09:21 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research at Kaspersky Labs, WinCE.Brador.a is a full-scale malicious program ready to go: unlike proof-of-concept malware, Brador has a complete set of destructive functions typical for backdoors.

The Backdoor.WinCE.Brador.a Trojan installs as a 5632 byte program on the PDA, and can be used to gain complete control of file uploads and downloads. The virus cannot spread by itself. Instead it can only arrive as an email attachment, as a download from the internet or as an upload along with other data from a desktop. Once activated it creates a file called svchost.exe in the Autorun directory and sends the computer's IP address to the Trojan controller. It then opens port 44299 and listens for instructions.

07:03 AM by ignatz in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The New York Times (free registration required) has a slightly smarmy but reasonably thorough review of the Sidekick II. It seems to be a clever little device, and much improved over the first version. edit: The review misses out on some technical issues of interest to geeks like us, such as battery life and weight, but overall is a good read.

10:15 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We offer 3 free Gmail accounts to the best ideas of what you think is still missing at Mobileread.com (as judged by yours truly).

06:58 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

A couple of smart kids from the Librie Yahoo Group have been trying to collect information on how to hack Sony's restrictive DRM.

They are looking for ways how you can "talk" to the embedded Linux in the hardware. This could for instance work through the USB port. Sony's website has a USB testdriver (for linux) to transfer files between the eBook reader and the host computer.

Another more crude way of hacking the Librie is to disassemble the Librie display (which is basically the only reason why we would want to get the damn thing) and connect it to a ARM computer board running Linux. The hardware interface should be similar as described in this datasheet.

I hope Sony reads this. They should open their eyes and finally acknowledge that they have been wrong all the time with forcing upon us their proprietary formats and DRM restrictions.

06:35 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

After more than five years of existence, Palm.Net is ceasing operations. The service will close and no longer be available after August 31, 2004. A Q&A is posted on the palmOne web site to help address questions customers may have.

That means all wireless handheld functionality that utilizes the Palm.Net network will not be available after August 31, 2004. Of course owners can continue to use VII, VIIx and i705 devices in non-wireless mode and take advantage of all the great features Palm handhelds offer. Unfortunately, the handheld’s wireless capability is only compatible with the Palm.Net network and can't be transferred to another network.

05:48 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to latest research figures published in WSJ, Symbian (consortium backed by Nokia) has widened its lead against Microsoft in the race to dominate the global market for software used in high-end handsets:

"Software supplied by Symbian controlled 41% of the personal organizers and smart phones shipped world-wide in the second quarter, compared with 37% in the same quarter a year ago, according to research firm canalys.com Ltd., of Reading, England. A smart phone is a cellphone that can run computer-style programs, such as three-dimensional videogames or spreadsheets. The research figures show that Microsoft's share remained steady at 23%, while the share of PalmSource Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., fell to 23% from 31%."

09:48 PM by cbarnett in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

The latest version of ubook (IMHO the best book reading software for the PPC) is now abvailable at http://www.gowerpoint.com/uBook_down_nf.html

The latest version (0.8o) has the following changes:

- Added new default Simpler BookStart.usk skin.
- Added New Easy mode for Options... and Open... page. Easier to use, less options.
- Added RGB-X Up and Down mode for top-down RGB matrix (iPaq, CyBook, etc....).
- Faster Image Processing.
- Added Macintosh (like) charset support for HTML files.
- Added Customizable menus in skins.
- Several bug fixes in the HTML and RTF parsers, Auto-Scroll resume, Dictionary look-up, Tables.
- Fixed the CTRL-A call to TextAnalyzer to hide the console window (PC version only). TextAnalyzer is available at http://coderyder.starkemuegge.de/ind.../EbooksQuality .

ubook is available for PPC and windows 95 (or better) OS.

Craig.

11:47 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to a newly published report, Dell'Oro Group predicts that sales of wireless LAN products will grow 20 percent in 2004 to $2.1 billion. According to the Dell'Oro Group report, enterprise-class access point shipments are forecast to increase dramatically by 75 percent in 2004, growing at an average annual rate of 47 percent through 2008. In contrast, small office / home office (SOHO) products such as access points, gateways, and network interface cards, are forecast to peak in the near term as users opt for DSL and cable modems with embedded wireless LAN and notebook computers with integrated wireless LAN.

"Until recently, corporations have been reluctant to adopt wireless LANs, primarily because of security concerns," commented Greg Collins, Senior Director of wireless LAN research at Dell'Oro Group. "Now with the improvements in management, encryption, and user authentication, wireless LAN will penetrate larger corporations because the technology improves productivity by allowing users to connect to the network from anywhere."

The result of this study is in line with predictions made by other research houses. For instance, as we reported earlier, Yankee Group predicts that about 27% of the world's population will use wireless services by 2007!