06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Been away? Fear not! Here is your chance to check out what appeared on our frontpage this week:

Browsers
7 steps to better handheld browsing (CSS tutorial)
Another tutorial on mobile cascade style sheets

Current E-Books Trends
Warning: Adobe documents now spying on you!

E-Book Conversion
New way to convert Word Documents to eBooks (FREE)
Paperless Printer to convert PDF into HTML

E-Book Webstores
Fictionwise 10% on MultiFormat e-books

General Chat
Quick Bits: Palm OS Cobalt Smartphone?, SDCard hot deal, and more
Reminder: Your opinion counts at MobileRead!

iSilo/X
iSilo/X 4.26 first beta available

Link Swap
e-Messenger - Web-based IM for your PDA

Other Gadgets
BlackBerry CEO not afraid of Microsoft
Electronic paper for shelf labels in Japanese stores
SyncroSign's Messenger gets wireless e-paper
Transcend Ultra Performance 80X SD cards

Palm
Clie-only apps to run on other Palm devices
MyUAE 0.4 - Amiga emulator for Palm OS 5
palmOne Life Drive more pictures and specs
WarpSpeed overclocking tool that kills screen whine

Pocket PC
Dell Axim 2200mAh extended battery review
Free PPC Western Shoot 'Em Up From ClickGamer
HP iPAQ hw6500 preview - a Treo killer? NOT!
Making the move from Palm to PocketPC
Missing Sync For Windows Mobile (with Mac)
MopiPhant - first Emule P2P client for Pocket PC
Web Sites with Free Pocket PC Games
Windows Mobile 2005 supports e-mail push technology / "Photon"

Portable Audio/Video
Interview with PyMusique Creator
US Government Wants To Meddle with DRM

Sunrise
Sunrise 0.41i bugfix release

11:55 AM by TadW in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

I found this one while browsing PalmAddicts this morning: Fictionwise is offering every unencrypted MultiFormat e-book at 10% off until April 14. MultiFormat titles can be downloaded in as many as 10 different formats to fit your needs.

12:00 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

As we are approaching our first anniversary, I'd like to thank all of you for your great commitment and loyality to MobileRead. I hope that you are still finding our mix of hand-picked news around mobile gadgets and e-book trends interesting. If there is anything you would like us to change or do differently, please do not hesitate to speak out openly!

This being said let me encourage you to participate more in our news discussions. It is our task to collect the best news from the Net for you. And it is your voice which we like to hear and that could make our discussions a hundred times more interesting.

Thank you!
Alexander (and the entire MobileRead team)

11:04 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Italian Solopalmari posted a detailed review (translated into English) on Dell's 2200mAh extended battery for the Axim X50 series. The reviewer concludes:

We feel that Dell’s 2200 mAh Li-ion battery strikes a fine balance between extended battery life and the inevitable increase in size and weight. All things considered, we would certainly recommend its purchase to those looking for greater freedom from power sockets and charger cables, particularly to those that use the Bluetooth and Wireless protocols assiduously.

When I purchased my Axim X50v last year, I received the extended battery in a package. The only occasion in which I've been using the battery was on train or airplane trips, where extra battery juice is greatly appreciated. Other than that I never wanted to carry the extra bulk with me around.

Thanks to Gnam for sending us the heads up!

10:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Put the pedal to the metal with Transcend's new flash memory. Transcend has improved the data transfer of their Secure Digital Cards to 80X speed. Transcend Ultra Performance 80X cards, which are for the first time fully compatible with SD card spec. v1.1, can achieve a theoretical blazing read speed of up to 12 MB/s and a write speed of up to 10 MB/s. Available in 256MB (38.50 EUR), 512MB (65.90 EUR), and 1GB (120 EUR), these SD Cards are based on dual channel high-tech technology; Transcend insists on using only original SLC (Single-Level-Cell) NAND Flash chips that have a higher write speed, lower power consumption, and superior durability compared with Secure Digital Cards made with MLC (Multi-Level-Cell) chips.

[first found at Golem.de]

08:57 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MyUAE 0.4 is a working Commodore Amiga emulator based on UAE specifically written for the Palm OS 5 platform. A Commodore Amiga, for those who don't know, is a 16/32 bit computer system based on the Motorola 680x0 CPU and a few specially designed custom chips that provide very good graphics and sound capabilities. Its first incarnation, the A1000, appeared in 1985, followed by the highly successful A500 and A2000 models.

MyUAE is a port of E-UAE 0.8.27. It doesn't support sound yet, nor AGA or higher processors than 68000. You need at least 9Mb free dynamic memory to run this application.

Download MyUAE Binaries.
Download MyUAE Sources.

05:58 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

The newly released Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 allows authors of "tagged" PDF documents to select an arbitrary Web address which is then contacted whenever you open one of these documents. Through some small JavaScript code that is embedded in the document Adobe Reader is reporting back information including the fact that you've opened the document (which has a unique identifier), your IP address, and which viewer version has been used. The information is submitted over port 80 using HTTP, so it is unlikely that a home or office firewall would, in a normal configuration, block the activity, unless the firewall administrator is attempting to block Web browsing.

Keep your finger on the pulse. The company behind all this is Canada-based Remote Approach, who advertises their technology as a mechanism to supervise the usage of PDF documents: "We call it Document Distribution Management™. You can call it a way to measure and analyze your real audience and reach - including channels like email and peer to peer, not just people downloading from your web site. We offer a suite of tools and services to help you identify, manage and track your documents in real-time." The company claims this not to be spyware, since according to them the "software retrieves no information from the user's computer and leaves no software behind." Which is a bald-faced lie since they store and share your IP address.

Apparently the company is also working on a feature that would let a company block a document from being read if there's no Internet connection. Another feature in the works would allow tracking on a page-by-page basis.

Of course all of this happens "in the dark", without informing you and without your consent! I suggest you immediately change the settings of your Reader, and disable Javascript. Or even better, you can disable the spying feature by deleting all plugins or by renaming the plugin directory acroread7/Reader/intellinux/plug_ins. (remember to repeat this every time there is an update).

And don't you dare open pirated PDF e-books!

[first found at Linux Weekly News]

05:04 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Our friend TankerBob wrote a wonderful essay explaining how he made the transition from being a dedicated Palm user for seven years to becoming a passionate Dell Axim X50v owner. His first week bottom line:

I've learned an incredible amount in just one week. At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that Pocket PC isn't the dark side—it's just another side. Hardware advances and hard work by Microsoft and their partners have brought the Pocket PC to a point of roughly equal stability and overall performance with Palm OS devices. Out of the box, their networking capability and built-in WiFi and VGA displays give them a large advantage amongst the growing number of home WiFi networkers and travelers requiring mobile access to the internet and/or home/office networks. On the other hand, if a user only needs to track schedules and contacts, or even work with MS Office-compatible files, a Palm might be a more efficient solution in both cost and complexity.

Other useful guides for making the transition are Bob's following three essays: I Took The Plunge, PalmOS to Pocket PC: Part I - Intro and PalmOS to Pocket PC: Part II - Conversion!