Second issue of Rucker's webzine is now online

Greets Cap,

This older topic showed up on the pop content last-read module, no doubt you've already discovered this useful prog but recently purloined a palm and 'ave been enjoying web-pages and ebooks on the porta, via the iSilo prog.

The process is fairly automated, log onto the infobahn, run the iSiloX utility, plug in the webpages address,  set how many links deep you want it to crawl, and it creates an offline version of the webpage complete with active links and images (if you so desire) for reading on your palm.

Thus far I've only placed a few full ebooks on there, some Cyberpunk starting with Gibson's Neuromancer and Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra - the latter purloined from Project Guttenberg - an excellent local for free ebooks.

Primarily I find it useful for taking webpages and Economist articles with me and I find it has re-ignited my interest in short-stories.  Though I'm not convinced one of which, a Lydia Davis, actually exists.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Timothy McSweeney made her up.

'ave you found any ebooks, progs or interesting games you'd recommend?

myself, on the game front, aside from the usual suspects (read: Ms. Pacman, Tetris, Palmboy: a Nintendo Gameboy emulator, some D&D games und a die roller) I found a Tradewars variant (Space Traders) , and I'm particularly fond of Bubble Shooter, a touch-pen version of Puzzle Bobble that is extremely addictive. 

So much so that I suspect that an inexpensive standalone (read: chinese knockoff - Ed) touch-pen version of it might make millions.  The pen control is the key, it raises the addictive quality of the game exponentially, imo.  I prefer the original Bubble Shooter for OS 3.5 (see bottom of linked page above) but there are numerous versions available.

Should you or anyone get the bug, a breakdown of the versions for Palm OS:

1. standalone original Color Bubble Shooter for OS3.5+

2. Bubble Shooter Golden Pack for OS 3.5+ containing the original color Bubble Shooter .. + Bubble Flytrix + Bubble Thriller + they're currently offering Bubble Shooter 2 for free to people that order the Golden pack, making for *scribble* *scribble* *erase* 4 games in this pack.

3. the newest version Bubble Shooter Mobile for Palm OS 5

And then we apparently have the Windows and Mac versions. 

Which is far too complicated to explain (read: he's in the process of downloading them -Ed)

Quite.  I don't expect to enjoy them as much however as it's really the palm touch pen that makes this game work for me.

There appear to be at least 4 Windows versions.

1. The Premium Edition

2. The Deluxe Edition

3. The Golden Pack Deluxe (+ Golden Pack Xmas Edition)

and

4. The Mobile Edition.  <-- Why there is a Windows version of the Mobile edition I do not yet know but there we 'ave it.

Do you or anyone for that matter have anything to recommend for the Palm? if so please fire away.

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.

Update: For anyone interested, discovered yet still even more (read: earlier) Windows versions of Bubbleshooter.

The Windows versions linked to at the above page (BS Deluxe, BS Gold Pack Deluxe, BS Gold Pack Xmas Edition and BS Premium) are fully featured trial versions that de-activate entirely after 60 minutes of play.

The earlier Windows versions conversely adopt the user-friendly perpetually-playable-with-limited-features-until-you-register approach. 

Making them the better selection for anyone that wants more than 60 minutes of trial play.

Bubble Shooter v2.14 (bare bones ver, sound but no music)

Bubble Shooter v4.05 (strategy + arcade mode, sound no music)

Bubble Shooter v5.02 (strategy + arcade + sniper mode + sound + music)

all 3 found here.

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.

I use my Palm TX primarly for watching movies and reading books and comic books. Here are the programs that I use:

Books:

MobiPocket Reader
It's easy to organize ebooks into libraries with this program and you can change your fonts and display sizes to find a combination that is easy on your eyes. You can bookmark the last page you read so that you can quickly find your spot when you resume reading and can annotate texts to your heart's content. I'm using version 4.8, but the most current version is 6.1 so I don't know what bells and whistles have been added since, but I'm willing to bet that the older version is probably better because it's simpler.

Comic Books:

Resco PhotoViewer
There are a couple of comic-book reading programs for PalmOS, but none of them seemed satisfactory. After reading up on the subject, a lot of people claimed it was easier to read them with photo-viewing software. Since those CBR comic book archives are nothing more than RAR archives of JPEGs, it's a simple matter to expand the archive, load it onto the Pam and view the pages as any other image files. While it's relatively easy to navigate through the pages and read them by zooming and panning, the biggest annoyance is a lack of bookmarking functionality.

Video:

TCPMP
This video player is no longer supported, but it's open source and it works well for me.

The only game that I find myself playing on my Palm is Bejewelled. I've tried the Trade Wars clone, but it's not nearly as interesting without any other human players involved.

Thanx Cap, great progs (particularly TCPMP) why excellent ware wind up unsupported/abandoned is oft tree boggling.

For Palm Comic Book Readers I found ComiX and ComicGuru

but on that abandonware note I rather enjoy(ed) Beamable.

Link dead, cannot locate reference to a new site.  Apparently a ghost remnant of the daze of comic book reading infobahn past.

You know the world is moving at a temporal mach pace when you consider a couple of years ago the distant past.

AFAIK it was a proprietary comic book format reader, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I found Beamable quite appealing. Moreso than any other palm comic book reader I've (yet) come across.

1. Images were optimized for viewing on your palm screen.

a) higher color and higher rez images may look good on a Win/Mac/Linux PC Desktop in Comical or ComicDisplay, but if they're not converted to your palm's screen specs they don't look so snarfy on the portable. 

I found Beamable's images bright and clean and for lack of a better term, quite aesthetically comic-bookie.

b) each page's panel was centred and blown full screen, displayed in sequential order, rather than displaying an entire page.  

result: easier to read; easier to focus; very much in tune with how one -actually- reads a comic.

which in turn allowed for an innovative feature,

2. large readable overlaid speech balloons.

Instead of fishing about zooming and panning, all text balloons are rolled in large readable print over the panel; if people are chatting, you tap the screen and the next speech balloon pops up over the speaker's head.

The drawback to Beamable and perhaps the reason they were apparently abandoned was likely the business model. They charged per comic and they apparently weren't compatible with the standard cbr/z/rar jpg image format.

imo if you re-released beamable and used a non-intrusive imbedded advertising model (targeted ads, instead of charging per comic) + opened up the source code so members could create free subscriber comic-books, I would think that Beamable could well become a killer palm app for comic book fans on the go.

In any event, the current Palm Comic Book (cbz/cbr format) Readers that I found are:

1. ComiX

2. ComicGuru

both come with image size/rez/color converters and comic book readers and charge a one-time fee for the software.  Comix is the Nintendo, Guru the Sony.

Personally, in terms of the palm comic book reading experience, I preferred Beamable over-all to both.

I also like your/Cap’s method of renaming a .cbr file to .a rar file, un-rar’ing and copying the jpg images to your portable. 

Couple this with an image converter (to batch-convert the images specifically to your palms screen specs) and a good image viewer and presto your own high quality cbr format comic book reader.  Good idea.

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.

You lot are no doubt already awares, but I found this good local for interesting free downloadable comic books: http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/

Some early SF pulp in there.

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.

Marvel Digital Comics: http://www.marvel.com/digitalcomics

If you're looking for Classic Marvel comics and back issues, Marvel Digital Comics has a couple of thousand comics on their Digital Comics (online reading) service. 

Note: I'm unable to get past page 4 on any of their "free" comics, it prompts you to sign into/sign up for the service (*possibly* related to the "U.S or Other" question you're prompted to answer when you first hit the site - try selecting U.S, you may get past page 4 on free comics) but  my experience is that you're not getting past page 4 even on free comics.  Please let me know if you are able to.

In any case, from what I've seen, it's quite good. 

Page transitions are nice (an animation of the page turning) you can view by single page or double page layout with a zoom feature on either, and my personal favorite, the smart panel view mode (which does what Beamable did - auto-focuses and zooms a single panel at a time, you simply press your right arrow key to read a page in sequential panel order - ergo no need to fish about panning and zooming)

The $5 a month subscription fee (when you sign up for $60 a year) is not bad.

But I would have 2 suggs to make it worth my while.

1. I should prefer being able to auto-save the comics to my hard-drive. 

For 2 reasons.

a) so as I can keep issues on my HD and read them offline at my pleasure.

I try to avoid "temporary live renting" whenever possible, it tends to feel like ether-economics given that at the end of the day, you've spent money and own nothing tangible. 

id est. I prefer to buy a movie for $10-$20 at the video-rental-store than rent it for $6 new.

b) so as there is no need to constantly (re)-download pages on the fly, which appears to be the current model.  A time and PC resources consuming process.

2. Failing the former sugg, then including 2 NEW issues/comics (chosen by the subscriber preferably) would likely push me over into/justify the $5 a month subscription model.

Otherwise, I'd more likely be interested in a $5 a month NetFlix like NEW Comic service. Save in digital download form.

For Marvel's back-catalog and reading all those seminal Marvel comic-book story-arc's, the service is quite good; the online reader is excellent, imo the service just needs a little extra to justify the $5 monthly subscription fee.

It appears to be undergoing change, so it's one to keep an eye out on.

Judge for yourself 'ere: http://www.marvel.com/digitalcomics/

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.

UPDATE: was able to get past page 4 on "free" Marvel Digital Comics.

it wasn't accepting my free marvel (website) account sign-in _in the MDC reader_ pop-up sign-in module, however if you log into your free marvel account at the website _first_ and then load the MDC reader, you will be logged into the MDC reader automagically and can read complete digital comics for free. For a limited time.

All free titles are listed here: http://www.marvel.com/digitalcomics/free

Was also able to save pages from the free comics to my hard-drive. 

However that would likely be classified as hacking.  or an exploit.  or an oversight. Or as I choose to see it: A gift from Marvel to the fans.

(un-hunh - Ed) 

One that isn't terribly difficult to figure out - if you know your way around Firefox, you'll readilly suss it.

The caveat  is that my testing seems to indicate that the MDC reader is designed to overlay a comic's text balloons over its image.  So there are 2 separate files per comic book page. 1 for the text, 1 for the image.

The upshot: The image that you save to your HD, will be one -without- the text balloons. 

I find that appealing, because one can scan a favorite page from one's own comic books, or find others that have, but rarely do you get the original art -without- any text on it. 

Because of the MDC reader's unique format now you can.

It's obviously not useful for saving (readable - Ed) comics to your HD, but it is particularly useful for wall-paper/art purposes. 

If you're a fan of  Jean-Grey/Marvel Girl/The Phoenix/The Dark Phoenix, The X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong front cover for example, is ..hot.

Unfortunately it reminds me of my red-headed high school flame, who it now occurs to me I might very well have fallen in love with because she looked, felt and acted, like Jean Grey.  or perhaps I projected that onto her.

Look it was High School OK.

and so setting it as wall-paper has sent me balmy thank you very much.

WARNING: In theory "Smart Mode" is great, in practice it sucks lark's vomit. 

It only works properly on some comics, on others it _skips_ the zooming and centering of some panels, ergo rending it unreliable as a means of reading a comic at this time. 

It can also lead to an *MDC reader freeze-up.

*should you purposefully or accidentally back up a page and it attempts to  "smart-panel" over the cover-page, the MDC reader may freeze up. 

It happened on my PC on select occasions at any rate. This is not something you want to happen when you've loaded up 22 pages at 500k a page, because you will have to close the (frozen - Ed) MDC reader and re-download all 22 500k pages to read the rest of the comic.

I suggest 1024x768 screen rez and 1-page read-mode.

1. the images are clearer and there's no alias'ing/no slight jagged lines from images being re-sized to lower screen resolutions.

2. no MDC reader freezes have yet occured in full-single-page read mode.

Corrections submitted, I shall now bugger off. 

Merry Christmas and/or Joy-to-You-and-Your-Religious-Denomination Day! and/or Happy Holidays to all!

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.