creates an index against every word, thereby making the contents searchable. The user can search on a term, generate a list of results ranked by a variety of methods to find the most relevant podcast and click to play or click to download.

Because Podscope uses speech recognition to index podcasts, there are some recognition accuracy issues. A search for ebooks yielded zero results. I find it hard to believe that no one has mentioned ebooks in a podcast.

A search for lifedrive also yielded zero results, but a search for life drive comes back with relevant results. Keep this in mind when podscoping.

When you do get search results, you can click on a hit to get a mini-player with a short audio excerpt of each hit, as well as a text description of the podcast and links.

Happy podcast listening and podscoping.

Brian

06:52 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

A PalmAddict user is wondering if anyone beside him uses his Palm (or any other PDA for that matter) while exercising (weight lifting, running, etc.). I am particularly paranoid of dropping my stuff, which is why I would never have the stomache to take a handheld with me to my workout. Feel free to drop your workout habits in the PA forum.

06:22 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Bookbutler is a really handy meta-search engine for comparing online book prices among various vendors. Simply type in title, author, keyword or ISBN of the book and you get the results ranging from cheapest to more expensive. Support for US, UK, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

05:59 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

In a move that may give Audible.com and makers of audiobooks on cassette and CD some serious competition, FindawayWorld today announced the development of Playaway, a "self-playing digital audio book that is ready for the way you live your life, no downloading required."

The Playaway device is about the size of an iPod that is already preloaded with an audiobook. It is not sure from the description whether you can change the audio content or if this is one of these disposable, single-use electronics that don't necessarily help to save our planet.

07:24 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Brighthand (via PalmAddicts) has a quick write-up explaining newbies how they can listen to podcasts on their handhelds. Basically you pick a feed client that also supports podcasts enclosures; Brighthand recommends QuickNews (Palm OS) and FeederReader (Pocket PC).

06:38 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Podiobooks.com provides audiobooks, serialized and delivered via podcast feeds. You can subscribe to podcast feeds on any of the books hosted on their server and automatically receive a chapter of each of the subscribed books every week. Authors provide Podiobooks.com their books at no charge. In turn, Podiobooks asks that you provide a donation for each audiobook you download. They in turn split that donation with the author.

From the website:

Podiobooks is a term coined by Evo Terra of The Dragon Page and Slice of Scifi to describe serialized audio books which are made available in podcast format. Subscribers to the podcast feed for each book will receive a new chapter each and every week. Some listeners keep it on their computers, some transfer the book to CD, but most (hopefully) transfer the file on to their mp3 player so they can listen no matter where they are.