TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for December, 2004

By David Rothman

When the Greensboro News & Record ran “Bus Driver Bob’s” obit on the front page of the final edition, it accidentally omitted the continuation on an inside page. In the past there would have been just a rerun of the story and a formulaic apology. You’d never have seen a personal note from Editor John Robinson (photo) appearing the same day in a blog.

OK, now here’s the library angle. Does anyone know of top librarians of big-city libraries doing their own blogs? Perhaps explaining new services or problems with the old? Or sharing the enthusiasm for certain authors? Must everything be library-impersonal? Among librarians, the troops have long been blogging, and then there’s Tasha Saecker’s gem of a blog for the small-town system that she runs in Wisconsin; but how about the top people in big-city libraries? For that matter, James Billington, Librarian of Congress, while not always the most clueful guy about ebooks and the Net, could do one heck of a blog–covering not just library matters but also those within his field of Russian studies.

Both stodgy, both in need of Contact

Newspapers and libraries tend to have much in common, as oft-stody institutitions that almost pride themselves on not keeping up with the times. So it’s good to see Robinson’s blog and the N&R’s other activities in the same spirit. Must be something in the water in Greensboro, North Carolina (population 223,891). Jeff Thigpen, Greensboro’s register of deeds, also has a blog going. If other ‘crats can do it, why can’t top library administrators? Perhaps something for Sandy Neerman, Greensboro’s well-regarded library director, to consider? Her system already has a lively and well-organized Web site, incuding, I might add, a netLibrary-related link promoted on the home page. So, at least from afar, it looks as if a Neerman blog would be in character.

But back to The Big Picture. Given the funding woes of so many American library systems, blogging could be A Very Good Thing. Administrators would not just be writing about library services, but also getting feedback along the way from other bloggers from outside librarydom. Too many library ‘crats move within narrow social circles, a problem not unknown to journalists or others such as cops (yes, blogging could be a great form of outreach for police departments–especially as audio and video blogs take off and the medium spreads farther beyond the elite).

Hiring criterion

With blogging so promising as a bridge between bureaucracies and the public, including the press, maybe the relevant skills should be among the criteria for hiring top liberarians and other government administrators. No, I’m not expecting most library ‘crats to blog as often or as eloquently as trained journalists like Robinson. But heartfelt blogs could go a long way toward winning friends for local libraries.

Related: Citizen Journalism: A Newspaper That Gets It, in Dan Gillmor’s blog.

Housekeeping note: I’m on the road this weekend, after a nice stay with inlaws in Statesville, North Carolina, and will be packing up everything electronic except for my Sony PDA (no danger of running out of reading material–not with scores of e-books on it). Back late Sunday or Monday. Happy New Year, everyone! If you haven’t already, check out Six biggest news stories in e-bookdom in 2004.

By David Rothman

A beta version of the GEB eBook Librarian lets you adjust your font size and margins and also bold the text that you import into the eBookwise-1150 and other machines that use Gemstar technology, including the RCA eBooks.

Download the beta from this page. To access the new features, choose “Advanced” within the “Create New” menu.

Great for people with vision problems

For the moment, the option will work only with .txt files you bring in, but programmer Steve Breen will soon be offering capabilities in other formats as well. Hey, way to go! Thanks to Steve, the Gemstar-related machines will be far more useful to people with vision problems.

Even if you enjoy normal sight, just bolding could make a major difference in the viewability of the 1150’s screen, especially when you’re using the smaller of the two existing font choices.

This is just a hint of good stuff to come from Steve, including, yes, import of OpenReader files after the exact format is settled on. Steve also will be working on OpenReader importation for other machines. Cool!

Biz details

If you like GEB eBook Librarian beta, you can register it for $15. The final results will also be available as the eBookwise Librarian, sold to owners of the eBookwise machine for $9.95.

Details: Justification is possible, too, with the new beta– although, given the line lengths involved, you may well prefer to do without it if you’re using the 1150 or a similar machine. Justification would make more sense on the larger-screened RCA color eBooks and the like. As for owners of the 1100 machines and perhaps some others, keep in mind that the old eBook Librarian from Nuvomedia does let you vary styles and sizes of type by picking up your desktop fonts. However, the Breen program could be handy for other reasons.

By

So is the quality/crap ratio deteriorating in the free regions of the Internet? Here are some thoughts from Adrian Viegas in Techtree.com: India’s High Tech Daily:

I had depended on the Internet a lot when I was doing my first year of masters in English Literature. My work didn’t give me the time to visit libraries, but it opened the entire Internet to me. Information was very easily available. More important was the quality of the essays and reviews posted on the Internet. Quite often I needed information and quotes of a critic on a particular text and it was up there on the Net in someone’s essay. The next year I just couldn’t recognize the Internet. None of the sites I had bookmarked opened. If they did, they asked me to pay…

So what did happen to the Internet? It seems going paid killed it. And what I can’t understand is why we let it happen. Those essays were mainly written by students who posted on the Internet, because they knew they were good and people would find them useful. Now I ask what happened to the next generation of students. Instead of knowledge being free we have neatly gone and packaged it and called it eLearning for which you pay a bomb.

Needless to say, a TeleRead-style approach could improve the quality-crap ratio of freebies while providing for proper incentives for content-creators.

Detail: I certainly don’t agree with all that Viegas says about e-books: “The Internet has given us ebooks, but no one really wants to make a portable reader that can be carried around. True you get cell phones and a few PDAs supporting ebooks, but they aren’t fun. ” Hmm. Between the Cybook and my Sony PDA–and good e-book sites such as Blaskmask–I’m in hog heaven. Yes, things could be a lot better; and many, alas, would agree with the Washington education lobbyist who told me: “Who wants to read old books?” But I think Viegas reaches too far to make his point.

By

If you doubt that the Tower of eBabel is a turnoff for prospective converts to e-books, check out a clueful post by Rochelle Hartman–a librarian friend of mine in the midwest. Rochelle is not a programmer. But she is far, far more tech-savvy than the typical librarian. In character, in the Tinfoil+Raccoon blog (”looking for the new and shiny in libraryland and beyond”), she warns of the harm that proprietary formats can do.

Rochelle says that if she were to pay $18.50 for an autobiography of Bill Clinton in electronic form, there would be “no guarantee that I could use that book forever… because it wouldn’t necessarily migrate if I bought a new machine. There’s something rather disposable about the proprietary format, which is another reason that ebooks still haven’t caught fire. I feel horrible recycling a $3.00 magazine that I know I’ll never read again. There’s no way I’m going to spend $18 on a book that I can’t keep for several years, or resell if it’s a dud.”

The confusion factor

Consider, too, another problem with proprietary formats–consumer confusion and the devastating effect on sales of e-book-related hardware and content. Rochelle has been trying out a loaner RCA REB1200 e-book for a library-related project in which I’m also involved; and I told her, correctly, that I couldn’t scare up the Clinton autobiography in a format for that particular machine. In her post she worried she would not be able to read the Clinton book electronically, period. But I’m glad to say that if she can tolerate a small screen and risk format obsolescence, then her loaner Sony Clie will work with the Clinton book in Mobipocket format; this particular Clie already has reading software installed for Mobipocket. I’ll blame the little misunderstanding on myself, not Rochelle, and help her get the e-book edition going if she wants. I’m just happy that Clinton’s My Life is not a Microsoft Reader-only book. Otherwise Rochelle would be out of luck since the Clie and RCA don’t run any form of Windows–a required operating system for Reader books. Nothing like letting the software industry dictate your e-reading tastes, eh?

Rochelle’s main point, of course, holds up beautifully–that the format war is bad news for consumer. The situation with the RCA and Clie, the tricky question of which books can display on which machines, is a splendid example of the confusion that ensues when the industry is in such a mess. Wait. There’s more. Remember, lawyers from Gemstar or another company have apparently thwarted Fictionwise’s efforts to make recent DRMed e-books conveniently available for the RCA and other machines that use Gemstar technology.

A raccoon-friendly solution

OpenReader, anyone? The idea isn’t to force everybody to use the same reader, but rather offer a common format that could be digested by an open source program, proprietary software from Microsoft, a rival program from Adobe, you name it. Different programs can have different interfaces and different coding. Only the format for the actual e-books will be identical. OpenReader will also promote standardization of the accompanying DRM and seek to make it less onerous than the present varieties–something that will be inherently easier with standards in place.

Jon Noring is the main ringleader for the OpenReader Consortium, and prospective volunteers and industry supporters can reach him at jon@openreader.org. He and I are on the lookout not just for hardcore techies but also standards-setters from related fields such as libraries and publishing–people who know what they want. OpenReader will build on a production format that Jon helped refine for the Open eBook Forum (not to be confused with the OpenReader Consortium), which, alas, has stubbornly refused to create a true consumer format despite past promises.

The price issue

As a newcomer to e-books, Rochelle will also be learning further about another form of insanity–prices. Why is it that so many mainstream publishers insist on gouging e-stores and consumers for the electronic versions? Amazon.com is selling the Clinton book new in hardback for $21 and directing people to used p-editions for as little as $10.99. The price of the e-book from Amazon in Adobe or Microsoft format? $18.48 despite no “shipping costs” but server space and bandwidth. And a Mobipocket version apparently isn’t even available from Amazon.

Luckily Rochelle can buy the book in Mobipocket–the best proprietary format for recreational reading on the Clie, far better than Adobe, which also has a reader for Palm-style machines–from eBooks.com. But the eBooks.com price will be $28. The same applies at Fictionwise unless you use rebate offers for “Club” members ($19.04 after rebate) or Micropay users ($22.40). What a downer for consumers and e-stores. I realize that the publishers are trying to protect their hardback sales. But mightn’t they be better off pricing e-books reasonably to do higher volume than they would otherwise?

The DRM Mafia

Of course, in fairness to publishers, it does not help the appeal of e-books when the DRM Mafia charges prices that at times exceed 15 percent of revenue. This is the kind of abuse we intend to wipe out with the OpenReader format. We want software companies to prosper, but let them make their bucks honestly rather than overcharging the publishing industry, libraries and the rest of us to justify the many redundancies in the Tower of eBabel.

Detail: Isn’t it interesting that Amazon apparently does not even carry the Clinton autobiography in the Mobipocket format? Even the world’s biggest online bookstore can’t keep up with all the formats in the Tower of eBabel. Nothing at Amazon for eReader fans, either. List price at the eReader store is $35, and even with a discount you’ll still pay $22.68.

By

Remember one of the little nits I had about the Cybook? I noted that aRMiTaG3, author of a generally pro-Cybook review, worried that dust particles might show up under the screen of the e-book reader. He had an easy fix anyway–keeping the stylus in place. Now, Michael Dahan at Bookeen, the company selling the Cybook, has even better news in an email to me:

1) For the time being the dust problem has been reported by only one person (Sorry Armitag for this issue).

2) We checked all our screens before shipments and we never noticed any kind of dust under the screen.

3) None of our other customers have complained about this kind of problem.

Thanks, Michael! I hope that people will spread the word. Unless I hear otherwise–dust reports should go to dr@teleread.org–it would appear we Cybook users can sweep away our concerns and enjoy that ten-inch screen.

By

Yes, I get it–why Laurent Picard has included uBook, not just Mobipocket and Boo Reader, on his Cybook. You should see Crime and Punishment on a ten-inch screen in double-column landscape mode. I can even read the smallest type of uBook’s five size-related choices. Forget about that with Mobipocket, even on the Cybook. The type would look too dot-matrixy. What’s more, with uBook, I can adjust the type size more precisely.

I’m hereby telling Laurent that he and David Jean at Gowerpoint (the uBook outfit) may want to do some cross promo. As I’ve said before, Cybook’s philosophy is the opposite of Gemstar’s–Laurent wants people to be able to read books exactly the way they want. And that’s also the philsophy of uBook.

The virtues of the rest of the gang

Mobipocket and Boo Reader have their own virtues–awesome aesthetics and ease of use in Mobipocket’s case, and usefulness for the vision-impaired in the case of Boo Reader and the related Boo Vision. But uBook has appeals of its own. I’ve tried uBook before on a PDA but could never before appreciate it to the extent I have on the Cybook.

The real torture test for the Cybook: As I’d expect, the Cybook doesn’t exactly do an instant pagination routine on War and Peace–a handy test novel, since it dwarfs the typical work in length. Took several minutes with uBook. But I could start in on the book even before full pagination happened, and, once it was done, I could almost instantly hop around. So what if the Cybook lacks the latest, speediest processor? Point is, it’s good enough for the job at hand. Speed of pagination, I can assure you, shouldn’t be a problem with your garden-variety 80,000-word book.

Related: The Cybook: A 10-inch color screen for Madame Bovary–and a $499 bargain for serious readers. I’ve squished some glitches and added a few more thoughts at the end. Also see New uBook can read eReader, Mobipocket, PDF, others.

By David Rothman

From MobileRead–an informative post by Morpheus:

David at Gowerpoint has just released a new version of his wonderful Pocket PC e-book reader uBook – version 0.9b.

Here’s what’s new:

– New e-book formats supported (eReader, MobiPocket -> if not encrypted, PML, Rocket eBook, CHM, PDF -> if not encrypted)

–Increased (artificial) limit of num words per minutes to 1200.

–Fixed images, nag, tables and stream bugs.

–Updated manual

–New skin: n0de by Marcus Kopp

Click here for a full overview of all ubook features including screenshots.

ubook is a shareware product. A licence costs $12US and works for all versions of the reader. The unlicenced version is not crippled in any way, but pops up an about screen every now and then.

The PDF part is interesting. Will this be how PDF reaches the Cybook (the FAQ says “e-reading projects” will make this possible)? I’m not the biggest fan of PDF but recognize Here and Now needs. Yes, uReader comes with the Cybook–version .8, adapted for the machine..

The bad news is a response in MobileRead to the original post. A “Mobipocket Enthusiast” in Paris is saying it’s illegal for uBook to be able to read Mobipocket format. Let’s hope that this person is speaking only personally and in this case is not speaking officially for the company. Even Adobe allows other people’s readers to display its format. If the “enthusiast” is going by Mobipocket’s user agreement–I haven’t checked the language there–then the agreement needs to be changed. Otherwise Mobipocket risks losing the goodwill of the user community and will be a less attractive choice not just for hardware vendors but also for e-bookstores and libraries.

Details: Please note the limitations of uBook’s Adobe display, such as the inability to display files in the “newer” version (and maybe even the one before that?). Hopefully Adobe capability for the Cybook will be more complete even if it can’t handle DRMed flavors of Adobe. There are also limitations for other format such as Mobipocket. Such complexities are yet one more argument for OpenReader. Why can’t hardware vendors be able to focus more on core issues, er, little details such as display quality, rather than having to worry about supporting all the inhabitants to the Tower of eBabel?

Update, 8:04 p.m., Dec. 26: Using the older version of uBook on the Cybook, I can display .prc files in fine style. I especially appreciate the ability to vary the spacing between lines. Instead of legal threats, Mobipocket would do well to add an advanced mode that allowed uBook-level control for readers in this respect and others.

By

Below are the six biggest news stories in e-bookdom in ‘04:

1. The creation of the OpenReader Consortium. I’m a founder but would feel the same way if I weren’t. We need to raze the Tower of eBabel, and some heavy-hitters have now expressed their support for the OR concept. A list of them will appear in early ‘05.

2. The library/Google’s convergence and competing efforts from the Internet Archive. Speaking of convergence, let’s hope that this event converges soon with #1. Libraries, Google and the Archive all will benefit from OpenReader.

3. The Librie, of course–the first e-book reader with E Ink technology. No longer can Luddites so blithely deny that e-books are as easy to read from as paper.

4. eBookwise/Fictionwise’s revival of old Gemstar technology. Here’s one more indication that the e-books are gaining traction, although right now we’re still talking about a tiny speck of the book industry. It was also good to see Bookeen bring back to life–in an improved form–the Cybook sold originally by Cytale. Even a New York Times article is upbeat on e-books. While the industry remains sick in many ways–witness the failure of the dyfunctional Open eBook Forum to live up to its name with a uniform consumer format, despite past promises–e-books aren’t about to vanish.

5. OverDrive’s shameful treatment of small publishers, the very same crowd that CEO Steve Potash so ardently wooed when he needed them. Will libraries suffer a similar abuse in time if OverDrive locks up that market?

6. More progress toward a rollout screen for cellphones. Potentially this is a tremendous boost for e-books, given the disappointing sales of PDAs. No, I haven’t supplied many details here. But it’s rather significant to learn that Siemens and E Ink among the players, joining such roll-out screen pioneers as Rolltronics.

More on OpenReader: We’ll especially welcome particpation from libraries to advance OpenReader’s XML/CSSish approach based on existing standards. With the OpenReader in effect, life will be easier for readers, writers, publishers, bookstores, distributors and libraries–now the indirect and indirect victims of format-related gouges that at times exceed 15 percent of revenue. OpenReader has techies excited about the concept and eager to contribute, though more volunteers are welcome. You needn’t be a programer. We’re also interested in hearing from, say, librarians, retailers and publishers who know what they want.

Correction: Yes, the headline should have read ‘04, not ‘05. Freudian slip. Can’t wait to be doing the same roundup a year hence.

By

IBM’s OmniFind program will offer”unstructured information management architecture, or UIMA” and,, according to I.B.M., “will lead to a third generation in the ability to retrieve computerized data.” – James Fallows in a New York Times column headlined At I.B.M., That Google Thing Is So Yesterday.

The TeleRead take: Here’s a page with more details on how the product could fit into IBM’s vision. Possibilities for libraries? The same column discusses other companies’ search-related efforts, including those for the desktop.

Related: Slashdot reaction (via LISNews).

By David Rothman

The big hassle with e-books on cellphones is that the screens are too small. But what if you could just roll the screens out? Details from Yahoo News, via eBookAd:

Cambridge-based Plastic Logic is to work with US firm E Ink to produce what could be the nearest computing has yet got to electronic paper.

It has also signed a deal with Siemens to develop flexible screens for mobiles.

The company, which was spun-off from Cambridge University, has demonstrated a screen that can bend to a radius of 5mm, a format that would enable its use in mobile displays that scroll out like a roll-top desk – if the flexing can be done repeatedly.

Plastic Logic is understood to be working on A5-sized (14.8×21cm) standalone screens that could act as auxiliary displays for mobiles, and would at the very least be more robust than conventional screens using glass substrates.

It is expected that the Siemens deal will involve Oled or LCD rather than E-Ink screens, which have only four greyscale levels. The company says it will be able to offer 100dpi resolution E-Ink screens in 2005 and up to 150dpi the following year, when A4 (21×29.7cm) screens will also be available…

On top of everyting else, the screens will be cheap to make.

Related: Press release and Plastic Logic and E Ink Demonstrate Flexible Displays with Printed Electronics from Plastic Logic.

By David Rothman

Emma Bovary, a denizen of the French provinces, was fed up with the selection of romantic novels from lending libraries. Might electronic books be a solution?

But she disliked the small print and all the scrolling needed on PDAs. Nor would she buy one of the e-book devices designed by Gemstar; even beauties like the RCA color machine lacked sufficient resolution for her. She almost purchased the Sony Librie. But the E Ink screen was monochrome, and in keeping with her artistic tendencies, she wanted color.

Then the town druggist told Madame Bovary about the Cybook, perhaps the most stylish of the e-book devices on the market. The machine offered 800×600 resolution and anti-aliasing for maximum sharpness of characters; and the LCD was a ten-incher. Clearly magnifique! Madam Bovary bought a Cybook immediately.

Dr. B and the Cybook

Intrigued, her husband, a doctor in search of suitable reading for his professional development, ordered a second for himself. Dr. Charles Bovary thus was able to operate successfully on a club-footed stableman employed by the local inn. The good doctor would have botched the procedure had it not been for all the articles he pulled down from databases and displayed in full glory on the screen of the Cybook. It could show medical illustrations in far greater detail than the typical e-book machine.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Cybook’s ability to work with Mobipocket-format books from places such as eBooks.com and Fictionwise, Madame Bovary could read financial self-help guides and marriage manuals. She learned to control her spending and even to love her husband.

The other upshot of all this, alas, was less of a stellar literary career for Gustave Flaubert, whom critics ridiculed for writing about such a boringly happy and faithful couple.

* * *

All right, so that’s not how Madame Bovary and the life of Flaubert turned out; but you get the idea. For those thriftier than Emma–and I’d hope you’d be among them–the Cybook is especially worth considering right now. Price of the Win CE machine is $499 over the holidays. That’s a major drop from the customary $738, itself just a fraction of the cost of the typical Tablet PC. No, the Cybook is not as technologically advanced as the Sony or as powerful as a TPC, but it could be just the ticket for serious readers of e-books who would rather not settle for a monochrome screen, even one as sharp as the Librie’s. Librarians and educators would do well to try out the Cybook. The color screen should be a hit with younger readers even if some elementary schoolers may find the machine to be a little too large. While $499 is a bargain by today’s standards, the K-12 community and many others would undoubtedly like for the price to decline still more. May mass production make this possible in the near future!

Significantly for users of most all varieties, the Cybook may be the most adept of the current dedicated e-book devices at coping with the Tower of eBabel. It can read files not just in Mobipocket, one of the better of the proprietary formats, but also in HTML, TXT, at least some version of Word, and nonDRMed PDB. Software to handle nonDRMed Adobe format will be on the way–help for professionals who want high-fi displays of illustrated scientific and technical material. And Bookeen, the Paris-based company behind the Cybook, is negotiating with Microsoft in hopes of picking up Microsoft Reader format. No promises. But let’s root for Microsoft to understand the business advantages of such a deal.

With or without Microsoft’s LIT format, the Cybook has plenty going for it. The Boo Reader developed in-house will even display files based on the production standard from the Open eBook Forum. Bookeen offers a proprietary version of the format, but Laurent Picard, the head of the company, is also gung ho on the nonproprietary OpenReader format that will build on the OeBF specs. Beyond the desire for exposure on the blog circuit, OpenReader is one of the reasons why Laurent graciously sent me the Cybook I’m among OpenReader’s ringleaders and am eagerly looking forward to the time when I can see OpenReader in action on that ten-inch screen. Like the Cybook, OpenReader will excel for display of sophisticated layouts in scientific, technical and mathematical publications.

On top of everything else, Laurent and colleagues share OpenReader’s eagerness to aid the visually impaired, and the Cybook shines in that respect. Not only does the large screen help, but the machine includes other accommodations such as extra-thick letters on the virtual keyboard. In Boo Reader, large fonts are especially easy to conjure up.

The screen–in greater detail

With that whopper of a screen, you may well be a more efficient reader no matter what software you use. The number of words displayed at once will depend on the software in use and the settings, but several hundred will not out of the question–a far cry from the maximum of 150 words that a high-res Sony Clie or similar PDA might show you.

Even a hand-held fan like me–I love Mobipocket’s audio scroll feature as run on my Clie–will be reading faster. The tradeoff for those ten inches is increased weight and size. I won’t be toting around the Cybook for a wait in the doctor’s office, not when the Clie tucks nicely into my back pocket. But most of my reading will be done in my work space or elsewhere at home, so, as a flagship e-reading machine for people like me, the Cybook wins out.

Screen resolution is 800 by 600 pixels, as noted, or 100 dots per inch compared to 170 for the Sony Librie. But the screen is far bigger than the six-incher on the Librie, and the sharpness still will leave most competing products in the dust. The RCA color eBook REB1200 with an 8.2-inch 640X480 screen beats many e-book readers in viewability but lacks the Cybook’s contrast; and the characters look a tad too much like the output of an old dot-matrix printer. Besides, it’s a discontinued model, meaning that Madame Bovary would have had to buy it off eBay. Given the quality of the Cybook’s screen, I wish the more sophisticated machine had been available for Ball State Univerity Prof. Richard Bellaver to use in his valuable research showing that children’s comprehension of e-books is virtually the same as of paper books. Who knows? Maybe some of the students would have absorbed more with the Cybook than off paper.

The Cybook’s 256-color capability isn’t the best, definitely not, but should suffice for the overwhelming major of corporate executives, consultants, writers and others who need to view documents in detail. That’s not all. Recently I read of a blogger who, with last-minute requirements for a business presentation, turned PowerPoint slides into images that the Cybook could digest. Try doing that with your typical Gemstar-type e-book reader (yes, the color ones might be an exception if you have the right software).

In the display department, another positive is that the Cybook display will show either portrait or landscape, the latter of which can be handy either for some presentations or for reading Russian novels with interminable paragraphs. Why, the Cybook would even be up to Faulknerian paragraphs. Alas, not all Gemstars have landscape capability. The Cybook’s can happen through Mobipocket (no rebooting needed) or otherwise (rebooting necessary)

As for screen-related nits, let me say that I observed a very slight flicker. But adjustments of the contrast and brightness controls took care of that, and I’m told this is the case with other users. Another nit is the fact that only software–not physical controls–can change the brightness and contrast. But so what? Most PDAs also rely on software controls, as do the typical Gemstar machines–the RCA’s mechanical ones are an exception. A third nit is that the characters fuzzed up slightly wwhen I used Mobipocket’s autoscroll feature. But then again, with a screen this large, I doubt I’ll autoscrolling as often as with my Sony Clie NX60/U, whose display is a fraction of the size of the Cybook’s.

One other nit is that the LCD must be aimed precisely enough at you to eliminate dark areas–the angle of viewing just isn’t as wide as I’d like, perhaps because the technology isn’t quite current. Here again, however, even though improvements would be welcome, I can nicely live with the existing machine, thank you. The angle issue just isn’t important for me. As a final nit let me observe that the smaller font sizes will still look a bit dot-matrixy, but they aren’t of interest to me anyway.

The really painful fact is that with exceptions such as the Librie, the Cybook’s screen represents dedicated e-book readers at their best in late 2004–even though the technology is several years old. Bookeen, using Hatachi-designed hardware originally introduced by Cytale, for which Laurent Picard once worked, is blameless. Even today, e-bookdom is still reeling from the aftermath of the dotcom bust. If the Cybook proves itself, then Laurent will have the capital to move on to newer technology. Meanwhile he has done a splendid job of updating the old in such areas as screen sharpness.

Other physical aspects: Size, weight, form factor and related usability

Dimensions are 8 by 10.1 by 1 inch, and weight is 35 ounces–this baby dwarfs my Clie and is even bigger than the RCA color e-book. Lots of people, however, would still consider the Cybook to be compact, just a fraction of the size and weight of typical laptops. Besides, remember what you get in return, the 10-inch screen. The Cybook, moreover, is comfortable on my lap at home or the office, or when I am stretched out on a couch. Do keep in mind two of features of the Cybook’s included Mobipocket format. Mobipocket is crossplatform and the DRM lets it run on more than one machine, so that I can keep the same book on both my Clie and the Cybook.

The Cybook’s shape is that of a classic tablet with the lower right part slanting outward slightly for an easier grip. A removable black cover of real or imitation leather protects the screen, and the tablet itself is of gray. Madame Bovary would like the elegance of the physical design.

Page Up and Page Down buttons are on the side and are small. I myself would have preferred an arrangement similar to that of the Gemstar 1100, with these two crucial controls being large rectangular buttons built into the main surface rather than off to the side. But this is strictly an individual preference, and I’m still very happy with the Cybook’s existing arrangement.

One other negative is that because of the size of the screen and of the machine in general, the Cybook is probably not as rugged as the RCA eBook and certainly not as durable as, say, the rubberized Gemstar 1100. Beyond the size, that is one reason why I would prefer a PDA for casual toting around.

Yet another downside, rather minor, is the risk of dust getting under the screen. The solution, as noted in a helpfully illustrated Cybook review from “aRMiTaG3,” is to always keep a stylus in place so dust cannot enter through the stylus hole. No big deal. Simply use a second stylus.

I’ve just described the existing Cybook, with hardware is based on Hitachi’s old design from the year 2000. Now look ahead. Imagine Cybook continuing to sell the present machine but also moving on to smaller, rubberized models and lowering the cost of the latter to $299–perhaps aided by mass purchases. Voila! This economy alternative to a Tablet PC could be catnip for schools and libraries, especially if Bookeeen can make the Cybook work better in interactive applications, which currently suffer for want of a keyboard connection. Back in the 1990s I suggested a “TeleReader” for mass sales to schools and libraries, and a modified Cybook could be the realization of this vision of an e-book-optimized machine that also served other purposes.

The operating system

Get ready to be nostalgic. The Cybook uses Win CE 3.0 rather than the Pocket PC-type OS found on most handhelds. That will limit the range of programs the Cybook can run. But some great news just may come in time. Bookeen is hoping for a linux port to the machine in the future, and meanwhile you get far more functionality than you would with a Gemstar-style device. See the software section below.

Processor

Once again, we’re talking nostalgia. The processor is a Motorola Power PC MPC823e running at 66 megahertz, a fraction of what processors can do in the latest PDAs. But except for, say, searching, you won’t notice the lack of speed. The Cybook would have been more expensive if Bookeen had had to start over again–the company made the right choice to go with here-and-now tech to keep R&D costs down until enough business came its way.

RAM and storage

The Cybook comes with 32 MB of RAM and a flash memory of 16 megabytes. You can buy CompactFlash cards of up to 128 MB from Bookeen (cost: $36.90). The cards work with a PCMCIA slot. You’ll need to buy a CompactFlash-PCMCIA adapter. With 128M, you’ll be able to hold well over 100 books in a compact format such as ASCII.

As an option, for $123, the Cybook store offers a BibliCard collection of 123 French classics. Normally I would protest the price tag, but I’ll go easy on Laurent because, unlike the old Gemstar crew, he is pro-choice and lets readers obtain their own content in a variety of formats shop around for the best price–perhaps even $0.

What books you can read

The Cybook gives you an unlimited choice of books readable for Mobipocket or Boo Reader–or in popular nonproprietary format such as HTML and ASCII. In Mobipocket alone some 20,000 titles are available, a fraction of the books published but still good by the less-than-satisfactory standards of e-bookdom as a whole. I have not used the Cybook to buy proprietary content, but another blogger, Kevin Tofel, reports a satisfactory experience with content from eBook Mall, a California-based store with 100,000 titles. You may also want to read his other impressions of the Cybook.

Of course, your reading won’t be limited just to books, given the ease of reading HTML pages with such included programs as uBook, or of calling them up directly via the Web browser.

The applications software: From e-books to e-mail and Web browsing

At Gemstar, the software mindset in essence was, “Hey, you’re stuck with a standard way of doing things”; but the philosophy at Bookeen is just the opposite. You an read a book in MobiPocket, a Cybook-optimized version of uBook, the homegrown Boo Reader, or Boo Reader Vision. That is why the Cybook is able to handle a variety of formats.

Either approach–the Gemstar one or the Bookeen one–has advantages. With one software reader well integrated with the buttons on the case, a Gemstar machine will be easier for novices to master. Gemstar’s approach, however, limits the possibilities for the interface, at least without a firmware upgrade, which, most likely, will still reflect the manufacturer’s limited choices for you.

I prefer Bookeen’s approach, given the horrors of the present Tower of eBabel. Some documents may work best in Mobipocket, some in uBook. Beyond that, Bookeeen’s CE-oriented approach means that in one swoop it can present users with a wide variety of applications: the aforementioned ones as well a Pocket Word, Pocket Inbox for e-mail, ActiveSync for communication with your desktop or laptop, the PTab Spreadsheet, an audio player, and Web browsing that can be optimized for the visually impaired. I have not yet had a chance to explore the software to the extent I’d like (better to do the review while the sale is on), but already I am highly impressed by the clean interface of Boo. Especially I like the search capability, which lets you simultaneously see multiple occurrences of a phrase in the text. The big negative I’ve found so far is that Boo can be a tad slow in bringing material up and performing some other operations such as searching, at least when a phrase appears often. I’d also like to see text, not just icons, associated with various options, although, given the multinational nature of the machine, I can understand the reason for this.

Please note some app-related limitations that Bookeen plans to address in the future. You cannot plug a keyboard into the USB port, for example, nor can you use a Microsoft ActiveSync with your desktop to browse the Web via Internet Explorer. Browsing can happen only through the Cybook’s 56K modem or, I suspect, a plug-in Ethernet or Wi-Fi card. I, for one, will especially appreciate the ability to use a keyboard–a “must” for most users with heavy email requirements.

Communications

The Cybook offers the following choices: a built-in 56K V90 modem, a USB port (1.5 Mbps), an IRDA infrared port (115.2 Kbps), a serial port (115.2 Kbps) and the PCMCIA port, which you can devote to either storage, Ethernet or WiFi. Another USB port in the future would be welcome. Both the USB port and the serial port work with ActiveSync. Via ActiveSync and Mobipocket Web companion, which I already had running on my Dell Optiplex, I was easily able to transfer files.

Battery life

The Cybook uses a lithium-ion battery, and the charges will last three to five hours–it depends on how far you crank up the brightness. You can call up the battery status by tapping an icon in the lower right of the screen–if you you already have the appropriate program loaded, a requirement I’d like to see eliminated. A somewhat longer battery life might also help, just as it would the RCA color eBook I own. Keep in mind, however, that I view both as machines mainly for home and office use, with the PDA being better for the road.

Documentation

My appreciation to Bookeen for at least including a written manual of at least moderate length. Wasn’t it a bit of a Catch 22 when at least some Gemstar machines came with a brief quick-start manual but nothing else on paper? Just how helpful was this for novices in need of information locked up in the machine? As with the Gemstars, I would prefer a yet more detailed manual that covered such information as the lack of AcuSync capabilities for Web browsing. But the manual is perfectly adequate. Some of the usages are strange to American eyes (for example, a battery-related mention of “4 hours of autonomy”), but in general, the manual is in plain English. What’s more, it contains helpful screenshots.

The bottom line

If you’re a serious reader of e-books and especially if you’re a professional with heavy reading requirements, you’d do well to consider the Cybook at the present price and maybe even at the usual one if your budget allows. The real issue for many users isn’t just money up front. It’s time. If the larger screen lets you read more efficiently and if multiformat capabilities can help you reduce the hassles of the Tower of eBabel, then the Cybook may well be for you. What’s more, when the hi-fi OpenReader format become the industry norm and you want to appreciate complex typography, the superior display will serve you well. Don’t let the older technology in the Cybook put you off–it’s not as if we’re talking 1995 here. Besides, the question isn’t the age but usability. In that area, for serious e-book readers, the Cybook already excels. Just as significantly, the Cybook has a future. Laurent assures me that firmware upgrade will be easy for existing owners, and this Linux talk intrigues me.

Follow-ups: Your opinions cherished

I’d love to hear from other Cybook users–both present and future ones. What do you agree with? Where do you disagree? This machine will be an ongoing project. Email me at dr@teleread.org.

Update, 2:15 pm.: This is a beta version of the review. I’ll be proofreading further, perhaps adding links and doing other tweaks. Speak up if you spot any atrocities. Now off to join Carly in some last-minute holiday shopping in beautiful Statesville, North Carolina.

Update, 7:15 a.m., Christmas Day: I’ve made yet more tweaks. Meanwhile a response has come from Morpheus at mobileread.com, who does not share the overall enthusiasm that aRMiTaG3, Kevin Tofel and I have after actually trying the unit. Thanks for the heads-up, Morpheus. I’d urge you to keep in mind the big picture, as opposed to smaller issues such as screen dust, a solution to which seems to exist. I will be following up with Bookeen for its take on the dust question.

Update, 6:40 p.m., Dec. 26: I modified the headline–originally “The Cybook: A 10-inch color screen for Madame Bovary–and a $499 bargain for other serious readers.” The word “other” is now gone, lest people think that her reading fare itself was always serious. But I believe she would have cared about the means by which the books were displayed. In that sense she was indeed “a serious reader.”

Update, 10:56 a.m., Dec. 27: Looks as if the screen dust issue is a nonissue for the Cybook screen. Also see a post on the uBook program as displayed on that ten-inch screen.

Update, Jan. 29, 2005: Cybook passes Raccoon’s screen test, but complexity annoys her.

Update April 16, 2005: Price is now $399.

By

Jason Epstein, one of the grand old men of publishing, who helped popularize quality paperbacks, has a piece in the MIT Technology Review on The Future of Books. He’s especially keen on print on demand technology, just as he is in Book Business: Publishing: Past, Present and Future. (Found via LISNews.)

By

Fearful that Google someday may lock up material now easy to access from the public domain, the Internet Archive is teaming up with major research libraries to provide a nonprofit alternative. Details from Information World Review:

Ten major international libraries have agreed to combine their digitised book collections into a free text-based archive hosted online by the not-for-profit Internet Archive. All content digitised and held in the text archive will be freely available to online users.

Two major US libraries have agreed to join the scheme: Carnegie Mellon University library and The Library of Congress have committed their Million Book Project and American Memory Projects, respectively, to the text archive. The projects both provide access to digitised collections.

The Canadian universities of Toronto, Ottawa and McMaster have agreed to add their collections, as have China’s Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Science, the European Archives and Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

In a statement, the Internet Archive describes the Text Archive as an Open Access archive that will “ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage”. Over a million books have been committed to the Text Archive by the member institutes, with 50,000 available in the first quarter of 2005.

The Internet Archive already contains many other valuable collections of text and multimedia, such as movies from the Prelinger Film Archive.

(Found via eBook Community list moderator Jon Noring and Steve Thomas, a member of John Mark Ockerbloom’s “BookPeople” mailing list.)

By

How to get a handle on the collection of classics at Project Gutenberg? Well, PG’s new Top 100 page could help. The top three downloads this week: Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, The Art of War and Some Christmas Stories.

Related: Free ebooks from Project Gutenberg, in eSchool News.

By

By

Library automation consultant Roy Lewis raises this possiblity–a class action suit against Gemstar for preventing eBookwise (part of Fictionwise) from bringing DRMed books to old Gemstar machines in a convenient way. Writes Roy:

I do not really understand why giving eBookTechnologies [Fictionwise's technology partner] my serial number and login and password is against the law. I am not trying to modify my ebook software, just load it with information. I will give them the data needed to recognize me/my device and they could create a title for it. The Class action would make sense because Gemstar is no longer providing new titles for it.

I don’t know all the facts or the legal issues, but didn’t Gemstar and partners promise consumers again and again that they would be able to dial up content in a blessed format? Did the ads mention a time frame? Whether or not a class action suit would have legal merit, this is yet more evidence that certain elements of the e-book industry have made used car reps seem like angels. Gemstar’s former management even caught the attention of the SEC for allegedly fooling investors. Pretty much in character for the ex-CEO and cronies, eh–given the pain they caused e-book buyers? Here’s the upshot.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the biggest shareholder in Gemstar-TV Guide these days, and Rich Battista has just become CEO of the latter company. Battista very likely isn’t even aware of the actions of his lawyers, and, let’s hope, will be reasonable. Far better that this be settled by negotiations than by lawsuit. Keep in mind that it’s possible that Gemstar does not even own the relevant rights any longer, though I suspect it still does.

Detail: Especially with programs in existence like the GEBlibrarian, you’ll still be able to enjoy public domain works and some nonDRMed commercial books on your Gemstar machines. What’s more, if the right people cooperate with the OpenReader Consortium, you may be able to read best-selling commercial titles on your Gemstar even if they are DRMed–just so the fomat is standards compliant. No definite promises. But the Consortium will do its best. Meanwhile I am not selling my RCA eBook bought for $135 on eBay.

If any lawyers are reading this and care to comment: E-mail me at dr@teleread.org. Again, however, I’m hoping not for a suit but for fast action to get those e-books out to trusting consumers. Let’s hope that Gemstar will take another look and cooperate with Fictionwise and its tech partner.

What everyone can do: Try to patronize bookstores and hardware vendors that support OpenReader–so Gemstar-style consumer ripoffs can never happen again or at least will be far less likely. In early ‘05 the Consortium will be releasing a list. One name I’ll mention now is Bookeen, which prides itself on trying to help buyers of the Cybook tablet deal with the Tower of eBabel. A Cybook review will appear here Friday.

By

“Digital technology is only a few years old, and even in that brief time, the digital world has produced dozens of incompatible, and often unreadable, media formats.” – The Electronic Library, an editorial in the New York Times.

The TeleRead take: Glad to see the Times mentioning the problem. Sad to see the Times so oblivious to efforts such as Project Gutenberg, which, for more than three decades, has been using “digital technology” in the form of the ASCII format. E-bookdom needs more than unadorned ASCII, of course, and OpenReader should help address standardization issues.

(Thanks to Roger Sperberg for spotting the Times editorial.)