TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for December, 2006

By Jon Noring

I am saddened that David Rothman brought up, in public rather than in private, the “three musts” he raised in his recent blog article regarding my involvement in e-book standards work. David has not only been a long-time business associate, but a friend. It saddens me more because we are in philosophical agreement about most things in the digital publishing arena, and seek the same end goals. I am also troubled that others were needlessly brought into this matter, such as my friends at OSoft, and my friends and associates at DPP.

The valuable time that I am spending to write this article could instead be used to work on other things to help promote OpenReader, such as BookX. BookX is intended to be used by smaller digital publishers as an intermediary XML master to readily produce OpenReader Publications and most of the digital publication formats in use today and tomorrow (and this includes OEBPS.)

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By Branko Collin

Librarything, the online personal library manager founded by Tim Spalding and co-owned by Abebooks, taught me something about myself: I don’t really care about cataloguing my personal library. Sure, it would be nice if somebody had done it for me, or if all my books had an RFID tag that would automatically keep my catalogue up to date, but I can easily go without a list of what I own.

So what goes on in the minds of those who do like to catalogue their personal library, and what does Librarything do to meet the demands of those people? I find it hard to answer the former, and therefor undoable to answer the latter.

Luckily, if you were already interested in Librarything, there is the free account. Anyone can store up to 200 books in their private database. And although you may own a lot more, once you hit a couple of dozen books entered you start getting a feel what Librarything can mean for you. Even if you decide that this is not the PLM for you, you can export your data to a tab delimited file and take it elsewhere (through the oddly named Joy menu). The only thing you’ll lose this way is the cover images you collected.

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By Robert Nagle

Wow, did anyone notice that Lessig went to court last month? He argued in Kahle vs. Gonzales before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the change “from an ‘opt-in’ to an ‘opt-out’ system of copyright alters a ‘traditional contour[] of copyright,’ requiring ‘further First Amendment scrutiny’ under the standard established in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 123 S. Ct. 769 (2003).”

The plaintiff’s brief is here , and here are Lessig’s thoughts afterwards (sort of confusing to read, because he’s responding to lots of commenters). Here’s an mp3 audio of the oral arguments (27 minutes long). Generally, Lessig sounds better prepared than the government’s attorney, and the questioning judges pressed both sides on how this case differed from Eldred. One judge asked the government’s attorney (at the 17 minute mark):

Question (Judge Schroeder): Is there anything in the legislative history to indicate that Congress was aware that in changing the system there might be some copyrights where there’s nobody there anymore who really enjoys the copyright right?
Answer (government attorney): I’m not aware of any discussion that specifically focuses on that point.

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By David Rothman

Carly and I are leaving Statesville, North Carolina, to head back to the Washington, D.C., area. That means no new TeleBlog entries from me until Sunday or Monday.

Enjoy the holidays, and if you, too, will be driving along Route 77 through the Blue Ridge Mountains, please watch out for those trucks!

Recommended read: 2006: Looking Back and Looking Forward—blind blogger David Fauxcheux’s discussion of tech predictions for ‘07 and beyond.

By David Rothman

Look, schools and libraries should discourage kids from visiting sex sites and chatting with perverts. But the Deleting Online Predators Act overdid it, and parents, teachers and children can be thankful that the proposed law died. Andy Carvin has the details.

Among the friends of DOPA-style legislation: Mark Foley, the sleazy ex-congressman who seduced young Congressional pages in between his pious utterances. Moliere, Moliere, you should be alive today in the United States to give certain politicians the writeups they deserve (painting).

Thought: DOPA also might have harmed the cause of interactive books.

By David Rothman

News release: Ruby Kulles, 7, is engrossed in an illustrated children’s book from the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation.

Kulles is part of Kids Team, a research arm of the Foundation at the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, involving children in the design and testing of the Library’s interface for children’s books across digital media.

The bright green computer she is using is a test model of the new, low-cost laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization (www.laptop.org). ICDL Foundation has the world’s largest collection of children’s literature available freely on the Internet.

(Thanks to wayan at OLPC News for the find.)

By Robert Nagle

Here’s a useful chart indicating which types of reuse are allowed by which creative commons licenses.

A few months ago, TeleRead linked to a page of ebook links I’ve been compiling. Well, I’m going to link to it again because I’ve been adding steadily to the links over the months. These links have more to do with content creation than anything else.

By David Rothman

All’s well. Just as I thought, Alex simply suffered a minor glitch. Welcome back, MR! Related: Earlier post.

By David Rothman

Fed up with the Tower of eBabel—all the horrors of clashing e-book formats—I joined Jon Noring in founding OpenReader. I even came up with the OpenReader name, and I’ve spent many hundreds of hours talking up OpenReader and its first implementation, OSoft’s dotReader. A standard is worthless without good programs that use it. What’s more, OSoft promised among other things to donate its dotReader technology to a nonprofit library project in which I was and am involved.

As an ordinary e-book user I badly want be able to own digital books for real and not be at the mercy of any particular company. Libraries, schools, publishers and retailers also will benefit if OpenReader takes off. Jon felt the same about a truly nonproprietary OpenReader standard, and, I hope, he still does.

Jon’s A issue

Now, however, at the very least in terms of appearances, Jon has complicated life for us OpenReader supporters. OpenReader’s main founder and leader has revealed he’ll do business and technical development for a California tech entrepreneur named David Cote, who in fact played a role in CD-ROM standards development and was invited to participate in an important XML-related group. David’s past involvement in standards, however, does not in itself guarantee the integrity of OpenReader.

Here’s what OpenReader will need to succeed as a truly independent and nonproprietary standard despite Jon’s involvement with David C, a co-owner of DigitalPulp and related companies:

One: dotReader’s timely ability to read OpenReader files

OSoft’s dotReader needs to render OpenReader files, among other formats. OSoft says that is still in the works, but I expected to see this months ago. While OSoft is a small company with limited resources, I’m disappointed just the same. If part of the fault is Jon’s, then this is one more reason to be uneasy about his relationship with David Cote’s companies—which so far have been playing up dotReader but not OpenReader. (more…)

By David Rothman

In a few minutes, I’ll be offering my thoughts on the OpenReader e-book standard in the wake of Jon Noring’s new relationship with a California entrepreneur. As a cofounder of the OpenReader Consortium, I’ll tell what OpenReader needs to survive as a nonproprietary standard. The gist of my personal opinions: Jon over the years has been one of the heroes of the e-book industry, and OpenReader is valuable and fixable—but only if at least three conditions are met, now that Jon will do business and technical development for David Cote, a co-owner of DigitalPulp Publishing and other companies. Please withhold comments, public or private, until the post appears.

By David Rothman

MobileRead has been down for a number of hours, and I’ve written Alex Turcic and Bob Russell for an explanation. I suspect it’s just a technical glitch—perhaps happening while Alex is out of town for the holidays. Good luck fixing the problem, guys.

Update, 8:44 a.m.: Bob believes that the problem stems from a move to a new server Alex recently bought—nothing more, just as I myself would think. Combine that with the holidays, and you have the most likely reason by far.

Housekeeping: More TeleBlog posts will be coming later today.

By David Rothman

Manybooks.net has laudably worked to offer formats for the iLiad and Sony Reader, among others—and now a startup site will focus on E Ink machines. Slightly edited, here’s the announcement from Feedbooks.

Feedbooks is a new Web site made from the ground up with E Ink devices in mind. The goal of this site is to provide a whole new experience, delivering books in the public domain, user submitted content and news. It is divided into three main sections:

• Discover: Download books from the public domain and submit additional books.
• Share: Using a simple dynamic (Ajax) interface, any member can create a book easily. This way you can upload and tag your works, making them available for everyone
• News: Generate customized newspapers using RSS feed or create your own newspaper with friends using a simple Ajax interface

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By David Rothman

“Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at nature.com.” – Gender Genie page at bookblog.

Austen vs. Dickens: Based on samples of about 1,500 words at the starts, here are the results for Pride and Prejudice and David Copperfield. P&P: Female score of 2496 and male score of 2231. DC: Female score of 1688 and male score of 1606. Huh? Is something wrong with the Genie, or could some of the best writing use roughly equal numbers of male and female words? (more…)

By David Rothman

“Now, if mainstream publishers reject their work as too specialized, even the most Beatles-obsessed authors are finding audiences for their books by publishing them themselves.” – New York Times.

The TeleRead take: At least some of the Beatles books have been out for a few years, and from what I can determine, the titles mentioned in the Times show more care than often goes into self-published works. One even contains a foreword by Walter Cronkite. Anyone know of any good, hyperspecialized e-books on the Beatles or other rockers?

By David Rothman

“It would be much easier and cheaper to send a hundred laptops than a thousand books. A hundred laptops don’t replace math teachers but they are better than no math education at all.” – Essay in OLPC News by Shankar Pokharel, President, One Laptop Per Child Nepal.

By David Rothman

Eight of New Orleans’ 12 library branches “were completely ruined by wind, water, and mold,” according to Rebuild New Orleans Public Library. Digital books are far from a complete replacement for paper libraries, but they could help.

With John Edwards using New Orleans as a backdrop for his 2008 presidential announcement (preview video), wouldn’t it be interesting if he called for a well-stocked national digital library system—to serve rich and poor, including Katrina victims? And suppose he also took a strong stand in favor of free WiFi services, something already happening in New Orleans, so students and others didn’t have to line up at library computers. Efforts could also be made to encourage corporations and individuals to donate used PDAs laptops to the poor. And what about machines in the $100 laptop vein? How sad that the people at OLPC seem more interested in promoting their pedagogical theories than in distributing their machines in the States and letting informed educators decide how to use them. The barriers to the realization of the basic TeleRead concept—going back to the early ’90s—are more human today than they are technological.

Literature and the national soul

One way to reduce costs of the books and other items in a TeleRead-style system would be to repeal the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act—which over the years will divert billions from libraries, schools and the rest of society to the entertainment elite. The soul of a a nation isn’t just in its political system but also in its culture. Books help differentiate America from Turkey, say, or Venezuela (and vice versa). If the Bono act didn’t exist, cash-strapped high schoolers in New Orleans could use PDAs to download the Great Gatsby for free even today. The circumstances behind Bono’s passage are rather suspicious.

So far, however, despite John Edwards’ reputation as a progressive politician and his past membership on a copyright-related Senate committee, he has adamantly refused to say a word against Bono even though he portrays himself as pro-education and his wife even planned once to teach literature. Is it possible that Edwards could surprise us? This needn’t be a war with publishers. More than enough money could go into the digital library system to make up for the losses suffered by repeal of Bono. Significantly, such an approach would help pay for contemporary books written by living authors.

Detail: E-books, hardware and wireless connections aren’t enough. Schools and libraries will need funds for training and support of teachers, librarians and users, as well as integration of technology into curricula. What’s more, I’m all in favor of appropriate multimedia and educational software being included in a TeleRead-style library, not just books alone.

Related: Edwards courting Robert Scoble and other bloggers.

By Jon Noring

The IDPF membership recently changed its Bylaws and added two more directors to the IDPF Board. For the two new seats, there are seven candidates, all of whom are worthy to serve on the Board.

One of the seven candidates vying for the two seats is George Kerscher, the former Chair of the OeBF/IDPF Board, and e-book accessibility advocate and expert. This is a call for IDPF members to seriously consider casting one of their two votes for George this time around.

In a recent IDPF Board election, George came awfully close to winning a seat on the Board. Hopefully the IDPF membership will recognize the importance of having an accessibility advocate on the IDPF Board. Three reasons:

1. Meeting accessibility requirements benefits the sighted as well (a topic I may write about in the future.)

2. New legal mandates in the digital publication arena, especially in education (e.g., NIMAS), have elevated the importance of accessibility.

3. It is the right thing to do.

George’s platform includes three points:

1. Access to Information in the “Information Age” is a Fundamental Human Right

2. Digital Publishing is a Global Market for Everybody: It Needs to Grow

3. Accessibility of eBooks by Persons with Print Disabilities

A few of us have advocated IDPF establishing a permanent Board seat for the accessibility community. But until that happens, the IDPF membership will have to do what is right and make sure George gets back on the IDPF Board. I hope it will be a mandate. I plan to individually contact many IDPF members and urge them to vote for George.

As the primary representative to IDPF for DigitalPulp Publishing, I will proudly cast one of our two votes for George, and I hope you will, too.