05:46 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

FlatLrf is a free Java application which allows you to recursively download Internet webpages to your Sony Librie e-book reader. Very nice!

At one time the Sony Librie e-book reader only allowed you to read a limited choice of commercial e-books available only to the Japanese market. Then in November txt2lrf came out, the first hack attempt by 'scythic' to convert your own text files to the Librie's LRF format. It was followed by MakeLFR and finally Sony's own official add-on tools allowing you to save your own reading material to the Librie.

FlatLrf is yet another valuable tool that should have been released by Sony the very first day it put the Librie on the market!

10:50 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Ever feel like paper and pencil is better than screen and stylus, but that it doesn't live up to geek status? Well, now you can get the best of both worlds with the Hipster PDA. It's simply a stack of low-tech index cards, but just for fun the author discusses settings and preferences, David Allen's Getting Things Done and gives tips on how to organize your Hipster PDA.

Technology is amazing, but good 'ole paper is pretty amazing too!

[Edit: See also this article from the USC Faculty Forum Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device; trade-name: "BOOK" ]

07:03 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Welcome to another digest entry of MobileRead, where we transform the profound into the bite-sized.

Announcements
New Mobileread RSS feeds - Pick and mix!

E-Book Webstores
20% discount for books from 'Diesel eBooks'
Fictionwise Free Nebula Nominees

General Chat
6 more Gmail invites
Bill Gates -- Supports Strong Intellectual Rights Laws
Engadget Awards 2004 Winners
Gadgets are no longer just for geeks...
Praise for PalmAddicts
WM2005 better but not enough? - and other predictions

iSilo/X
iSilo/X V4.2 released

New Links
PdaMobileWeb - mobile web index

Other E-Book Resources
Metacritic Books reviews
Read e-books through RSS feeds

Other Gadgets
Another Pocketable Screen Projector
Benchmark test of new 2GB SD cards
Hi-Speed Internet For Your Car
Hitachi's "Mikey" and "Slim" miniature drives
Sony introduces Memory Stick Pro with 4GB

Pocket PC
Egress V2.01 RSS-client for PPC released
IM+ Instant Messenger for free at Handango
Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 released
New BetaPlayer 0.095d test build available
Solitaire for Pocket PC
Windows Mobile 2005 aka Magneto insider news

Portable Audio/Video
Archos PMA400 video player debuts at CES'05
iPod Flash player days away

Smartphones
BenQ's "Treo-Killer" P50 will appear this spring
Mobile phones with Toshiba harddrives?
PDA and Phone Convergence - Consumers don't really want it
Pocket PC and Smartphones Will Merge

Sunrise
Sunrise 0.40-pre4 released
Sunrise 0.40-pre7 released - more bugfixes

11:45 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

We're always on the lookout for better ways to read on the go. Current pocket devices are much better for reading than you might think, but the idea of a full-sized page on the go from a pocket device is pretty exciting.

The latest news about portable display technology comes from the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon Technology in Germany, where they have developed a tiny projector capable of 320 by 240 resolution. It uses a tiny micromirror with springs to draw the picture pixel by pixel. Very fast, of course. The technology will be limited to monochrome display until color lasers become cheap.

See also a previous example of this kind of technology from a US lab... Video Projection with PDAs!

(via www.gizmo.com.au)

11:24 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

You will soon be able to get satellite high-speed internet from your car. That will be handy Just in case you want to download a new ebook while riding down the highway on a family vacation.

The RaySat SpeedRay 3000 satellite antenna will be available second half of 2005 for a mere $3500 plus installation and internet service costs.

And people think it's dangerous to use a cell phone while driving. Wait till they start reading ebooks while driving!

(via Gizmodo, which is a very nice site similar to www.engadget.com)

09:16 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

BenQ announced that its P50 will be appearing this spring, with or without a mobile carrier, for somewhere between $650 and $800 street price.

You haven't heard of the P50 yet? The P50 is a quad-band GSM keyboarded smartphone, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular networking, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. It packs an Intel Bulverde PXA272 processor and am SDIO expansion slot, too. It's a bit longer than the Treo, although the keyboard is very similar to the Treo 600's, with similar domed keys.

08:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

As I promised you earlier, the fabled Archos Pocket Media Assistant PMA400 (official website, English manual) had its first debut at CES yesterday afternoon. It will be available at the end of January for $799; some accessories are already available now.

The complete specs:

Capacity: 30GB
Interfaces: High-speed USB 2.0, compatible USB 1.1, PC & Mac USB Host port compatible Mass Storage Device Built-in WiFi connection (802.11b technology) IRDA 115 kb/s port.
Operating system: Linux Qtopia™ with embedded ARCHOS multimedia applications.
Video playback: MPEG-4 SP with MP3 or ADPCM stereo sound, near SVCD quality up to 704x480 @ 30 f/s (MTSC), 720x576 @ 25 f/s (PAL), AVI file format.
Video recording: MPEG-4 SP with MP3 stereo sound, near SVCD quality (optimised resolution for standard TV through composite video line-in) with up to 512x384 @ 30 f/s, in AVI format.
Music playback: Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 kb/s CBR & VBR, WMA (including Microsoft® PD DRM protected files), WAV.
Music recording: From any analog source into MP3 or WAV (PCM) format. Voice recording with built-in microphone.
Photo viewer: JPEG, PNG, GIF or BMP.
PIM functionalities: Qtopia™ software to manage your address book, agenda, calendar, calculator.
Games: Qtopia™ embedded games and Mophun™ game engine to play games downloadable from Archos web-site.
Display: 3.5" TFT transflective touch screen (QVGA) 320x240 pixels, 262,000 colors and TV output.
AV Connections: Earphone/Line Out jack. Built-in microphone and speaker. TV cradle to connect to TV with analog audio/video In & Out to RCA jacks, S-video In, and IR receiver for remote and IR emitter for tuner control, SCART In & Out for European version. Travel audio-video kit in option to record audio and video analog source on the move.
Battery life: Up to 4 hours for video playback or 9.5 hours for music. Removable battery available as an option.
Scalability: Download firmware updates from www.archos.com
Power source: Internal: rechargeable Li-Ion Batteries. External: AC charger/adapter.
Dimensions: Approx. 125 x 78 x 20 mm (4.9" x 3.1" x 0.8").
Weight: 280 g (9.9 oz).
System requirements: PC: Pentium® III 800 MHz or higher, Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000 or XP. 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) with USB port and CD-ROM drive. Mac: 9.2 or X (10.2.4) USB Manager version 1.2 or higher with USB port and CD-ROM drive.

08:32 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Toshiba announced at CES last week that it will be shipping its mobile phone-oriented 2GB, 0.85in hard drive by the end of January. And according to The Register, a 4GB version will ship mid-year, with 6GB and 8GB drives shipping in 2006.

Toshiba is pitching the part at "next-generation mobile digital devices", but it's a good bet phone makers are going to take a keen interest in the drive, particularly given the clear convergence between handsets, PDAs and, increasingly, digital media players. Toshiba's hard drives may enable handset makers to incorporate large storage capacities more cost-effectively than they can with Flash-based memory cards, and potentially reach higher capacities more quickly.

I was never a big fan of flash devices, so I hope that PPC vendors will incorporate these harddisk drives soon!