03:35 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Finnish phone maker Nokia scrapped plans for handsets to be powered by fuel cells, according to press reports Friday. The company originally had said it was expecting to bring fuel cell powered phones and accessories to the market within a year or two, but the technology is not "mature" enough, Nokia says.

Read the full story at BetaNews.

11:43 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Fictionwise is running a "Buy 1/Get 1 Free" sale on some of their most popular Sci-Fi authors this week, all as convenient Multiformat e-books. To take advantage of these offers, simply add the first mentioned to your cart, the second one will come along for the ride automatically! Authors included in the special: Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, Lois McMaster Bujold, Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, and James Patrick Kelly.

Thanks to the great guys at 1src for pointing us to this deal!

10:48 PM by sUnShInE in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

A British Wi-fi hotspot provider has announced that will begin offering free calls with Skype.

Yes, you read that right: Free. No need to pay. Zip.

Have a PPC with Skype and you're just dying to call your girlfriend in Chicago? (Gee, that sounds familiar...) Now you can just pop in to one of over 350 Broadreach Networks affiliated hotspots all over the UK and make that call.

Broadreach can be found in major brands like Virgin Megastores, Eurostar, Travelodge, Moto, Little Chef, Virgin Trains, EAT, Choice Hotels and Quality Inn as well as in major railway stations including all the London terminals. They're also working to bring Wi-fi service to all European train services.

Both companies win. The partnership will allow Skype users in the UK to extend their reach of more than 28 million global users (and growing daily). The new traffic brought in by Skype users will boost usage of Broadreach’s ReadytoSurf hotspots since users will be charged for access to data services like web browsing and email.

Broadreach is the first hotspot operator to have secured a deal of this sort with Skype and is the launch partner in the UK.

Of course you can also use your Wi-fi enabled laptop to use Skype service, but if you really want to do in a truly mobile way, your Pocket PC with Wi-fi can make it happen. (Said the Palm user, "Grrrr!")

Read more from their press release here.

04:59 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

From Teleread.org: Bookeen, maker of the Cybook, has opened up Ubibooks. The new e-book store is starting out with several thousand books with texts available in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian).

And here is my take why this e-book store is going to fail:
1. E-books are offered only in one format, Mobipocket, which is one of the most-restrictive (e-books only run on the device you bought it for) and unusable (incompatible with any other e-book software reader).
2. So-called "best 100 promotions" lure you into buying DRM-infested books that are publicly and freely available DRM-free at Gutenberg.

02:51 PM by rmeister0 in More E-Book Readers | Fictionwise eBookwise

I have written a 5,000 word review on the eBookWise eb-1150 e-book reader, including a discussion of personal content issues. I have also included some photographs to show the size of the book (compared to two other PDA type devices), and some screen shots in normal and large font display.

You can read the online review here.

Feel free to post comments, suggestions and corrections to this thread.

12:22 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Alex Pruss sent word to us that this tool Font Collector 1.40 is now freeware (previously $5). Font Collector is an easy-to-use companion program to Fonts4OS5, FontSubst, eReader, iSilo, Mobipocket, FontHackV, FontHack123, Palm Bible+ and Plucker, allowing you to convert fonts from many other formats - including fonts within applications you may have sitting around on your PDA - to formats for these applications.

The following input font formats are supported: FontHack123, eReader, Fonts4OS5 (not for conversion to other formats), FontSubst (not for conversion to other formats), FontHackV, fonts inside all applications' main .prc files, Plucker, iSilo, PalmBible+, VersaMail fonts, FontBucket, vuilt-in Sony NX fonts, built-in Palm OS fonts on many devices.

You can now download the full source-code from here.

12:05 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Deutsche Telekom is collaborating with Deutsche Bahn (DB) to bring high-speed WiFi access to Germany's ICE InterCity Express train. Although perhaps not the same feel like surfing in the sky, it is possible that one or the other person will have a great kick from surfing online at a speed of 300km/h. Details are still kept in the dark; the service with the suspected name "Railnet" will be officially anounced at Cebit 2005 on March 11.

09:14 AM by Team7 in E-Book General | News

I was laying in bed last night trying to fall asleep. I am reading the last book of the Otori series by Lian Hearn and I was thinking how dull eBooks are and how dull paper books are for that matter. But many times eBooks are even denied their covers so all you get is just type. Don't get me wrong this is the best part. It's like getting a monet painting and complaining the frame is dull but just bear with me.

I started thinking about how ebooks could instill some of the feeling and emotion of the stories. I really think that in the future, eBooks should move beyond plain type and start adding animations. For example vines that grow up the margin of the page. Skys the limit as far as simple animations, nothing much, just something that happens evertime you begin a new page lasting maybe 3sec. Maybe authors should spend some money on hiring illustrators. Remember, color doesn't cost any more money in digital. Also I have noticed that games are starting to emulate movies as in that you play some of the game and then you get a long story sequence. How about the same with books you read: at the end of each chapter you get some animation. I think this would be the greatest because many authors like Neil Gaimen already take alot of advantage of the art world. I could just imagine some of his stories like Underworld have cut scenes done by some of those great japanese animators.

I know that many people prefer having no pictures and no movies/voices because they like to imagine things. But it is just an idea of where eBooks could go. I realize that many authors don't have the money to pay for these kind of extras; still, if you want to receive bigger dividens you need to invest more - but these are extreme cases. Just adding some more life to a book wouldn't necessarily increase the price or the expenses for the author, I think. Once this would become main stream like watching movies or such, I expect that eBooks will cost around the same as hard-cover books. Not too bad. Also since many people don't want all extras, maybe there would also be a way to just release a plain-text version. Kinda like some authors do it now: releasing a collector's edition with extra pictures in the book. I think that authors should start adding alot more extras in eBooks, now that they are digital and it can be done.

Sorry for all the rambeling and bad spelling but I just got all these ideas and wanted to know what you guys thought was possible/feasable. This would also probably require a eBook-only reading device