02:41 PM by DaleDe in E-Book General | News

April marks the 4 year anniversary of the MobileRead wiki. Actually it was placed in service on April 10th but there were only some token pages available at that time. Over the next couple of weeks there was quite a bit of work on the site. With the home page taking its final form on April 23rd. You can view the page by looking here. It remained the same for more than a year after that. It looks amazingly like the Main Page today although a few things have been added. No reason to mess with perfection, I guess.

It struggled through the summer and by August 20, 2006 it had 31 pages. Interest was pretty high with 21,133 views and 8 pages had more than 1,000 hits. You can review the history of the site at: Wiki Statistics.
Initially the interest focused on eBook Readers and that continues to be high on the list of topics. As a matter of fact the top ten list of most visited pages has only 2 pages that were not originally written in 2006. The iLiad initially got lots of attention and the last iLiad page only dropped out of top ten a couple of months ago. However lately the wiki interest has favored more generic topics with the exception of the top page, E-book Reader Matrix, which has more than a million hits just on the one page (yes thats 1,000,000). In 2006 there were only 4 devices to compare, the Sony 500, the iLiad, and two Hanlins, but today there is a huge number with more appearing every day.

April 1st this year saw the wiki reach 7,000,000 hits so this anniversary marks the vision of the original posters in making it a valuable resource for this community over the last 4 years. With your help it can continue to be a major resource here at MobileRead. We are adding a million hits about every 3 months these days.

Dale

07:00 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | General Discussions

I'm in the middle of writing a review of the Edge, and I wanted to take a moment and ask for feedback. Is there a topic you'd like me to cover, or a feature that you want to hear about? let me know.

I've written 3 posts so far over on my blog. The first post is a basic intro with the type of questions I'm planning to ask.

The second post covers how the Edge allows you to export pen based annotations.

When using the Edge, you can save the pen based annotations (and the page they’re on) as a PDF. You’re also supposed to be able to send that PDF as an email attachment, but that doesn’t seem to work yet. (Let me fiddle with that some more.)

I’m also pleased with the quality of the inking. BTW, now I understand why the Edge has a large bezel. It gives me extra space to rest my hand while I’m writing. This helps me a lot, because my penmanship was never very good to start with.

The third post is the first part of the body of the review. It started as a comparison of the Edge and a netbook, and went sideways from there. I can't give you a snippet from this one. It would make little sense out of context.

• Entourage Edge Review, pt 0
• The right way to handle notes
• Entourage Edge Review, pt 1

Questions? Thoughts? Mad Ramblings?

09:13 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | General Discussions

crossposted from The Digital Reader

The Atlantic just posted an interview of Paul Theroux, and like most all of his work it’s worth reading at least twice. Here is the intro:

For better or for worse, the age of the e-book is upon us. Analysts estimate Americans will buy on the order of 6 million e-readers this year—and by 2014, an estimated 32 million people will own one. What does the proliferation of Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other e-readers portend for the publishing industry? What does the e-reader mean for writers, for storytelling, for the place of fiction in the cultural landscape? We put these and other questions to Paul Theroux, who published his first Atlantic short story, “Two in the Bush,” in 1968 and his eighth, “Siamese Nights,” this past February, as part of The Atlantic’s Fiction for Kindle project. (These questions will also be the focus of a panel discussion featuring Theroux, Richard Bausch, and other writers at the Luminato festival in Toronto, on June 19.)

continued here

11:06 AM by Nate the great in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

I just came across this demo video for iPad only edition of Alice in Wonderland by Atomic Antelope. It’s a little intense, and looks like it’s lot of fun.

But, it’s not an ebook. It’s a game based on a novel. With that in mind, this demo helped me understand what some people were saying at O’Reilly TOC about the future of publishing. If this is the future, then book publishing is going to die out.

via The Digital Reader

08:45 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

Sharp announced their newest invention Saturday. It’s a prototype 10″ LCD screen that can create a 3D effect without glasses. Not that I said prototype; it’s not in production yet. Details are sparse; all we know at this point is that it has a touchscreen and that you can switch between 2D and 3D at the touch of a button.

Supposedly this new screen is being touted for e-reading; I don’t see how that would be useful. Video, certainly, but I think the 3D effect would get in the way of reading.

09:12 AM by ShortNCuddlyAm in E-Book General | News

I've just had a general email from them saying they've launched their ebook store. I think they did have some free ebooks before, but now apparently they have over 340000 to buy. I've not yet had a look at their selection, but that's what I'm off to do now.

Relevant bit of the site is here: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/category/3390/eBooks

Given they joined MR last year, I'm surprised we've not heard anything from them directly about this!

(Disclaimer: I have no link to the company except as a very happy customer of theirs for physical books)

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Here are the highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News

• iBooks, Wattpad Ipad apps avalaible now, B&N coming soon
• Smart Devices to release new E-reader - the R7
• Wiley launches new e-reader comparison site
• RUMOR: Best Buy will sell the Nook on 18 April
• RUMOR: Amazon Kindle Coming to Target on 25 April
• Introducing the Viewsonic VEB 620 & VEB 625

E-Book General - General Discussions

• Help revise the Epub standard

09:32 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

cross posted from The Digital Reader

Viewsonic announced 2 new e-readers yesterday at The Gadget Show Live in the UK.The details in the press release are rather sparse, but I do have some information.

The VEB 620 & VEB 625 both have a 6″ epaper screen, 2GB storage, SD card slot, and an accelerometer. The VEB 625 also has Wifi and a touchscreen. If you look at the picture on the left, you can see the letters 3G on the bottom edge. There was no mention in the press release, so don’t get your hopes up. Also, I’m still waiting to hear about format support.

The devices were only announced for a European release and are supposed to be available now. The projected retail is £175 (VEB 620) and £205 (VEB 625), and both prices are excluding VAT.