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

12:10 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Hack A Day found an interesting way to reuse your old, unused PDA for some good purpose. You could use its display as an LCD output for your PC or for some robotics project. All you need is the open-source software palmlorb which runs on any Palm OS device and makes your Palm emulate a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.

11:44 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Another great news from the e-book reader department. As thin as paper, this could be the ultimate format for displays: the roll. When it's needed, it's there. When it isn't, it rolls away to almost nothing.

Polymer Vision, a line of business within Philips Electronics, announced today its new 5-inch PV-QML5 rollable display. With a decreased radius of curvature, improved operational and mechanical lifetime and paperlike viewing contrast, the display is expected to go in production within two years.

A couple of specs:
The Polymer Vision PV-QML5 is an ultra-thin (100µm) featherweight QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) active-matrix display with a diagonal of 5 inches. When not actively used, the display can be rolled up into a small housing with a radius of curvature of less than 7.5 mm. With four gray levels, the monochrome display provides paperlike viewing comfort with a high (10:1) contrast ratio for reading-intensive applications. Even in bright daylight, the display is easy to read. Using a bi-stable electrophoretic display effect from E Ink Corp., the display consumes an exceptionally low amount of power.

Sounds definitely better than LCD. Alas, why is it that all my devices are still powered with LCD displays?

11:30 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

This story travelled from a Japanese business site (dead link) to SorobanGeeks and then to Gizmodo where I actually found it:

Sharp has shown a prototype eBook reader with a screen that is only 1mm thick — inside the transparent plastic case that is obviously much thicker. Although they don’t plan to have the technology in saleable form until 2007, they already have one major leg up on Sony (and I’m not just talking about the color screen); since eBooks have already been a major part of Sharp’s Zaurus campaign, their library already has around 7000 titles, compared to Sony’s meager 100 or so.

Who knows, if the recent stories on the demise of the PDA are true (I really don't want to hear about it anymore), a color e-book reader will be exactly what we need in 2007 (you'll never find me reading e-books on smartphone devices with current screen sizes!).

11:05 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I found these GREAT news in the Netscape Mozilla newsgroup posted by Lead-Mini-Mozilla-developer Doug Turner:

[...]You can download a sneak peak at this build here. Keep in mind, it is basically the second build that I made that actually rendered a page successfully. When you check it out, remember I told you: Lots of work to do; Lots of work to do.

[...]I have written up some notes on how to go about building this stuff. I don't claim the notes are perfect, but they are a start. Ideally, the notes will turn into a "how to build for windows ce" webpage. If someone wants to help on this, please let me know. The notes are here.

[...]If you find bugs, please write them up in bugzilla. For the Operating System, just simply select other. We are working on adding a Windows CE option.

[...]There are a few loose ends such as XPTCall, build and config changes, https, and code reviews. Most of these items have people working on them. If you are interested in any, please let me know. The tracking bug for all things windows ce related is here.

[...]Currently, I am building against the Pocket PC 2003 SDK. We may want to adjust this at some point, but I thought it would be acceptable place to start. The binary is 3.8MB compressed not including security. To run the build I have, you need about 5mb of memory to display www.google.com (this is a pretty soft number. I need a better tool to determine exact rss usage -- if you have a tool in mind, please let me know)

[...]Another thing you will notice is the UI for the application is terrible. I really need your input and windows ce coding skills here. If you want to take a look at the current code for the application, it is here.

12:19 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

A lot of updated PalmOne news from our favorite site PalmAddicts this morning:

ROM upgrade for the Sprint: "It's in the works, but don't have a hard date."
650 long delays solution: PalmOne is working on fixing the long delays with the 650 in the phone app and when switching between apps.
No Cobalt on Treo's: Palm One don't have any plans for Colbalt to ship on Treo's.
P1 looking to expand Treo market: "We've said we are open to looking at lots of ways to grow the market with no specifics."
PalmOne working on wifi card for the Treo 650: "We are looking at it but it's harder than it sounds."