09:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

One of our members posted today information on some serious screen defects he has been experiencing with his Archos AV420 device.

According to the user, after recording for around 20 minutes at room temperature, a patch of moisture with 1.5 cm in diameter and oil-like rings surrounding the patch develops as the AV420 heats up. Making it worse, the patch is located in the very middle of the LCD display (photos posted in the original thread).

It appears that the defect is not an isolated event: Our member was able to exchange his AV420 three times; yet, each time his device displayed the same screen quality annoyance.

We are waiting for feedback from Archos.

05:54 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmOne Inc swung to a profit in its first quarter from a year-earlier loss on a 62 percent jump in revenue, spurred by solid sales of its Treo 600 mobile phone and other handheld digital devices. The good results caused PalmOne shares (PLMO) to soar nearly 16 percent in after-hours trading after jumping 4.6 percent in regular trading on Nasdaq.

According to PalmOne, it shipped some 981,000 handhelds, including Treo as well as Zire and Tungsten devices, which do not include mobile phones.

It looks like PocketPC hasn't completely taken over yet

05:49 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | News

Linda Rosencrance from Computerworld analyzes the status quo of e-paper technologies and their near future.

One of the major e-paper developers is MIT-offspring E Ink Corp, whose technology is also used in Sony's DRM-polluted Librie reader: "For the Librie product, we make our e-ink as a film, a sheet of plastic that gets sold to Philips Electronics. Philips makes the display, and then the display is sold to Sony and put into an electronic reader," says Darren Bischoff, E Ink's marketing manager. "We're part of an enabling component for making that a paperlike reading experience."

But E Ink is already working on the next-generation smart paper called RadioPaper: "Now we can make something that visually looks like paper, but we want something that feels like paper as well," Bischoff from E Ink says.

What I don't understand is why Sony is still the only company who has purchased E Ink displays from Philips and used them for a handheld application. E Ink says it wants to see its technology appear in electronic devices ranging from handheld computers to cellular phones, calculators, digital watches and car dashboards.

So what are they waiting for? The Sony Librie is certainly not the "killer app" we were waiting for!

05:26 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

On the one hand, you have the publishers. They want stiffer copyright laws since they fear that a growing number of students are skirting the exaggerated charges of textbooks by illegally downloading pirated copies from the web.

On the other hand, you have the book industry critics. They say that publishers are simply attempting to justify escalating book prices and trying to clamp down on the distribution of information.

Canada.com wrote a stimulating article this week, discussing this controvery between file sharers and publishers.

Who knows, perhaps the next thing will be textbook publishers going after libraries for "sharing" books for free...

04:46 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

informIT has an interesting article (still ongoing), where virus programmer Ratter talks about the 29a virus writers group and its motivation in developing proof-of-concept viruses. He then goes on to describe in considerable detail the source code of WinCE4.Dust and the Windows CE weaknesses that it exploits.

Ratter is a member of the infamous 29a VX group (29a is the hex equivalent of the devilish number 666). He is also the creator of WinCE4.Dust, the first known Windows CE virus to run on ARM-based devices with Windows Mobile Pocket PC. WinCE4.Dust is a live, working proof-of-concept virus that infects all .exe files in the root directory of the Pocket PC device.

03:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Great news for all Palm OS gamers: PDAmill is running a 50% off promotion on all Palm OS products this week, that is the Palm OS versions of Snails, GameBox Asia, Classics, Gems and Solitaire.

To use this special promotion you have to go to www.pdamill.com, add the item(s) to your shopping cart and enter 'PDAMILL' as the promotion code, then hit 'Recalculate'. The promotion's running only this week and is limited to the first 200 buyers. So being quick is essential :-)

Thanks to Peter for the news!

09:26 PM by hacker in E-Book Formats | Workshop

I've been fielding a LOT of requests lately for custom works in eBook format. Many of you have seen my 9/11 Commission Report. That work apparently gained the attention of several very large companies who want their material converted in a similarly-professional manner. In fact, so many are interested, that I've started another company to handle it (can't say anything more on that right now).

But two of the largest works we've been asked to do, are the Wikipedia and IMDB, in a standalone mobile format.

Wikipedia required a LOT of rehandling of the upstream MediaWiki source, which I updated to fix quite a few problems. The approach taken by EVERY other attempt to get this Wikipedia content into a manageable format for the Palm size/memory, is wrong. I've seen several Perl scripts that try to take the SQL dump and translate that back into HTML. Bzzt.

We took a completely different approach (and one that will continue to transparently scale, including images), and we've been very successful so far.

IMDB is another sizable work. To redistribute it, requires extensive licensing, so we can't just give that away for free, without something to cover our costs to license the material.

So the question I'm proposing here is...

I'm working on 3 of these custom works right now (one, very timely, must be out this month, or the whole effort is wasted). I've now successfully partnered with 1/2 dozen companies who are very interested in these "custom" conversions of their works to formats suitable for handhelds. There's a lot of interest, and we're gaining more and more partners every week, it seems.

But I need your help, your suggestions and your input. Let me know how we can make the whole process better, and continue to provide better and better material for you, the reader.

04:06 PM by JongJungBu in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Screenshot: http://www.trisystech.net/images/aod8.jpg

Aeon of Discovery has been updated to version 1.3. The update includes multiple save slots, delegating multiple times per turn, changes to diplomacy, and a few cosmetic fixes. Aeon of Discovery is a turn-based strategy game for the Pocket PC involving four major maritime powers during the Period of Exploration and Discovery of the New World. More information about the game and the latest version changes can be found on the Trisystech website:
http://www.trisystech.com

Don’t forget if you purchase Aeon of Discovery through our Handango-Powered Store, you can immediately purchase Giza or Medieval Folk Healer for 20% off!