Diesel eBooks has opened up with "over 35,000 titles" available "from hundreds of publishers; anytime of day, from anywhere in the world. We offer ebooks in multiple, secure formats including Microsoft, Adobe and Palm Readers.

"Using our Diesel technology, we have organized our inventory with over 50 categories and 2,300 subcategories and incorporated a robust search tool in hopes of reducing the time required for a customer purchase and enhancing their overall experience. Plans are for hundreds of titles to be added each month."

Best of luck to the proprietors--my fellow Virginians Jeanie and Scott Redford, who are based in Richmond. More from PublishersWeekly.com:

Redford is a former marketing and sales director at Sprint PCS who was laid off. Four months ago, he put his expertise in marketing and mobile technology to work and launched an e-book retail site focusing on romance novels. He quickly decided to relaunch (and rename) the site as a general e-book retailer after deciding he could market and sell e-books effectively in a broad range of categories.

Based in Richmond, Va., Diesel eBooks (www.diesel-ebooks.com) offers 35,000 e-book titles available in MS Reader, Adobe e-book reader and Palm eReader formats. Redford put up all the money to start the business. He told PW the site was launched with the help of "two key working relationships"—e-publishing vendor Lightning Source and Heavy Metal, a Boston-based Web developer experienced in building backend e-commerce infrastructures for selling and downloading digital content.

The big 600-pounder in PDA operating systems is no longer PalmSource. It's Microsoft with 48 percent of the market this past quarter, and that could help Microsoft Reader even though Reader is an antique with obnoxious DRM that alienates many a customer.

Since many Pocket PCs come with Microsoft Reader, it will be interesting to see how this shakes out for eReader, formerly known as PalmReader, which wisely changed its name.

Why Microsoft dominance of PDA OSes? Well, business vendors would rather not rely on a single hardware vendor, palmOne, the company dominating PDAs running the Palm OS. By contrast, Microsoft-OS PDAs are available from Dell and HP.

Gap could grow even wider

That's still not the greatest variety. But Todd Kort of the Gartner Group says choice makes a difference, and with Sony and Toshiba leaving the PDA market in the States, as I see it, the gap could grow even wider.

Meanwhile a Reuters report in USA Today based on a Gartner report says:

Microsoft overtook PalmSource in the third quarter as the world's biggest operating system for handheld computers, a survey showed on Friday.

Microsoft's Windows operating system accounted for 48.1% of worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs), up from 41.2% in year-ago period, according to July-September statistics from research group Gartner.

Palm's share dropped to 29.8% in the third quarter of 2004 from 46.9% in the same period last year. Canada's Research In Motion, which produces the hardware and software for its popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail devices, was a strong third, quadrupling its global market share in twelve months to 19.8% from 4.9%.

Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs) increased 13.6% to 2.86 million units.

The Democrats are owned lock, stock and barrel by Hollywood. That pains me as a lifelong liberal Dem, and I'm not going to be partisan about this. I was pleased, therefore, to read the following from Internet.com:

The American Conservative Union (ACU) accused Hollywood of attempting to "shanghai" public policy for its own agenda as it urged Congress to reject a package of proposed new intellectual property laws.

Stacie Rumenap, deputy director of the million-member ACU, joined officials from the electronics industry and public interest groups Friday to denounce an omnibus bill that combines eight different pieces of legislation that deal with copyright laws and technology.

Those $99 reborn Gemstars--descended from the original Rocket eBooks--are now buyable at the eBookwise site run by Fictionwise. Novelist Kate Saundby, well known in the e-book world, snapped up two machines immediately and is spreading the word on various email lists.

Screen contrast isn't as good as on more modern devices, but e-books are still perfectly readable on the machines if the reborn Gemstars are like those of yore. If you've been tarrying, this is a great way to get started in e-books. And the accompanying books formatted for Rocket eBook and Gemstar victims will please many old-timers who suffered when manufacturers orphaned the machines.

Biggest e-book events of 2004 so far--along with the Librie and OpenReader

Along with debut of the E-Ink-based Librie--and, yes, the creation of the OpenReader Consortium, in which I'm involved--the Gemstar revival could well be the most significant e-book event of 2004 so far.

It shows that despite all the DRM- and format-related bungling e-books are still alive, even with pathetic global sales of a mere $40 million a year. I'm especially heartened by word that Fictionwise intends in the future to release more advanced versions of the rebranded Gemstars.

Better hardware, not just efforts to deal with consumer-hostile DRM and and the Tower of eBabel, will also improve sales.

The lowdown

eBookwise is selling "an eBook reader called the eBookwise-1150 (a re-branded GEB 1150 device) for $99.95" and offering a "$20 content bonus." It's also marketing "eBooks for 'migrated' GEB 1150, GEB 2150, REB 1200, and GEB 2200 devices. Learn about migration and more."

The store "already sells over 6500 titles with many more being added in the coming weeks and months." You can register for updates.

The Tower of eBabel

I hate the Tower of eBabel and am not keen on proprietary formats of the kind that the above machines use. However, big publishers and perhaps a hardware vendor have presumably left Fictionwise's Scott and Steve Pentergrast with no choice. That will change as demand grows for an end to the DRM and format messes. What's more, I understand that Fictionwise will soon allow buyers of the new Gemstars to import their own material such as Gutenberg-style books. That's not a real solution but mitigates the harm. Furthermore, if the right people cooperate, OpenReader books will be available via conversion.

Meanwhile best of luck to Scott, Steve and others at Fictionwise!

Raves from Kate Saundby

A fellow e-book lover is as enchanted by the Gemstar revival as I am--in fact, even more. Author K.C. Krueger, aka Kate Saundby, aka Freddie, has just ordered two machines. Below is her message this morning to the Fictionwise list. Along the way, you'll notice that she nicely spells out the horrors--including the DRM nightmares--that she has suffered with other machines. While Fictionwise carries her books, I haven't the least doubt that she would feel and act the same if it did not. All right, here's what Kate says:

I immediately went to the site and ordered two 1150's (one as a Christmas gift for a friend who I've been trying to convert to ebooks), and am looking forward to their arrival. Presently, I own a 32-meg Franklin Rocket and a Gemstar 1100, both of which are in excellent working order.

Personally, I consider the original Rocket's display superior to the 1100's, but like the lighter weight of the latter.

The big attraction of the Gemstar 1150 for me is that I can now get encrypted titles that were previously unavailable My HP Jornada has finally died, which means I've lost all the encrypted MobiPocket titles I had on it. My Palm Zire 71, which also handles Mobipocket, has a teeny-tiny screen, which will display only a paragraph or two at a time and a battery life of three or four hours as compared to the Rockets' robust eighteen. Because this was the third time I registered for MobiPocket, I'm also out of code numbers, which is a monumental pain you know where. And the pundits continue to wonder why ordinary customers like me loathe encryption as much as we do! I paid for those titles and now I can't even access them! Which means I'll probably have to buy them all over again, dammit.

Interestingly, whenever I've attended a book show or convention and displayed my various wireless ereading devices, (a Hiebook, an HP Jornada 540, Palm Zire and two Rockets) the attendees invariably gravitate to the Rockets. When I say, 'No, they're not for sale,' they immediately want to know where they can get one.

In other words, for reading purposes, the Rockets still have it over everything else.

Earlier I suggested that copyright laws were a shining example of Democratic politicians' disconnect with America, especially in states such as Ohio, which doesn't exactly abound with overpaid studio executives. Now, from guess which state, come a relevant item via the Free Conversant site:

It is with great pleasure I post today that the MPAA anti-piracy signs are being removed from The Mall at Tuttle Crossing in Dublin, Ohio...

Background:

Taubman, the property owners and managers of The Mall got back with me within the last few days that they will be asking JCDecaux, their indoor marketing company, to remove these signs.

I honestly was quite surprised that these are not scary, monolithic corporations, but rather agile growing businesses staffed with some of the nicest people you'll ever talk to. My last discussion Taubman was short, and sweet letting me know that they will be providing me the exact date for when the signs will be removed. Wow! Talk about customer service!

I love my community. Mere yards away from this mall lay the offices of many corporations that are on the forefront of utilizing new technology and media. The Dublin Core metadata comes from here, and that is just one example. For doing business, Columbus, Ohio is a good place to be.

The ads are tantamount to a legal threat to the general public about their property, and they do it opposite advertisements for children's movies. My response is that I do not want them to do that in my community, in the public space where I'm trying to live. I am an artist too, and just because they have a problem with free downloads, doesn't mean they can give the impression that people in my community can't download my copyrighted works for free.

It is not that I think that copyright infringement is justified. Rather, corporations are giving legitimate downloading and new internet-based media a bad name by claiming they are a victim of new technology.

Being nice, patient, and making a simple, yet compelling argument about your views is always a great way to create change within a corporation. You can never hurt a corporation by doing this, only make it better, and if they are helping one more customer, you, isn't that good for both parties?

The MPAA itself was founded as a pirate organization. Piracy is wrong, but new media always unleashes itself in ways that can often combat the established structures. The actual history of information as property can be found in the excellent freely downloadable ebook and mp3 audiobook Free Culture by Laurence Lessig. http://www.free-culture.org

So, technology's role in all of this is not my point to make.

It is interesting, however, the fact that the anchor stores of this mall sell DiVX and MP3 playing devices. As an artist, I take great offense that the MPAA would be as bold as to propagandize internet downloads in this manner without being fair to the reality of legitimate downloads. How many people that would ever bother consuming my crappy music or video are being turned away by thinking they can't freely do whatever they want with what I create? I would be honored! Take it! I'll never quite understand why the MPAA wants to preach at the general public (their own consumers).

CDs and floppies are iffy as long-term storage solutions, warns an article in today's New York Times.

That's old news, but here's an extra thought in a TeleRead context. Is it possible that a national digital library system could reliably store not just finished books but also the personal papers of leading authors who consented?

Admittedly there are risks. Care would have to be taken to prevent leaks and give the writers and their estates control over the material, just as is the case in the paper era. But the idea is at least worth contemplating.

Possibility for Internet Archive?

Maybe the privately owned Internet Archive could undertake this project--a nice way to complement the work of OurMedia (formerly OpenMedia), which will focus on storing the texts, graphics, audios and videos of ordinary Americans with stories to tell. Other notables, such as leading business people and government officials, might also see possibilities here.

Meanwhile here are more details from the Times article:

The nation's 115 million home computers are brimming over with personal treasures - millions of photographs, music of every genre, college papers, the great American novel and, of course, mountains of e-mail messages.

Yet no one has figured out how to preserve these electronic materials for the next decade, much less for the ages. Like junk e-mail, the problem of digital archiving, which seems straightforward, confounds even the experts.

"To save a digital file for, let's say, a hundred years is going to take a lot of work," said Peter Hite, president of Media Management Services, a consulting firm in Houston. "Whereas to take a traditional photograph and just put it in a shoe box doesn't take any work." Already, half of all photographs are taken by digital cameras, with most of the shots never leaving a personal computer's hard drive.

So dire and complex is the challenge of digital preservation in general that the Library of Congress has spent the last several years forming committees and issuing reports on the state of the nation's preparedness for digital preservation.

Jim Gallagher, director for information technology services at the Library of Congress, said the library, faced with "a deluge of digital information," had embarked on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar project, with an eye toward creating uniform standards for preserving digital material so that it can be read in the future regardless of the hardware or software being used. The assumption is that machines and software formats in use now will become obsolete sooner rather than later.

"It is a global problem for the biggest governments and the biggest corporations all the way down to individuals," said Ken Thibodeau, director for the electronic records archives program at the National Archives and Records Administration.

In the meantime, individual PC owners struggle in private. Desk drawers and den closets are filled with obsolete computers, stacks of Zip disks and 3½-inch diskettes, even the larger 5¼-inch floppy disks from the 1980's. Short of a clear solution, experts recommend that people copy their materials, which were once on vinyl, film and paper, to CD's and other backup formats.

In a classy reply to yesterday's post, Kansas City Star book critic John Mark Eberhart confirmed my belief--that actually he and I have very much in common in our unhappiness with the Tower of eBabel. I'll quote a few sentences from his clueful message:

You're right that I have one of the old Rocket eBooks, the model with the monochrome screen. Part of my dissatisfaction stems from having lost some texts via the thing as it became less and less useful--but I thank you for your alert regarding some things I might be missing. I'm going to check into that...

I think you're right--we probably do see this more eye to eye than I thought. I have absolutely no philosophical objection to digital texts. All I want is some stability of some kind, you know? While no promises ever can be made, technology developers of all kinds need to be aware of the frustration they can cause consumers.

Down in Australia, the local Gutenberg link for Gone with the Wind is--gone. The New York Times has the details.

Jon Noring, the eBook Community list moderator, who inspired the Slashdotting of the TeleRead post about this, correctly worries about the implications for the public domain movement.

Let's hope that Larry Lessig and the EFF can leap into action and, if it makes sense, get a test case going here--lest greedy estates imperil the cash-strapped public domain movement with threats of suits.

Bad news beyond Gutenberg

Significantly, the U.S. and Aussie Gutenbergs are independent organizations, and yet the Margaret Mitchell estate claimed that the Americans were inducing the Australians to commit infringements. This is bad news for U.S. citizens contemplating public domain archives in countries with shorter copyright terms.

We need shorter copyright terms, yes, not longer ones stretched out by donation-bribed legislators. The Democrats resolutely refused to make this a campaign issue despite my appeals to the respective Kerry and Edwards campaigns. No one would oppose the multibillion-dollar copyright giveway to heirs and corporations--yes, that's the actual cost over the years of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act signed by Bill Clinton. One of the many reasons why the Dems lost? You bet. A populist stand on on this and other copyright issues could have won over enough voters to make a difference in a barely lost election, given all the tens of millions of file-downloaders. Ohio isn't exactly teeming with glamorous Hollywood executives with millions to give to the DNC--just schoolchildren in need of educations.

No, copyright isn't the economy or Iraq. But it does matter, not just in terms of elections but in terms of the democracy we're fighting for. With material in the public domain, you can quote from it without the risk that still-in-copyright material carries. The electorate can be better informed. Copyright is good, but only with balance--a quality that both the Democrats and the Bushies have missed at most every turn. None other than Hilary Rosen, who recenty left as CEO of the RIAA, has assisted in the rewriting of Iraqi copyright law.

More details from the Times

A few more details from the Times:

At issue is the date when "Gone With the Wind" enters the public domain. In the United States, under an extension of copyright law, "Gone With the Wind'' will not enter the public domain until 2031, 95 years after its original publication.

But in Australia, as in a handful of other places, the book was free of copyright restrictions in 1999, 50 years after Mitchell's death.

The case is one more example of the Internet's inherent lack of respect for national borders or, from another view, the world's lack of reckoning for the international nature of the Internet, and it is also an example of the already complicated range of copyright laws.

The issue of national sovereignty over the Internet has not been firmly established, either by trade agreement or by court precedent, some legal experts say, and conflicts continue to be settled individually. But there are much bigger copyright battles looming as more material, including songs by Elvis Presley and the Beatles, approach public domain in countries around the world...

[Thomas D. Selz], the lawyer with the firm that represents the Stephens Mitchell Trusts, said the law firm and the estate were still exploring what action to take in the Australian case.

He said his firm had merely exchanged e-mail messages with Project Gutenberg and was surprised to hear that the "Gone With the Wind" text was no longer accessible. The project's founder, Michael Stern [Hart], did not reply to e-mail messages requesting comment.

But in a radio interview this year, Col Choat, the coordinator of Project Gutenberg in Australia, said that about 300 books on his site were free of copyright protection in Australia but not in the United States. Among them were Hitler's "Mein Kampf," "My Brilliant Career" by Miles Franklin, "1984" by George Orwell and the Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Those texts were still at www.gutenberg.net.au last week.

"It may be that just the threat of pressure was enough incentive to get it removed," Mr. Carroll, the California lawyer, said. "Project Gutenberg is made up of volunteers and doesn't have deep pockets."

Another reason for the quick removal of the book may be a trade agreement, expected to be ratified by the United States and Australia this year, that would require Australia to enforce a copyright limit of 70 years after the death of the author...

John Mark Eberhart, book critic for the Kansas City Star, is an e-book basher. But in an emailed reply to a TeleRead post, Eberhart was spot-on about proprietary e-book formats--well, at least indirectly as a "burned" buyer of a Rocket eBook or maybe a similar orphan, perhaps a Gemstar. Imagine "spending a considerable amount of money on a portable reader, then having the company go out of business," with many publishers losing interest in the related format, thereby limiting Eberhart's e-book choices.

Smug members of the e-book industry would do well to pay close attention to Eberhart's implied grumpiness about the Tower of eBabel and understand the need for a standards-based format like OpenReader. While most of the just-received note from Eberhart was an attack on my post, I can see him as a possible ally in the future when he learns more about e-books. It is laudable to bash the user-hostile aspects of e-books. The trick is to be discerning in taking on the industry's massive abuse of customers.

Meanwhile, in full, here is what I originally posted back on September 26--followed by all of Eberhart reply:

E-book Luddites: Do they know of PDAs?

No, PDAs aren't the solution for all who want to read e-books--screens are smaller than many readers would like. But it would be nice to see certain journalists at least acknowledge PDAs' existence, as opposed to making readers think that a Web browser needs to be the norm. In the Kansas City Star, book critic John Mark Eberhart writes that he won't read e-text because of "eye strain" and goes on to say:

I still find it much easier to read a printed page than sit in front of a computer screen. There used to be a couple good free-standing reading units out there, but readers really did not embrace them. That said, I do enjoy reading news and weather and such on the Web. That's because I can accomplish that in a much briefer time. So the bottom line: Information, yes. Some research, sure. But reading entire books on the Web is, at this point, not something I'm really interested in doing. It would take considerable improvements in technology to change my mind. And even then, my easy chair is much more comfortable than my office chair.

Notice? Not a word on Mobipocket or other ways to display e-books on a PDA.

I'm using my wife's email because it automatically comes up when I respond to a Web page. At any rate, this is John Mark Eberhart responding to your post on teleread.org. Your post distorts what I said on the KC Star Web Forum. I never said that I never read texts in digital form, as you imply. Nor did I ever say I haven't tried PDAs--I have, and still found them rather unsatisfactory, although certain versions did have their advantages. But after spending considerable money on a portable reader, then having the company go out of business, I feel I have been burned a bit, and I'm reluctant to be burned again. Finally, you write that I wrote my comments "in the Kansas City Star," which is inaccurate. As you well know, those comments appeared in the discussion forum on kansascity.com, which is NOT the same thing as "The Kansas City Star."

I'd appreciate you posting these clarifications on the site.

Suppose Andrew Carnegie had promised to give away steel, not libraries. Metaphorically that's the position that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in.

Microsoft earns its money off knowledge-related products ranging from software to books and photographs--in many cases, the very stuff that public libraries ought to make available for free. Given libraries' inevitable clashes with Microsoft's corporate goals, isn't it time for Bill Gates to spin off an independent foundation created especially with libraries and schools in mind? Mightn't he continue his present library efforts but experiment with allowing some self-created competition? Just consider the library-related possibilities in areas such as a universal e-book format and open source, which could lead to thriftier, more effective libraries and maybe even technology beneficial to Microsoft in the long run. While Bill Gates isn't the current foundation's leader, he was on the board at least as of 2003, and his father, William H. Gates, Sr., remains as cochair. Time for a spinoff without those and other Microsoft connections?

Only 3.3 percent for libraries

Such questions come to mind in the wake of a pie chart in the Nov. 11 edition of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It shows that the Gates library initiative has received just 3.3 percent of some $7.2 billion that Bill and Melinda Gates have given away since 1994. Why are libraries such a low priority in the Gates cosmos despite all the comparisons of the software mogul with Carnegie? Just why are libraries getting just a few crumbs, relatively, from the Gates Foundation's $27 billion endowment?

Perhaps, deep down, Bill Gates is ambivalent about what he is doing. On one hand, public libraries are supposed to make as much information as possible available for free. On the other, Microsoft aspires to be one of the toll-keepers of the Internet. While Microsoft has been more flexible than expected in allowing libraries to use non-Microsoft products, some serious conflicts remain.

The more Gates gets into content, particularly with tens of billion dollars of stray cash on hand at Microsoft, the more appropriate it is to ask: "Couldn't some of your corporate activities be at odds with your library initiative? Mightn't your proprietary-format approach be an obstacle to libraries' adoption of electronic books? Your own people promised to avoid VHS vs. Beta times ten. And yet today we have the Tower of eBabel. On top of that, haven't you locked up classic photographs and other elements of American culture?"

Corbis illustrates problem

The Corbis archive of photographs and art is one illustration of the perils of too deeply intertwining Gates' business and philanthropic activities without allowing for the conflicts. Since when has the Corbis content been available to small business people to use the images in an unfettered way, not just look at them? An independent new foundation, not run by Gates or members of his family, could work out arrangements for at least some of Corbis collection to be unfettered, with proper compensation for copyright holders. Remember, libraries do not just exist for education per se. Carnegie regarded philanthropy as a way to help common people build wealth; that is, "to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise." It is high time that Gates money help libraries became more responsive to young business people's needs in an era where so many Netizens originate content, not just consume it. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act makes it more urgent than ever for Carnegie II to stop tying up so much content if he indeed cares about libraries. An independent Gates Library Foundation could work with Corbis in that regard and others.

An independent foundation could also begin to negotiate with publishers and film and recording studios to make selected text works available for free to schoolchildren and the rest of us a la TeleRead. Bill Gates bought several rare editions of The Great Gatsby--reportedly a favorite of his--for the personal library of his $50-million-plus mansion. Why hasn't he used the Net to share his enthusiasm? An independent Gates Library Foundation could be bolder than Gates in experimenting with new intellectual property models to spread around Gatsby and other modern classics.

What's more, it could also finance an open-source alternatives to proprietary e-book formats like Microsoft Reader, which will not evolve as easily as could OpenReader, whose evolution a consortium could manage over the years. Ironically one of the beneficiaries might be Microsoft. With more free books on the Net and the advent of a universal e-book format, people might show more interest in the Tablet PC as well as in smaller tablets. Even commercial e-books would benefit. Today you can't truly own an e-book, not with the uncertainties of proprietary formats and proprietary DRM. Doing good with e-books just might help Microsoft's leader do well--through increased sales of hardware and operating systems.

An independent Gates Library Foundation, moreover, could go further beyond the mostly box-and-wire approach of the Gates Foundation and do a better job of integrating computers into the fabric of the communities the foundation served. Sadly and ironically, some bright people in small towns are using Gates-financed equipment in libraries to look for jobs outside their communities--a problem that Gates himself has acknowledged. An independent library foundation could work more closely with local people to create hometown opportunities than could a software mogul accustomed to life the Microsoft way. Unfortunately a few sentences in the Chronicles of Philanthropy show that Microsoft, er, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is actually becoming less flexible in funding libraries.

"The foundation doesn't accept unsolicited proposals for its education and library programs," the Chronicle reports, "and expects to provide fewer unsolicited grants in global health as well." In the same vein, the Chronicle quotes foundation spokesman Lowell Weiss:

More and more frequently we are reaching out directly to potential partners that have a strong track record in carrying out these activities rather than waiting for inquiries to come to us. Across all our programs, we are gaining greater clarity on the outcomes we want to help achieve and the activities we believe are most likely to achieve these outcomes.