05:58 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Mobile Sites

Reuters has a new mobile service offering 10 headline stories accompanied with full color photos (via PhoneMag and textually.org). The service requires you to download the Mediabricks Media Viewer, a customizable J2ME Java application that is compatible with various handsets.

I spent a few minutes looking at the Java midlet and found out that you can also access the news articles directly via your browser. I am sure with a small PHP or Perl script you could quickly write your own news engine. Rest assured, Reuters doesn't support it, or they would have made this information available first place (or even better: offer news articles in XML format). So it's up to you what you do with it. Here we go:

The general url is:
http://reutersnews.co.uk/mb/servlet/MorfServlet?service=TopNews&category=reuters-ad&spkey=Reuters.Ad.UK&country=us&dev=7650&object=

Before you can use it you must fill in the last parameter 'object'. See further below.

• service
  Currently only 'TopNews'
• category
  Always 'reuters-ad'.
• spkey
  The service provider key. Without the proper key ('Reuters.Ad.UK' or 'Reuters.Ad.US') the service won't work.
• country
  Either 'us' for Reuters US news or 'uk' for Reuters UK news
• dev
  One of the supported devices - output might differ depending on selected device
  e.g.
  7650
  6670
• object
  One of the following paramters:
  • Headlines
    shows list of latest 10 articles with article ids
    example
  • Article
    shows article (required article id in &aid=)
    e.g.
    example
  • ArticleWithBinaries (required article id in &aid=)
    serves article as application/vnd.wap.wmlc
    e.g.
    example
  • ArticleWithImage (required article id in &aid=)
    serves article and (if available) article images as application/vnd.wap.wmlc
    e.g.
    example
  • Image (required article id in &aid=)
    serves (if available) image of an article
    e.g.
    example
  • Ticker
    shows a pretty Reuters tagline
  • Structure
    shows list of article ids of latest articles
  • Startup
    serves certificate, structure and ticker as application/vnd.wap.wmlc

01:12 AM by hacker in E-Book Formats | Other formats

You can Free as in Freedom today in both high-resolution and low-resolution formats! (And don't forget to install those spiffy anti-alias fonts).

Screenshots below...

09:33 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Japan Airlines will expand its Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service to flights between Tokyo-New York (JL006/005) starting May 10, 2005. To commemorate the opening of the new service, JAL will offer a $10.00 discount that is valid up to July 15, 2005 (a flat rate for the entire trip would then cost $19.95). So next time you plan a trip to Japan, make sure to catch this route and save a few bucks when you are surfing the Net in the air.

09:26 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | iSilo/X

A few days have passed and it's time for another beta release of the forthcoming iSilo and iSiloX V4.26. Considering how few changes/bugfixes were needed since the last beta, it is likely that Darren is going to release a final version any time soon.

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.

09:03 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Andre Dahan, President and CEO of Cingular's New Mobile Multimedia Services subsidiary has been named to the PalmSource board of directors. Dahan began his career as a database architect with the Israeli government and held various technical-oriented positions with IBM and S.E. Qual, an information technology-consulting firm.

"Andre's extensive experience in both the wireless and IT industries are a great fit for the Company as we continue to make progress in our plan to transform PalmSource into a broad-based software provider for all mobile devices," said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource.

More in the official press release.

08:24 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Thanks to jkOnTheRun for pointing out that Andy Kessler's newest (not yet released) book How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets is now available for free in Adobe PDF format.

How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. In the style of James Burke, it connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today. Presented with his trademark wit and smart-ass assessments, How We Got Here offers readers an original and refreshing look at history.

07:08 PM by Brian in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I'm a Make Magazine subscriber and recently received Volume 01. In case you aren't familiar with Make, it's published by O'Reilly, and is focused on technology, hacks, and neat do-it-yourself projects.

On page 134 of Make:01, Mark Frauenfelder's article Reading eBooks on a Palm Handheld: Discovering the pleasures of reading by backlight goes into eBook reading. Mark is editor-in-chief of Make as well as a fellow Zodiac owner .

It's great to see eBook reading getting an entire article in Make's premiere issue, and is more anecdotal evidence that eBooks are gaining momentum and more mainstream acceptance.

Brian

01:58 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Tapwave, the maker of the Zodiac PalmOS gaming PDA, has shared a bit of their vision for the future. The information is via a Tapland article and Byron Connell, the Sr VP of Marketing at Tapwave.

Sounds like they are aiming for multiple co-branded multimedia devices, and a strengthening of the platform for those purposes. There is also a list of new developments on the Zodiac front that will be good news for Zodiac fans.

While you're there, be sure to check out the rest of the Tapland site. One of the features I've noticed is that they always seem to have a list of the best SD card deals there on the front page.