05:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Engadget is spreading the rumor that Korean LG is working on a new smartphone that will run the new Windows Mobile 2005 aka Magneto OS (on which we reported earlier). It would have been nice had they also given us a timeline for the release!

04:58 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Brad from ePublishing Blog asks an interesting question: What is a fair price for an e-book?

Here is the real shame: I was standing there (figuratively), cash in hand and ready to buy, actually hunting for more books by this same author when I saw the price of $7.50. If it has been a paperback I might have bought, but for an ebook I felt the price much too high.

Brad differentiates between well-known, and less well-known authors. He would be willing to pay a higher price for an e-book from an established author, like Dean Koontz, than for an e-book from a relatively unknown writer who is publishing his works through an unknown small press.

Do you agree? What it your personal pain threshold for e-book prices?

11:46 PM by Chaos in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Yes, at Macworld Expo today Apple unveiled some new stuff...

Hardware:
Mac Mini - a sub-500 (American) Mac, with no display. Looks interesting. The hardware is a small step above most of the iBooks/PowerBooks. And the price! Can very reasonably compete with PCs of that price. (Edited out part about lack of DVD burner - it is available as an option.)

iPod Shuffle - a flash based iPod, with no display, and either 512MB or 1GB of space. Yes, no display... They're marketing it as basically meant to play songs randomly. I believe there's also an option to play through albums in some sort of sequence... $99 for 512MB, $149 for 1GB. American prices, again. And it's TINY!

Software included iLife '05 and iWork. iWork is a (small - for now) office suite with Keynote 2 and Pages (a new word processor). No, no spreadsheet for now... Maybe next year.

I believe there were a few other things announced, but those four are the most talked about/most hyped.

04:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Jonathan Aquino did a wonderful job comparing Fitaly and Atomik, two alternative text layouts which are both aimed for faster text input on PDAs and other devices with pen-based interfaces. In fact he wrote a script in Groovy (never heard of thatlanguage before!) which calculates the gestures required for entering the words in Textware's Dom Perignon IV Speed Contest.

Looks like Fitaly is the winner with a close margin between 2 and 4 percent.

Also check out these two related posts:

- various statistics posted by Fitaly, of course suggesting that Fitaly is the winner here

- James Kendrick's closer look at "Shark" incorporating the Atomik key layout.

02:19 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Menneisyys compiled a nice overview with lots of pretty screenshots of all CHM-supporting e-book readers that are currently available on the Pocket PC platform (I didn't know they were *that* many!).

It is always nice to hear that the author agrees with me that microOLAP's CHM eBook Reader beats the rest: "Without doubt, the best CHM reader. Works flawlessly on VGA machines in QVGA mode without pixel doubling, supports SE fully, and even has a working (!) bookmarking mechanism."

[via Pocket PC eBooks Watch]

12:27 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Just a few minutes ago iAnywhere Solutions announced a "major" upgrade to its AvantGo client. The upgrade to Version 6 enhances the popular mobile Internet service with new features including wireless browsing; customized wireless synchronization (enabling faster, more reliable syncs); expanded channel management and personalization capabilities; and improved customer support (at least that is what the company claims - I guess they're referring to their new support site).

The list of changes is indeed long and I recommend you to click here to find out more.

AvantGo is available for are all major mobile device platforms including Palm OS 5, Pocket PC 2000/2002, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC and the Symbian OS based Series 60 and UIQ platforms.

11:10 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We are looking for two extra editors to enlarge our MR Team.

Requirements: dedication, ability to post regularly, excellent English writing and reading skills, ability to get into the MR spirit when posting your finds.

Send your applications to the MR Team.

09:50 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Picard has just released the first release candiate of BetaPlayer 0.096 "unstable". The Intel 2700G plugin is now part of the main core, no additional plugin is required here anymore.

You can download it from here.