Mobile Tech News -- Publishing Directly to Kindle, Handmark Buys Astraware, Express Translation Service

Amazon Kindle To Be Used in A Beta Book Publishing Test

In a move that seems like an attempt to overthrow the traditional publishing side of book reading, Daniel Oran is taking advantage of the Amazon Kindle and its ability to reach users by offering a 99 cent beta version of his coming book Believe.

According to the website ReadWriteWeb, "Oran is also using the site to solicit and gather thoughts from early readers." This would seem to meet just kinds of goals that were set out when the Amazon Kindle was released in the late Fall. After this "beta test," Oran plans to publish Believe by traditional publishing methods.

Kindle users can visit the Believe sale page on Amazon to download the book to their devices. Proceeds from Believe will be donated to the Neediest Cases Fund.

Handmark and Astraware Announce New Business Relationship

Astraware has been a long-time staple of games and other applications for mobile devices, and Handmark as been a long time destination for those shopping for solid and useful titles for their devices. Now, these two have announced that Astraware will become part of the Handmark family of companies.

As part of this new business partnership, Astraware will expand its existing U.K. games development studio to develop new high-profile licenses as well as continuing work on original titles. In addition, Astraware will release their first titles for Symbian S60 and UIQ in the first quarter of 2008, and will add games for BlackBerry devices later in the year.

Paragon Software Showcases Unveils SlovoEd Express Translation Service

Using smartphones and PDAs as language assistants when traveling is nothing new; however, doing so without having to save large dictionaries on the device is something innovative being brought to market with the SlovoEd Express Translation Service. This wireless network solution offers a collection of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries directly to the mobile device without using up as much space on the device as traditional translation dictionaries.

The Windows Mobile service allows SlovoEd users to get precise translations -- either in the traditional way of downloading one or several programs on the device, or by choosing a language and getting a one-year subscription to the SlovoEd Express Translation Service.

The SlovoEd Express Translation Service is currently being demoed at CES in Las Vegas.

For more information, visit the SlovoEd web site.