03:34 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Alex, you thought you could disappear without a word?

02:57 PM by hacker in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Greetings.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. It is a time of mourning, and of retrospection. I'd like to give something back, to help educate those who may not know the details surrounding the events of 9/11.

As many of you may already know, I have taken the 567-page 9/11 Commission Report (in PDF format), and converted it BY HAND to validated XHTML. In the process I corrected several thousand punctuation mistakes, mis-hyphenated words, and the flow of the document in general. The content itself was not changed, just the way it was presented. The goal was to make the document readable on handheld devices.

I also added a linked TOC, mini-TOC for each chapter, and cross-linked every annotation and footnote in the original document. I also reformatted the output itself, to better display on mobile devices, such as PalmOS handhelds. There are a lot of other changes here that make the document much more readible on handheld devices. The information contained within, is far too important to disregard or be lost in a huge PDF on a .gov website.

From this base, I converted it to Plucker format, and then again to iSilo format. You can see all three versions here:

Both of the mobile versions are available on MemoWare and Palmgear as well (these links go right to the reports themselves on these sites).

Please feel free to download, redistribute, share, and link to this version as much as you'd like (of course, if you do, please make sure to give me credit, where credit is due). If I've missed any relevant newsgroups, forums, blogs, or websites please repost/forward there.

It is the only version of this document indexable by search engines and the like. It is also much more useful than the original, being heavily cross-linked within itself. I put a LOT of work into this to make it a professional work. Please respect the amout of time I've spent on it, by not hijacking it without crediting me.

Thanks everyone. I hope you enjoy the work. Please let me know if you'd like any additions, features, or other versions converted for other platforms.

12:00 PM by ignatz in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I'm in the process of converting from Palm to Pocket PC, and it got me wondering what the spread is here. It's plain that the majority here are Palm users, but it seems that that may be changing. So let us know: what do you use?

11:43 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Skype has just released Skype for PocketPC v1.0, a free software to let PocketPC users make free unlimited Skype calls over any Wi-Fi network. Minimum requirements arePocketPC 2003 OS, obviously WiFi, and a 400 MHz processor.

Skype for PocketPC and regular Skype accounts are linked, so you can be logged on both devices at the same time and receive on both a ring if someone calls you.

As for the headset, Skype recommends Plantronics headsets for optimal quality.

08:54 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Bob posted about Gmail-lite before, a Perl-based PHP script that provides Gmail access to mobile browser.

Now there is another tool called Gmail-mobile 0.1, also PHP-based, which allows you to access your GMail account with any WAP phone (WML format).

It seems to be very trivial to rewrite this script to have it output mobile-friendly html instead of WML. Any volunteers? (edit: Gmail-lite does that, plus it is also in PHP. Thanks to rclodfelter for correcting me).

08:44 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

If you visit PalmGear or PocketGear, you are swamped with thousands of applications and games that you can download and install on your PDA. The secret is to find the jewels and leave the crap behind (trust me, there is more crap than jewels). Especially if you are a newbie, this task can be daunting. Heh, but before you give up, you should check out what other users can recommend!

cbarnett started a list of his recommended PocketPC tools and games.

And I started a list of my installed PalmOS application and toys.

I recommend that you visit one of those two threads and post the content of your PDA. I am sure we will all be surprised about the one or other game we have missed all the time

08:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

No, this is not something you put on your morning eggs. What exactly is the Pepper Pad?

The Pepper Pad's new invisible, simplified operating system is based on MontaVista Linux and Java, which are both enhanced and optimized for the Intel XScale processor. The Pepper Pad also utilizes Intel's new 2700G companion chip for speedy 2D/3D multimedia handling. The system features 256 MB of SDRAM, 32 MB of flash memory, and a 20-gigabyte hard drive. It has a rechargeable lithium polymer battery with power management, plus an AC power supply. The Pepper Pad turns on instantly and charges quickly.

Plus the Pepper Pad 2 has an 8.4-inch color touchscreen and 802.11b+g Wi-Fi. Doesn't that sound like a great solution for reading e-books? I think so too. If you cannot wait and want to be one of the first to have it for January 2005 deliever, you can pre-order it now (for a heavy price tag of USD 800).

07:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Brad from ePublishing Blog has just published an interesting review of Plucker (you should also check out Brad's earlier review on iSilo and iSiloX). It is worth checking out. We definitely agree with him:

Plucker does not spend enough time trumpeting how good of an ebook compiler and reader they have. The reader, on the Palm has one of the most elegant interfaces I have seen. The compiler is not quite as straight forward but if you play with it you will figure it out rather quickly. Both reader and compiler are absolutely free and without any royalties for publishing in the format.

Btw, we added ePublishing Blog newsfeeds to our Frontpage. You can disable/enable it in your control panel.