TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Mobipocket’ Category

By Jon Noring

AAP’s recent open letter strongly supporting the use of ePub by publishers was covered by David Rothman in a separate blog article.

Reading the letter, it was unclear to me whether AAP supported ePub as a consumer format. The letter focused mostly on using ePub as an intermediary format to be converted by wholesalers and retailers into various proprietary end-user formats currently in vogue.

The letter did imply support of ePub as a consumer format, by the use of the word “IF” in the second paragraph, but it was not explicit and some might have interpreted the letter differently. If so, they should read the clarification by Ed McCoyd, the Director of Digital Policy at AAP, who signed the AAP open letter. With his permission I am quoting part of his reply to the letter I wrote him:

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Popularity: 2% [?]

By Paul Biba

Best Buy has started selling the Windows XP version of the Eee PC and I’m afraid I fell for it. Unlike Ficbot I am not willing to fool around with Linux - I want something useful out of the box with no learning curve. An XP box is also useful as I have pretty much converted to a Mac shop but at times Windows is essential. For example, my bank and insurance company will only accept logins from Internet Explorer, not Firefox or Safari. I have been running Parallels on my MacBook and it works pretty well, but it’s nice to have an easily accessible Windows machine sitting nearby.

The machine comes with 512K RAM and 4GB of internal memory. I added an extra 8GB SD card to hold more programs. Much to my surprise it is pretty speedy, even with the underclocked processor and the limited RAM. I have it connected to a spare 19″ Samsung LCD monitor and the display is crisp and clean. For some further shots you can take a look at my posting at GPSPassion. Here’s the link. In that posting I discuss how I loaded up some GPS software on the machine and how you can use it for on-road navigation. You’ll also see a shot of it connected to the Samsung monitor. The touchpad has been the subject of criticism in a number of reviews for being difficult to use. I, however, seem to have no problems with it at all. I also added one of those mice with a retractable cord.

The keyboard is pretty tiny but I think you could end up typing fairly quickly if you had enough practice. The WiFi reception is incredible. I get better reception than my wife’s Toshiba or IBM and it is as good, if not a bit better, than my MacBook. The Windows connection proceedure, however, makes you want to scream and tear your hair out after you have gotten used to the simple, quick Mac procedure. As a matter of fact, dealing with Windows on the machine validates my decision to switch to the Mac platform. Boy is Windows clunky compared to OSX!

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Popularity: 4% [?]

By David Rothman

“We are a public school district with a corporate Amazon account. In good faith we purchased a Kindle. When it came time to download books, we discovered Amazon would only allow customers to order by credit card. Public school libraries, academic libraries and public libraries do not have corporate credit cards. So, bottom line, Amazon won’t let us buy Kindle books on our corporate account via a purchase order. Our Kindle is useless to us and our students have no access to this great technology. So much for innovation and Amazon’s lack of leadership in emerging technologies! And now we have a $400 loss at our taxpayers’ expense.” - A school librarian in New York.

The TeleRead take: Read the comments (appearing below her post), which overwhelmingly defend Amazon. I’d agree with them for the most part. That said, Amazon would do well not to allow purchase orders without warning customers of the complications—including the Kindle’s licensing terms, suggesting that this is really machine for individual use. See a LibraryJournal article and Rochelle Hartman’s thoughts on these matters. Psst! If the librarian and her school really want to keep the Kindle, they could download free nonDRM classics or buy nonDRMed books in Mobipocket format or DRMed ones from sources such as Fictionwise. Carefully read the format-related information in store FAQs. Confusingly, the Kindle can read nonDRMed Mobi for public domain sites and many stores but not the “protected” type unless the store has arranged for this.

Meanwhile, if nothing else, we know that the Kindle is in use at a New Jersey library—presumably one with a credit card—despite the legal questions. No, this isn’t the most school-and-library-friendly machine, but as long as you know the risks and workarounds, it’s far, far from useless. Of course, the Kindle will be more useful if Amazon gets behind the ePub standard, which could increase the number of books available for it.

Two public domain sites with Mobi/Kindle books: Feedbooks and Manybooks.net.

Image: Kindle with Sony Reader—CC-licensed from Jblyberg.

Popularity: 5% [?]

By David Rothman

Ironic, isn’t it?

Amazon’s bestseller pricing favors Kindle books over those at the Mobipocket Store in the Mobi format—which can run on certain mobile phones and a variety of other devices.

But meanwhile Jeff Bezos and company are laudably recognizing the importance of mobile phones with a new, cellphone-based service to let you order books and items via text messaging.

Will the Kindle itself soon be turned into an order-taker for much more than books?

Related: TextBuyIt page on Amazon, the new service’s FAQ,  Publishers Weekly story and the rival, book-oriented ShopText service.

And a reminder to Jeff and friends: The world has many more cellphones than dedicated e-book readers. In your place I’d hope mightily that Google doesn’t catch on to the potential of the Android cellphone platform for e-book software able to display .epub books. Time to get more serious about .epub?

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Paul Biba

Despite my sarcastic title, this is really good news for the ebook community. The availability of ebooks on more and more platforms can only be good for the medium. Here is part of the announcement from Mobipocket today:

Do you read emails on your Blackberry? Why not read ebooks and enews? Download the free Mobipocket eBook Reader on your Blackberry, and enjoy the reading experience. The online eBookstore is also integrated: find and start reading your favorite stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, straight from your Blackberry! Read on and discover how your Blackberry can become the ultimate ebook reader.

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Forget your desktop computer: the Mobipocket Reader now gives you Over The Air (OTA) access to the entire eBook catalogue from your Blackberry. At any time, and you can be anywhere, you will find your favorite stories among more than 65.000 premium titles ! Download and try free samples, read other reader’s reviews, buy and download instantly the titles you like… all from your Blackberry.

And of course, all the titles in your library can be downloaded or redownloaded at any time from your account.

Popularity: 5% [?]