08:27 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Font Collector by Alexander Pruss is an easy-to-use companion program to Fonts4OS5, FontSubst, eReader, iSilo, Mobipocket, FontHackV, FontHack123, Palm Bible+ and Plucker, allowing you to convert fonts from many other formats - including fonts within applications you may have sitting around on your PDA - to formats for these applications.

The following input font formats are supported: FontHack123, eReader, Fonts4OS5 (not for conversion to other formats), FontSubst (not for conversion to other formats), FontHackV, fonts inside all applications' main .prc files, Plucker, iSilo, PalmBible+, VersaMail fonts, FontBucket, vuilt-in Sony NX fonts, built-in Palm OS fonts on many devices.

It's free when used to convert fonts to PalmBible+ and Plucker. For other output formats, Font Collector is shareware ($5.00/USD; free trial with slightly uglified output font).

12:47 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Archos will showcase its first "fourth generation" personal video player (PVP) at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas. The Pocket Media Assistant PMA400, which runs embedded Linux, boasts wireless Internet access and "a host of additional new features," (touch screen, PIM, ...) according to an Archos spokesperson.

Before you buy a product from Archos, make sure you are aware of screen defects here and here that were experienced by some users with the Archos AV420, an earlier incarnation of the PMA400.

[via LinuxDevices.com]

12:27 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

If you are looking for a good discount on e-books, you should check out Fictionwise, who is still running a holiday special through December 31st: get 20% off the purchase of any unencrypted MultiFormat title, and get a 20% Micropay Rebate on any Secure title in their store.

11:44 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The source-code of Cabir, a Symbian OS and Series 60 UI-targeting worm, appears to have slipped out and been brought to a wider audience. According to F-Secure,

"First of all, these new variants [of the Cabir worm] seem to be recompiled versions based on original Cabir source code. Which means that the Cabir source code is floating around in the underground. Which is bad news. We didn't know the sources were out there, and we've never seen them."

The worm was original written by the virus-writing group 29A Labs and Security firms believe that the group planned to release the source code in their next virus tech magazine.

Some phones that are known to be vulnerable: Nokia N-Gage/N-Gage, Nokia 3230/3650/3600/6260/6600/6620/6670/7610/7650, Panasonic X700, Samsung SGH D700/D710, Sendo X, Siemens SX1.

So better be careful next time when you upload software to your cell phone. Also, don't leave your phone's Bluetooth set to discoverable, and confirm any file you receive over Bluetooth (Cabir replicates via Bluetooth)!

11:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to a recent study at the Mayo Clinic, WiFi-enabled PDAs appear not to affect pacemakers and other heart-assisting devices.

"When new devices are used near a patient with a life-sustaining implantable device, there is a potential of electromagnetic interference, and assessment of potential interactions is critical," said David Hayes, M.D., a Mayo Clinic physician and the lead researcher in the study, which was published in the recent issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. No such interferences or potential interactions were found with the testing device, a HP Compaq iPAQ fitted with a Cisco Aironet WLAN card.

10:46 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PocketScumm, the unofficial name of the Windows CE ScummVM port, is now available as a 0.7.

General updates:
- More game data can be compressed - this includes Broken Sword .CLU sound files (speech.clu from 175 Mb to 61 Mb, music.clu from 147 Mb to 36 Mb), Smush .SAN files (opening.san in COMI from 83 Mb to 37 Mb). Check the ScummVM 0.7.0 tools package on your desktop computer for more details.
- Misc bug fixes
- More Humongous Entertainment titles supported

News on the CE front:
- Smartphone support is back (tested on SPV, E100, E200, C500)
- Digital Imuse should sound better (again)
- Broken Sword 2 should be more memory friendly (if the movies are not playing (will happen in VGA mode), you don't have enough memory to play them. This will be fixed in further releases)

Downloads:
PocketPC 2000/2002 ARM and Smartphone 2002 version

Windows Mobile 2003 for PocketPC and Smartphone version

09:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PocketRSS V2.0.15 by HappyJackRoad is a new RSS and Atom feed client for Pocket PCs. Among its impressive feature list you find support for all the different feed formats, Today screen integration, namespace mapping, ability to download full articles for offline viewing, podcasting support, and WM2003SE and VGA support.

I am currently still using Newsbreak, another great RSS reader by Ilium Soft. But if you look at the feature list, PocketRSS seems to be the better alternative. I would definitely give it a try!

06:06 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Laurens, author of Sunrise, explains in his blog why he believes that by moving to Linux, PalmSource will ultimatively loose its competitive advantage and may not even survive in the long run:

Vendors choose Linux because it's free and PalmSource will have a hard time selling their proprietary layer at a profitable level to companies accustomed to paying next to nothing for the OS. As it stands, Linux devices do not have UIs as elegant as that of PalmOS, but that might still change. PalmSource might find themselves blazing the trail for UIs in Linux devices, only to find themselves caught up by an open-source alternative sponsored by device vendors.

One month ago, Palm OS users were confronted with the news that Laurens would not put his energy and resources into developing a Palm OS-based version of his upcoming Sunrise viewer. A few days after his announcement, PalmSource reported that the company intended to port Palm OS to Linux (also see our insider scoop).

There is a lot of speculation about the future of PalmSource and its operation system Palm OS, and I guess speculation will continue until we'll finally see (if we ever will!) a next-generation Palm OS device.