04:21 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In a press release the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced yesterday the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) - an endeavor to make Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy, and convenient as Web access from a desktop device.

The idea of the new initiative is to develop a set of technical "best practices" for developing "mobileOK" Web sites to provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices.

MWI will work to make sure device usability and mobile services improve even more, said Evan Smouse, director of strategic technology at HP, which is a founding sponsor. Additional founding MWI sponsors include France Telecom, MobileAware, Segala M Test, Vodafone and Volantis.

"We believe the MWI will accelerate the development of rich media content services and will be a catalyst for the next generation of engaging communications experiences," Smouse said in a statement.

[via Palm247]

11:12 PM by pruss in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

My shareware utility to allow smoothed (anti-aliased) fonts on OS 5 hi-res devices (except for Tapwave) has been updated...

http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?xyz=90288
http://www.zlthemes.com/Programs.php

1.40: Allow font darkness (gamma) adjustment. More Smart Layout improvements. Include apps on cards in configuration. Fix scrolling in app list via keyboard.

10:03 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Found The Literature Network with many books online and it is worthy of mention. I will let an excerpt from the web page speak for itself...

Welcome to The Literature Network. We offer searchable online literature for the student, educator, or enthusiast. To find the work you're looking for start by looking through the author index. We currently have over 300 full books and over 1000 short stories and poems by over 90 authors. Our quotations database has over 8500 quotes.

06:49 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Thanks to Shaun over at PDA 24/7 for pointing out an ebook resource that you may not have discovered yet. It is their ebook review page with quite a few books there already. If interest continues, he plans to make it an ongoing resource. It's an interesting approach, and you'll see that they have reviews that go from very simple, to very detailed.

And as I'm the sort of person that loves to go snooping around in web sites, I also found a very nice list of links for ebook resources here that I hadn't noticed before and may be of interest to our readers.

04:03 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to Brighthand, there is a full-page article in Laptop magazine about the LifeDrive in advance of the formal announcement. Probably not good for them, but great for us. All the details are given here.

More to come I'm sure!

Ongoing update(s):
Here's the scoop...

-- Dimensions are 4.7" x 2.8" x 0.76"
-- Weight is 6.8 oz
-- Automatic hard drive sync
-- Will support USB2.0 for faster transfer of data
-- SD slot
-- HiRes+ 320x480 display, with landscape and portrait
-- Will come with NormSoft's Pocket Tunes, which works with Rhapsody streaming
-- Will come with Documents To Go
-- To be released May 18 for $499.99
-- Wifi & Bluetooth 1.1
-- 4 gig hard drive
-- PalmOS Garnet (OS5)
-- Camera companion (an application not a camera)
-- Web browser and email applications
-- RAM size unknown

(Brighthand via Engadget)

01:22 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

That's the date of the release of yet another market study on pdas. We've heard that the market is down. Then up. Now May 10th brings news that it's down again according to a study released by IDC. Fifth consecutive quarter of falling sales of pdas. Doom and gloom once again? Somehow I've lost interest.

No doubt the pda market faces challenges like saturation and competition from smart phones. But studies on the pda market are starting to sound like the bickering being carried on about whether or not cell phone radiation emmissions are bad for you.

All right, the pda market is down today. Just be patient. I'm sure some research firm will "surprise" us again by how resilient the market is with a new study about the remarkable growth in pdas!

(Via Information Week)

09:01 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

May 10th, 2005 marks the first anniversary of the launching of this website, MobileRead.com. It came kicking and screaming into this world after months of desperate trying during its pre-life state also known as Turcic.com (some old-timers among you may still remember).

We are holding off the party a bit longer until we can reveal our planned site redesign. Meanwhile, I'd like to thank the following people for their priceless support: Bob, zire71man, Colin, David, Lynn, Craig, Chaos, Paul, Ignatz, and Thierry. Let's also not forget Sammy of PalmAddicts, Shaun of PDA247, and David of Teleread.org, all of them great guys who were always very kind to us. And of course, most importantly, I thank all of you who're visiting MobileRead for taking part and showing your interest in our community!

Although I've signed a NDA with Microsoft I cannot but tell you the truth: We didn't want to make this into a huge announcement without running at risk of stealing Microsoft the show of its WM 5.0 unveiling today. Today is Billy's day and we respect that!

Happy Birthday MobileRead, and to a successful second year!!!

08:20 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | iSilo/X

Darren has just posted the final release of iSilo and iSiloX V4.26.

Highlights of version 4.26:

• Support for the Motorola A1000 and Motorola A925 in iSilo for Symbian UIQ.
• Added support for id attributes in all elements as link.
• Added support for displaying images of input elements.
• Addressing of miscellaneous issues.

If you are new to iSilo make sure to visit this thread for more information.