eReader web site collapsing under the load!

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

Nah, they don't read. They just like to pretend to read so as to look smart. ;-Þ

And (or so I'm told) by reading on an iPhone, they also look "sexy."

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I did not know that. I suppose that at a glance those clever females can tell the difference between an iPhone and an iPod Touch too.
....otherwise I could hold my iPod touch to my ear and have loud conversations with myself.

Do you need an electronic device to have loud conversations with yourself??

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think their problem is just the raw load of download activity on their servers at once.

That is what they said.

This is just the kind of thing I was thinking of in another thread (here somewhere) about formats and delivery: If eReader sent purchasers one formatted file (like ePub) that they would then convert to their device of choice, they wouldn't have to worry about customers coming back and bombing their servers for re-downloads. IOW, they are experiencing the downside of their own proprietary, DRM-based system.

Wouldn't help in this case. Downloading them all again seems to be the only way to get ebooks of any sort onto the iPhone.

But hopefully they'll recover soon, when the initial surge is over.

That's their hope.
______
Dennis

[jerryleejr]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

And (or so I'm told) by reading on an iPhone, they also look "sexy."

Stop staring at me I will put my Iphone Down! (why is she laughing at me?)

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

please do let us know how that works out for you. personally i'm always attracted to crazy people having conversations with electronic devices, but i'd be interested to know whether i was alone or not.

I am talking loudly into my laptop as I type this, Can you hear ME!!

JJ

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

please do let us know how that works out for you. personally i'm always attracted to crazy people having conversations with electronic devices, but i'd be interested to know whether i was alone or not.

In New York City, it used to be that when you saw a chap on the street staring several feet past your shoulder and having a conversation with someone you couldn't see, you assumed it was one of the homeless crazy people. Now, you assume it's a homeless crazy person with a cell phone.

I have conversations with electronic devices on a too regular basis, along the lines of "Computer, I have a screwdriver, and I know how to use it!"

(And I was up till oh dark hundred this morning dealing with a PC that decided to have problems with it's boot drive. Five physical drives in the box, and of course it has to develop bad blocks on the boot drive, in the Windows "system" registry hive... Back up now, but a time consuming PITA to fix.)
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Dennis

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In New York City, it used to be that when you saw a chap on the street staring several feet past your shoulder and having a conversation with someone you couldn't see, you assumed it was one of the homeless crazy people. Now, you assume it's a homeless crazy person with a cell phone.

I have conversations with electronic devices on a too regular basis, along the lines of "Computer, I have a screwdriver, and I know how to use it!"

heh. i regularly have that conversation as well, with my pc.

(And I was up till oh dark hundred this morning dealing with a PC that decided to have problems with it's boot drive. Five physical drives in the box, and of course it has to develop bad blocks on the boot drive, in the Windows "system" registry hive... Back up now, but a time consuming PITA to fix.)
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Dennis

...thus the "i have a screwdriver !!" conversations. also why bill gates / microsoft / windows are On My List.

[nekokami]

Wow. And the iPhone ebook system didn't even look very user-friendly.

After the Kindle media hype, now this... I think a bunch of publishers are going to be re-visiting their strategies. (I just hope what they come out with will work for those of us using other kinds of dedicated readers!)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

I could understand why they would have a few problems to handle queries on their database, API requests etc... But downloads ? It's just static files ! A simple x-send would do the trick.

Can you say "bandwidth limitations"?

I don't know how fat a pipe they connect to, but it obviously isn't fat enough.
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Dennis

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Can you say "bandwidth limitations"?

I don't know how fat a pipe they connect to, but it obviously isn't fat enough.
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Dennis

Bandwidth limitations nowadays are ridiculous. With all these websites streaming videos, buying bandwidth for e-books is almost free.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Bandwidth limitations nowadays are ridiculous. With all these websites streaming videos, buying bandwidth for e-books is almost free.

I used to work for a streaming video specialist. They didn't host the stuff. They just provided clients with easy methods of getting their video uploaded, transcoded, and linked to their site. They paid Akamai (or other CDN preferred by the client) to actually host the stuff, and Akamai's pipes handled the bandwidth.

That wouldn't be the case with Fictionwise. And even teh big boys cn get swamped, as witness Apple/s problems with the iTunes store when the new iPhone was released, and the software update for the older iPhone and Touch.
______
Dennis

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If eReader sent purchasers one formatted file (like ePub) that they would then convert to their device of choice, they wouldn't have to worry about customers coming back and bombing their servers for re-downloads. IOW, they are experiencing the downside of their own proprietary, DRM-based system.

I'm sure that's wrong. If the most convenient way to get the book on your new device is to download it, that's how people will do it.

If all these people just downloaded 1 book to try out the reader or a couple of books they were actually going to read on the device there probably would not be this problem.

Just like a bank doesn't have enough cash on hand for every depositor to withdraw all their money in cash eReader's servers aren't designed to have enough capacity for every customer or even a portion of their customers to download all their books at one time.

BOb

[nekokami]

I suspect many of the people buying ebooks for their iPhones were not people who already had ebooks on other devices. Maybe not all, but probably most.

[AMacD]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And what happens to you if you meet a member of the opposite sex with an iphone?

I would flee in the opposite direction. I assume that anyone wandering around in public with a cell phone plugged into their ear is either devoid of any imagination or brain dead or soon to be brain dead.

[desertgrandma]

As much as I hate the whole "IPhone" idea, I"m loving that there were so many bookreaders out there......it can only mean a wider selection of books for us Kindle users as publishers realize that yes, Virginia, there really IS a need for e-book formats! And maybe it will change the minds of those authors who refuse to allow their books to be formatted.

[MickeyC]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

As much as I hate the whole "IPhone" idea, I"m loving that there were so many bookreaders out there......it can only mean a wider selection of books for us Kindle users as publishers realize that yes, Virginia, there really IS a need for e-book formats! And maybe it will change the minds of those authors who refuse to allow their books to be formatted.

I just got an iPhone and one of the things I really like about it is the ability to now read books on it. I prefer my Sony for reading but it is too big to carry everywhere. But I've always got my cell phone handy and, now, will always have a book handy to read should I need it.