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

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• The best e-book reader in 2009, according to the-ebook.org
• Coos County Library District to lend Sony Readers
• Ebooks in Canadian libraries
• Book, magazine sales in Japan decreased in 2009 (AP)
• Ebooks at CES (pt 4)
• Insdream SX601 - new ebook reader
• First Look at Blio, Ray Kurzweil's Tablet-Friendly Ebook Format
• Microsoft is getting back into ebooks!
• Rise of the E-Reader - BBC Radio 4
• Mark your calender: International Ebook Reader Fair to be held in March
• PVI gets final approval of E-Ink Corp purchase
• Firmware update released for the Onyx Boox 60
• How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing (NPR)
• BBC R4 programme about the role of the editor
• Today is Public Domain Day
• A National Scan Center: A Public Works Project (O'Reilley Radar)
• New Words for the New Year

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• New image resource - Must See!

E-Book Software - Calibre

• Calibre ranked #7 as 'Greatest Open Source Software Of 2009'

E-Book Devices - Sony Portable Reader (New Forum)

• [Linux & Windows] PRS Note Reader v0.2 released

Portable Devices - Other Devices

• FBReader 0.12.1 for SmartQ

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Wishing all of you a Happy New Year!

09:21 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I came across a couple of lists today and I thought it would be fun to share them.

Lake Superior State University has released its 35th annual List of Banished Words:

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. -- Word "czars" at Lake Superior State University "unfriended" 15 words and phrases and declared them "shovel-ready" for inclusion on the university's 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

"The list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail.'"

from:
http://www.lssu.edu/whats_new/articl...articleid=1905

And the latest words to be added to the OED were just announced:
http://www.oed.com/help/updates/latest-additions.html

08:40 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

I just found a really interesting collection of images at the Blueprint Database. I was lost in their SF collection (2600+), but wanted to take a moment to share this with you. While it may be called a blueprint archive, most of the images aren't blueprints. The correct technical term for this kind of image is elevation. Enjoy.
http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/

08:17 AM by HarryT in E-Book General | News

For those who ask "what do publishers do to deserve being paid", this fascinating BBC Radio 4 programme about the role of the editor may be of interest:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ok_27_12_2009/

Description from the BBC site:

Mariella Frostrup and her guests discuss a generally unheralded figure in the writing of a book - its editor.

Mariella talks to Diana Athill, the former editor of novelists including VS Naipaul, John Updike and Jean Rhys, and herself the author of Stet, an acclaimed memoir of her life in publishing.

John Carey, the author of a recent biography of William Golding, explains how Golding's masterpiece Lord of the Flies was saved from the rejects pile - and extensively remodelled - by Golding's first editor.

The editor and writer Jenny Uglow reveals some of the tricks of her trade, and the novelists Giles Foden and DJ Taylor discuss how novelists rely on - and sometimes ignore - their editors, from Dickens to the present day.

08:14 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Carl Malamud is calling for the US to establish a national scan center.

In the course of doing research for some recent testimony before Congress on the National Archives and Records Administration, I was struck by several facts about how our first National Archivist, Robert D.W. Connor, met some seemingly insurmountable challenges when he took office in the mid-1930s.

The biggest challenge was the deluge of paperwork, a situation not very different from what our national institutions face today. Instead of simply moaning the impossibility of swallowing all the records Connor would need to establish the National Archives, he thought nonlinear. The result was the invention of several key technologies: the airbrush to clean paper, the laminator to protect it, and of course, the microphotograph (now known as microfilm or microfiche), a technology so successful it reduced incoming paper needs by 95%.

from:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/a-n...er-public.html

10:49 PM by benlau in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Hi,

The PRS Note reader v0.2 is released. It is a open source software that could read .note format used in Sony reader. It could also convert the .note file to svg/txt file. The v0.1 release could only be run on Linux , but this time the v0.2 release has already included a windows installer. (v0.3 should have Mac support)

Changelog:
- Ported to windows
- Supported to go to first / last page by 'home' and 'end' keys
- Supported page removal

Screenshot:

Project Site:
http://launchpad.net/prsnotereader

Windows binary:
http://code.google.com/p/prsnotereader/downloads/list

Ubuntu Packages:
https://launchpad.net/~benlau/+archive/ppa

Ubuntu Installation:

You may download the .deb file from the site above , or add the following source repository to your APT.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/benlau/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Then run

sudo apt-get install prsnotereader

Enjoy it.

10:48 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I can't write about this topic without getting really angry, so I'm just going to post a few links. I'm sure there are plenty more stories, but that's enough to raise your blood pressure. Enjoy.

http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2009/...ne-by-lawyers/

http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091231/1105257562.shtml

02:26 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

On behalf of the MobileRead team I would like to wish all of you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2010! Thank you everybody for being part of this amazing community, for your endless contributions, and for the valuable feedback and suggestions you have provided us throughout this year.

So, wherever you are in the world, and whatever your plans are for New Year's Eve - have a good one! - and hope to see you next year again.