This is a release of the iNewsStand application.

I did not program this, it was done by the smart people over at Feedbooks (http://www.feedbooks.com). I simply helped with the porting to the iLiad.

This program allows you download News, Books, Soduku all over a network connection without the use of a PC. I can download books in the Mobipocket, ePub, or custom iLiad PDF formats.

Previous discussion can be found in this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12852)

Hey...
very good news, great job Adam. A sincere thank you!

Hi Adam,
I have kind of the problem with iNewsStand.
I have my wireless network link up and when start iNewsStand green led is flashing all the time.
"Brick bar" at the bottom is alive showing black "brick" traveling and nothing else is happening.

I have 2.12 software version

Regards
Piotr

Hi Adam,
I have kind of the problem with iNewsStand.
I have my wireless network link up and when start iNewsStand green led is flashing all the time.
"Brick bar" at the bottom is alive showing black "brick" traveling and nothing else is happening.

I have 2.12 software version

Regards
Piotr

I'm not sure what the problem is...That's never happened to me before.

I've put the unzipped file on my iliad and clicked to run it, it comes up with an error message,

here's the error log:

I/O warning : failed to load external entity "./inewsstand.xml"
error : Resource temporarily unavailable
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/initializing"
error : Resource temporarily unavailable
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/initializing"


any help would be appreciated :)

I have my wireless network link up and when start iNewsStand green led is flashing all the time.
"Brick bar" at the bottom is alive showing black "brick" traveling and nothing else is happening. Is this (or your download target) on your CF card? There is a problem downloading to the CF card via WiFi, see The Guardian 24 automatic download (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=165593&postcount=22). I can't tell if iNewsStand is designed to work around this or not.

There is a problem downloading to the CF card via WiFi, see The Guardian 24 automatic download (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=165593&postcount=22). I can't tell if iNewsStand is designed to work around this or not.

It downloads directly to your storage media of choice. In my case CF which resulted in problems.

I've put the unzipped file on my iliad and clicked to run it, it comes up with an error message,

here's the error log:

I/O warning : failed to load external entity "./inewsstand.xml"
error : Resource temporarily unavailable
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/initializing"
error : Resource temporarily unavailable
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/initializing"


any help would be appreciated :)

Seems like it had a problem accessing the XML resource on our end. Maybe you should try again ?

If you put the same RSS feed that you use in Mobipocket into Feedbook the output is truncated. Any way to fix that?

Hi There,Bonjour,

I have tried several times to upload RSS and Newspapers unsuccessfully so I decided to seek help from the EXPERTS... I am aware of the fact that the CF that I am using can be a problem when downloading using a wireless connection, however, each time I was able to download one of several ebooks successfully, which were located in the folder internal memory/Books (that makes me assume that it can be possible to download newspapers as well). The internal memory/Newspaper folder stay desperately empty each time...:blink:
Would you be kind as to let me know how I could solve that issue. I did follow some advices from the other forum (...start downloading RSS first, one by one and then newspapers...) unsuccessfully!!!

Hadrien, Merci infiniment d'avoir creer le web site Feedbooks.com mais aussi un ingenieux logiciel tel que inewstand. j'espere vivement pouvoir le faire marcher...


Thanks a million for your help,
Merci d'avance pour tout


Take good care,

D.

I have iNewsStand working with my new iLiad I just got Friday (novice ILiad user, but linux experience), and its quite nice. But I have a few problems and questions.

Is there a way to easily cleanup the old news downloads? Can it be done automatically?

Is a crossword puzzle planned for the future?

Tech News downloads but doesn't open.

Likewise, I setup an RSS feed for JKOnTheRun. It downloads but will not open.

Any sugestions? Thanks.

1st: I cant read greek rss (xml) . With mobipocket i can.
2nd: With feedbooks u can read the titles and not the articles.
3rd: If u want to download and read a book is ok....

Is there a solution to read greek rss and all the articles of them? Feebooks had a very good idea but they have to fix some problems like those i said above.

Hello everyone,

First of all, the current version of the software is still more of a test version than anything else. Book downloads already work perfectly (aside from the CF issue).
For the RSS feeds, you can experience bugs related to the software on the iLiad or to the service itself. We're still focusing on finishing all of our features for books on the service, and the RSS part is not as fully ready.
The main problem that we have is that our iLiad is dead and iRex haven't released yet their new development tools. Once that we can work on the iLiad again, we'll improve the software (the UI for example could be much better).

Heres a few answers:
- Cleaning up old downloads: We could let the user select to include or not the date in the filename. Without the date, it would overwrite the old file.
- Full feeds/Partial feeds: We don't truncate the feeds unlike what Alcuith said. Actually some websites use partial feeds with just a few sentences instead of the full article. We don't plan on extracting the content on our own for 2 reasons. First of all, I'm not sure that this would be legal. But it would also take a lot of resources on our side to handle such a thing for thousands of users. If you'd like a full feed for a website that only provides a partial one, I would advise you to send an e-mail to the webmaster or to create a full feed yourself with a service such as Dapper.
- Foreign languages: Currently, we don't have a way to detect the language of the text. For PDF (LaTeX) we need this information to correctly encode the characters. This won't be an issue with Mobipocket and ePub though, once we add support for these 2 formats for our RSS feature. We'll probably move to Prince XML for our PDF output in the future, which should fix this problem for PDF files too.

I just purchased the Iliad and installed the inewsstand on CF and not internal memory. Whenever I download feeds or books it says it is downloaded but when I try to open them up nothing happens. It shows the actually size of the document in my reader but will not open. Is it because it is on CF?

Is it because it is on CF?

Yes, at the moment there is a bug on the iLiad when it downloads directly to CF. Your best bet is to either use an MMC card or the internal storage.

thanks

Hi,

This software is great ! Is the code source available ?

I'm working on a new API for Feedbooks, this time the whole service will be fully RESTful and this should enable much much more features.

I'll release full documentation when everything is ready and we'll provide a C++ library too.

So until there the source code is not available to download ?

So until there the source code is not available to download ?

Yes it is, I've just sent an e-mail to Adam about it (I don't have access to the SVN for this project from my laptop).

Great ! thanks, keep me informed

Here's the latest version of the source that I have. It was used to make the binary posted in this thread.

Thanks a lot !

(Just to know if I can modify what I want, is this under GPL license ?)

Thanks a lot !

(Just to know if I can modify what I want, is this under GPL license ?)

Sure but keep in mind that the API will evolve in the near future.

We'll have a RESTful API.
For exemple you'll be able to access a book in XML with this type of request: GET /book/id.xml
or in JSON: GET /book/id.json

To search for a book it'll be: GET /books/search?query=yourquery
... for an author: GET /authors/search?query=yourquery

We'll have tons of resources available this way. The first version of the API will be mostly GET requests (read) but we'll add the possibility to create books, authors, newspapers in the second release (the rest of the CRUD actions: Create, Update and Delete).

I've included an example of a search with the new API. If you'd like to study examples of REST API, try Digg or Twitter.

Well ... Im in a hurry to see that ! It'll open great opportunities to improve book access !!!

ps : paris, france ? c'est francais feedbook ?

EDIT : héhéhé ... oui en effet, il y a même quelques commentaires en français qui trainent ;)

I didn't thought it would be that simple the create a connexion with the iLiad !! Actually, I wanna create a download platform for this device and I wonder how does your server work on feedBook ?

ARggg ^^ ... I can't compile iNewsStand for the iLiad, how do you do this ?

(if I try with the WMware image, I get an error with gtk+-2.0 ... and if I try with KDevelop I have problems like "skipping incompatible /PATH/lerdm.so" for example...)

Hello Hadrien,

sorry, have you sorted out the errors like:
FATAL ERROR - Can not get XML: http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/initializing?

It seems like I cann't connect in iNewsStand after my device was repaired in iRex... (it was returning on this days)

I couldn't discover the point "default profile" in Network profiles. In a case of pressing the iDS button the connection with IRex resource is established normally. But when I try to connect via ConnectionMgr_script and after that run the dillo browser - the browser doesn't see any site... it's very strange cause I use the same software packages like before the device was shipped to iRex service.

Any ideas, guys?

Just took a look at this XML file and it's still available and working (initializing is the first XML file called when you use the API).

Just wondering when the Sudoku's will be fixed? They have been "disabled" for awhile. Thanks.

Just wondering when the Sudoku's will be fixed? They have been "disabled" for awhile. Thanks.

As soon as I have enough time to work on it. We've just launched a vastly improved RSS feature and a new API, I need some time to complete everything and make sure that everything works fine.

Ok, thanks for the update. It used to be that the Sudoku was one of the few things that worked. I have noticed that more of the RSS feeds are working now though. Please keep up the good work!

Ok, thanks for the update. It used to be that the Sudoku was one of the few things that worked. I have noticed that more of the RSS feeds are working now though. Please keep up the good work!

The RSS part is completely different now: it's much faster, support a lot more feeds and there's even a Mobipocket or ePub output. I use it myself every morning and it only takes a few seconds to generate and download all my feeds.

I'll add new pages too to browse through feeds and newspapers and thanks to our new API it should be super easy for a developer to create new applications using Feedbooks (http://www.feedbooks.com/help/iphone#stanza is a very good example).

Hadrien, regarding the newspapers. I wasn't manage yesterday to create the .mobi-file or pdf-file with newspaper (although it was downloaded judging by downloading state). However there wasn't any trouble with a simple feed.

suppose this old bug hasn't been corrected yet?

Thanks a lot

Hadrien, regarding the newspapers. I wasn't manage yesterday to create the .mobi-file or pdf-file with newspaper (although it was downloaded judging by downloading state). However there wasn't any trouble with a simple feed.

suppose this old bug hasn't been corrected yet?

Thanks a lot

It wasn't exactly a bug: the problem is that generating a newspaper with multiple feeds took too long and therefore did a timeout on nginx. This should be fixed with most of the newspapers now, what your newspaper's id ?

that's the private newspaper: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/2367

that's the private newspaper: http://www.feedbooks.com/newspaper/2367

I don't see a single RSS feed in it.

If it's private, it might not work as the moment as I'm working on a unified authentification system (cookies, sessions, HTTP Basic Auth and parameters).

I don't see a single RSS feed in it.

If it's private, it might not work as the moment as I'm working on a unified authentification system (cookies, sessions, HTTP Basic Auth and parameters).

hmm, yes, I've deleted feeds from it yesterday... How to delete the whole newspaper?

Btw, Hadrien, is it possibile to download the news via iDS button pressing (Automatic Downloaders Framework (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26064)) in background mode? I guess it would be useful a lot :)
Upps, sorry - I found the answer :)

Should be very easy to download in the background.
Basically there's 2 solutions:
1) you manually enter the URIs of your feeds/newspapers and the script wget them
2) you create a small script that could parse your XML listing the subscriptions on Feedbooks and get them

Thomas is working on such a thing, you should probably ask him.

Too bad that you deleted the content in the newspaper, I could've probably test it and see if there's a real problem on it.

Too bad that you deleted the content in the newspaper, I could've probably test it and see if there's a real problem on it.

Hadrian, I've restored the content - please find out it

Hadrian, I've restored the content - please find out it

There's a problem with the second feed. Might be because it's in cyrillic, I'll have to do a few test. First one in the newspaper works fine.

There's a problem with the second feed. Might be because it's in cyrillic, I'll have to do a few test. First one in the newspaper works fine.

Dear Hadrian, have you performed your testing? Should I exclude the cirillic feeds from newspapers in a future?

Dear Hadrian, have you performed your testing? Should I exclude the cirillic feeds from newspapers in a future?

It's not a specific problem with cyrillic: the first feed works. I need to do further tests to see why the other one isn't working properly.

I love Feedbooks and iNewsStand is a great addition to my iLiad. Its all working perfectly for me. Thanks, Hadrien!

I love Feedbooks and iNewsStand is a great addition to my iLiad. Its all working perfectly for me. Thanks, Hadrien!

Glad that you like it Crisby. I still consider that this application is far from what I'd like it to be but unfortunately, our iLiad is broken and no news from iRex about a SDK.

In the meantime we've released a new API (http://www.feedbooks.com/api), a sync software for Windows (http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand) and Stanza integrated our API on the iPhone (http://www.feedbooks.com/help/iphone).

I hope that real soon it'll be possible to sync your feeds from Feedbooks using iDS, this way, you could automatically get them every morning using the built-in wifi.

Hadrien, I can't see any benefit in being able to synch our feeds from Feedbooks using iDS... am I missing something?

I find it very easy to download my Feedbooks feeds and books via iNewsStand. I can choose which feeds to download each time - I doubt I could do that through iDS - I expect it would be all or nothing each time. iNewsStand is easy to load and use.

I love it that I can choose a classic book and download it quickly, wirelessly, free, beautifully formatted, to my iLiad. Thank you!

Hadrien, I can't see any benefit in being able to synch our feeds from Feedbooks using iDS... am I missing something?

I find it very easy to download my Feedbooks feeds and books via iNewsStand. I can choose which feeds to download each time - I doubt I could do that through iDS - I expect it would be all or nothing each time. iNewsStand is easy to load and use.

I love it that I can choose a classic book and download it quickly, wirelessly, free, beautifully formatted, to my iLiad. Thank you!

A few people on this forum created scripts that are executed at the same time than iDS. Since you can ask iDS to auto-launch at a certain time, this would be an easy way to auto-sync your feeds every morning. You wouldn't have to launch the application: your feeds would be ready for you.

Fast as lightning reply!

I hadn't thought of the auto-launch as I don't use it. I can see why some people would prefer to use that for feeds.

All the same, I prefer to choose which feeds to synch at the time :)

A few people on this forum created scripts that are executed at the same time than iDS. Since you can ask iDS to auto-launch at a certain time, this would be an easy way to auto-sync your feeds every morning. You wouldn't have to launch the application: your feeds would be ready for you.

Would this also mean that us mac users could have an alternative to iNewsStand ? I have tried both the iLiad companion software and iNewsStand on my intel mac via vware and xp but have no success with either of them as my iLiad is unrecognised by xp. Not sure why atm. It works fine in osx via samba.

I'd much prefer a way to sync feedbook feeds without getting my hands dirty with any form of windows in any case. I may have come in late in the day but would the scripts people may be working on or proposed support from yourselves enable me to do this ?

Thanks.

Rachael

With iNewsStand, the downloads are directly on the device already. The scripts would act the same way: no desktop necessary.

Dear Hadrien,

Thank you very much for working so diligently on such great software and web site...
I have not been really able to fully enjoy the iNewsStand in the past as I am using using a CF card for all my ebooks and other nice 3rd party applications. I have learned that because of the conflict between the wireless and the CF card, it was pretty much impossible to download Newspapers (which I guess is due to to the substantive time needed to produce theses newspapers) while downloading books from feedboks.com work wonderfully...

I am planning to add a 1 or 2 GB SD card, to be able to install the only iNnewStand application and somehow get around the CF issue. To this matter I have a couple of questions:
1. Is it possible to do that without confusing the iliad?
2. Is it possible to specify the final output folder
3. What could be the consequences using both the CF card and the SD card...battery drain and other???
4. Any other "traps" to avoid??
5. To avoid messing things up, may I request from you a step by step process?



By anticipation, Thanks a million for your consideration.

Dabon.

The iLiad only supports 1GB MMC Compatible Cards.

Why don't you install iNewsStand on the internal memory? It's a very small application.

Concerning the output folder: we use the configuration of the iLiad. If you map your newspaper folder to another one, it'll be downloaded in this new folder.

Dear Adam B. and Hadrien,

Thank you very much for your responses and suggestion.

To Adam B.:
A few reasons why, I did not use my internal memory:
1. It is not really about the size of the applications, but rather to the fact that I have read a lot of comment in this forum, stating that one should refrain to install applications on their internal memory, as much as possible because of the potential of harm to the iliad...I like my iliad so much that i do not want to take any risk...
2. If ever Irex decide to upgrade their iliad with a new version of software 2.13 (what I do not wish as i like my ilaid like it is already...); that would ultimately wipe out every 3rd party applications from my internal memory...


To Hadrien:
If I understand clearly, the application will use the internal memory newspaper folder. In that case, it should be ok then.


Thanks,

Dabon.

I'm sorry, when I say "Internal Memory", I mean in one of the "News, Books, Docs, or Notes" directories. There's no harm in putting the iNewsStand application there because it does not modify the operating system of the iLiad.

Also, it will still be there after a software update.

Putting the application in the book or news folder would make a lot of sense (I'll let the user decide if they use iNewsStand for books or for news more often).
The default location for news is indeed the internal memory but you could change it in the XML configuration file.

Dear Adam B. and Hadrien,
Thank you again for some very informative responses.
I will install the application within the iliad newspaper folder, and see how it goes...If I ran out of space I can always use emlfFM2 to transfer files on the CF card...:)

Thank you again.

Take good care,

Dabon.

P.S. To Adam: While I have your attention here, may I request that you take a look at the KeePassX application that I have tried unsuccessfully numerous time with my CF card??
I have written a post in the appropriate thread, but have not gotten any response yet.
Thanks a million by anticipation.

With iNewsStand, the downloads are directly on the device already. The scripts would act the same way: no desktop necessary.

yey ! Bring on the scripts ! :thumbsup:

Rachael

Dear Adam B. and Hadrien,
Thank you again for some very informative responses.
I will install the application within the iliad newspaper folder, and see how it goes...If I ran out of space I can always use emlfFM2 to transfer files on the CF card...:)

Thank you again.

Take good care,

Dabon.

P.S. To Adam: While I have your attention here, may I request that you take a look at the KeePassX application that I have tried unsuccessfully numerous time with my CF card??
I have written a post in the appropriate thread, but have not gotten any response yet.
Thanks a million by anticipation.
Hi. I am brand new to this forum and the Iliad Second edition. I can't see how to install Newsstand on the Iliad - can anyone help please?

The RSS part is completely different now: it's much faster, support a lot more feeds and there's even a Mobipocket or ePub output. I use it myself every morning and it only takes a few seconds to generate and download all my feeds.

Hi. I got my Iliad this week, ready to take on holiday with me, and I've installed all the books I want, but I would also like a News feed (the BBC one ideally) whilst I'm away, when I can get near a wireless access point.

I've registered with Feedbooks, and subscribed to the BBC news feed. I've downloaded and installed your iNewsStand, and entered the details. When I run it (it is installed in my internal memory, and I have the News set to go there too -- all my books are on CF and all my DOocs are on MMC).

I can run iNewsStand okay, and it says I'm logged in and have "Iliad PDF" format setting. When I select the BBC news feed (the only one listed at present) and click "Sync!" the green LED lights for a few seconds, but the "wireless icon" bottom right never reverses. If I view the Downloads tab it says my BBC feed is "downloading 0%" for a longish time, until I exit and come back, or select "Refresh", when is says "Downloaded".

However, I can never actually find it. If it has downloaded to my Iliad it certainly isn't anywhere recognisable, and I've been through the contentslister in the main menu for internal memory, CF and MMC.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong. If you could possibly advise I'd be very grateful. Problem is I'm departing on holiday tomorrow afternoon (Thursday 18th, UK time) so I don't suppose it'll be resolved in time.

Should I try a different format? Iliad PDF seemed to be default for Iliad, but mayne, now you say Mobi and ePub are supported I should try one of those?

Thanks in anticipation.

Pete Dowson

Hi. I got my Iliad this week, ready to take on holiday with me, and I've installed all the books I want, but I would also like a News feed (the BBC one ideally) whilst I'm away, when I can get near a wireless access point.

I've registered with Feedbooks, and subscribed to the BBC news feed. I've downloaded and installed your iNewsStand, and entered the details. When I run it (it is installed in my internal memory, and I have the News set to go there too -- all my books are on CF and all my DOocs are on MMC).

I can run iNewsStand okay, and it says I'm logged in and have "Iliad PDF" format setting. When I select the BBC news feed (the only one listed at present) and click "Sync!" the green LED lights for a few seconds, but the "wireless icon" bottom right never reverses. If I view the Downloads tab it says my BBC feed is "downloading 0%" for a longish time, until I exit and come back, or select "Refresh", when is says "Downloaded".

However, I can never actually find it. If it has downloaded to my Iliad it certainly isn't anywhere recognisable, and I've been through the contentslister in the main menu for internal memory, CF and MMC.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong. If you could possibly advise I'd be very grateful. Problem is I'm departing on holiday tomorrow afternoon (Thursday 18th, UK time) so I don't suppose it'll be resolved in time.

Should I try a different format? Iliad PDF seemed to be default for Iliad, but mayne, now you say Mobi and ePub are supported I should try one of those?

Thanks in anticipation.

Pete Dowson

Yes, could you try Mobipocket or another RSS feed maybe ? It might be an issue with the name of the file too.

Yes, could you try Mobipocket or another RSS feed maybe ? It might be an issue with the name of the file too.
Wow! You are quick replying!

Thanks. I'll try mobi ... and maybe another feed of interest.

Pete

Yes, could you try Mobipocket or another RSS feed maybe ? It might be an issue with the name of the file too.

I changed my subscriptions to BBC to mobi, and added the iLiad feed as mobi, and, just as a test for PDF, the Sudoku as PDF (not sure how one plays Sudoku on a PDF so this is probably wrong).

I went into iNewStand, and they were all listed straight-away. Great, I thought. So I selected all, and sync!, and it seemed to be busy. I clicked "Downloads" to watch the progress and the application ended and returned me to the Newspapers lister.

I clicked on it to reenter it to see what is going on, but this gave an extra entry on the Main Newspapers listing saying just "iNewstand Error" with a X close button and an empty window. The green LED is still flickering like mad, so I assume it is busy getting my stuff, but I don't understand why i can't see how it is doing.

Should the downloads be visible on the Newspapers listing (that's where I put iNewsStand), or in mobipockets folder?

Anyway I've left it with the green LED still flickering away. Not sure how long to leave it before getting worried.

[EDIT]

Ah, it looks like it might just have been waiting for me to click the X to get rid of the Error window. When I did that it went quiescent again, so I re-ran the iNewsStand. I selected only the two News feeds in Mobi format and "Sync!", and I now see both listed in the Downloads tab, one "Downloading 0%" the other "Waiting ...". I don't know how to tell whether anything is actually happening. The geed LED is just off as is the wireless icon bottom right.

[FURTHER EDIT]
The display is static at "Downloading 0%" and 2Waiting ..." until I clikc "Refresh". Then they both go to "Downloaded". So I think, "good", and clikc Exit.

The BBC file is now there, but it doesn't show in the list till I press "News" again. I haven't yet found the iLiad reader news feed ...

Regards

Pete

I changed my subscriptions to BBC to mobi, and added the iLiad feed as mobi, and, just as a test for PDF, the Sudoku as PDF (not sure how one plays Sudoku on a PDF so this is probably wrong).

I went into iNewStand, and they were all listed straight-away. Great, I thought. So I selected all, and sync!, and it seemed to be busy. I clicked "Downloads" to watch the progress and the application ended and returned me to the Newspapers lister.

I clicked on it to reenter it to see what is going on, but this gave an extra entry on the Main Newspapers listing saying just "iNewstand Error" with a X close button and an empty window. The green LED is still flickering like mad, so I assume it is busy getting my stuff, but I don't understand why i can't see how it is doing.

Should the downloads be visible on the Newspapers listing (that's where I put iNewsStand), or in mobipockets folder?

Anyway I've left it with the green LED still flickering away. Not sure how long to leave it before getting worried.

[EDIT]

Ah, it looks like it might just have been waiting for me to click the X to get rid of the Error window. When I did that it went quiescent again, so I re-ran the iNewsStand. I selected only the two News feeds in Mobi format and "Sync!", and I now see both listed in the Downloads tab, one "Downloading 0%" the other "Waiting ...". I don't know how to tell whether anything is actually happening. The geed LED is just off as is the wireless icon bottom right.

[FURTHER EDIT]
The display is static at "Downloading 0%" and 2Waiting ..." until I clikc "Refresh". Then they both go to "Downloaded". So I think, "good", and clikc Exit.

The BBC file is now there, but it doesn't show in the list till I press "News" again. I haven't yet found the iLiad reader news feed ...

Regards

Pete

The default option is to download those RSS feeds to the news folder although you can change this behavior in an XML file (we use the iLiad default settings).

is the iNewsstand still being developed? I think it is a great application and it would be shame to abandon it. It has been pretty quiet around it lately however.

:help:This is a release of the iNewsStand application.

I did not program this, it was done by the smart people over at Feedbooks (http://www.feedbooks.com). I simply helped with the porting to the iLiad.

This program allows you download News, Books, Soduku all over a network connection without the use of a PC. I can download books in the Mobipocket, ePub, or custom iLiad PDF formats.

Previous discussion can be found in this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12852)

I'm almost there...one last problem, my iLiad says it cannot connect to Feedbooks.com. Check connection...

What step am I missing????

Is your iLiad using the connection manager to connect to the internet when the program launches?

Is your iLiad using the connection manager to connect to the internet when the program launches?

I am experiencing the same problem.
:help:

yes. it connects and confirms the connection first. everything seems to be working except for this error. i hope you can help...... =(

Yes,Yes! This is the software that we can use instead of Mobipocket!! Thanks a lot!!

Just find this application today. It really does a great job. However, can I save my user name and password in iliad and to make it more convenient downloading news feeds?

Hi....

Just polling: I'm thinking about developing a new simple application for the Iliad to browse, select and download books from feedbooks.com. I believe they have about 3000 free books. I plan to program this against the xml api described here: http://feedbooks.com/api

Will people be interested in this or will I be the only user :rolleyes:

Greetz, Hansel.

Sounds interesting but make sure that you're using our Atom (OPDS) feeds, not the deprecated XML.
If you actually design such an application, it'll be compatible with every OPDS feed, not juste Feedbooks (for example the Internet Archive: http://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/).

Adrien,
Thanks for the info (I'm new to this), I'll start by studying the atom interface...
Do you know if many Iliad owners download books form Feedbooks? (personally I like the possibility to set your own pdf page size)

Adrien,
Thanks for the info (I'm new to this), I'll start by studying the atom interface...
Do you know if many Iliad owners download books form Feedbooks? (personally I like the possibility to set your own pdf page size)

I'm interested! :thumbsup:

I personally like the functionality and use of the current Feedbooks.com iLiad app very much! It's the kind of software iRex should have contracted out with partners since they didn't really get the chance to exploit this area! I guess to be fair, from their point of view, if it can't be economically feasible then it won't get done! :dunno:

But, while you are at it would a Mobileread.com download app be possible using the same framework as Feedbooks.com?

I would like to see this functionality very much as I think the iLiad is severally crippled if it can't just go out and fetch new content. I just wish iRex would allow a non-secure iDS server access to be used so that users can load their own personal content very easily (wirelessly via proxy server - hey calibre has one of those.... :snicker: ).

I'm willing to assist any way I can (however, not being a linux programmer hampers things a bit for me). I like to hack code already written so perhaps I can tweak things to make them work better... ;)

BTW, I was involved in the effort to allow the Fictionwise/Gemstar devices (EBW1150 and REB1200) to access the internet (via wired connections :o ) and serve webcontent onto them effortlessly! See the thread on impserve (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28363) and HOW-TO: Surf the Internet with the EBW1150 or REB1200 (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28297). :)

I want the same functionality with the ilIad... :chinscratch:

I'm interested! :thumbsup:
[...]But, while you are at it would a Mobileread.com download app be possible using the same framework as Feedbooks.com?
Hey, that would be cool! Are all those uploaded books archived somewhere in a way a computer can understand?

PS: a.f.a.i.k. the Iliad already can surf the internet (sort of) with minimo.

Hey, that would be cool! Are all those uploaded books archived somewhere in a way a computer can understand?

PS: a.f.a.i.k. the Iliad already can surf the internet (sort of) with minimo.

The Mobipocket Download Guide just lists the all the .prc/.mobi attachments available for download at Mobileread.com filtering out all the other formats or uploads.

If you explode the .mobi that gets downloaded when you access the Mobipocket Download Guide (http://www.mobileread.com/mobiguide) under the E-Books menu item at the top of the page in the Blue Bar, then you will see exactly how this is accomplished.

In particular, when referenced, a URL is re-directed to the exact ebook attachment, for example this is an extract of the exploded html: Eliot, Charles W. (editor), Harvard Classics 22: Homer's Odyssey, v.1, 27 July 07
edited and uploaded by RWood
Download: http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/4609 for Harvard Classics XXII.prc

and

Download: http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/4610 for Harvard Classics XXI.prc


As an example, try downloading "Bower, B. M - Cabin Fever" using these links:
.epub http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/37998
.imp http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/38000
.imp http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/38001
.lrf http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/38003
.prc http://www.mobileread.com/ebooks/mobi/38005

Now, if Alex would supply you with a downloadable listing of all the .prc/.mobi ebooks, then your app would just have to list it and allow the user to select which one to download (hopefully using filters/searches) and then fetch that attachment and place it into the iLiad's Books/Mobipocket folder in use.

Sounds simple doesn't it?

While I profess to have no inside knowledge of how the mobileread.com servers operate, I have tested this approach to downloading attachments before... :whistle:

Thanks for the info!

http://www.mobileread.com/mobiguide looks like a great starting point. I converted it to epub with Calibre, unzipped it, converted the resulting html file to clean xml with htmltidy... The resulting file can be hacked with some xml-parsing scripts to extract the relevant information (and generate OPDS Atom XML (http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/OPDS)). That is, unless such data is readily available at Mobileread...

Enough challenge for some rainy afternoons ;-)

PS: a.f.a.i.k. the Iliad already can surf the internet (sort of) with minimo.

I had tried that but it was difficult getting started accessing the internet (probably was caused by using my 8GB CF card with wifi).

When I worked on impserve (just a local proxy server written in python by MR member ashkulz), I collected some convenient links into an internet "launch" sheet called index.html (see index-nrapallo.zip attachment). I tried accessing these links, but something is missing. The eBookwise devices had GREAT internal server/HTML support when working with HTTP GET and POST. The impserve python script ran on the user's local computer and served content to the device based on the mimetype of the links tapped in the hardware reader. Then impserve would "react" and fetch the web content, filter it, fix it for incompatibilities with the hardware devices' weaknesses and then "pass on the content" for the devices' internal mechanism to take over, be it downloading an ebook to the device or simply displaying the webpage previously fetched and fixed.

I'm sure the same approach could be used with the iLiad HOWEVER, there is no internal (server) support to accept a .prc/.mobi file for storage (or even perhaps a .pdf ebook) AFAIK. What we need is an internal server that can launch wired / wireless access and wait for files and/or webpages being served to it from the user's home computer that is running a proxy server like impserve. This new impserve (call it iliadserve or just ladserve?) could even be used to preprocess .epub locally and then send the resulting (exploded) files to the iLiad's internal webbrowser just like MR member mikelv has done with his Firefox add-on called EPUBReader (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60459). :chinscratch:

BTW, another MR member Ret had previous to me used an alpha stage java proxy server/librarian that used a "sample.html" launch page to start surfing the internet by entering a keyword in an input box and having google retrieve it's links (attached retlibrarian.zip below). I tried it on the iLiad but there is no echoing of characters typed in the search box and it actually just retrieves the Google web search homepage where I have to type the search word again, this time getting the desired results. It would be nice to have the characters "echo" and use this link on an iLiad .html start page. ;)

And prior to that I found C sourced code for software that was the basis of the inspirations for impserve and "surf the internet" on my LCD reader called LinReb (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27529). We (I) owe it all to this program for paving the way (see attachment below as well).

So, I think all the pieces are conceptually quite attainable, but nothing on the iLiad has been written to pull it all together. Above I have referenced a python script, html coding, java code and C source code. What an assortment of programming languages; all that is missing is the glue that combines them, ...., what? .... , did I hear you say Lua???? :rofl:

By the way, is there any better "internal" .html support that can replace (via an installed program) the use of minimo for surfing the internet ON the iLiad?

I'm not very interested in surfing the net with my Iliad (at the moment), more in downloading books with a simple gui. What I like about the Iliad is that I will not need a PC for that once there is some adequate software...

I'm pretty sure that the networking stuff on the Iliad works fine (as long as you don't access the cf while doing wifi). Wget is working fine, and can be used in scripts. Curl is o.k. too. The Lua binding for libcurl is included in my lua-iliad package. I did a small demo for Adam B. that downloads a file while showing progress.
(http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43929)
It's easy to run a small webserver written in Lua (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36799) on the Iliad. I did an experiment a while back (my first Lua for Iliad experiment) that could do 'server side scripting'. It's only a few hundred lines of code. It's not really nice code, but it worked:rolleyes:

For now I'll focus on downloading books... soooo much to play, soooo little time :mad:

I'm not very interested in surfing the net with my Iliad (at the moment), more in downloading books with a simple gui. What I like about the Iliad is that I will not need a PC for that once there is some adequate software...

A standalone app will surely do the trick, but while "surfing the net" the interface IS the html code fetched for the various web pages, like mobileread.com and when in the Mobi ebook forum, the user just has to click the link to the .prc/.mobi attachment BUT then the iLiad needs to know what to do with that mime-type. That's where the server side code, that is resident on the iLiad, could be helpful.

So, in the end, a really "simple" gui may just be any web page that has links to (your) mobipocket ebooks... :chinscratch: :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure that the networking stuff on the Iliad works fine (as long as you don't access the cf while doing wifi). Wget is working fine, and can be used in scripts. Curl is o.k. too. The Lua binding for libcurl is included in my lua-iliad package. I did a small demo for Adam B. that downloads a file while showing progress.
(http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43929)

:thumbsup: I'll have to try that demo so thanks for the link! I did use wget to fetch Project Gutenberg .mobi ebooks before in a script, so I know it does work quite well.

It's easy to run a small webserver written in Lua (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36799) on the Iliad. I did an experiment a while back (my first Lua for Iliad experiment) that could do 'server side scripting'. It's only a few hundred lines of code. It's not really nice code, but it worked:rolleyes:

:2thumbsup Oh, more code to play with. Thanks again!!!

For now I'll focus on downloading books... soooo much to play, soooo little time :mad:

and forget about any actual reading time... :snicker:

he way, is there any better "internal" .html support that can replace (via an installed program) the use of minimo for surfing the internet ON the iLiad?I just read the 'xiliad' article again: dillo is another browser for the Iliad. Probably got it from http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8870...

Using a browser as gui and a web server as application was what I had I mind when toying with Xiliad. There was no scriptable gui then. It still is a viable approach with lots of possibilities...

Thanks for all the fresh ideas!

That is, unless such data is readily available at Mobileread...

You will notice, in the Browse Latest Uploads (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?order=desc&sort=dateline) section under the E-Books menu above in the blue bar, that there is a daily catalog of ALL mobileread.com ebooks in: Full List: HTML (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?do=getlist&type=html) | TXT.

This catalog just links all ebooks to their description page, which contains the actual link to download the ebook attachment. For example, my above-noted links for the "Bower, B. M - Cabin Fever" ebooks posted by crutledge are listed as: <li><a href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60371">Bower, B. M: Bower, B. M. V1. 25 Oct 2009</a> <i>Mobipocket</i></li>
<li><a href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60368">Bower, B. M: Bower, B. M. V1. 25 Oct 2009</a> <i>eBookwise</i></li>
<li><a href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60370">Bower, B. M: Bower, B. M. V1. 25 Oct 2009</a> <i>Sony BBeB</i></li>
<li><a href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60367">Bower, B. M: Bower, B. M. V1. 25 Oct 2009</a> <i>ePub</i></li>


If you filter by format name (Mobipocket for .mobi/.prc) then you can use that as a starting point. However, this approach requires a second (web) access to retrieve that description page so as to extract the actual download link. And then finally, you'll need to fetch that ebook file for the user and place it in the appropriate ebook folder.

This is crude but may offer some different thinking. This can be done only once, but will then ignore newly uploaded ebooks or daily to be current.

In the end, to really make your app/code shine, you will probably need a "feed" from mobileread.com with the pertinent data from Alex's server side data. :fingersx: :grin2:

It's easy to run a small webserver written in Lua (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36799) on the Iliad. I did an experiment a while back (my first Lua for Iliad experiment) that could do 'server side scripting'. It's only a few hundred lines of code. It's not really nice code, but it worked:rolleyes:

I didn't have any luck getting this to work with dillio 0.8.6 and Firefox 3.5 on my WinXP machine via wireless. It seems that it launches from the programs directory on my SD card, but then just returns to the ContentLister without giving my PC browser any access to http://192.168.X.XXX:8080 with my iliad's wireless ip address instead of those X's. Does it work with the latest firmware 2.12?

I just read the 'xiliad' article again: dillo is another browser for the Iliad. Probably got it from http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8870...

Yes, thanks AGAIN for this link. It is an amazingly fast browser and quite feature rich. The xepdmgr dillio port looks nice as well but not all the same features (i.e. File Open) are supported in that port.

Using a browser as gui and a web server as application was what I had I mind when toying with Xiliad. There was no scriptable gui then. It still is a viable approach with lots of possibilities...

Thanks for all the fresh ideas!

Hopefully, whatever approach you decide to take in the end (standalone app or browser/proxy server) it will work well for the latest firmware and wireless.

:rolleyes: p.s. Actually the ideas are rather old (been floating around my head for over a year), it's just me whose "fresh" to the iLiad scene! :snicker: Oh, and as you make progress, I may have something to say about that too! :o :thumbsup:

I didn't have any luck getting this [Xiliad] to work...I've repaired Xiliad, see: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36799