By Andrew Liszewski
While it’s nice to see the Sony Portable Reader finally showing up in their online store, in true ‘Sony Style’ it’s missing a few features that some users might want.
The Iliad E-Reader from iRex Technologies is looking to be a nice alternative to Sony’s own Reader. Instead of Memory Stick & SD, the Iliad has slots for storing books on Compact Flash, SD and MMC, in addition to the 224 MB of available flash memory built-in. It can also access new content via a USB hook-up or through a WiFi connection. The Iliad supports PDF, XHTML and TXT with other formats being added in the ‘near future’ but also includes MP3 capabilities with a built-in headphone jack allowing audiobooks to be enjoyed when you’re just too lazy to read.
The Iliad’s biggest advantage is that its touch-sensitive screen can be used to jot down notes on ‘blank paper’, or mark-up books and documents that have already been uploaded to the device.
The Iliad E-Reader will be available in April 2006. Pricing information is to be announced.
[iRex Iliad E-Reader] VIA [Ubergizmo]
I have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS style sheets and can produce documents with these. However, I am not sure about XHTML – what is this? Will the iliad accept HTML documents?
XHTML is a stricter form of HTML. For instance, in HTML you don’t need to close all your elements, and you can use mixed case in element names (ImG, IMG, img are all fine); in XHTML you need to close all elements, and all code needs to be lowercase.
XHTML is like HTML an official W3C specification, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find more information. HTML editors should be able to produce XHTML, and otherwise there is always the excellent Tidy tool.
What will this gadget cost?