This is a post I made over at MobileRead. Some people may read my blog, and not visit there.

The following is a list of everything you can do on your iLiad. This includes stock functions, and things made possible by third party apps from the community. Hopefully this list will continue to grow as we get more developers interested in this platform.

1. Reading
   1. Formats you can read
   2. PDF

      1. Zoom in and out of PDF’s. Allows you to view documents not formatted for the iLiad’s screen

      2. View PDF’s in Portrait and Landscape mode. Also helps viewing documents

      3. Follow Hyperlinks and move back and forward

      4. Scribble on any PDF document. You can later merge the scribbles on your desktop.
      5. Bookmark specific pages inside a PDF.
      6. Automatically zoom and browse PDF’s that are in column format. Helpful for technical articles.
      7. Use gestures to perform various functions inside a PDF.
      8. Read in full screen, without the bottom tool bar.
   3. Mobipocket
      1. Read DRM protected and non DRM’ed Mobipocket books.
      2. Increase the font size of text within a mobipocket book.
      3. Look up words in a dictionary while you’re reading.
      4. Browse a book by the table of contents
   4. HTML
   5. TXT
   6. Unencrypted LIT files.
   7. Microsoft Word documents, RTF documents
   8. Microsoft Excel Files
   9. Supported by FBReader (Registry Installer)

  1. Increase and decrease font size
  2. Read in Full Screen mode
  3. Have a clock displayed on the screen while reading
  4. Search within a document
  5. Browse table of contents
  6. Organize a Book library

  * RTF
  * CHM
  * OEB
  * OPF
  * FB2
  * TCR

1. Other Media
   • JPG
   • PNG
   • BMP
   • 2 Audio Playing Applictions Support: Content Lister Based & Graphical Application
     • MP3
     • OGG
     • WAV
     • MOD
2. Internet Connectivity
   • Surf the Web using Dillo or Minimo
   • Download new comics daily.
3. Play Games
   • Chess
   • Mahjongg
   • Interactive Fiction
   • Sudoku. Also available at Feedbooks.com
   • GnuGo (in text mode)
4. For Developers and Linux geeks
   • Open a terminal on the iLiad
   • Install an SSH server and have it automatically started at boot
   • Browse the file system on the iLiad and move files around.
   • Use the iLiad as a Wacom tablet on your Linux computer.
5. Security store your passwords and keep them updated with your PC, Mac, or other mobile devices.
6. Keep a Calender, Contacts, and Todo List on the iLiad.
7. Edit simple text files and programming source code.
8. Connect a USB Keyboard to your iLiad
9. . Use as a Compact Flash and MMC/SD card reader for your PC.
10. . Automatically download and upload files to and from your networked Windows computer with the companion software. (On Mac’s and Linux PC’s with Samba too).
11. . Take screenshots of running programs on the iLiad.

I’ve got my iLiad back! It was at UPS for the last 5 days because support forgot to put the address on the shipping label (it only had my name, city, state, and zip).

It’s charging and updating the software now.

The screen looks better than I remember when I first got it. The whites are very white, and the shades of grey are much more defined. I really couldn’t be happier with it at this point. :)

I’ve completed a script that will allow you to read Microsoft .Lit (Reader) files on the iLiad. It uses my port of convertlit.

Basically what will happen, is you copy the .lit file to your iLiad. You will select it from the contentlister like you would a PDF or any other document. When you do that, it will launch my convertlit script. It will explode the lit file into an OEB, and automatically create the manifest.xml with the Author’s name and title of the book. It will even use the cover art embedded in the lit as an icon in the contentlister.

After that, you will need to delete the lit file yourself (I won’t do it, in case something went wrong), and open the OEB with FBReader.

I’ve tested this with a few example LIT files I’ve found online. I haven’t, however, tested with a DRM5 file as noted in convertlit’s help document. If anyone has one of these types of files and would like me to test, I’d be happy to do so.

Following in the footsteps of Dell and Google, iRex has created a corporate blog.

I think this is a great idea, as it allows people to get further insight into the company and learn about things they wouldn’t otherwise. As long as it’s updated on a regular basis, this could be a very good thing. Especially for keeping an open dialog between the company and it’s customers.

They’ve also added me to their blogroll, so I wanted to thank them for that as well.

So I got this email today:

Dear Mr. Boeglin,

Thank you for your email.

I would like to inform you that we replaced your battery. The device has been repaired and was send to you on the 11.09.2007.

Your repaired device has been send to the following address:

Kind regards

Technical Support Centre
iRex Technologies

They didn’t mention the screen repair, but since that was the main issue on the ticket, I’m sure it was reolved since they did not say otherwise. I had shipped my iLiad last Wednesday, after it was already in the mail, I emailed iRex support asking them to look into my battery issues. I’ve only been able to get ~6 hours on a charge, and never receive the low battery warning. I expect to receive my iLiad today or tomorrow. With a new battery and a screen that doesn’t have burn-in or excessive ghosting, it’ll be like a brand new device!

I just wanted to say thanks to iRex for their great support! This is the second time it’s been sent to them (first was a brick that was my fault). Both times I’ve had great communication and fast shipping. I know some haven’t had as good of luck as I have, but I have only praise for them.

Things have been pretty quiet on the iLiad front for me lately. Right now, my iLiad is at iRex’s repair facility because of Screen Burn and Excessive Ghosting. I wanted to get it taken care of before my warranty is up in December.

I do have some things in the pipeline that will be pretty cool. I’m helping port and test the Feedbooks Downloader. There were a few font issues, and it needs a status bar, but overall it’s a very cool program and will add a lot of functionality to the iLiad.

I’m also working on porting the updated version of FBReader with support for the .epub standard. In addition, I’ll be modifying the installer so that you can open up supported books directly from the contentlister.

AbiWord and Gnumeric will be updated as well with an installer and Contentlister support.

There should be a lot of excitement after the 2.11 release.

It seems that compiling Minimo for the iLiad wasn’t necessary. In early firmware versions, you could use the standard Minimo installation to browse the web. Although, you didn’t have your own address bar or navigation buttons. Further on, iRex patched their code to prevent this. I was digging around in the firmware today when I found the launch mozilla script. After setting Minimo to use the modified libX11 and replacing the included chrome templates with that of another Minimo release, I was able to get a working web browser.

There are still a few things that need to be done before I can release it. I have to test whether or not it can function in a non-standard directory (so that it can run from the compact flash card). I also need to work out screen refreshes. Right now it does a full refresh every time the page loads. This can get annoying. I should be able to get it to work with a partial update. It’s very cool to have a full featured browser on the iLiad. I can now check Gmail on the go.

For ongoing discussion, click: here.

I’ve ported GPE Calendar, Contacts, and Todo for the iLiad. Since they share so many libraries, I’ve included them in a single package. GPE does not have any sync abilities that I’m aware of, so you won’t be able to keep it updated with your PC. But, it’s a step in the right direction.

It’s a standard installer, unzip it to your memory card, and run on the iLiad.

Cross Posting from: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12861

I’ve created a comic strip downloader for the iLiad. It uses the site http://high5.net/comic/ to download the day’s comics.

There are two versions of it.

Automatic Daily Downloader

Manualy Initiated Downloader

The Automatic version is for more advanced users who have the unbricking package. It uses cron to setup an automatic daily download. With this version, as long as your iLiad is connected to the internet at 8am, your comics will be ready for you.

The Manual version is for the Average Joe. When you slect the program, it will check to see if it’s updated today. If it has not, it will automatically open the connection manager, and download the day’s comics. When finished, it will open FBReader and display the comic page. If it has already downloaded, it will simply open FBReader with the comics.

Whichever you use, it’s a very cool way to read comics and show off some of the potential of the device.

With the release of general developer unbricking coming soon, I’ve started to prepare packages for many apps. From here on out, all of my packages will be released as ipk’s with a shell script installer. I’ve finished Abiword, including a script to modify er_registry, to allow you to open Microsoft Word documents directly from the contentlister. I’m working on Gnumeric now, and will update the FBReader package with the registry hack as well.

Pretty soon, anyone with the developer package and unbricking support will be able to open almost any document they’d like on the iLiad. These are going to be some pretty exciting times.