08:08 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

02:58 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.

12:20 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

Improved Smart Layout. Simple 16-bit display forcing built into FontSmoother. Optimization in 8-bit mode: Now twenty(!) times faster standard text rendering in 8-bit mode on the T5 (other devices may show a 35 percent improvement). Extended Smart Highlight to T5. Added Blazer tweak to improve quality and speed. Fixed lo-res aliased components of fonts. Added support for Tungsten E2 (not tested). Fresh trial period for users who tried older versions.

08:50 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Last week we reported on the early beta of Skype for Windows Mobile-based smartphones. According today to German news site Golem the makers of Skype are planning to support only one smartphone platform, so it seems that other platforms such as Symbian and Linux Embedded have currently dropped out of the race. Then again, in a recent interview appearing at Mobilemag, Skype CEO Niklas Zennström confirmed that they're also working on new versions of Skype that'll work on handsets running on Symbian and Linux.

Perhaps we shouldn't think too much about what smartphone platform will be supported in near future, at least as long as currently available phones don't have the CPU power and network connectivity to enable Skype voice calls.

06:31 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Over at PalmAddicts this entry caught my eye today. PalmLoyal talks about modifying the standard ROM of the Treo 650 by adding or removing standard applications. Mad, bad and dangerous to know, Shadowmite is offering the necessary tools and ROMs for this bold venture.

A warning: Any ROM flash can be dangerous and potentially render your device useless. You should definitely look at the master rom file listing (PDF) first to see which files are safe to delete and which ones should stay in the ROM. Also check out this step by step FAQ by Mytreo.net.

06:13 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Shaun of PDA247 writes that TCPMP 0.65b for Palm OS is now available. TCPMP, or The Core Pocket Media Player is written by Gábor Kovács, the same guy who is behind the BetaPlayer project for Pocket PC. Changes in 0.65b include:

• +Treo650 keyboard backlight turn off in fullscreen
• +plugin architecture (modified gcc used for compiling)
• +ac3 plugin for palmos
• +musepack (mpc) plugin for palmos
• -changing to 'Unfiled' launcher catalog
• -mp4 reader bugfix
• -screen turn off bugfix
• -save last position fix with a/v offset
• -many minor bugfixes
• -fix d-pad direction following video

06:01 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Reading Recommendations

The winners of the 2005 Nebula Awards have been announced!

Best Novel: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Best Novella: "The Green Leopard Plague" by Walter Jon Williams
Best Novelette: "Basement Magic" by Ellen Klages
Best Short Story: "Coming to Terms" by Eileen Gunn
Best Script: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson

Also check out Neil Gaiman's speech he gave at the Nebulas.

[via SFSignal]

05:51 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Sunrise

A very minor update this time:

• Fixed: Scrapbook title escaping - XML characters were not escaped properly in titles from Scrapbook index.
• Changed: XML prolog in SDLs - The XML prolog in the SDL file no longer specifies a character encoding. Specifying the encoding is unnecessary because SDLs are always encoded in UTF-8.

Download from Palmgear.

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