TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for November, 2005

By David Rothman

Here–from Warren Adler; yes, the Warren Adler, author of The War of the Roses. Excerpt:

People have been telling me for years that authors in general are totally brain dead when it comes to business decisions. I have always denied this accusation, but it appears that the Authors Guild, which purports to represent authors, is pursuing a lawsuit against Google that confirms this general opinion… (more…)

By David Rothman

Time to brave the perils of I-77 again. I’m shutting down in Statesville, North Carolina, and will resurface from my usual turf in Alexandria, VA, on Friday or over the weekend. Meanwhile enjoy old posts–and perhaps new ones from other TeleBlog regulars.

By David Rothman

“My father and his two brothers and his sister grew up in the 1920s with no money but with plenty of books. Almost no one in Natchez had any wealth to speak of, and therefore it was culture that delineated your place in society–culture along with intelligence, ambition, looks, manners, and family history.” – Robb Forman Dew in a guest essay for Maud Newton.

The TeleRead take: In terms of money, most of the Third World is like the American South of yore–in fact, more so. Will elites in India, China and elsewhere feel a little threatened if e-books allow the unwashed to narrow the culture gap? Fascinatingly, it’s the best books, the classics, that will be free in developing countries through such projects as the Internet Archive and MIT’s $100 laptop initiative. Let’s hope, by the way, that plenty of local equivalents will spring up to augment the international literary archives.

Related: U.S. global library plan: Imperialistic?

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: You can enjoy an MP3 of the essay below from Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book reviewer.

As a poet myself, it is only natural that I am often moved to read other poets–either for inspiration or for the sheer pleasure of simply reading without any work objective in mind. Until recently I had always taken my Tennyson and my Yeats off the top of my bookshelf, dusted off the thin, worn pages and carefully turned, reading each poem in turn. The same has been true of my Book of Nonsense with illustrations by Edward Lear and poems from diverse writers and anonymous poets and nonsense writers of all kind, including Lewis Carroll who included the poem Jabberwocky, my favorite and the first poem I ever memorized at age nine.

A Eureka moment about e-books and poetry

But the pages wear thin, the books begin to fall apart, and we wrap them in acetate and acid free paper; but it seems to make little difference now. The damage has been done. And so it was that the other night I had a Eureka moment. If I could read fiction and nonfiction on my borrowed Dell Axim, then why not download to Mobipocket reader on my Tungsten E? (more…)

By David Rothman

“Nokia previously mentioned that they were in talks with several channels to carry the Nokia 770. It seems like CompUSA is the first one. The Nokia 770 now appears at the CompUSA website but is still not yet available for order/pre-order. It will sell for $399.99 however, $40 more than the Nokia USA online store’s price.” – Reggie in Internet Table Talk, via Mike Cane. Related: MobileBurn’s 770 review and, via MobileRead, PC Mag’s not-so-gung-ho rewiew.

By David Rothman

E-books offer big pluses such as convenience and searchability, and librarians see purchases continuing. But they also complain of negatives, including licensing restrictions and a Tower of eBabel among formats. Those, in essence, are the feelings of 51 librarians, mostly from academic libraries, whom the Charleston Report surveyed for the September/October 2005 issue. An excerpt from the print edition: (more…)

By David Rothman

TeleRead calls for well-stocked national digital libraries, plural. And there is a reason for the plural–to help protect national sovereignty. The U.S. Library of Congress, which has proposed a global library, will have to be sensitive to the issue of “cultural imperialism,” and in if:book, Lisa Lynch has some thoughts on the topic. Also in if:book: Sober thoughts on google: privatization and privacy.

By Branko Collin

Reinder Dijkhuis comments on the online seminar about Susanna Clarke’s fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is being held over at the Crooked Timber blog. While he does so, he muses about the emancipation of literary criticism; and how that is ultimately a good thing. And he promises to blog more about that in the future. Which is entirely a good thing.

By David Rothman

Could the $100 MIT laptop be about to shake up the e-book hardware market? Especially if ordinary folks will be able to buy the unit for some $200, sans volume discount? The price figure is just speculation, but it seems realistic to me.

This photo certainly offers hope for e-bookers. Size of the color screen, by the way, is seven inches–more or less optimal for K-12 e-book use. Could U.S. school districts end up with $100 models? At that price we’re talking serious competition for p-textbooks, and the effects could be major for publishers.

With prices so low, libraries will easily be able to lend the machines to patrons. Ahead–eventually: The $50 e-book-capable computer on sale at Kmart, in line with my 1992 prediction.

Further hardware details from Tectonic and Ars Technia. From the former:

Hardware specs
- 500Mhz AMD processor
- 1GB flash memory (no hard drive);
- SVGA 8″ diagonal display (dual LCD Color/Black & White mode for power conservation and outdoor reading);
- 128MB of DRAM;
- AC Cord that doubles as carrying strap as the power source and a hand-crank (one minute of cranking gives enough power for 10 minutes of operation)….

Since many people have asked about this, we should mention that MIT has plans to sell the laptops to the general public at $200 a unit. According to MIT, “In parallel, OLPC is in discussion with a handful of well known large and global companies to release a commercial version circa $200 …”

Also note that Redhat is a sponsor of the project, which should answer many of your questions as to why they’re not using your favourite Linux distribution.

Meanwhile Ars Techia speculates that “At this point, it is probably safe to assume that the browser and word processor will be the increasingly popular Firefox and OpenOffice.org, but the nature of the programming environment remains a matter of debate.”

Related: Blown-up image of the $100 laptop used for e-book reading. Other images.

Update, 9:38 p.m.: From the Wikipedia, here’s the lowdown on the screen res in the b&w mode vs. the color mode. “SVGA 8″ diagonal display (dual LCD Colour (470 by 350 resolution)/Black & White (800 by 600 resolution) mode for power conservation and outdoor reading); estimated cost $35.” With decent indoor lighting, the 800×600 b&w mode presumably would be usable. At some point I hope to check in with MIT about the contrast ratio in the b&w mode.

By David Rothman

Principle number one: “The library is everywhere.” And obviously e-books will count in this world. See Do Libraries Matter? The Rise of Library 2.0 by Paul Miller and Ken Chad. Plus, Michael Stephens in ALA TechSource. Via LibrarianInBlack.

By David Rothman

“Samsung Electronics…has developed the world’s largest transmissive TFT LCD (thin-film transistor, liquid crystal display), with high enough resolution to display digital television content.” – TechNewsWorld.

E-book possibilities–at least, for improved versions? Combine an appropriate flexible display with a rugged case and durable circuitry and the rest, and maybe you’ll be able to drop your e-book tablet with impunity. The present flexible LCD is seven inches, with 640×480 res.

Related: News release.

By David Rothman

Audio interview by Larry Magid, via LISNews.

By David Rothman

Here via a SearchEngineWatch article and Gary Price.

By Robert Nagle

In his essay on the Problem of Length and the Novel Michael Allen writes:

We must always remember, however, the effects of survivorship bias. When we look back at the past, and see big thick books which became famous, we are seeing the survivors. A select band indeed. We do not see the big thick books which were bloody boring and of no real interest either to the literati or the hoi polloi. Neither do we see those novels which never achieved publication at all, because they were judged to be too short. Who knows what lost masterpieces were in that category? We must greatly beware, therefore, of falling into the trap of thinking that long novels are, by virtue of their length, somehow inherently superior to short ones.

This fascinating essay illustrates how the social and economic realities of publishing affected the literature being consumed. (more…)

By David Rothman

Korea, having left the States in the dust in the area of broadband, now even has mobile TV. And that’s probably good news on the whole for the e-book industry–since the same hardware could be used for e-books. More from Colin at MobileRead. Also in MR: PalmPDF V0.8 released.

By David Rothman

Here, via an NL article in Search Engine Watch.

By David Rothman

Will LCD prices drop as a result of 3M’s patent expiring for brightness-enhancement film? Details from Digitimes.