05:27 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Samsung announced today that its SPH-V6500 and SCH-V650 smartphones will both offer support for Adobe PDF, MS Word and Excel, JPG and TXT files. Although I am not a huge fan of Adobe PDF, this is a big step forward to making e-books attractive to the casual cell phone user. Perhaps than again it is not, if one considers the hassle of DRM-infected Adobe files.

[related: Adobe has also released a Symbian version of its Adobe reader. Time to fire it up in my Nokia Communicator 9500. -Alex]

Source: Digital Chosunilbo and PDA Live

05:18 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Reading Recommendations

Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention to be held in Glasgow, August 4-8, 2005, has released nominations for this year's Hugo Awards. The competiting top 5 novels are: The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks; Iron Council by China Miéville; Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; and River of Gods by Ian McDonald.

Sources: Slashdot and Locus Online.

05:06 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

ROO Mobile is a new streaming video service free to use and without registration from ROO Media. Use your wireless-enabled PDA or smartphone to download news clips (in Windows .ASF and .WMV) from various categories including news, sports, entertainment, business and more.

Thank you to jkOnTheRun for the heads up!

04:59 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Those guys from Harvard Business School have a story how mobile phones specially designed for small kids are "innovative and pioneering." Well, big words, and I am not sure if I should agree.

Firefly Mobile, which was launched in 2002, is selling the Firefly, a small sturdy device designed to fit a kid's hand. Unlike those complicated smart phones from Samsung we see these days, the $99 kid-centric cell has only 5 keys that allow children to speed-dial their parents and best friends (there's room for 22 numbers).

The Firefly not only has a catchy name, but it also comes in bright colors. I only like to ask how many parents are willing to buy phones for their beloved and precious little ones, still not knowing what harm cell RF radiation can do to the human brain (especially since the depth of penetration is more in the child than the adult). I am not one of those who say that cell phones are essentially bad. But until it is proven safe, I would always hesitate to encourage children to use cell phones.

One interesting side-note: CEO of Firefly is Robin Abrams, who was also president of Palm Computing at one time.

04:35 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The news is out and is spreading quickly that someone figured out how to hack the Sony PSP game Wipeout and enable the hidden browser to surf regular web pages. The following instruction is from Absurd Genius:

1. Setup a DNS server (i.e. Bind)
2. Re-map "ingame.scea.com" to a webserver on your local network via your hosts file
3. On your webserver, create /wipeout/index.html (Can contain links of sites you'd like to see)
4. In network settings, point your PSP's primary DNS @ your DNS server
5. Fire up Wipeout Pure and go to "Downloads" -- you should see your index.html you created.

Other news sites that are also reporting it:

• PSP Web Browser with Wipeout Pure [gizmodo.com]
• PSP Web Browser experience [psp411.com]
• PSP web browser? [engadget.com]
• Web Browsing on Your PSP [games.slashdot.org]

04:16 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

You knew it was only a matter of time until those viruses became smart enough to do serious harm to your cell phone. The Slate runs an article examining what harm could be done to you or your cell. In short: it could cost you money.

Several security officials told me that a scam artist could write a worm that invades your phone, waits patiently until 4 a.m., then makes an hourlong call to an overseas phone-sex line that bills you by the minute. Sure, you could call your mobile carrier and plead that you didn't make the call, but you'll just seem like another in-denial porn hound. Pay up, pervert. Of course, once the scam became public, the FBI or some other government agency could try to shut the phone line down. But a scam like that only needs to operate for an hour to collect plenty of phone fees. And if the line is located in Russia or China—where most of today's criminal viruses emerge—it could be almost impossible to shut it down quickly.

Phone companies like to think of their networks as gated communities; but do they really have control over what is installed on my phone? I am afraid once evil is in my phone, it'll be hard for them to keep it from spreading.

04:07 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

There's another way to download web content for viewing remotely. It's called WebCopier from MaximumSoft Corp. Today's news release includes the following summary...

MaximumSoft Corp. today announced the release of WebCopier for Pocket PC 4.2. The program allows to download entire Web sites, store them locally and view them later view them on desktop computers or Pocket PCs, at users’ convenience. WebCopier provides access to the downloaded information at any time, no matter where its users are, no Internet connection is required.

I'm not familiar with the product, but am interested to learn more about what its high points are. I've asked MaximumSoft for some more info, and I'll let you know what I find out. They've got some tough competition with iSiloX, Sunrise, Plucker, etc but each piece of software tends to have it's own strengths. More information is available at the product site.

Other products are available for offline browsing with Mac and Windows, but no indication of a PalmOS version.

12:01 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

If you still lack your own PDA, or if you are a Palm user thinking of switching over to the Pocket PC side (I've heard it's possible), you should have a closer look at those two hot deals from Dell each offering a great PDA for relative few bucks:

• Dell Axim X50v 624MHz 640x480 Handheld $364 at Dell Home [bensbargains.net]
• Dell Axim X30 624MHz Handheld $279 at Dell Home [bensbargains.net]