02:37 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Free PPC-based Plucker viewer Vade Mecum 0.6.5 has been released with various bugfixes for previous versions. There is also a new feature which displays scrollbars for large images.

Vade Mecum (pronounced "VAY-dee MEE-cum", which is Latin for "go with me") is the first-ever Plucker document viewer for the Pocket PC. It is a complete redesign and rewrite of the original PalmOS version of the viewer, and includes many features that do not exist in the PalmOS version.

02:30 PM by doctorow in Archive | Mobile Sites

Someone made a mobile version of the CIA - The World Factbook. It contains all countries including all maps, but has flags removed and some HTML code cleaned. The uncompressed HTML is only 13.7Mb and can be used with any offline converter such as Sunrise, Plucker Desktop and iSiloX.

Click here to download the zip file (5.1MB) of the Factbook.

01:15 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Franklin sold its 16,765 ordinary shares in Mobipocket to Amazon for about $2.5 million in cash and retired 29% of its outstanding preferred stock for $1 million. The company still has 2,434 preferred shares with a liquidation value of about $2.4 million outstanding.

What is this story about? Amazon is currently selling e-books in Microsoft .LIT and Adobe .PDF formats. The new deal could indicate that the Internet giant is planning to offer e-books in the proprietary Mobipocket format as well. For those who still don't know: Mobipocket is an ugly duckling among e-book formats, because its restrictive DRM format is incompatible with any other reader but Mobipocket (have you ever tried using Mobipocket with a WM2003SE Pocket PC? It doesn't look pretty!) and because it is "device-based", limiting the number of devices that can decrypt your purchased e-book.

[via Teleread and Philadelphia Business].

12:31 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Looking for something better, something faster, than Pocket Internet Explorer? Doug Turner is working hard on Mini-Mozilla aka Minimo, which is the trimmed down version of the Mozilla web browser. It came to my attention (thank you Mr. Anonymous) that there is a new ARM binary available for download.

Minimo V0.4 has a new UI (double-tap to get to the navigation!), is reduced in code size, and includes various fixes since 0.3. Most importantly, this version works again on Dell Axim X50 devices (yeah!). I can see Palm users already drooling over this one

Link to the official Minimo project site.

09:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmSource is going to announce its earnings for Q3 2005 today after market close. A conference can be followed on PalmSource's investor relations Web site at 5:00 p.m. EST (2:00 p.m. PST).

Long-term investors didn't have a rosy year with PalmSource stock. I attached the current 1-Year chart of PalmSource and plotted it against the Nasdaq Index.

08:55 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Since we broke the news of the Windows Mobile 2005 leak last week, more previews are popping up. The latest of its kind is from Mobile-review and it contains lots of bright and sparkling screenshots. The main innovations of WM2005 the reviewer concludes:

• The single-handed control of the device, not involving the touch screen. The support of applications for Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone. The key devices that will illustrate this approach this year are Asus p515, HTC Blizzard and Samsung Thor.
• Possibility to add photos and assign personal melodies to the contacts.
• Greatly improved Word Mobile (it keeps formats while editing, shows pictures); to a smaller extent – Excel Mobile. New application added – PowerPoint Mobile.
• Built-in drivers (APIs) for GPS and the camera.

Another previous preview has been forced to be taken down, and I assume by you-know-whom.

08:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Earlier on Mobileread reported that the built-in VoIP receiver of the Pocket Loox 720 can be activated only with a software development kit that is access restricted to selected developers. SJ Labs' SJphone now finally supports this feature in the latest Build 1.50.274; in other words, Loox owners don't require a headset for VoIP anymore. Click here for the download.

From the official description:
SJphone® is a VOIP softphone that allows you to speak with any other softphone running on PC/ PDA, any stand-alone IP-phone or using VOIP service provider with any traditional wired or mobile phone. It supports both SIP and H.323 standards and is fully inter-operable with most major VOIP vendors and Service Providers.

03:25 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

EContent goes to great lengths in Epaper: The Flexible Electronic Display of the Future describing why electronic paper such as E-Ink will become an affordable and widely used technology within the next years. As Mobileread reported earlier (here, here, and here), a next-generation flexible electronic paper is in the works which will hopefully go in full-scale production by 2007.

Do people want electronic paper? Sony spokesperson Atsuo Omagari says, "our business [of the Sony Librie] went well as planned so far," there's a feeling amongst industry watchers that its overall customer reviews have been somewhat underwhelming." Sony responded to address the situation. "They began selling with new devices a CD, which contained about 100 Japanese novels on it, as well as some very useful tools, most notable of which was a one-step-simple printer driver, so now whatever can be printed off of a computer can print directly to the device."

It sticks out like a sore thumb that Sony is not reading Mobileread. Can someone please tell them that the key to successfully selling an e-book device is to remove it from its ridiculous DRM obstacles?