06:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hello guys and girls!!

I am sorry not to have mentioned it earlier. I am finally on the vacation I've been longing for for the past few months! I am going to spend my next three weeks in Dubrovnik (images), Croatia, which is a world cultural heritage site on the Adriatic Sea. It is also my second home town, because my father was born and raised here. I am sure my opinion is biased (because of my family background), but I seriously think that Dubrovnik is one of the nicest places on this planet (and I have been already to a lot of nice places), a place which is worth the trip even if you have to travel thousands of miles coming from North America. I will spent most of my time here with my girlfriend exploring new islands by boat, eating a lot of sea food, and helping my parents to move furniture into a new house.

All my Internet activitiy will be limited to occasional visits to one of the various Internet Cafés here (there is even one Internet place just by the beach, no joke!).

I am sure some of you guys will also be away in the sun or on some adventure trip this summer. To those unfortunate who have to bite in the bullet and stay in the office: I'd be happy if you could manage this place in the time being without me

I keep you informed if something new and exciting happens on my vacation.

Sunny Greets,
Alex

01:45 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

News from JAVOedge: New screen protectors for the O2 Xphone / Qtek 8080 / iMate Smartphone2; the protector is made of non-reflective material which clings on to the screen with a silicon based surface leaving no sticky residue.
You can buy it either Single - $8.25 or in a 3x Bundle Pack - $21.04. I've heard good things about the JAVOedge protectors, so have a look if you are in need of protecting your screen from scratches.

09:49 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Mobile Sites

It seems like we all are looking for news sources these days. But with all of the news and information sources on the web, many of us are facing information overload. There are many ways to deal with this, but more and more common is a retreat to familiar comfortable sources like local newspapers.

You can always "Google" the sites, but here's another nice alternative, if you are searching for newspapers in the US... www.newspaperlinks.com

Tip: Most sites can be read in mobile form if you take some time with your favorite clipping software like iSiloX or Plucker. But the work might already be done for you. Check out the newspaper's site map, and look for mobile or pda versions. Sometimes one exists under a section like "site features." It's hit-and-miss, but there are a lot out there.

And at your desk or laptop, before you venture out with your PDA or smartphone, check out http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ to see what's on front pages across the world.

Also be sure to visit the MobileRead forums. There's a wealth of news sources and information about reading them on your mobile device.

10:41 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

European Commission publishes mobile broadband services plan

In a recently published document, the European Commission has called for increased R&D spending for mobile communication, commerce and content delivery. The ever increasing speed of business makes the extension of activities into the mobile computing world a matter of urgency, and this commission publication is intended to encourage the growth of technology.

According to the document, some of the hurdles to overcome include strengthening patent protections for mobile technology and improving the framework for intellectual property. In addition, rules and technology for mobile e-commerce are seen as a key challenge.

That's good news for fans of mobile computing!

For further reading check out these resources:
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=2213
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07...eless_r_and_d/
http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=55591
http://europa.eu.int/information_soc...m/index_en.htm

03:53 PM by sUnShInE in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Important Notice: The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser and use a different browser after last week's sophisticated malware attack targeted a known IE flaw.

US-CERT, a non-profit partnership between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the public and private sectors, was established in September 2003 to improve computer security preparedness and response to cyber-attacks in the U.S.

A vulnerability statement on the CERT site said: "There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites." CERT otherwise recommends, among other things, that users set security settings to high and to disable Active scripting and ActiveX.

All over the net security researchers have spent a lot of time beating the "Dump IE" drum, and the CERT notice lends credibility to stoke the movement away from the "world's most popular browser".

More from Internet News and The Register.

Note: I realize that MobileRead users are smarter than the average netster, but I figured I'd pass this along to anyone who's still riding the holey IE train. Just because it came pre-installed on your computer, doesn't mean it's any good.

02:43 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Portable Media World makes us happy today with some new information on the portable video players Archos AV400 and AV500. While the AV400 model will replace the AV3x0 range, the AV500 will be a top-range model, featuring PDA functionalities and a touch screen (available last quarter 2004).

The resolution of the 3.5" screen is enough to display 320 x 240 pixels, and can display larger movies, up to 704x480. It can read MP3, WMA, MPEG4 and DIVX5 / Xvid.

01:24 PM by Zire in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

The old thread can be found here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1200 thought that I would keep it alive with some new information.

What is WhatsOn?
WhatsOn for the Palm Computing Platform is a tool that allows you to display TV listing data in an easy-to-use grid format. Carry your TV Listings schedule with you everywhere you bring your Palm. WhatsOn comes with a utility, XMLTV, to download TV listing data from the world wide web. Using this tool, you can regularly and automatically update your Palm Organizer with current TV listing information. WhatsOn also comes with a conduit that allows you to effortlessly hotsync your TV listing data to your Palm Organizer. And best of all, WhatsOn is FREE.

I have been using whaton for about a year and I have to say it is sweet. I only had a small problem with it. Sometimes it does not download the update to xmltv and gives an error message but still works. All you need to do is download the latest version of xmltv from sourceforge. The cool thing is is that the xmltv file is updated quite often. Which makes changes to the channels frequently. At present there is support for the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Denmark. The main advantage of this program is that during setup you are able to pick your cable company or if not broadcast and choose which channels you want listed or not. This feature reduces the size of the database that is transferred during your palm.

I had some trouble with the way xmltv.exe grabs data at the moment and there were some configuration issues. Usually when you download the new version of xmltv from sourceforge all you have to do is put the new version of xmltv.exe in the whaton folder in your palm user folder. Yesterday I did this and got errors saying that the format is right but it could not grab any data. This is because the file tv_grab_na is not valid anymore, tv_grab_na_dd replaced it. Also you need to sign up with zap2it labs at http://labs.zap2it.com/ztvws/ztvws_l...01-1-0,00.html and set up a profile in order for xmltv.exe to be able to download tv data to your computer. To add you also need to edit configure.bat and grab.bat by opening it with notepad change any reference of tv_grab_na to tv_grab_na_dd. One more thing I promise You have to copy the folder called share from the xmltv folder into whatson. You then should be ready to go. Run configure.bat go throught the prompts and that's it. If you are not worried about security after the configuration you can edit tv_grab_na_dd.conf to include your password so you won't have to input it in each time you grab data to go to your palm.

This is one of the best programs for the palm. I highly recommend it. Find it at www.zookware.com

12:30 PM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

DiscountMags has a complimentary free year's subscription to Wired, if you're not already signed up.

No Credit Card or anything alike required. Hurry up, because the offer subject to availability.