07:11 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!

09:01 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!

08:55 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.]

08:46 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.

08:23 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!

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Been away? Fear not! Here is your chance to check out what appeared on our frontpage this week:

Announcements
Customize your MR frontpage (reminder)
Individual feeds at MobileRead (reminder)

Avantgo
Avantgo'05 receives positive review

Browsers
WebToGo 4.3 released

Current E-Books Trends
German library allowed to crack copy protection
Pirates publish e-books on copyright theft

E-Book Readers
Bookeen Cybook review at ZDNet UK

E-Book Webstores
Diesel eBooks adds mobile browser support
Fictionwise Nebula Nominee freebie: Aloha

General Chat
Consumer-electronics firms join to develop new DRM
On time management with PDAs
Paris Hilton's Blackberry hacked
This week's Handango freebies for Palm, PPC, etc.

Other Gadgets
Universal wireless charging: the Splashpower solution

Other Readers
RefToGo.com Concise Oxford English Dictionary announced
Wikipedia for TomeRaider updated 12/2004

Palm
FontSmoother 1.0 for Palm OS released
Fool.com's advice on palmOne stock
Landscape mode for Sony Clie NX/NZ/TH devices
No New Zodiac Until 2006
Palm OS soon in the lead with VGA devices?

Pocket PC
Axim X50 WEP key exposure: bad, yet not that bad
Dell Axim X50v review: "Best PDA ever."
Fitaly 3.5 for WM2003 SE released
NetFront V3.3 mobile browser with PDF support
Run Other PCs from your PPC

Portable Audio/Video
In a Fool's view: the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle
iPod2PC makes backups of your iPod songs
Next generation iPod mini and iPod: "Q22B" and "Q98"

12:12 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Here's our periodic reminder that you can customize the appearance of the MobileRead frontpage. For example, you can selectively hide external news sources that you are not interested in. Visit this link for a full overview of your current frontpage settings (you need to be logged in)!

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

11:36 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Some said it wasn't possible. Mobile Stream announced a tool for all Sony Clie NX/NZ/TH devices to enable landscape mode for any landscape-aware Palm OS application (such as Documents To Go, ZLauncher, Kinoma, etc.). Originally, most of these applications were only designed to work in landscape on Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5 and Zodiac handhelds.

There is currently no public beta available. According to PDA247, the public demo is scheduled for the second week of February.