TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for May, 2005

By David Rothman

eBookAd says it’s thriving and is paying publishers every penny owed–despite a series of attempted credit card frauds from the Middle East and Asian countries such as Vietnam. I’ve talked to the company at length and so far I find its explanations entirely credible.

“Full royalties have been sent to all publishers who’ve had their cashouts delayed and have their accounts in good standing,” says Dustin Revin, president of the e-book retailer, distributor and Web infrastructure provider with more than 600 small publishers as customers. (more…)

By David Rothman

First, let get one thing straight. It’s okay for people to be rich–that’s not the issue. But could John Edwards’ roomy $6 million mansion in Georgetown be one reason why he has been so aggressively mute about Draconian copyright laws, the scourge of e-book lovers?

“Recently, to get the house ready for sale,” the Washington Post reports, “the Edwardses shipped hundreds of books to their home in Raleigh and cleared out clutter.” Hundreds? Edwards could have stored thousands. Somewhere in Edwards’ One America, however, no small number of people lack room for as large a collection. E-books, especially the free public domain variety, could help. Could Edwards, however, despite his textile town origins, be identifying less these days with the poor than with millionaire members of the Entertainment-Copyright Complex on issues such as copyright-term extension? (more…)

By David Rothman

How many times have you bought a paper computer book and felt it was obsolete by the time you got it home from the store? Could e-books do a better job–and in new ways? Naba Barkakati, a prolific computer-book writer and a recent endorser of OpenReader, has some ideas.

By David Rothman

In the 1990s a White House staffer assured me that books with many collaborators could substitute in K-12 for the usual copyrighted variety written by individuals. That was a pretty simplistic vision compared to a well-stocked national digital library system.

Still, I don’t think he was entirely wrong. The delightful surprise is that some of the most useful collaborative works could potentially come not from bureaucratic institutions but from the Wiki crowd. (more…)

By David Rothman

P-book defenders are extolling the “vices” of dead-tree books as if they were “virtues”–just like old railroad lovers romanticizing the filthy smoke of coalfired steam engines. That’s one viewpoint in a newly revisited debate betweeen ibiblio archivist Paul Jones and a poet named Betty Adcock.

Himself a poet, Jones says p-books, like e-books, “have many not so great sides to them. The smell that Betty talks about of an old library is the smell of the books rotting.”

By David Rothman

Had Nikita Khrushchev really banged his shoe against a desk at the U.N. in October 1960? The spring before, missiles had downed an American U-2 spy plane deep in Soviet territory, and Khrushchev was now waging the Cold War in full fury after a delegate from the Philippines accused the USSR of “swallowing up” Eastern Europe. Witnesses could not agree whether or not the shoe had hit the desk. But something else was clear on a grander level. When Dwight Eisenhower gave his farewell address in early 1961, Washington was undeniably fixated on defeating the Russians. Many in Eisenhower’s place would have left office while simply mouthing the usual platitudes in favor of A Strong Defense. (more…)

By David Rothman

You can now see Terje Hillesund’s academic presentation of Digital Reading: Can Critical Text Editions Make Use of OpenReader? Earlier details here and here.

By David Rothman

Podcasting may take off for real when the technology becomes part of iTunes and millions of iPod owners can tune in even if they are techno-dunces. Shouldn’t the U.S. Congress do something about this? No, no, Senator Hatch, I’m not saying ban it. In fact, cyberlaw expert Ernie Miller has a better idea–something that Congress could implement now or at least very soon:

Why doesn’t every single darn committee, subcommittee, whatever, have a podcast (in the future, broadcatch) of its hearings?

Why isn’t there a floor podcast?

How long will it take Congress to get a clue?

Might not this be something for former Congress member Newt Gingrich, my political opposite in many respects, to follow through on? While Speaker of the House, he used the Net to expand public access to Congress. But much remains to be done, and podcasts, especially of obscure but crucial committee hearings, not just floor debate, could go a long way. (more…)

By David Rothman

Details from Joi Ito. Also on the search-engine front: Yahoo! Mindset Search: Intent Driven Search, via LISNews.

By David Rothman

“The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon,” discussing his 1769-1782 exploits and using only one e in the last name, has reached cyberspace. Find his tale at the Archiving Early America site.

June 7, in case you didn’t know, is Boone Day–when the famous frontiersman first saw the state of Kentucky.

(Via the American Memory Project and Librarians’ Index to the Internet.)

By David Rothman

“If, as Clay Shirky persuasively argues, formal taxonomies are (often) inferior to collaborative tagsonomies, why shouldn’t digital libraries involve the library users as cataloguers?” – Roger Sperberg’s essay Tagsonomies and digital libraries in Electric Forest. Also see earlier item.

By David Rothman

Digital radio recording raises eyebrows, via J.D. Lasica’s Darknet. Also see Reuters and P2Pnet.net articles.

By David Rothman

“‘Maybe somebody somewhere was working hard, but I only knew what I saw: lots of people with way too much free time on their hands’– enabling them to be ‘the biggest gossips I had ever encountered: It was junior high with BlackBerries and Instant Messenger.’” – Ex-D.C. sex blogger Jessica Cutler’s new novel as quoted by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post.

By David Rothman

This post is a hard one to write, given all the new ammo with which to make my point that people on campus should care. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wrap it up. Lest anyone be deprived of suspense, understand that I’ll also point out some good aspects of the complex.

Update, 8:15 a.m., May 30: Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

By David Rothman

The GreatNews RSS reader is well organized to allow rapid news-reading. Other goodies: an SQLite-type database, full-text searching with highlighted keywords, and integration with Bloglines, from which you can pick up your subscriptions. I had GreatNews going in 5-10 minutes with all my subs imported. Found via JKontherun and MobileRead, source of that snazzy headline.

Update, 12:28 a.m., May 30: GreatNews has some rough edges. Some news-search categories were picking up words from others. But in general, this is the best reader program I’ve used so far, especially in tandem with Bloglines. It’s that good, a real time-saver. Some might consider the interface too crowded, but that’s their problem.

By David Rothman

Remember those stuffy audio guides that you can pick up at art galleries and museums? Now you may have more choice. Check out With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour, in today’s New York Times.

Also of interest in the Times this morning: A Force Too Strong, Even for Wal-Mart, Daniel Akst’s analysis of the Net’s rise as a vehicle for information and entertainment.

By David Rothman

“The Open eBook Forum (Open Electronic Book Forum or OEBF) is an organization whose purpose is to develop a specification for electronic content, based on existing HTML and XML standards, that allows electronic book content to be viewed on various devices (PC display, PDA, or eBook reader) and all platforms.” – Whatis.com.

Update: Not only has the OeBF changed its name to the International Digital Publishing Forum, it’s also made clear that a standard consumer-level format is not part of its mission. That makes the above definiton out of date or at least grossly misleading. I’d suggest that Whatis.com start mentioning the OpenReader Consortium, which, by the way, covers more than e-books. Luckily some good folks behind the OeBF specs are showing interest in OpenReader, and that’s good. It’s fine with us OR types if people want to be in OeBF as well.