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Originally Posted by rmeister0
I for one an not sick of the iPod. (Since I don't watch television, what advertising?)
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Does anyone still watch television? Since i discovered torrent for tv shows i practically stopped watching :P
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Why? Because it works. My wife has a G2 model, mines a G3, and i bought a shuffle to use as a flash drive with a music-playing bonus. They have been reliable and easy to use.
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I was given one shuffle this christmas, a very nice device.
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The closest equal in the ebook world is probably the eb-1150, which works conceptually a lot like an iPod. But converting your pre-existing content is still a pain, the file format is incredibly proprietary, and there is still no guarantee that your purchased content will survive the closure of FictionWise.
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I can only talk about the Librie, but since I received it, i have been converting books. It really is simple to do although i doubt any future "regular" user of ebooks would be willing to that much effort.
Although i could simply convert a text using makelrf, i just like paginating the various sections, cover, images, etc.
So i end up using Bookcreator, which allows all of this, but which is a "little" more complicated. I just love that the program lets me make virtual chapters, and allow the use of styles (i frequently use the Demo of Adobe Indesign, whenever i have to paginate something).
The problem is that the normal user wants a straight conversion program, like Makelrf, where he inputs a original format and it gets translated to his favorite reader (with cover, chapters, formatting, etc).
When i found out the Open Ebook Forum i hoped that the industry was finally going to deliver a "core" xml format, which the other companies could use to convert to the format of their devices.
The user would buy the access to the ebook, go to his shelf, select format/device/reader and the content server would send the appropriate file.
Right now i'm hoping that OpenReader will solve some of this problems. Let's wait and see...
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Maybe the Hanjin device or the Iliad will go somewhere, but history does not paint a pretty picture. They are both promising devices, but are both absolutely useless without content.
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Although i can't develop this very much, i know for a fact the iRex is in contact with content providers here in Portugal(i sort of introduced it to some of them), and is trying to convince them about the characteristics of this device/delivery of content, etc.
The problem, at least here in Portugal, is that the publishers want a device in the market BEFORE they are willing to invest in ebooks (i made some Surveys about this when i was still studying).
Obviously buying an "empty" device, is very different than buying a device with subscriptions or with a option to buy 100/200$ on a online ebookstore.
There's a lot free content online but it's still a hassle to have to convert all of it.
I read somewhere that Project Gutenberg would in the future start converting their books to Html instead of plain asci. That would be great, but if there were to be a "core" free ebook format that would simplify everyone’s life (we would only need the converters to our favorite formats/devices).
I'm currently uploading my finished librie conversions (from free ebooks), to my site, and i was hoping that at least one or more persons would also like to send their owns.
Suffice to say that those who would, are "ashamed" of their "simple" Makelrf conversions, and although they are free texts, they don't think it worth it to send them to me :P
So i end up with only 40 ebooks in 4 months :|
And it seems that it won' be possible to read the lrf's on the Iliad, so i'll eventually stop making conversions for the Librie.
Sight