06:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Here are some collected newsbits from me this Sunday. Handhelds can cause tendinitis flare-ups (anyone here having problems already?), and Singapore is going to have live TV on its flights beginning June 2005 (Connexion at its best).

• Treo Bluetooth Wireless Headset [engadget.com]
• More Nintendo Revolution News [i4u.com]
• iPlagiary [metafilter.com]
• Dell's 10 Days Of Deals -- Axim X50v $399CDN Today [pocketpcthoughts.com]
• Handhelds pose risk to hand health [indystar.com]
• Singapore Airlines to offer live TV in-flight from June [thestandard.com]

10:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Pitney Bowes invented a system (Patent US2005048956) helping cell phone owners to receive directions by doing a single phone call.

First the user calls a specific service center. With the received call, the operator at the center can automatically obtain the location of the mobile user from the communications network using a triangulation method. With this knowledge, he can give the appropriate directions to the desired destination, which could be anything from a gas station to a restaurant.

I don't have to tell you that sophisticated triangulation could be easily abused. Even today, cell phone providers can determine their customers' location when they dial an emergency phone number. A mailbox bomb suspect was once tracked because of his mistake to turn on his cell phone. Which seems fine in this particular case. But what if someone uses the same technology to track individuals he just doesn't like for personal or political reasons? Where are the limits and who is in control of using triangulation techniques?

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

In case you've missed any MobileRead news from this week, here is our usual roundup:

E-Book Readers
New eBook Reader: WinCE SmartBook G168A

E-Book Webstores
Librie.de now offering e-books (Cebit)
Ubibooks offers 20% on all e-books / word from Unibooks

General Chat
Exclusive: Sony Ericsson's display to adapt to environment
Gmail now mobile-compatible - 150 more invites
HP's new battery saver for mobile devices
Kirvin on Fitaly
Really now, what is the point of RSS?
Sammy really likes Mobileread
Wiki on styling websites for mobile devices

iSilo/X
iSilo/iSiloX v4.25 final version released

New Links
Locusmag feed updated
MyYahoo! syncs with mobile phones now

Other E-Book Resources
Simmon College's e-book reader guide

Other Gadgets
Jackito TDA - a fingertip-touchscreen PDA!
Rumor: Apple Handheld with OSX
Sony Gadgets Coming to US?

Palm
Good essay on the death/evolution of the Palm at Writing on your Palm
Palm-powered hagenuk SmartPhone S200 (Cebit)
T5 Deals at PalmOne Online Store

Pocket PC
Lenovo's ET960: Where's the Connection?
Pocket Loox 720 built-in VoIP works only with restricted SDK
PowerVR Racer demo for Axim X50v
Robert Scoble Wowed by Dell Axim PocketPC
Samsung unveals Magneto Smartphone! (Cebit)
WinMobile Download Accelerator for PPC

Smartphones
Microsoft Not Porting MS Reader to SmartPhones
Samsung to Revolutionize PPC Smart Phones

WiFi / Bluetooth Technologies
Milking new wireless opportunities

01:55 AM by hacker in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Before you jump on me, hear me out.. I'm actually soliciting some ideas and suggestions, and I have a real purpose behind this post, so I hope this thread gets nice and lengthy and opinionated. I want everyone to respond and contribute...

Feeds, blogs, syndication, rss, xml, rss, atom, opml... it goes by many different names, and there are about 13 different incompatible formats for all of them. They're all XML, so that makes it fairly easy to parse... almost.

I've personally run into dozens of feeds that are exported from very popular websites, that don't even validate as a proper feed. Techncially, as developers (or those who are parsing feed content with tools we write), we're supposed to reject the feed as invalid; the XML specification requires it, but the users don't care, they just want the content. Herein lies the complexity... and the paradox.

But what are feeds really useful for? You're only given a "teaser" in the feed, which, when clicked or followed, leads you to a full-page article with the full content from that article. Why would anyone want to use these "teasers" on a PDA? Without some serious clipping and transcoding of those full-size pages, you're wasting a ton of space on your PDA just to read news articles, if you follow more than just that top level.

For most websites, their feeds are simply used as "commercials" to help drive traffic to their site, and thus bring in some advertiser's revenue (banner ads), but why are they such a fad for mobile and PDA users? I haven't yet found a single useful feed that provides the followed content in a consistent mobile format (except ours, of course). They all just link to an overly-heavy, banner-ad-ridden, full-size webpage. These aren't fun to read on a PDA.

So here we go, an impromptu survey to solicit some discussion and opionions:

What do you use feeds for?

• Are you reading them with a specialized reader?
• A PDA or other mobile/handheld device?
• A desktop browser?
• Something else?

What is missing from your "feed" experience?

• Better content?
• More usable features?
• Better integration with devices or browsers?
• Something else?

How are you finding your favorite feeds?

• Specialized feed-based search engine
• Google? Yahoo? MSN?
• Something else?

There are literally hundreds of tools out there to read, fetch, convert, integrate, migrate, and do all kinds of other things to feeds and other syndicated content... Lots of blogs and blog software can export directly to syndicated content (Drupal, Wordpress, Movable Type, and others, for example).

Thousands of people are using feeds and syndicated content.. but why?

09:41 AM by Michael in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Hello everyone,

Despite Alexander's prediction, I hope we will not fail.

Nevertheless, Alexander's comments are welcome and help us to make our shop more interesting and attractive for our customers.

We choose to use one format (Mobipocket) because
1 - we want to have the site as simple as possible for a new ebook customer.
2 - As Mobipocket is running on almost every PDA or PC, you don't have to choose your ebook depending on your hardware (some PDF ebooks are not well reflowed on your PDA), Microsoft Reader does not run on Palm,etc.

I am OK with Alexander's comment on DRM-free ebooks (classics) that mask all the recent books. From this comment we decided to change our first welcome page. You can have a look www.ubibooks.com.

We decide also to offer a special welcome rebate of 20% on all our ebooks .

So welcome to ubibooks.

Best regards to all.
Michael

06:50 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I found this article via Slashdot, and I think we reported on this here earlier. Basically HP researchers have come up with a new technology to reduce the power usage on mobile devices. They targeted the display, which is still the main culprits of battery consumption, and developed an intelligent solution that automatically dims unimportant pixels, portions of the screen that are not in use.

The results are astonishing: On an iPAQ PDA, "display battery life lasted from two to 11 times longer, depending on what the user was doing. What's more, 95 percent of users said they preferred the new interface, even without the energy-saving advantages."

Fine work you did, folks from HP. But please - hurry up! We've talked about so many breathtaking inventions; alas, most of them have still failed to materialize in commercial products.

06:36 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Two interesting Fujitsu-Siemens Loox news I discovered at Pocketcenter.de and haven't seen anywhere else yet:

1. The built-in VoIP receiver of the Loox 720 can be activated with a software development kit that is access restricted to selected developers. SJ Labs' SJphone (see attached image) will support this feature; Skype is not compatible and won't be in any time soon.

2. There will be an upgrade to WM 2003SE for the Loox 400 series. It'll be available at Pocket Loox for EUR 45 any time soon.

01:20 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Some Danish researchers invented a system called the BlipNet network in partnership with the Danish Cattle Research Centre which can be used to monitor the well-being of cows. No joke! The system is supposed to automatically report early warnings of the illness to the farmer through Bluetooth-enabled sensors that are placed on the cow (at a unit cost of 95€).

According to Peter Knudsen, CEO of Blip Systems, "Simple step counters are already developed. But our system will also monitor the cow's pulse and body temperature as well as how much it lies down and stands up respectively. If the cow changes its behaviour it is possible to predict which diseases might be in question."

Now who would have thought that wireless techniques can increase animal welfare