05:41 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Sam from PalmAddicts explains why he believes the PalmOne Treo to be a good blueprint of what future technology of communication devices will be like.

I never thought I would be saying that three or four years ago but the with the popularity of devices such as the Treo I think most people are switching. I do prefer a PDA and I think I mentioned this on the site a few days ago but if the right mobile technology is right such as SKYPE then I would welcome it and the boundries between smartphone and PDA are slowly falling down and both devices are being to merge right in front of our eyes and that is why I think the Treo is the perfect blueprint for the future.

Interesting line of thought, though not everyone may completely agree with him.

04:56 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Wouldn't it be nice not just to talk about e-paper technology but to actually own one of these nifty e-book readers that resemble real paper better than anything else we have seen? Now there's hope to believe that the situation will improve soon. According to a report from Digitimes, Prime View International (PVI), a Taiwan-based panel maker specializing in smaller-sized panel production, will acquire Royal Philips Electronics' electrophoretic display business and is planning to begin volume production of e-paper (Sony) products in Q4 2005:

According to Liu [vice chairman of PVI], PVI has successfully tested electrophoretic displays made using a 6-inch panel and the company is scheduled to volume produce products for Sony starting from the fourth quarter. Sony was a major customer of the Philips unit, with the Japanese firm introducing its Librie e-book based on the technology last year.

Sony is in the game again, and we hope they've learned from their mistakes (we absolutely don't want another Librie fiasco).

06:53 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Casey Chesnut knows what he is talking about when it comes to developing applications with the .NET Compact Framework. In a step-by-step methology he explains how he came to port NASA's World Wind, a free tool that lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, for the Pocket PC platform using advanced technologies such as Managed Direct3D Mobile (available in Windows Mobile 5.0).

His tool /cfWorldWind is a proof of concept and as far as I know there are no binaries you could download yet. Still interesting, especially if you are looking for a tool that can plot out place names for all Hooters restaurants around the US!

[via Make:Blog]

06:10 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Adobe is going to permanently close the Digital Media Store on June 3, 2005. According to their FAQ,

Adobe opened the store as both a showcase for PDF content and as a demonstration of PDF related eBook technology. Due to the success of online retailers in the current market, there is no longer a need for Adobe to support a separate PDF store.

In other words, the mega seller considers e-books no longer a niche market (which is also apparant due to Adobe's recent purchase of Mobipocket stocks), and will continue to offer e-books on its main site, www.adobe.com.

05:40 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

Earlier this week we reported that some Linux folks were working on a firmware hack to "englishfy" the user interface of the Sony Librie e-book reader. The first firmware patch is now available and at least one Librie owner could tell me that he was successful in applying the hack. Only a few japanese letters, the USB and powersaving message boxes have not been translated yet.

Make sure to read the HOWTO carefully! Screwing up a flash update could easily render your device useless (in that case don't throw it away, but send it to me - I have a thing for broken devices).

Click here to download Firmware Patch FW06160 R1EN.

04:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If you really want to run bleeding edge software for your Pocket PC, you can now download (direct link) a developer preview of Microsoft's forthcoming ActiveSync 4.0. Not for the faint-hearted, especially if you rely on using WiFi for syncronizing Pocket PC and desktop (for reasons beyond my understanding Microsoft has dropped WiFi support in this release).

Thanks to Arne from theunwired for the tip.

04:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

CHM eBook Reader by MicroOLAP allows you to view files in the common Windows help format (*.CHM, also known as "compiled HTML") on your Pocket PC. This tool is in my opinion the best option you have for reading native CHM files on a mobile device.

New in 2.4: Support of merged chm and *.col files, support of external JS files, multiframe pages support and multi language.

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]