09:22 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Everyone knows you can walk up to machines to get a variety of items like stamps, money, tickets, etc.

Well you may soon be able to walk up to a machine and get a paperback! For an expected price of less than $100,000, the On Demand Machine Corporation will be offering the BookMachine that can create paperback books on demand. Books can be printed in three to five minutes in various sizes. The machine even handles the payment process if using a credit card.

While there are competing systems offered by IBM and Xerox, the BookMachine is designed to be so simple that a customer or clerk can run the machine as easily as a copy machine. A master database holds all the contents of books remotely.

Pretty impressive. Still, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just download the book and read it on your handheld?

Our thanks to Engadget for pointing out this bit of news first.

09:28 AM by brahamt in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

After much rumor and much speculation, the fourth generation of the venerable Apple iPod was announced today Apple Site.

Over the past several months, there were numerous rumors about the features to be included in the new iPod ranging from the plausible (video display) to the not bloody likely (WMA support). In the end, we got the iPod mini controls, simplified menu system, slightly smaller size, 50% better battery life, speed variable Audiobooks, multiple On-The-Go Playlists, and my personal favorite, Sync and charging through USB.

Other Links
Newsweek Article from MSNBC
MacMinute

04:12 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | iSilo/X

The news is a few days late, but better now than never...
Only after the two-weeks old release of iSilo V4.05 Final, the makers of iSilo already offer the next beta V4.1 Beta 2 for download (iSiloX download). Lot's of changes, plus the added ability to support external document linking (e.g., cross-document linking).

05:17 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

There's a new audio subproject of Project Gutenberg called Radio Gutenberg.

This new audio site currently has almost 400 free audio book titles available. Most are read by computer, which can be an interesting experience all by itself, but there are also 8 human read titles by Arthur Conan Doyle provided by AudioBooksForFree. "[Radio] Gutenberg makes audio eBooks available for some of the same great literature available in plain text."

Our thanks to PDA 24/7 for this discovery.

05:08 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Formats | Workshop

ConvertLIT, which is most probably illegal in the US by now, allows you to circumvent Microsoft Reader DRM. V1.8 was just released, and comes with the following bug fixes and new features:

- Dictionaries are now properly expanded,
- completely rewrote space handling, to fix "italics" bugs,
- changed compression library to a new version to fix rare hangs,
- create subdirectories. (Use "-d" to disable).

As always you can download the program and its sources for free.

04:59 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

According to a recent Associated Press news article, Sony is saying that it has no plans to offer its Librie book reader in the United States, where the core technology originated (E-Ink). So you can either go to Japan and buy it there in Japanese letters for $380, or hope that another company will eventually come up with a similar technology (and hopefully without the restrictive DRM the Librie is suffering from). Why is Sony slowly abandoning the Western Hemisphere? First it stopped selling its PDA line, now the Librie...?

09:21 AM by sUnShInE in Miscellaneous | Lounge

You can stop wondering. A new study has confirmed what many cubicle dwellers have long suspected: Many companies, maybe even yours, are monitoring outgoing e-mails.

According to a new survey conducted by Forrester Consulting and sponsored by Proofpoint Inc., a company that makes anti-spam and mail filtering software, over 43% of corporations with more than 20,000 employees employ personnel to monitor and read their staff's outbound e-mail.

The survey of 140 corporate decision-makers found that companies are concerned about employees leaking sensitive information via e-mail, which ranked as the biggest reason behind the snooping policy.

The survey comes on the heels of a recent federal court ruling which held that it is perfectly legal for ISPs to read and copy the inbound e-mail of their clients. The ruling , by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, held that e-mail does not enjoy the same eavesdropping protections as telephone conversations, because it is stored on servers before being routed to recipients. (Excellent op/eds here and here)

Word up: America Online, EarthLink, and Yahoo all have privacy policies prohibiting them from reading customer e-mail, except in the case of a court order.

If it's sensitive, protect it. Don't use the bossman's server.

08:16 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Engadget.com is reporting an interesting response from AvantGo customer support to a customer with a Microsoft smart phone. The reply reportedly indicates that such a product already exists and has been demoed, and customer interest is being evaluated. Check out the Engadget story for more details.