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.

12:15 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but NPR is usually a good source of thought provoking editorials. The segment is about 5 minutes long, and it's also available for download as MP3.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=122026529

09:06 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Last week Onyx released a new firmware for the Boox 60. The improvements include:

• Migrate to ADOBE RM 9.1
• Add password support PDF
• OTA support to enable user to purchase books from online shop
• Notes support
• Shortcut support
• More text encoding support to reflowable content like plain text, mobi
• More text size support
• Clock support
• Bookmark support to web browser
• Wi-Fi deadlock issue during standby
• https support
• Add GPL declaration to about information
• Fix reboot issue
• Some small GUI bugs fixed

The second one is a biggie. So far as I know, no other device developer has implemented that part of Adobe RM. You can download the update from here:
http://www.onyx-international.com/node/69

08:05 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Chinese e-reader site MobRead is reporting that PVI now has final approval from the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission to buy Massachusetts based E-ink Corp.

Up until it announced the purchase of Eink back in June, PVI had licensed Eink's technology and was (still is) the primary manufacturer of epaper screens for ebook readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader, Hanlin V3, Cybook, etc.