Archive for September, 2007

This weekend I finally got around to getting my DS lite to read e-books.  There are a few things you need in order to do this.  First, you need something like a Max Media Dock or Datel’s Games and Music cartridge.  Both are under $30.    There are other cartridges such as a Supercard SD, Gameboy Advance Movie Player, R4 Multimedia card, etc. You will also need either an SD, Micro SD, or Compact Flash card depending on what kind of dock or cartridge you buy.  Finally, you will need the e-book reader software from one of the homebrew sites.  I’ll list all links at the end of this post. The process was rather easy once I found an how to guide on Pocket Gamer.  This guide shows how to install DS Reader, but this guide will work for any NDS software.  I found three readers available for the DS: Read More, DS Libris, and DS Reader. 

So far DS reader is the most stable one I tried.  There was no screen freezing and it is easy to navigate. DS reader recognizes txt files only and uses True Type Fonts.  It comes with two included, but you can add your own.  You can also choose to have either a white or black background, standard style or anti-aliased. Another thing I like about this software is that you can adjust your font size. Screen view settings include top, bottom, and both.  Another choice is whether or not you want smart paragraphs.  I would pick yes to avoid lines with only one word on it. 

I also tried Read More and DS Libris.  Both readers are portrait mode so you would hold the DS lite like a book and it displays two pages.  I was impressed by these two programs since I felt like I had a regular book opened.  The problem is that they didn’t work that well for me.  First, Read More opens to an introduction of the program, but that’s as far as I got.  Whenever I tried to get to the menu, the program would freeze.  I searched some forums and there were others who shared my experience, but so far no answers.  So I can not tell you if this application is customizable. Now for DS Libris.  This is a new home brew and the author states that it may have many bugs.  The program only lists the first eight files and only recognizes files in xht (XHTML) format.  I tried to format some text using Word, but no luck.  I may try it using Open Office. The program is also prone to fail on start up.  It worked great for awhile and then it started to give error messages.  From what I could tell there is no way to change any of the settings.  Another problem worth mentioning is that I couldn’t find a way to exit out of any of the three reader programs.  All I could do was turn off the DS.

Overall it was a nice experience reading on the DS, which has beautiful bright screens .  I wouldn’t use it as my primary reader, but on trips it could be a nice diversion from gaming.

Links

Max Media Player

Read More Alpha

Newbie Guide for DS lite

GBA Movie Player

Mini site for Datel’s Games and Music

Drivers to patch NDS files to work on Cartridge

DS Scene: A DS Homebrew site for downloads and user forum

Deal Extreme:  E-store with cartridges, cases, etc

For Comic e-books:  The author of the site is closing it soon

Golden Age Comics: Site for downloading copyright free golden age comics.

I have survived the second week of American Literature.  I think at this point I could start using my e-book reader.  Practically everything is available online at Project Gutenberg. Also the companion CD that came with the book has some of the text and a quick Google search finds the rest.  So now it is a matter of convenience and time.  The print in the textbook is too small for me and downloading and converting stuff from the Internet takes up a lot of my time.  This would have gone better as an experiment if the syllabus was available prior to the beginning of class.  What I have found myself doing is simply reading the stuff online using Internet Explorer’s  zoom feature.  I take my notes by copying and pasting stuff into Word.  It’s more convenient that way.  I get writer’s cramps easily and these notes will make it easier to study for exams.  However, in class I have found that it is essential to have the text book with me. The instructor constantly refers to page and line numbers.  It takes a while for everyone to search and find the passage.  E-books would make this so much easier.  I have noticed that the students do not make any marks in their textbook.  I ask some of them why and it’s because they all plan to sell the book back to the bookstore.  In light of that, I believe it would be hard to convince them to use e-books, unless they were offered at substantially discounted prices.  The companion CD also has note taking capabilities.  When text is highlighted and copied a notepad application pops up.  If only they had their entire book on this CD. I thought that taking this class would be fun, but it has ended up being more work than I had anticipated.

My cable went out Friday afternoon and I spent the next seven hours trying to get someone to come out and fix it.  Apparently, when it was installed they never covered the cable outside.  The guy who cuts my grass also cut my cable.  Time Warner said that was a very low priority in the world of repairs.  My you I also have digital phone service along with TV service and Internet.  So my being without a phone wasn’t their concern.  It wasn’t until I told them to cancel my service that I suddenly became a priority.  So suddenly instead of one week they were at my door yesterday.  I have had enough of Road Runner.  I am changing to a new service called Embarq.  Satellite here I come.  My only reservation is that I will have DSL.  If any of you have it, let me know how good it is compared to Cable (Broadband).

I need to update my post from yesterday.  ­­­­Paul commented that reading e-books is possible if in HTML format. Doh! I should have realized that and didn’t, so thanks.  All I would have to do is email my e-books to myself or probably just upload them to my Google account.  I can live with that until someone comes up with another solution.  He also informed me that I won’t get 22 hours of battery life when reading since I would have the backlight on.  Tamas wrote that Bloglines has optimized their site for iPhones and there are other sites as well.  I did a quick search and one place really caught my interest.  iPhoneAlley has a post about a free beta service called Booksoniphone.com.  From what I can tell there are over 20,000 e-books available on site, and I am guessing that it is public domain.  What I like is that I can upload my own files for viewing.  The site is only accessible via your iPhone unless you are uploading files. So I am going to try this on my husband’s phone and will update you.  Also I have been reading the Apple iPhone feature page more closely and found this:

Q.  What types of email attachments can I view on iPhone?

A.  iPhone displays most picture attachments (JPEG, GIF, and TIFF) in-line with the text in email messages. iPhone can also view PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel email attachments.

So far this would give me 5 ways to view e-books.  This is looking better by the minute.   I also found a way to view RSS feeds on the iPhone Central Blog.  The article states that Newsgator  has an optimized mobile client for the iPhone.  Another comment revealed that Texterity, Inc has launched a beta version of a digital magazine viewer for the iPhone.  You can read the article here. So stop by iPhone Central and read more.  I have also added it to my Blogroll.   I am starting to warm up to the iPhone, especially now, since my husband will be one of the many first adopters getting the $100 credit.

I am not a cell phone fan.  The only reasons why I keep mine around are for emergencies and being able to surf the web on my Nokia N800.  So when the iPhone was introduced, I didn’t really get excited.  My husband has one and I have to admit it is an awesome phone.  The screen is beautiful and the iPhone has an intuitive user interface. I really like the scroll , enlarging pictures, and Internet pages effortlessly with your fingers. Then the drawbacks become apparent real fast.  First up is the battery life.  It gets worse for my husband as time goes by.  He gets less than three hours of constant web browsing, or about 2 hours of video viewing.  If he uses the phone only as a phone then the battery life is tolerable, lasting about 2 days, but then again he doesn’t talk much on the phone.  The next drawback is the iPhone Bluetooth capabilities.  It can only be used when making phone calls.  Once he switches to video or music, the Bluetooth is automatically turned off.  That makes no sense to me. Another thing I don’t like is that it is hard to get RSS feeds going.  I suppose this is due to Safari’s limitations.  His only feed was from Daily Lit and after the first day he could not get anymore feeds.  What I find really fascinating is that it has YouTube capabilities, but no reading software, no available games.  I must be getting old, because while I do view some stuff on Youtube, it would never be one of my must haves on a device.  Wouldn’t it be just as easy to include some sort of reader on the iPhone? 

So now the iPod touch has arrived, which is thinner than the iPhone, but no camera, no Bluetooth, no mention of a RSS feed reader, and still no application to read e-books.  I don’t get it this.  The 3.5″ display and touch interface would be perfect for reading.  I tried to find more specifics on the device, but I don’t believe there is an extras section containing a calendar, notes, to do list, contacts, or game applications.  I hope I am wrong, since my itty bitty first generation iPod Nano has these features.  I was really tempted, but I am going to have to pass on this one until I get more information or updates are announced.  I don’t know who decided that a text reader wasn’t necessary, but it’s like the iPod touch does everything, but the one thing it should have included.  Even Palm reader and Mobipocket have recognized that people want to carry books on their smart phones.  Just think, a 3.5″ bright color screen that automatically changes orientation when you turn it, finger scrolling, zooming (possibly good for pdf files), and backlighting.  I read that it has 22 hours of music play back, so using it for reading should give even better battery life.  While it would be nice to add memory, 16 gb would be more than enough for me. I really would skip the 8 gb since you can double your capacity for only $100 more.  That’s why the 4 gb iPhone is gone.  It’s make no economic sense.  So should you skip the iPod touch and go for the competitively priced iPhone?  That’s a tough call, and I think that’s what Apple and AT&T are betting on. I will be keeping my eye on this.  If Apple doesn’t make a reader available for the iPod touch, I know it’s only a matter of time before someone develops a work around. 

After reading on various sites that Palm has decided to pull the plug on the Foleo, I received a newsletter from Palm complete with Ed Colligan’s letter stating the same.  So what does this really mean?  Did Palm realize that the people don’t want or need this device?  In case you don’t know or have forgotten, the Foleo was an expensive light weight mobile companion device.  The intent was that it was to work with your smartphone.  So in essence it’s just a big screen mirror (with keyboard) of your smartphone’s screen connected and synced via Bluetooth.  It looks like a mini notebook with a 10″ screen except it’s not and couldn’t be used as one either.  My immediate thought back in May when it was announced was, “Why doesn’t the screen swivel so it can be used as a tablet PC?”  From the pictures I saw, the Foleo just looked like it was begging someone to make it into an UMPC.  Since the device could not run palm applications on its own, I just dismissed it from my mind.  I am glad that Palm decided to scrap this product.  Hopefully from the feedback across the Web they will go back to what they do best.  It has been so long since a new Palm device has been introduced.  I think that the Foleo could make it if they put in an OS system and make the device into a convertible tablet.  I could even go with the OS being Windows Mobile. That would enable e-book readers to have most if not all the dominate formats on board and a 10″ color screen.  The bonus would be that it could also be used for Internet browsing, email, letters, etc.  The end result is the perfect e-book reading device/laptop/tablet PC/mobile Internet device/UMPC.  Then I think they could justify the $600 price tag and I would pre-order the second the site came up.  So here’s hoping to next time.

P.S.  The Palm link above points to the letter in its entirety