Sony Partners With Google To Bring More Than 500,000 Books To The Reader - Page 2

carld · 03-19-2009, 01:52 AM

Just for grins I installed Sony's ebook software (since the newest version supports Vista 64) and gave the free book library a try. I used Calibre to convert an epub to mobi and sent it off to my Kindle, and it displayed well enough.

As far as I can tell these books are already available through google books. So, the content is nothing new, but being able to get them more conveniently definitely is.

Edit: The second book I tried was utterly unreadable. I can't speak for how it looks on an actual Sony though.

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 01:54 AM

'

Can't us Sony users enjoy something good, even for like FIVE minutes, before 'someone' tries to rain on our parade

?

cerement · 03-19-2009, 02:19 AM

Now if Google decides to make the ePubs available for direct download rather than through Sony's Windows only program ...

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 02:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cerement

Now if Google decides to make the ePubs available for direct download rather than through Sony's Windows only program ...

I swear you guys crack me up! Go read your Kindle

!

Curly · 03-19-2009, 02:39 AM

Wonderful news for those of us who can use Sony's ebook store!

But those folk outside North America, who had been blocked from downloading the software, will lose out. (Waterstones doesn't seem to have it on their site yet anyway.)

carld · 03-19-2009, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragonbone

'

Can't us Sony users enjoy something good, even for like FIVE minutes, before 'someone' tries to rain on our parade

?

My bad, sorry.

Enjoy the content. It actually is nice that they're available as convenient ePubs.

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curly

Wonderful news for those of us who can use Sony's ebook store!

But those folk outside North America, who had been blocked from downloading the software, will lose out. (Waterstones doesn't seem to have it on their site yet anyway.)

Curly, I'm all the way in Japan and I can use it. I just told a small white lie when I registered my Sony, saying: I live in USA

. Why can't you access it?

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carld

My bad, sorry.

Enjoy the content. It actually is nice that they're available as convenient ePubs.

Thanks carld, and anyway you guys have Amazon

.

Curly · 03-19-2009, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragonbone

Curly, I'm all the way in Japan and I can use it. I just told a small white lie when I registered my Sony, saying: I live in USA

. Why can't you access it?

I can access it as you do, but I know some people on this forum have not been able to. The Sony software is able to pick up on their location. I think in some cases this is because they have already loaded on the UK software.

dreams · 03-19-2009, 03:13 AM

I downloaded and viewed a few random copies of books. The Sony library is clunky and slow but I can get a good idea of what it will look like on the Sony 505. OK, so they aren't as "pretty" as the ones here on MR but it does expand availability of other works that are out there.. I think I have been spoiled by the excellently formatted versions on MR.

Just a few copy and paste pieces from inside the books..

>This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. Google Book Search has digitized millions of physical books and made them available online at http://books.google.com

The digitization at the most basic level is based on page images of the physical books. To make this book available as an ePub formated file we have taken those page images and extracted the text using Optical Character Recognition (or OCR for short) technology. The extraction of text from page images is a difficult engineering task. Smudges on the physical books' pages, fancy fonts, old fonts, torn pages, etc. can all lead to errors in the extracted text. Imperfect OCR is only the first challenge in the ultimate goal of moving from collections of page images to extracted-text based books. Our computer algorithms also have to automatically determine the structure of the book (what are the headers and footers, where images are placed, whether text is verse or prose, and so forth). Getting this right allows us to render the book in a way that follows the format of the original book.

Despite our best efforts you may see spelling mistakes, garbage characters, extraneous images, or missing pages in this book. Based on our estimates, these errors should not prevent you from enjoying the content of the book. The technical challenges of automatically constructing a perfect book are daunting, but we continue to make enhancements to our OCR and book structure extraction technologies.<

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curly

I can access it as you do, but I know some people on this forum have not been able to. The Sony software is able to pick up on their location. I think in some cases this is because they have already loaded on the UK software.

Oh, that is SO unfair for you!! So you can't access any of those 50'000 free books?

BTW, I see you are from Scotland! You don't have any hunky single Jamie's where you live, do you

?

Curly · 03-19-2009, 04:19 AM

I can access the US site as I downloaded the US software before I bought my reader and before the 505 was even available in the UK.

Hunky single men?! In Scotland?! Just kidding guys!

Aye, there are a few around and they are lovely!

dragonbone · 03-19-2009, 04:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curly

I can access the US site as I downloaded the US software before I bought my reader and before the 505 was even available in the UK.

Hunky single men?! In Scotland?! Just kidding guys!

Aye, there are a few around and they are lovely!

Oh, sorry Curly, I didn't read your post correctly, (guess I was too busy thinking about Jamie). Well, it's great to hear that you do have access to the books. I hope that they sort out this international problem soon though.

alexxxm · 03-19-2009, 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curly

I can access it as you do, but I know some people on this forum have not been able to. The Sony software is able to pick up on their location. I think in some cases this is because they have already loaded on the UK software.

same here (Italy). Even though I just re-installed the Sony library, it says "Not authorized for the ebook store".
Maybe somebody knows if there's a way to unlock it?

alessandro

mjh215 · 03-19-2009, 05:07 AM

As far as a numbers game, this could impact the market a good deal. You -know- Sony will start marketing the reader as coming with access to over half a million free books courtesy of Google. As we are fond of pointing out, the average consumer doesn't do the same diligent research many of our users would so when they read that versus the Kindle it might make a huge difference...

(Again, I like the variety of multiple devices on the market, and don't want Sony to 'win', nor anyone else)

When I first started reading I thought perhaps Google was doing a clean OCR of their files for this project, apparently they are just importing the original OCR'd text they've been using which as others have pointed out is often quite horrid. That really is too bad as I think they are the one company capable of doing a good job at it...

-MJ

03-19-2009, 01:54 AM	#17
dragonbone must love dogs Posts: 480 Karma: 1079 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Tokyo Device: Sony PRS-700, iPhone 32GB 3GS, iPad 64GB WiFi	' Can't us Sony users enjoy something good, even for like FIVE minutes, before 'someone' tries to rain on our parade ? Last edited by dragonbone; 03-19-2009 at 02:04 AM. Reason: tone

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03-19-2009, 01:52 AM	#16
carld Wizard Posts: 2,698 Karma: 4748723 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	Just for grins I installed Sony's ebook software (since the newest version supports Vista 64) and gave the free book library a try. I used Calibre to convert an epub to mobi and sent it off to my Kindle, and it displayed well enough. As far as I can tell these books are already available through google books. So, the content is nothing new, but being able to get them more conveniently definitely is. Edit: The second book I tried was utterly unreadable. I can't speak for how it looks on an actual Sony though.

03-19-2009, 02:19 AM	#18
cerement Groupie Posts: 170 Karma: 2000 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: San José, CA Device: Amazon Kindle 1, Sony PRS-300, Amazon Kindle 3	Now if Google decides to make the ePubs available for direct download rather than through Sony's Windows only program ...

03-19-2009, 02:39 AM	#20
Curly I need a holiday! Posts: 1,227 Karma: 4622 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Scotland Device: PRS-505, ipod touch	Wonderful news for those of us who can use Sony's ebook store! But those folk outside North America, who had been blocked from downloading the software, will lose out. (Waterstones doesn't seem to have it on their site yet anyway.)

03-19-2009, 03:13 AM	#25
dreams It's about the umbrella Posts: 25,112 Karma: 56250158 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: Sony 505\| K Fire \| KK 3G+Wi-Fi \| iPhone 3Gs \|Vista 32-bit Hm Prem w/FF	I downloaded and viewed a few random copies of books. The Sony library is clunky and slow but I can get a good idea of what it will look like on the Sony 505. OK, so they aren't as "pretty" as the ones here on MR but it does expand availability of other works that are out there.. I think I have been spoiled by the excellently formatted versions on MR. Just a few copy and paste pieces from inside the books.. >This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. Google Book Search has digitized millions of physical books and made them available online at http://books.google.com The digitization at the most basic level is based on page images of the physical books. To make this book available as an ePub formated file we have taken those page images and extracted the text using Optical Character Recognition (or OCR for short) technology. The extraction of text from page images is a difficult engineering task. Smudges on the physical books' pages, fancy fonts, old fonts, torn pages, etc. can all lead to errors in the extracted text. Imperfect OCR is only the first challenge in the ultimate goal of moving from collections of page images to extracted-text based books. Our computer algorithms also have to automatically determine the structure of the book (what are the headers and footers, where images are placed, whether text is verse or prose, and so forth). Getting this right allows us to render the book in a way that follows the format of the original book. Despite our best efforts you may see spelling mistakes, garbage characters, extraneous images, or missing pages in this book. Based on our estimates, these errors should not prevent you from enjoying the content of the book. The technical challenges of automatically constructing a perfect book are daunting, but we continue to make enhancements to our OCR and book structure extraction technologies.<

03-19-2009, 04:19 AM	#27
Curly I need a holiday! Posts: 1,227 Karma: 4622 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Scotland Device: PRS-505, ipod touch	I can access the US site as I downloaded the US software before I bought my reader and before the 505 was even available in the UK. Hunky single men?! In Scotland?! Just kidding guys! Aye, there are a few around and they are lovely!

03-19-2009, 05:07 AM	#30
mjh215 Guru Posts: 988 Karma: 12653 Join Date: Apr 2008 Device: None of your business	As far as a numbers game, this could impact the market a good deal. You -know- Sony will start marketing the reader as coming with access to over half a million free books courtesy of Google. As we are fond of pointing out, the average consumer doesn't do the same diligent research many of our users would so when they read that versus the Kindle it might make a huge difference... (Again, I like the variety of multiple devices on the market, and don't want Sony to 'win', nor anyone else) When I first started reading I thought perhaps Google was doing a clean OCR of their files for this project, apparently they are just importing the original OCR'd text they've been using which as others have pointed out is often quite horrid. That really is too bad as I think they are the one company capable of doing a good job at it... -MJ

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