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!

06:00 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"

11:12 AM 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.

10:36 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.

07:14 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Think Secret simply cannot leave it alone. Despite all existing legal worries, the site today revealed some insider speculations for Apple's next generation iPods.

Next iPod mini: Code-named Q22B ("Osiris"), very likely with a 5GB Seagate hard drive. Same form factor, with an updated firmware for new functionality. Expected to be finished in early February, but at least a month later before announcement or roll-out.

5G iPod: Code-named Q98, won't appear until the middle of the year at the earliest. May come out with either a 40GB or a 80GB Toshiba hard drive. New: a silver enclosure matching Mac mini, PowerBook, and Power Mac products.

06:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

If you are interested how to use your PDA for more efficient time management you should definitely pay a visit to Bruce Keener's personal page! He not only talks about his favorite software picks for Palm OS and Pocket PC, but also goes into great detail how to use them to manage and prioritize personal tasks. A wonderful resource!

10:09 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Never again carry a charger with you when you travel, where the whole world, whether it's an airport lounge in Tokyo, a coffee shop in New York City or a hotel in Stockholm, uses the same solution. Simply pick up your cell phone, your MP3 player, or your PDA, drop it on a pad, and it'll automatically charge! Just a dream?

Founded in June 2001 by two Cambridge U engineering students, Lily Cheng and James Hay, Splashpower Ltd. is trying to make this dream of every gadget freak come true. Their solution: Wireless power recharging.

The Splashpower technology comprises two parts:

1) the SplashModule power receiver: a sub-millimeter thin receiver module that can be customized to just about any size, shape or curve of a mobile device and makes no visible impact to product appearance.

2) the SplashPad charging base: a thin wireless charging platform the size of a mouse pad that plugs into any electric outlet and can be built into any surface (for instance cars, desks, airplane tables), with in-built protection from over-voltage.

Any device fitted with a SplashModule instantly begins to recharge through magnetic inductive power transfer when placed anywhere on the SplashPad. Multiple devices can be charged simultaneously on a single SplashPad.

The company has been promising the commercial launch of its technology for the past three years. A series of recently filed patents may indicate that Splashpower technology is finally ready to march:

Portable electrical or electronic devices for use in inductive power transfer systems (GB2399230)
Inductive power transfer system having areas with horizontal field (GB2399229)
A distributed primary inductive power transfer area with uniform coupling to one or more secondary power receiving devices (GB2399228)
Simultaneous inductive power transfer system to multiple devices (GB2399227)
Inductive power transfer system with moving field (GB2399226)
Inductive power transfer system having a horizontal magnetic field (GB2399225)
Electrical power transfer using inductive coupling (GB2398176)
Adapting portable electrical devices to receive power wirelessly (WO2004055654)
Improvements relating to contact-less power transfer (WO2004038888)
Improvements relating to automatically configuring rechargable devices (WO2004038887)
Improvements relating to retention of rechargable devices (WO2004030176)
Power transfer between devices (GB2392024)
Improvements relating to the transfer of electromagnetic power (WO03096361)
Contact-less power transfer (US2003210106)
Contactless power transfer area (GB2388716)

According to Slashpower, the company is already working hand in hand with mobile phone and portable device manufacturers and it expects to see the first mobile products incorporating Splashpower technology before the end of the year.

Perhaps it is just me, but I cannot wait to get rid of my hopelessly tangled collection of recharging cords that accumulates in my drawer

[image sources: patents, NewScientist]

05:17 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

ACCESS has announced the release of its NetFront V3.3 browser engine, the company's latest version of the beyond-PC browser for mobile phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, digital television, automobile telematics, and other Internet-capable devices.

NetFront V3.3 features enhanced DHTML support, frame handling, pop-up blocking, and RSS, as well as support for Atom Feed, international domains, encryption, and password management. It now also integrates support for displaying Adobe's PDF format.

The older NetFront V3.1 browser was also the winner in the "Browsers and Web Utilities" category of Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards 2004 competition. There is no information yet as to when Access will offer the upgraded version of NetFront for either Pocket PC or Palm OS.