12:02 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

It seems that legal threats were enough to end the development of DVD Decrypter. That has long been a tool for archiving DVDs, and which strips protection (DRM) much better than other all-in-one tools such as DVD Shrink and others. The tool is also helpful at times for getting content onto a mobile device for reading.

Looks like the process of making personal backup copies has just gotten that much harder for anything you buy in the future with DRM that existing copies of DVD Decrypter can't already handle.

Publisher's control of content is likely to become even harsher than the wireless carrers' stranglehold on how you use and pay for their data network. The bottom line is that they are going to force you to live with expensive and hard to use content that is controlled even to the point of how often and how long you are able use it. Until the inevitable alternatives arrive, that is!

(via Engadget)

05:07 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Nobody really has the device yet, but someone managed to write a port of Plucker for the Maemo user interface - which is used by the forthcoming Nokia 770. This development could make the Linux Nokia with its gorgeous 800x480 screen and low $350 list price a perfect e-book reading device! David from Teleread is also excited: Check out the screenshot showing the start of Alice in Wonderland. Cool. The 770 won't be out until Q3, alas. I can hardly wait.

In case you don't know what Plucker is, make sure to check out this link.

[via ebook-community-list]

04:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Today I stumbled on PDA Fiction, an interesting and current blog dedicated to reading e-books on a PDA. Another e-book blog I regularly visit is Teleread, which has a strong focus on advocating e-book standards. Both sites are valuable resources for every e-book fan so make sure to check them out!

03:50 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

From Pride Of Lions this morning: It's just like technology; the big gets bigger and the small gets smaller. Laptop drives capacity is set to dwarf what we're now used to, yet maintain their standard 2.5" footprint. Internal hard drives capacity is inching ever-closer to that "t" word: terabyte. One-half terabyte drives announced.

Techworld reported yesterday that Seagate has claimed a world first with a new 160GB, 2.5in laptop hard drive. The drive is one of a series of new products, including new 500GB drives.

It works by standing the magnetic fields that represent data bits upright. In today's commercially available drives, the fields lay flat on the disk surface, but standing them upright takes up less space, so more can be packed onto the disk.

Seagate's drive is the first to hit the market, at least according to Seagate. Hitachi is field-testing 100GB drives, but has yet to announce a sale date. In April, Fujitsu announced 200GB drives using perpendicular technology, but not until 2007.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Seagate is also going to offer new 1" and CF card form-factor drives in 4Gb and 8GB versions.

03:21 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

From Pride Of Lions: As a Safari guy, I've been digging tabbed browsing for a while, but the PC crowd should rejoice that Microsoft is willing to be flexible (even if it's only in response to their losing marketshare, mindshare, installshare, and/or money). From webpronews: Late yesterday evening, Microsoft let out an updated MSN Search Toolbar for download with the added feature of tabbed browsing for Internet Explorer 6. The echoes of "why didn't we think of this earlier?" were still ripe in the Redmond campus hallways. Mozilla was reported to have snickered.

05:25 PM by pruss in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

My easy converter that lets you convert Windows TrueType (and Type 1 if you have ATM) fonts to FontSmoother smooth fonts so you can use your favorite Windows font on your PDA is now released.

http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?xyz=104888

02:08 PM by Pride Of Lions in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

http://www.smartdisk.com/eWeb/smartd...FlashTrax1.asp

There's a lot to like here. It's not intended to replace anyone's PIM abilities, but as a media manager, it's pretty cool.

Things I like:

3.5" LCD
Hard drive (80GB!, WOW!)
Plays music, videos, reads .TXT files (eBook reader?), displays different photo formats
USB 2.0
Swappable battery
Software upgradable
Video-out capability
Adequate user-interface
Remote (!)

Things I didn't like:

Compact Flash (and Microdrives) only, no SD card support without media adapter
Kinda bulky looking (but since it's not intended as a PDA replacement, but rather a DVD player replacement, it's actually OK)
The implied geekiness involved with actually getting your money's worth in this product and ripping your DVD's to load up the hard drive. I can do it (now), but the normal end-user doesn't know how and thus won't truly see this product's value.

True technology here, big things getting bigger and small things getting smaller.
POL9A

via Tapland.

11:47 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BBHub has a quick write up of the first BlackBerry-only store to open in New York City next week:

BreakThrough Wireless will open a branded New York's BlackBerry Center on June 16. The store will offer BlackBerry handhelds from Nextel, T-Mobile and Cingular, presumably the BlackBerry 7520, BlackBerry 7100t and BlackBerry 7100g. The location will also carryBlackBerry Enterprise Server, third-party BlackBerry applications, and BlackBerry accessories. They'll even help with BlackBerry Internet Service set-up.

The store is located in Manhattan at 109 West 39th Street, near Sixth Avenue and across the street from Bryant Park.