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!

10:52 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Microsoft just released ActiveSync 3.8 for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

It contains fixes making synchronization more trouble free and includes all the significant improvements brought to you in ActiveSync 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7.1.

11:26 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

In this new digital era, many are questioning the current intellectual property laws and are calling for reform. The recording industry has ruthlessly pursued file sharers even beyond what most people consider fair and reasonable. Many people wonder why it's in our best interest to keep a song's rights protected for many years. How long is long enough for content rights to get reasonable returns on the original investment required to create the work?

The battle cry has been that we must protect property rights or we will see less great movies and music and writing. The content will start disappearing because there just won't be enough revenue in it if we weaken property rights. In fact it is argued that not only must the content be protected, but the content owner should have full control over how and when it is viewed or used.

In an interview with Bill Gates at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by CNET news.com, we hear his thoughts about intellectual property. He answers with some pretty amazing comments like

...There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises.

and

...when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.

Check out the article itself for more of the context for what he has to say about intellectual property and many other issues related to Microsoft's business.

But however you slice it, a big opportunity for Microsoft lies in making the most of the large revenue streams associated with content providers and content delivery systems. Microsoft is unlikely to support any weakening of copyright or patent laws as long as they expect to have a piece of that pie. Good or bad? I suppose that's the $1,000,000 question.