[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm sure Sony is aware of the Baen model, but it's not clear it's applicable to them.

Baen is a publisher. They can choose to offer electronic books by their authors in their choice for formats, DRM or not, and pricing, as long as their contract with the author permits them to do so.

Sony is not a publisher. In terms of providing content for the reader, they are a distributor or retailer, and what they can offer and under what terms will be governed by the agreement with the publishers whose books they offer.

What Sony can do is jawbone the publishers on pricing, availability, and DRM (actually lack thereof). The Baen model is relevant as ammunition/evidence. I realize that Sony isn't the publisher themselves, and can't control the outcome. They can, however, provide some influence in the right direction. Especially since higher sales helps them as well as the publishers and the consumers.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

What is the problem with the current site that requires Windows to access content? I don't run Mac OS/X or Linux, so I don't know what the issue is.

I agree that web standards are a good thing and should be adhered to. I'll ask if the site redesign will be usable by Mac users.

The need for the Sony Library software is the problem. At a minimum, it should be possible to authorize a Sony reader by entering its serial number into a web site (presumably a site associated with Sony's store). Purchasing from the Sony store should NOT require use of their software. Likewise, there's no reason why one should need Windows do the secure Adobe thing, either.

With just a little thought, they should be able to be completely platform independent. I also note that Calibre is more useful than Sony's software in terms of available functionality... and it's mainly the work of one guy (with clever use of pre-existing open source libraries).

On the support for thousands of books, you wrote:

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Yes, that would be nice.

Indeed. I've given up using an SD card for the nonce, because I can't stand paging through the list of books to get to the one I want. One small feature (and one bug-fix: see the P.S. below) is all that stands in the way of letting the community fix the problem for them.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Personally, I also think Sony ought to take a leaf from Mobipocket, and offer an LRF Creator application to make it easier for folks to develop Sony compatible content. ePub and Adobe DE support is all very well, but not everybody has (or is willing to shell out for) InDesign.

If you have clean HTML (or ePub, or Lit, or Mobi, and probably some other formats as well), Calibre will give you quite a nice .lrf file. And ePub support is coming along.

If Sony really wanted to make some quick progress in the direction of an LRF Creator application, they could do like IBM (or Apple, or Google, or Sun, or ...) and assign one or more of their own software guys to contribute to the Calibre project. It's open source -- they can ship it too! There are plenty of other products that come with open source apps on the install CD; nothing wrong with it.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'll see what I can do.

I don't expect to get everything covered, but I'm making a list. In some cases, it may be a case of "Okay, you're not the guy who can tell me that. Can you point at the one who is?" Like, I don't expect Steve, as the President of the whole Division, to have technical details at his fingertips. I'll be happy if [he] passes me on to the folks who do.
______
Dennis

Getting these ideas to the people who actually know would be the second-best outcome we could hope for. The best outcome would be to get the ideas passed down the chain with a strong endorsement from "the President of the whole Division," as that tends to make things actually happen.

Xenophon

P.S. There's a small technical glitch with my idea for supporting thousands of books on the Sony Readers. The issue is that Sony's firmware exhibits worse-than-linear-time behavior when it scans memory (and SD cards) to identify content after you've changed what's there. I've seen reports of it taking over an hour to do the scan with ~4K books, and running out of battery before finishing the scan with ~8K books. (Those numbers may be off, but the idea is correct). There's obviously an underlying algorithmic problem that needs to be fixed; no reason it should be worse than O(n lg n), but it seems to be. This is another one of those pesky details that Steve won't be the right person to deal with, but...