TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for July, 2006

By David Rothman

Here’s to detachable keyboards for laptops!

Not only would they be good for users’ backs, necks, arms and wrists, but they might also make e-book reading easier. In a related vein, how about displays you can raise?

Those are among the concepts discussed–without mention of e-books–in a CNet interview with Arimasa Naitoh, father of the ThinkPad (via Slashdot).

By David Rothman

Fascinating, isn’t it? While India might reject the OLPC laptop project, the country is #4 in “ebook” search stats on Google.

A little disconnect? Might the elite be out of touch with the needs and desires of the masses? Granted, techies in places like Bangalore might be distorting the stats, but I still wonder.

Meanwhile how about the top Indian educat’s statement that the laptops could harm creativity? Does this mean that word-processing makes it harder to write an essay? Or that you’ll be less creative if you read your books on a computer rather than on paper?

Swifter than India about OLPC: Nigeria, which is buying a million laptops. This is reportedly the project’s first official order. (more…)

By David Rothman

Here, from eContent. The big stat: “Eight firms, one-third of the original 24 [mentioned in articles six years ago], seem to be active.” Just eight? Author is Walt Crawford, a library systems analyst who says he’s open-minded, but who is mostly hostile to e-books.

Guess what, Walt? In this case I agree. The industry does have a high mortality rate. I’ll await your forthcoming article on the reasons.

At the top of my list: Draconian DRM and the Tower of eBabel. If you knock the Sony Reader for repeating the Gemstar approach–the Reader can read DRMed books only in the Sony format, even though most big publishers insist on “protection”–you’ll be right on track. Give ‘em hell, Walt. Nothing like hardware tied to a specific format, eh?

For the sake of e-bookdom, I hope the Reader isn’t a well-publicized flop; but its backward approach certainly won’t win over the likes of Walt Crawford. He says it’s “much-hyped,” and I totally understand.

By David Rothman

Via a service called Inform.com, newspapers will actually be offering automatic links to rival sites—displayed in sidebars and triggered by word use. When e-books can reliably link to other works, let’s hope that similar features can be present.

Right now a Random House author can freely cite a Simon & Schuster author on paper. Logically, in an era of linked e-books, the same would apply, and even automatic links could be generated if a writer wanted. But let’s not assume that’ll be inevitable. I just hope that writers and publishers Get It. Appropriate books–no, this isn’t for John Updike novels–should be as open as the Web.

By Branko Collin

Photo copyright 1982, Tieum. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

In 1977 the first home computers emerged: contrary to the DIY hobby computers that preceded them, these were ready-made kits that included a keyboard, a monitor, some sort of external storage in the form of a music cassette player or floppy disk drive. In 1980 Sir Clive Sinclair (then just Clive Sinclair) released the first European home computer, the ZX-80. In 1982 the French PTT introduced the Minitel platform to France; roll-out wasn’t finished until four years later.

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By David Rothman

Has anyone run across MobileBooks.org—full of WAPized e-classics from Project Gutenberg—and what do you think of it?

MobileBooks works with Java-enabled phones, including low-end models. Some 200 books are free.

I don’t like the idea of even a US$3 monthly subscription fee for continued access to all 5,000 of the MobileBooks’ PG books (two months free). But at least MobileBooks was smart enough to use an appropriate format for its audience—unlike the World eBook Fair, which seems fixated on PDF.

Plus, kudos to MB’s John Michael Mizzi for a better-done site than the Fair’s. Read more about the Malta-based Mizzi at di-ve.com. Excerpt: (more…)

By David Rothman

For years I’ve despaired that many literary classics from Project Gutenberg are available only in ASCII. That means no boldface, no italics and other amenities when reading these books on your Palm handheld.

The demise of Blackmask, offering a number of formats, did not help.

The Plucker format is hardly the end-all and be-all for Palm owners, but it’s far, far better than plain text–in terms of typographical amenities. A bunch of PG books are now in Plucker but not in HTML.

But how to use Plucker? For newbies, here is a very quick and very dirty how-to, which old Plucker hands are welcome to expand and correct:

1. Download and unzip the Palm viewer. Here’s a zipped Windows version that I used with my Palm TX Handheld. This one is for a Window desktop, which you’ll use to transfer the reader software to your handheld. Check the Plucker download page for other possibilities. If you lack ZIP, you can get a free eval version of PKZIP. (more…)

By David Rothman

The OLPC laptop, set to go into production next year, could have a major influence on the evolution of the e-book industry in many developing countries.

But will the reading software and format be up to the job? The latest talk is of of a Wiki-capable approach. Also see format specs and possibilities.

So what do you think? And what if OLPC goes with a special format? Would it serve the kids or actually isolate them from commercial content and even jack up costs for readers and publishers while diminishing the number of books available? And how about the DRM issue? Big publishers insist on DRM–which raises the issue of interactivity, and which DRM systems could support it. Sould the laptop actually include more than one e-book reader?

(More info via eBookCommunity List.)

By Branko Collin

Maciej Ceglowski, who is still translating The Golden Calf, has collected the letters of Pushkin in .mbox format, the internet standard for storing e-mail.

In the future I would like to set up an IMAP server for this kind of historical correspondence, so people can annotate letters by replying to them. For the moment, I’m just trying to amass material – drop me a line if you know of good online sources for other authors.

(Moderator’s note: What a great find, Branko! Imagine what fun Moses Herzog would have had with this. – David)

By David Rothman

The e-book business is enough of a laughingstock. Annual e-book sales for Planet Earth are probably well under $100 million, a speck of the tens of billions spent on paper books.

So actually I’m rooting for Sony to succeed with the Sony Reader. You remember, don’t you? The E Ink gadget that was supposed to come out in the spring?

But can public relations substitute for action? Bennett Kleinberg of Goodman Media International, a Sony PR contractor, has written Boing Boing that Sony will answer readers’ question. Same deal goes for MobileRead; and ditto for Make. Here’s to communications! But if Sony really cares about consumers and e-book publishers, why does it still intend to:

1. Popularize BBeB, an inferior proprietary format that will inevitably give way to an XMLish standard, as even Bill McCoy, a blogger at Adobe, a Sony partner, admits. (more…)

By David Rothman

Amazon is getting into the feature film business; could book-publishing be next? Publishers, not just independent bookstores, should watch this carefully. As I’ve said before, Amazon wants it all. Long term, Amazon’s Mobipocket format may come with a lot of strings. Here’s a book for those involved to check out.

Speaking of Mobipocket: After a week or so, I still can’t use my new Palm TX to check out books from a local public library, thanks to Mobipocket’s dreadful DRM. Even after the trouble is fixed, I won’t be able to use library books on more than three devices.

By David Rothman

Touch screens on mobile phones could be about to get a lot more popular–perhaps reaching 40 percent of headsets by 2012, according to Strategy Analytics.

I know. You worry about lost styli, but I still love the idea of touch screens on mobile phones to allow more sophisticated e-book apps. If nothing else, they could make it easier to enter terms for searching. Bluetooth keyboard capability can help as well, needless to say. More from jkOnTheRun and David Beers.

Meanwhile I hope that David Ajao in Ghana can weigh in on both this item and the one below.

By David Rothman

“Microsoft is showing off a prototype of a cell-phone operating system that it might end up fielding as a low-cost computing platform for the developing world.” – Microsoft Watch.

The TeleRead take: Hmm. Any e-text apps on the way? And just how low could the price get, if we’re thinking not just about cellphones but those for developing countries? What gotchas, if any, might Microsoft have in mind to make up for the price? More from Microsoft Watch: (more…)

By David Rothman

The $500 UMPC—how long until it’s a reality? Well, I was poking around my RSS feeds and Google and came across an old item from jkOnTheRun about a model from Founder Electronics. Could the Chinese be the ones who eventually bring the price down to under $500? At any rate, with the detachable keyboard, the Founder model actually looks pretty interesting. I wonder if Founder wants to use the UMPC to popularize its Apabi e-book reader, which, by the way, is already in use on the iLiad. Related: Video of Found’s MiniNote UMPC.

By David Rothman

That’s the sentiment at Crave in the U.K. It warns that Sony will “drown its own puppy” with a heavily proprietary approach.

Hello, Sony? Your proprietary mania is alienating both readers and publishers, not charming them. Even many of the big guys hate the Tower of eBabel as a major waste of resources, and the probable Apple machine just worsens the problem.

Yes, Sir Howard, you’ve spent money on translations of books into your proprietary format. But that won’t make customers keep buying your books forever. They don’t care about your squandered money. If you really want to compete against Apple, go for a nonproprietary format and keep your cost down. In effect right now customers are paying for your vanity. From from hating Sony, Crave says: “A bit more openness and a bit of verve, and Sony could have a whole new market—if it has the spine for it.” Amen.

Related: Sony reps answering questions at MobileRead. It’ll be fascinating to read responses on such issues as DRM and format. You may even want to drop by and ask your own questions. (more…)

By David Rothman

I’m curious. Does open-source hardware have a future in e-books? Note the existence of the Open Book Project. Excerpt from OBP site:

A light, letter sized LCD or E-ink display tablet with touch screen, Wi-Fi, few GB of flash memory, decent battery life and a price of under $500 – that could be the specs of the OpenBook. The OpenBook initiative started because there is no product that would meet this requirements on the market today. The initiative’s goal is to maintain an open specifications of the OpenBook.

The Project aims literally to target “between MIT $100 laptop and a consumer Tablet PC”, which actually means design a device that would not waste both software and hardware resources and still be highly usable. Technology in usability does not change every two years to force you change the hardware. When software changes the device can be easily re-flashed gaining the new features.

By David Rothman

In How iTunes screws the music industry and the public, Cory Doctorow has a few thoughts that both the music and e-book industries should ponder. Will Apple use a proprietary format for e-books, too—or at least a common format mucked up by Apple-specific DRM? Don’t be surprised. Related: Open Book: The ThoutReader Challenges Publishers to Rethink Convergence, from John Blossom, president of Shore Communiations. Also see DRM dystopia — can Microsoft save us? in Boing Boing.