07:40 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Mobileread was contacted by Microsoft Anti-Piracy some weeks ago regarding a particular (slashdotted) post on Microsoft's upcoming Windows Mobile 2005. This post contained a handful of screen shots, some new information and a projected release time schedule, along with a source link to Neowin.

While we agreed to take the news down (really, we could hardly afford a lawyer, nor was the matter important enough to us), some other news sites such as Weblogs Inc., parent company of Engadget.com, decided to not remove a similar content on the future of Windows Mobile.

Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., argues that he did not steal any information and was simply reporting on information that he had found elsewhere on the Web (more about it here). -- Is it really that simple? What do you think, should Microsoft have the right to remove leaked proprietary material from news sites, or should news sites have the right to report news that have appeared elsewhere on the Net before?

06:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Once again, this week's list of freebies from Handango:

Pocket PC: BetterMeasure ($19.99 value)
Palm OS: Plot4 ($3.50 value)
Sony Ericsson: HangMania ($4.99 value)
Series 60: Championship Hearts Pro Card Game ($14.98 value)
Windows Mobile Smartphone: Trick Soccer 2004 ($4.99 value)

06:30 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Russian software developer Spb Software House has released Sbp Clone, a program claiming to allow applications, files, and registry settings to be cloned and/or restored onto multiple Pocket PC devices. This program could be useful a) for large enterprises that want to configure multiple Pocket PCs with the same set of programs, and b) as a complete backup solution for home users (uhm, for those who don't mind the price tag -- USD $299.00). Features:

# One device is configured, the other devices are subject to clone
# Average device cloning time is ~3 minutes
# Data compressing and encryption
# Self-extracting and self-executing image file on an SD card
# Assigned location of the target clone image files
# Providing individual names and IP addresses for clones

You can check out for free the user manual or download a download a demo.

06:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

What is Rojo? Corie Lok at MIT Technology Review describes Rojo as "the first company to combine RSS aggregation with social networking." Rojo is currently available by invitation only: "As of press time, a limited number of invited users were testing Rojo’s website, which was launched in October [last year]."

And now you can have your own invite from Mobileread. We have -five- invites to share with you.

The rules: You have to be a registered Mobileread member and actively participating in our discussions (by that we mean no new joiners who are eager to just grap the invite and disappear again). As always, we'd appreciate if you had something nice to say about us (suggestions are also welcomed!). Simply reply to this post. First-comes-first-serves!

08:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

The bad news. I have an eye surgery coming up this week and won't be online for some time.

The good news. You will probably not even notice my absence thanks to the amazing Mobileread editor team. If anyone of you needs help, count on them!

07:55 AM by Laurens in Archive | Sunrise

I just released Sunrise 0.41.

Two new features in this release:

• Import feeds from OPML files
• Include full-size version of an image

[added by Alex: If you are new to Sunrise, click here to find out more about its top-notch features for website offline conversion.]

07:46 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Yesterday I stumbled over TVGuide for PocketPC, a free, tiny (~250Kb) application to put TV schedules on your PPC device. If you enjoy watching TV, this is a must-have!

To use TVGuide, you need to download the following three tools (all free):
1. vguide-ppc (0.6.0.127 is most current as of today)
2. xmltv (0.5.37 is most current as of today)
3. XML2TVGuide data converter (to convert XMLTV files to TVGuide format)

The documentation of each tool is self-explanatory. First start with xmltv, to scrape the latest TV information from an online source of your choice. Then you must use the XML2TVGuide converter to reformat the xmltv files. The resulting converted files you simply copy somewhere on your PPC (I use a new directory on my SD Card). The first time you start TVGuide, it will ask you to point to this location.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

There are at least two other similar products, Pocket TV Listings and Pocket TV Browser. Feel free to check them out as well.

07:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

For a short time only, Fictionwise is offering a $40% Micropay rebate on its "best of the best" e-books of 2004. For instance, George RR Martin's A Storm of Swords is currently available for $2.99 after rebate!

Talking about fair prices for e-books, I think this a good start!