09:51 AM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

For the first time, bloggers have been awarded press credentials to cover the national political conventions. That's a harbinger of bigger changes in the media landscape, according to nationally known columnist Dan Gillmor.

His new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, tells the story of the grassroots journalists–including bloggers–who are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news. Through Internet-fueled, interactive vehicles like weblogs, these readers-turned-reporters are transforming the news from a lecture to a conversation. They're publishing in real time to a worldwide audience that's eager to read their independent, unfiltered reports. And the impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. We the Media sheds light on this deep shift in how we make–and consume–the news.

Available for free as PDF:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/

08:58 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The Shareware Industry Awards were presented on July 17, 2004 at the fourteenth annual Shareware Industry Conference, attended by shareware authors, press, and shareware enthusiasts from all over the world.

TealDoc won the SIA Industry Awards as the Best Program for PDA's.

TealDoc enables reading, editing, and browsing documents, Doc files, eBooks and text files on a PalmOS-powered handheld. The curious thing is that I have never heard of TealDoc nor of anyone using it. After all the talk about iSilo, Plucker, AvantGo, can it be that we were missing something important here?

08:21 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research at Kaspersky Labs, WinCE.Brador.a is a full-scale malicious program ready to go: unlike proof-of-concept malware, Brador has a complete set of destructive functions typical for backdoors.

The Backdoor.WinCE.Brador.a Trojan installs as a 5632 byte program on the PDA, and can be used to gain complete control of file uploads and downloads. The virus cannot spread by itself. Instead it can only arrive as an email attachment, as a download from the internet or as an upload along with other data from a desktop. Once activated it creates a file called svchost.exe in the Autorun directory and sends the computer's IP address to the Trojan controller. It then opens port 44299 and listens for instructions.

06:03 AM by ignatz in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The New York Times (free registration required) has a slightly smarmy but reasonably thorough review of the Sidekick II. It seems to be a clever little device, and much improved over the first version. edit: The review misses out on some technical issues of interest to geeks like us, such as battery life and weight, but overall is a good read.

09:15 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

We offer 3 free Gmail accounts to the best ideas of what you think is still missing at Mobileread.com (as judged by yours truly).

05:58 AM by Colin Dunstan in More E-Book Readers | Legacy E-Book Devices

A couple of smart kids from the Librie Yahoo Group have been trying to collect information on how to hack Sony's restrictive DRM.

They are looking for ways how you can "talk" to the embedded Linux in the hardware. This could for instance work through the USB port. Sony's website has a USB testdriver (for linux) to transfer files between the eBook reader and the host computer.

Another more crude way of hacking the Librie is to disassemble the Librie display (which is basically the only reason why we would want to get the damn thing) and connect it to a ARM computer board running Linux. The hardware interface should be similar as described in this datasheet.

I hope Sony reads this. They should open their eyes and finally acknowledge that they have been wrong all the time with forcing upon us their proprietary formats and DRM restrictions.

05:35 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

After more than five years of existence, Palm.Net is ceasing operations. The service will close and no longer be available after August 31, 2004. A Q&A is posted on the palmOne web site to help address questions customers may have.

That means all wireless handheld functionality that utilizes the Palm.Net network will not be available after August 31, 2004. Of course owners can continue to use VII, VIIx and i705 devices in non-wireless mode and take advantage of all the great features Palm handhelds offer. Unfortunately, the handheld’s wireless capability is only compatible with the Palm.Net network and can't be transferred to another network.

04:48 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

According to latest research figures published in WSJ, Symbian (consortium backed by Nokia) has widened its lead against Microsoft in the race to dominate the global market for software used in high-end handsets:

"Software supplied by Symbian controlled 41% of the personal organizers and smart phones shipped world-wide in the second quarter, compared with 37% in the same quarter a year ago, according to research firm canalys.com Ltd., of Reading, England. A smart phone is a cellphone that can run computer-style programs, such as three-dimensional videogames or spreadsheets. The research figures show that Microsoft's share remained steady at 23%, while the share of PalmSource Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., fell to 23% from 31%."