TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for October, 2006

By David Rothman

Um, can Adobe kindly tell us just who’ll control the development and evolution of Mars—described as “an XML representation of PDF,” which itself is Adobe-bossed except for PDF/A and related flavors?

An “open” standard, even one using components from W3C, such as SVG, can still be as vendor-controlled as all get-out.

Read on to the questions at the end of this post. See why Adobe just might be creating some major problem for itself and rivals within its beloved IDPF—after holding itself out as standards-friendly and trusting of the organization.

Adobe’s do-it-yourself Tower of eBabel?

Between old-fashioned PDF, the OEBPS as currently almost supported by the public beta of Adobe’s Digital Editions (with proprietary DRM presumably on the way for protection-minded publishers), and Mars (perhaps accompanied by proprietary DRM but creating “protection”-related problems even if it isn’t), I’m in awe.

Might a whole new Tower of eBabel be under construction within just one company?

The pesky OEBPS question

I’d feel much better if Adobe would say, “Yes, Mars isn’t just an open standard—it’s entirely nonproprietary, and we’ll turn its evolution over to an OASIS technical committee.”

But then what about the OEBPS nirvana? So the IDPF’s proudly announced container format is to hide a rat’s nest of formats? And at least somewhat reduce the importance of OEBPS (of which the container spec can allow just token use)?

“Embrace, Extend and Extinguish”?

Meanwhile I’ll be curious if certain publishers, lured by talk of easy conversion from PDF, will still fall for Adobe’s crafty campaign to undermine nonproprietary e-book standards.

Will Mars, perhaps like heavy use of Flash, be used as part of a Microsoft-style Embrace, Extend and Extinguish strategy? Along with proprietary DRM? (more…)

By David Rothman

Sony is a target of an industrywide U.S. Justice Department probe into alleged fixing of prices for RAM chips.

No, this doesn’t relate directly to the Sony Reader, but it’s another reminder of the need for readers and publishers to be wary of giant high-tech conglomerates—especially in “just trust us” areas such as e-book standards, including DRM-compatibility issues.

Corporate culture: Possible ‘root’ cause?

Remember, the latest investigation follows Sony’s rootkit disaster and its exploding batteries. What happened to the old Sony? I love my Clies and my late father’s decades-old Walkman radio. Sad. Is the current Sony corporate culture a contributor to the string of problems? And, yes, this is germane to e-book standards. DRM and other aspects of e-book standards are not physical objects. But like the batteries, they need careful attention and open-mindedness from the techies involved. (more…)

By David Rothman

“Mr. Brodie applied one drop of the empyreumatic oil of tobacco to the tongue of a cat; it occasioned immediate convulsions and an accelerated breathing. Five minutes after, the animal lay down on the side, and presented, from time to time, slight convulsive movements. A quarter of an hour after, it appeared recovered. The same quantity of the oil was applied again, and the animal died in two minutes.” – An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health, via nanybooks.net.

By David Rothman

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is one of the giants of the global book trade, at least within such areas as technical books. So how does Joe Wikert, a vice president and executive publisher in the Professional/Trade Divsion, feel about Adobe Digital Editions, the new Adobe reader now in public beta?

“I’ve played around with it for a few days now,” he writes, “and I don’t see what the big deal is. Sure, it’s a nice little application that lets you organize and read your e-docs, but what’s new and exciting here? I’ve been able to read PDFs on my laptop and PDAs for years now.”

Rescuing PDA users from PDF horrors

Compared to Digital Editions, dotReader will offer much more, especially for tech book publishers, which will benefit from truly advanced interactivity. But in fairness to Adobe, its new reader is a major step forward for the company, just as Adobe’s Bill McCoy says, given its ability to read documents in a reflowable format. Try reading PDF on a typical handheld; let us know your secrets, Joe, if you truly do enjoy PDF on a PDA! While Tower of eBabel issues still abound, especially DRM-related ones, which dotReader-type software will solve better, the Adobe reader offers some progress compared to the horrors of PDF. (more…)

By David Rothman

If you own an iPod, you can use it to read a free excerpt of The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness by Steven Levy.

Nice going, Claire. What’s more, I’m delighted that Simon & Schuster is already selling the book in Adobe, Microsoft and Palm formats.

E-books should appear when or even before p-books do. What better way to take advantage of the initial burst of publicity, especially if you want to reach audiences overseas?

Meanwhile, S&S might also want to consider selling the entire Levy book for iPod reading, not just in the other formats.

By Jon Noring

Today, IDPF announced the release of the Open eBook Publication Structure Container Format 1.0 (OCF). This standard is a step forward and I congratulate all who made it a reality. It will be useful for many e-book applications.

But the IDPF continues to paint the OCF as a much grander thing than it really is — making a mountain out of a mole hill. This is disturbing since IDPF refuses to address head-on the most important issues regarding the “Tower of eBabel,” such as an industry-wide standardization of a consumer-acceptable DRM system.

(more…)

By David Rothman

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Other than actual e-book reading software, what’s more important than a good, reliable browser for us junkies–to aid in finding and downloading e-books? And yet I regard Firefox 2.0 as a major disappointment, now that I’ve used it in various versions.

I love the new spell-checker for online forms, but even more than the betas, the supposed production version keeps crashing on my PC.

Is this a typical experience? Despite denials, might 2.0 have major memory-handling problems?

Meanwhile you can bet I’m saving my blog drafts very often. Grrr!

By David Rothman

Will this architect’s sketch for a new library in Lawrence, Kansas, be obsolete soon—whether or not a library is built?

Will e-books and bookstores will kill off libraries or vice versa, in other words?

That’s what LISNews readers are chewing over in the wake of a London Times article suggesting that public libraries could go the way of public baths.

U.K. vs. U.S. library use

Library use is declining in the U.K., while the opposite is true in the U.S., as noted by various LISNews contributors.

Ah, but nuances abound. Is the U.K. situation somewhat unique, given all the questions about the funding and competence of the library bureaucracies over there? Apparently. Still, isn’t it interesting that sales of books in the U.K. are growing?

Meanwhile, over in the States, while circulation is rising, one wonders: How much of it is due to DVDs, audios and e-books? And if so, what does that mean when videos and the rest will be easily available at home? (more…)

By David Rothman

The newly released container format from the IDPF is progress but far from a full solution. Read my Publisher’s Weekly article from August for details. Still unresolved are such issues as incompatible DRM schemes and the possibility of excessive use of vendor-controlled standards such as Flash without adequate alternatives. As for OpenReader, we’ll happily pick up the basic IDPF container format since it’s just a twist on one associated with the OpenDocument format and we’re interested in minimizing compatibility problems. Thanks, guys. (Via Roland.)

By David Rothman

I’ll get to an e-book angle in time, but first here are two questions.

What’s missing in this screenshot from the New York Times’s mobile edition?

And why am I spending more time than before with the rival Washington Post edition for cellphones and PDAs?

Well, look carefully and you’ll see the New York Times no longer has a read-entire-article option at the bottom of each page of long stories. The mobile edition will give me the news only in shorter pieces.

So now I must use the stylus or my finger much more often than before since, yes, I do enjoy reading even long articles on my Palm TX. And meanwhile I must hit the scroll-ahead button anyway on my hardware.

The Great Numbers Mystery on the NYT mobile site

Between the Times “next page” and the TX scroll, I’m busier than I should be. I’m baffled. Until a few days ago the Times was pretty good about including the entire-article option. Maybe there’s hope, however. The “4″ is missing from the otherwise-consecutive numbers in front of the options at the bottom of the page.

Could this mean that the Times will restore entire-article option? Or that it will simply readjust the numbering system to allow for this bothersome disappearance? (more…)

By David Rothman

Could Universe 3 be the solution for Palm owners who want to browse e-book sites that have yet to be optimized for cell phones and PDAs?

The lowdown at Palm Infocenter looks promising: “Its main features will include the ability to have up to three browser tabs, HTML / XHTML / WML support and an integrated RSS reader.” Features in the present beta—sorry, you need to sign up for the program, and no new slots are available now—include:

A Tabbed interface (supporting up to 3 tabs)
An address bar featuring a url box and navigation buttons
An Integrated RSS reader
Private browsing (mask the history, cache and cookies)
Support for JPEG, GIF, BMP and PNG (with alpha channels) images
Support for HTML/XHTML/WML/RSS 1.0/2.0
Support for WAP 1.0/2.0
Support for Hires and Hires+ screen sizes
No need for the Java VM!

Notice the WAP support? So Palm PDA owners, too, just like cell phone folks, will apparently be able, after all, to enjoy Matt’s nifty new mobile version of manybooks.net. Or am I missing something? Among the other features will be “Opening and saving files to the local file system.”

As for the exact OSes supported, it would seem that most any Palm device running OS 5.0 and up will be able to run the new browser. (more…)

By David Rothman

Here, from MobileRead. Also see past TeleRead posts on PL. Will an Amazon connection come about, assuming there isn’t one already? The old Kindle rumors just adds to the fun.

By David Rothman

“Is there a way to export one’s macros from Word 6.0 into Word 2003? My SO says there is not, but we need to upate Word version for some of the new e-mss work. And he has literally dozens of macros that he is unwilling to take the time to re-create.” – TeleBlog reader in the book biz.

The TeleRead take: OK, gang, can anyone help? I suspect that the reader isn’t the only one who could use a definitive answer. Would this help?

By David Rothman

“Gruesome short story about a ‘Loch Ness Monster’ type of creature that inhabits a lake in Wyoming. The plot has elements of Frankenstein in it, which makes it particularly creepy.” – The Monster of Lake LaMetrie, as summed up in a review on manybooks.net. The four-star rating is a star short of the one I’d give. Big, slimy creatures are fun—they remind me of the politicians and RIAA/MPAA overlords dear to us all.

By David Rothman

Cell phone and PDA users got a break when manybooks.net started serving up e-books in such formats as eReader and Mobipocket.

And now there’s a new twist—a cell-phone-friendly incarnation of the 15,030-book site with a super-simple layout that underpowered devices can easily digest. Only, this version is called mnybks.net, which makes sense when you’re in Entry Hell. Then do a bookmark if you can.

Update: Please note that the only file output right now on the mobile site is .jar, really for cell phones rather than PDAs, but perhaps manybook.net will add other formats like Mobipocket.

If so, in ease of use, manybooks.net would then be the leading public domain site for owners of PDAs, too, not just cell phones. And in case you want to know how Matt McClintock, Mr. Manybooks, did the simple layout, just go to Hawhaw, short for “HTML and WML hybrid adapted Webserver.”

Update, 2:30 a.m, Oct. 28: Revised to address the format issue.

Update, 9:57 a.m.: In a note to MobileRead, Matt says he hopes to make his main site easier to use with handhelds. Great!

By David Rothman

“When I reviewed Sony Reader, an e-ink e-book reader, I mentioned a slight flicker on the screen when it refreshed pages. Here’s a video of that, and here’s all our prior coverage. Despite the flicker, it’s still a pretty little toy that’ll make a great present for the voracious reader and technophile in your family” – Gizmodo.

By David Rothman

I’m still waiting for Barnes & Noble to start doing interactive books via dotReader, which would let the discussions be visible not just on the Web but also within the actual books that the customers bought.

Still, B&N is now part of the way there through the “Barnes & Noble Book Clubs: Where Readers and Writers Meet.” Among the writers meeting their readers online are Carl Hiaasen, Diane Setterfield and Jack Canfield. (more…)