Google releases 1 million public domain books in ePub format

[joedevon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The programmer who can figure out how to let you give the URLs of a dozen or so blogs, and return a single ePub file

Just scanned the epub spec, doesn't look difficult.

with the most recent entry (with comments) in each, could make a mint off it.

I don't think Google could reliably say which part of a "post" is the text only, w/ comments....they could make a good guess, but it would always be janky...but as an avid Google Reader user, I can say that there are a ton of feeds that have the full post in their RSS, so it should be pretty easy to do this based on RSS feeds minus the comments.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by joedevon

I don't think Google could reliably say which part of a "post" is the text only, w/ comments....they could make a good guess, but it would always be janky...but as an avid Google Reader user, I can say that there are a ton of feeds that have the full post in their RSS, so it should be pretty easy to do this based on RSS feeds minus the comments.

Creating the ePub would be easy; it's finding the "posts" that's hard. And a lot of pre-existing RSS feeds are truncated.

"With comments" is crucial for me. Or at least, "with notification that there are, or are not, comments." The blogosphere is a social place; I don't want to download 20 interesting posts and have no idea which ones are being discussed, and which ones are just being absorbed. Some interesting LiveJournal posts will have several hundred comments.

And I'm aware that's not obvious coding; different blogs have different methods for comments. But I'd pay for a subscription to the ability to put in a dozen or so blog URLs into a list, and get back an HTML file with all of their most recent posts with comments. Potentially, to get the HTML of the posts without comments, although that's less useful to me.

(Hmm. Should contact code-happy friends and talk to them about putting together this ability.)

[joedevon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Creating the ePub would be easy; it's finding the "posts" that's hard. And a lot of pre-existing RSS feeds are truncated.

"With comments" is crucial for me. Or at least, "with notification that there are, or are not, comments." The blogosphere is a social place; I don't want to download 20 interesting posts and have no idea which ones are being discussed, and which ones are just being absorbed. Some interesting LiveJournal posts will have several hundred comments.

And I'm aware that's not obvious coding; different blogs have different methods for comments. But I'd pay for a subscription to the ability to put in a dozen or so blog URLs into a list, and get back an HTML file with all of their most recent posts with comments. Potentially, to get the HTML of the posts without comments, although that's less useful to me.

(Hmm. Should contact code-happy friends and talk to them about putting together this ability.)

Doesn't Google Reader tell you how many comments are there?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by joedevon

Doesn't Google Reader tell you how many comments are there?

Have no idea; haven't tried Google Reader. Every time I've tried to set up an RSS aggregator, I get confused and give up. Just looked again. I'm terrified of it.

It doesn't seem to have a way for me to add blogs that aren't on its short list of blog sites. Nor a simple way to just put in the URL of a blog, rather than using its search engine. And many of its RSS feeds are truncated, which makes them useless for placing into an ebook reader. (Not meaning to be whining; am commenting as I notice things. I'm trying to set up a feed to figure out how it works.)

Picked half a dozen blogs, including a couple on LJ. Mmmkay. Yes, it shows comment numbers. Now, how do I grab the feed and throw it into my PRS-505?

ETA Secondarilyy: how do I grab the *one* most recent post from each blog, rather than the several most recent from the busy blogs?

[sprise]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Generally speaking, the Google books are not good quality at all. OCR'd scans that haven't been proofread mostly. A lot of doubles, too.

I just downloaded Google's epub version of the first attempt to complete Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Not only did the OCR errors jump off the screen at me immediately, but I discovered that the epub version is missing the entire last page of the story. I'm in the process of cleaning it up so that it's readable, but something tells me it would be easier (and less time-consuming) to retype it from scratch from the PDF.

It's nice to see Google branching out in the formats it offers, but the quality control part of the operation definitely needs some work.

Stephanie

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Creating the ePub would be easy; it's finding the "posts" that's hard. And a lot of pre-existing RSS feeds are truncated.

Because this is an area that interests me, I googled "rss to epub" and came up with... a thread on MR!

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26016

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Because this is an area that interests me, I googled "rss to epub" and came up with... a thread on MR!

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26016

Calibre recipes do the same thing, but bonus they send the latest 'recipe' content to your reader on connection. It's an excellent way to deliver RSS serial fiction to your readers.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by sprise

I just downloaded Google's epub version of the first attempt to complete Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Not only did the OCR errors jump off the screen at me immediately, but I discovered that the epub version is missing the entire last page of the story. I'm in the process of cleaning it up so that it's readable, but something tells me it would be easier (and less time-consuming) to retype it from scratch from the PDF.

It's nice to see Google branching out in the formats it offers, but the quality control part of the operation definitely needs some work.

Stephanie

FWIW, you can find Harry's excellent illustrated version of that book here on MR...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54474

[Wario]

There one good news that UK will able to access to 1m google books via CoolerBooks.com

[sprise]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

FWIW, you can find Harry's excellent illustrated version of that book here on MR...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54474

Thanks for the link ... I've already downloaded and read the version that Harry created. The epub I snagged from Google was Thomas James' effort to complete Edwin Drood affter Dickens' death.

Stephanie

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It doesn't seem to have a way for me to add blogs that aren't on its short list of blog sites. Nor a simple way to just put in the URL of a blog, rather than using its search engine.

Sure it does. Along the left side where it says "Subscriptions" there is a down arrow which when you click opens a little short cut menu. "Add a Subscription..." is a choice. Choose that an a little section opens where you can paste in the URL of a feed.

I am also able to in FireFox just click on the RSS icon in the URL/address bar when it sees feeds. That brings me right to a subscript in google reader page. I am sure I had to set that up, but I don't remember how I did it.

BOb