10:26 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Azom reports that HP Laboratories Bristol has developed a prototype of a display that is bistable, color, plastic and is made by imprinting and lamination processes that eliminate the expensive vacuum deposition and photolithography used to make today’s flat panels.

Does this sound like a real alternative to E-Ink's E-Paper (as used in Sony's monstrous Librie)? You bet!

Paper-like display technologies are beginning to emerge, but so far many developments still need active matrices and have focused on reflective, black-and-white displays.

“More and more content is produced in color. New display technologies cannot afford to ignore that if they are ever to compete with books, art, magazines and posters,” said Adrian Geisow, manager of Displays Research, HP Laboratories, Bristol.

Unfortunately it can still take a few more years of further applied research to properly develop and assess the commercial potential of this technology.

Thanks to Teleread for the link.

10:02 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

E-book reader eReader has been selected as "Best e-Book Reader" in Pocket PC magazine's 2004 Best Software Awards.

"We are honored to be selected as a winner in Pocket PC magazine's 2004 Best Software Awards," said Ryan Wuerch, Motricity's chairman and CEO. "It is a great industry validation for Motricity, our products and the expanding popularity of eBooks. This award further validates our strength and presence in the eBook marketplace and we are pleased that eReader is the software of choice for avid eBook enthusiasts."

Other finalists were: Mobipocket Reader, TomeRaider
Other candiates were: Tiny eBook Reader, uBook

Interestingly, only commercial PPC e-book readers using proprietary formats made it into the final round.

07:42 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Conics.net offers the new Zaurus Sl-C3000 converted to English at no extra cost. You can preorder the device now for $749 USD and have it delivered overseas after November 10th, 2004.

There are also some wonderful screenshots of the device after its OS was converted to English.

02:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Our Internet provider is currently facing a malicious DDoS attack. They're working to mitigate the issue, both at our network, and with assistance from Internap.

The DDOS attack has made our switch become unresponsive at this moment. We have lost connectivity at around 1:50 PM. No ETA as to when this can be resolved.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

10:48 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Earlier today I mentioned that PalmGear has changed its site layout which has unfortunately caused our PalmGear RSS feeds to stop working.

Well they are back again, alive and kickin'! Sorry for the small delay I needed to analyze PalmGear's new site layout.

The feeds:

PalmGear New Software:
https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/pgupdated_rss20.xml

PalmGear New Updates:
https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/pgnews_rss20.xml

I'd gladly appreciate any of your comments.

06:09 AM by Laurens in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

palmOne Finally Officially Announces the Treo 650 (Brighthand)

palmOne has just taken the wraps off what has to be the most anticipated new smartphone of the season: the Treo 650.

The predictions were pretty much dead-on: hires, OS 5, Bluetooth, swappable battery, better camera, flash memory. Even though this is just an incremental update, I can see this model becoming a big success. Bluetooth is pretty much essential here in Europe (often cited as one of the reasons why the Treo 600 has not been as successful as it has been in the US). I hope PalmOne will have the manufacturing problems sorted out, so they can supply them in greater numbers.

Anyone planning on buying the 650? Or are MobileRead members allergic to SmartPhones? Personally, I will hold off until SmartPhones with OS6 arrive next year. Apparently, Samsung is working on one, but I hope PalmOne will also come out with their upgrade.

03:33 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Good and bad news. PalmGear has finally a new look, probably due to the name change of its parent company PowerByHand to Motricitiy (a weird name, that is my opinion). If you haven't heard about it before: PowerByHand has recently raised $27 million in venture capital funding. Enough money to allow for another name change and to redesign a couple of its affiliated sites. This is the good news.

The bad news is that my feed creator script breaks due to the layout changes of PalmGear. You will now receive the message

FeedLiquifier/2.00: parsing failed. Contact me at Mobileread.com with the name of the feed and the time it occured.

when trying to parse either

https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/pgupdated_rss20.xml or
https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/pgnews_rss20.xml

I promise I will have them updated in a couple of hours, after I have done some other important things.

01:53 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

iNDUSTRY Entertainment informed us that they have just released a MAJOR update of Jack or 100 Ways to Barbecue.

The new version 1.5 includes new features and enhacements such as: 100% ARM optimization, digital music and sound effects, optimized versions for a variety of screen resolutions (160x160, 240x240, 240x320, 320x240, 320x320, 320x480, 480x320 pixels).

Btw, Jack is also available on Microsoft PocketPC and Smartphone platforms.