08:41 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Some really excellent sites don't seem to make a big first impression on me, but over time my eyes are opened to content that is really interesting. Pocket PC E-Books Watch is a site that is growing on me that way. I'm sure I've visited before at various times, but didn't realize how much great material they have. All kinds of information about ebooks, the ebook industry, ebook technology, interviews, and other various sorts of content for mobile devices.

In particular, what fascinates me at the moment is the interview links.
For example, a sample of what I found by searching on "interview"...
* Comics One Profile
* Interview With Jeff Hawkins
* Rosetta Books
* Exclusive with Palm Digital Media (aka Peanut Press / Ereader)
* Founder of Project Gutenberg
* Cracking iTunes' DRM with JHymn

08:02 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Readers may be much more ready for e-books than we generally believe. Book Tech Magazine has a nice article about a recent study by the Open E-Book Forum which provides some compelling numbers, which confirm that widespread e-book adoption is inevitable, but is slowed by DRM and the publishing industry.

Here's an excerpt...

[font=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular] [font=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Consumer of Acceptance of E-Books Grows[/font] [font=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]

A new consumer survey finds 70% of readers are ready to buy electronic books if they can read them on any computer. The survey also finds 67% of consumers are ready to read electronic books, and 62% would borrow e-books from the library.

The research was sponsored by the Open E-Book Forum (OEBF), an industry trade association that promotes e-book technologies.

But if consumers are ready to thumb through electronic pages, sentiment among leading book publishers hasn't changed. They believe consumers and retailers still aren't ready for e-books.

[/font][/font]Note: Unfortunately, the article is stashed behind a registration requirement, but BugMeNot can help. If the link I gave above fails to work for you, then you may have to do a search on the article archives to find it yourself. Or it may still be on the front page.

Even better, if you're looking for lots of e-book articles, browse for additional e-book articles here! One of the interesting tidbits is in an article called "Expert's Page", and it has a very interesting point to make...

Copying is Good

In this age of Napster, book technologists and digital rights providers often suggest (incorrectly) that the electronic publishing industry requires more sophisticated copy protection and that consumers be taught that copying is illegal.

Did I mention that this idea is wrong? Copying is not illegal. Unauthorized copying is illegal And though it may surprise some, authorized copying of digital goods can be an e-publisher's best friend...

04:09 PM by derekweb in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

This is a very nice description by one of our readers about the process of going from Palm to PPC. I like the word he chose... "traumatic!" Very true. You can find the three Tanker Bob articles he references here. And I've written my own 2-part article on the experience during my own switch to PPC here. [BobR]

This is just a short primer for something I'll be finishing later tonight. However, I just recently switched from a PalmOne device to an iPaq.

My goals were simple, though probably numerous:
1 - Clear screen, as I use it for a mobile photo album and movies
2 - HAS to be able to deal with To Dos and Calendaring, ... and do so EASILY!
3 - Financial tracking is a MUST
4 - eBooks. Gotta be able to do eBooks! Not negociable.
5 - Games. Not the crap-sex stuff either that used to polute PocketGear.
6 - Battery Life
7 - Memory (ROM / RAM) has to be considerable. I do a lot. :-)
8 - What are the extra's.

I went with the HP, despite the slightly smaller pixel resolution than the Dell x50v because I could simply BUY IT LOCALLY. Dell, I like your online store, but I NEED to see it, feel it, hold it, in my grubby paws before I'll ever drop out $500 or more for something. Because if it breaks, I can now take my handheld back to the purchase point (on warranty) and get help. I like that. Especially since I'm not especially big (yet) on Windows Mobile PPC.

I didn't feel like waiting for the PalmOne LifeDrive that is soon to debut, because at the time, there was NO INDICATION except for a rough time frame (summer, 2005 sound familiar anyone?) of when this was going to be available. My T3 was going out FAST, ... I couldn't use Graffiti anymore because the screen was going. As a result, I couldn't wait. Not an option.

Now. For the transition itself. If I were to use a single word to describe it, I would use "Traumatic". And for me, it would be extremely descriptive. I will give kudo's however, that there was someone else (I *think* TankerBob) who did 3 primers on his own switch. I used his guides as a starting point for my own dang near religiously. I had his second guide printed out, I needed the data that much.

It's not easy, doing the switch. He has it right, though. The BEST way to convert over is to do so COLD TURKEY.

Software.
--------------------
Essential Software:
Financial -
- Microsoft Money
- Pocket Quicken 2.03 (I hope they update this one soon, like they did for PalmOS)
----> Both were on the plate for consideration due to their overall robustness. I eventually decided on PocketQuicken (though it's quirkier on the install, and it REALLY preferrs that you sync with Desktop Quicken) due to familiarity on the Palm side. Plus I like to be able to categorize by Bank Accounts, Loans, Assets, etc where MMoney does not do that.

Time Management
- Ultra something.
- Pocket Informant.
---> You can tell here what I went with. PI has a TON of customizations that you can do for it. So many that I'm still going through and struggling with some of them. A lot of them are just common sense, though so the basics are pretty easy to figure out. Which is a good thing, all things considered.

Web Browsing
- One of the things that I wanted NOW was WiFi capability, as well as BlueTooth. The iPaq does this nicely. But Pocket Explorer does not. So you will WANT to down load NetFront3. Yes you have to pay for it, but it's WORTH it. It's SSL capable (meaning that if you can secure your Wi Fi, you can use it to access your bank account online), and it's speedy. It can do tabs, and you can save images from a webpage to your card. In short, it's a desktop browser on your handheld. It has tons more features that frankly, make it really worth the small amount of cash that I paid for the license.

Entertainment
- I added BetaPlayer to the mix. WONDERFUL application. I love it. And it's free. I don't remember the EXACT phrasing, but you don't have to pay anything to use it. It plays a ton of different formats (... now if only they can add MOV to that list it'd be excellent and truly above all others!)

Maintenance
- Way more important here on PPC than on PalmOne handhelds. For this, I use MemMaid. Nice little ditty that keeps your temp files and otehr things cleaned out. Quite necessary on PPC, unfortunately. Pocket Mechanic is the other utility I use. Both are wonderful, and while not exactly required for use of a PPC, they definitely enhance your experience wth your handheld.

Overall ease of use
- Get something like WISBAR, or WisBar Advance 2x. In short, since Windows does not give you the option to Minimize vs Close the application, you're stuck with PPC minimizing to the background. Free up some memory and have WisBar set it to CLOSE instead. Nice feature, and they add a bunch more too! I just switched from WisBar to WisBar Advanced (still evaluating it) but so far, I'm *really* impressed.

Oddball Add Ins that make life easier:
- Kasuei's Hitchhiker. Still in beta, but still, VERY NICELY DONE so far.
- MohairSofa Calendar+ Today Plug In. Allows your Today Screen to show more than just your next appointment, and up to several days worth, in fact.
- Resco Explorer. So definite nice add ins, and I like the split screen approach to File Exploring.
- Macromedia Flash Player. Won't play desktop flash stuff ... at least not without a major conversion, but maybe down the road? Still, it allows others to do some nice programming. See DashBoard, or FlashDance for examples.

This is the short list, and frankly, they've made it a LOT easier on me for my surviving my transition from one platform to the other. I hope that if you read this and are thinking about converting, that this will somehow help you out too. And find TankerBobs' stuff too. They're priceless on this stuff for providing tips and information.

02:36 PM by gadgetguru in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

HandheldLearning of UK has obtained an official datasheet of PalmOne's imminent Lifedrive Mobile Manager handheld. As expected, most of the rumored details are confirmed in the datasheet;

• 4GB (3.85 GB user accessible, I presume that's the full harddrive, 3.85 being the formatted capacity)
• Wifi (802.11b)
• Bluetooth wireless connectivity
• 4.76" x 2.87" x 0.74"
• 6.8 Oz.
• 320 x 480 pixels 65k color TFT screen
• 416 Mhz Intel processor
• Palm OS 5.4 Garnet
• includes Docs To Go 7, Versamail 3.1, Pocket Tunes, Addit!, and more

The datasheet is in PDF and is 1.2MB in size.
http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/in...picseen#msg523

via PDA24/7 and HandheldLearning.co.uk

02:02 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Very interesting news for mobile computing in the future. Imagine leaving your laptop or pda on, at full brightness and with WiFi connected as long as you want! I wouldn't expect it next year, but it might be a breakthrough that frees us from the chains of the recharger cord.

As it's unfamiliar technology to me, let's quote directly from the source...

A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries—and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. The details of the technology, already licensed to BetaBatt Inc., appears in today’s issue of Advanced Materials.

Now if you're like me, the first question is not even "when it appears", but what will it do to me!? It sounds dangerous on the surface. We already need to be careful not to put laptops on our laps if we want to stay fertile. And recently there was someone that went poking into an iPod with a screwdriver causing it to explode and sending him to the hospital. (He was okay.) Now we're talking about radiation for consumer devices?

Well, it can't be too bad. For one thing, they list implanted pacemakers as a potential application. For another thing, one of the Slashdot comments says that it might use alpha radiation which bounces off skin and is only dangerous if inhaled. I don't know of too many people that have broken open batteries and inhaled them. Maybe someone who knows something about the technology can tell us more about the safety aspects.

Read all about it at PhysOrg (via Slashdot).

12:13 PM by gadgetguru in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The Mobilis mini computer from India's Encore looks promising. It's pretty small and runs a version of Linux with most of the important bases (web browsing, email, etc.) covered, it even has a touch screen. It's heavy at 750 grams but at $230-350, its a nice tablet computer. Now if they could incorporate a harddrive into that thing...

[via CNet]

11:52 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Evil things you can find on the Net. This one is especially evil if you think of breaking into your best friend's network or taking a free ride in your neighborhood. Tom's network has a step-by-step guide explaining how even non-hackers can break the WEP encryption that is still so commonly used in WiFi networks.

This is the first part of a two part series; but it already reveals more information that I would have ever known without. While this article explains the concepts of sniffing and attacking computers, the second part will show you how to stimulate the target LAN to generate wireless traffic that we will capture and perform the actual WEP key crack.

I hope you're already protected with WPA (most WiFi enabled mobile device should support this newer security standard by now).

11:24 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

We already know that a couple of vendors (Dell, HP, Fujitsu) will offer ROM upgrades to Windows Mobile 5.0 for some existing PDAs sometime in Q3 2005. That's the good news. According to msmobiles, however, current Windows-based smartphone users are out of luck:

Interestingly ROM images with Windows Mobile 5.0 exist for HTC Typhoon (Orange SPV C500, Audiovox SMT 5600, etc), for HTC Blue Angel and other models, but they will not be available for customers, because operators and distributors want you to buy new phones with Windows Mobile 5.0 instead of upgrading new ones...We have also got information from other sources that there will be no upgrades to Windows Mobile 5.0 for existing Windows Mobile phones.