07:23 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

In a press release dated 11 August:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the first report of California’s free digital textbook initiative... Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California’s standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards, including the CK-12 Foundation’s CK-12 Single Variable Calculus, CK-12 Trigonometry, CK-12 Chemistry and Dr. H. Jerome Keisler’s Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach.

press release

You can find the digital textbooks here (as well as a report specifying exactly how well they did).
*************

Curiously enough, I can't see that a second step has been planned. I really wonder where they are going to go from here.

03:08 AM by dasony in E-Book General | News

I just ordered a PRS-600 and now this comes into the news. (I live in Korea BTW.)

• 6 inch screen with QWERTY buttons
• Supports PDF, epub, txt, ppt, doc, xls and other formats WITHOUT conversion.
• Supports Comic viewer for comics
• Expandable to maximum 32GB with memory slot.
• Up to 9000 page turns

They are affiliated with Kyobo, the biggest book store in Korean, and also with other learning contents company. They are working on contents from US, Russia, Europe and Australia.

The pre-order starts on 16th September in Korea. The price is not officially announced, but it seems it will be 350,000~400,000 KRW range, which is around 300 USD.

They are also talking with retailers in Russia and US. iRiver says the product's focus will be overseas markets so I expect it to be released in other countries soon.

08:37 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

I'm prone to strange musings when I'm tired. Tonight, I noticed something - When reading an e-book, it's very hard to get an idea of how thick or long a book is. It's not hard with a paper book. You look at it, or feel the weight, maybe look at the last page, and then you peek at a few sample pages to see how much fits on each page. Then you just sort of "know" how long the book is, and what the page count means.

But when you read an e-book, how is one to know how long the book is? I confess that to get an idea of the length, I generally do some research and check out the number of pages of the print version. Or if I'm reading a lot, then my mind remembers that magic paper-to-device page conversion factor at my favorite font size. That gives me a general feel for the length of the corresponding "real" book in paper form. Usually the e-book has a lot more pages than the paper version, especially if I'm reading on my Treo phone.

But if I don't have that magic conversion factor in my head, or if I am trying to determine how long an e-book is on a device that is new to me, it's kind of a mystery. How do I describe the book length to someone else? Some of the e-books I bought seemed like they were the equivalent of ~300 pages to me. But after looking it up, I find I bought e-books that were only about the equivalent of a bit over 100 pages. I knew it was a really quick read, but wow. I have to admit that I felt a little cheated at first, because I didn't realize how short they were when I was purchasing them. (Actually, I would have bought them anyway - they were really good!)

Now, even if paper books go away (not likely for a long, long time), there will probably still be a place for an typeset version in some format like pdf. I've never heard anyone conjecture that, but it seems self-evident to me that typesetting properly done adds greatly to the reading experience. The nicely formatted e-books available at MobileRead are a good demonstration of the value of presentation. So not everything is likely to be entirely flowable, re-sizeable text.

But... what if there really is no fixed text size? (After all, who is really going to bother nicely typesetting the average fiction e-book in the future?) Then how will we describe e-book length?

I can't think of any other alternative besides word count, and that seems to incredibly unsatisfying and aesthetically crude. It reminds me too much of school days, I suppose. But if there is no fixed standard page number to compare against, what else can we do? I suppose we could agree on a certain common text size and page layout in electronic form and make that the "agreed upon" number of pages in a book. But that seems silly to me also.

This may ruffle some feathers, or you may have some thoughts that make me realize how silly I am, but as wonderful as e-books are, I think that the corresponding paper books are awfully nice, even for simple things like setting a standard for the number of pages.

05:28 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

Astak confirms that their EZ Reader Pocket Pro's are now shipping.

The EZ Reader Pocket Pro is a 5inch eInk based reader device. The device has the new Epson high-speed controller and a 400MHz processor. You can expand the built in memory with an SD card of up to 16GB capacity.

This new device now includes Adobe Digital Editions which allows support for Secure Adobe ePub and PDF eBooks which are sold at many eBook stores and available at many public lending libraries. Support for many other non-secure ebook formats is also included.

You can currently purchase the EZ Reader Pocket PRO for $199 directly from Astak's web site at http://www.theezreader.com/ for a limited time.

This device is being discussed in the Astak forum section here on Mobile Read.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=574993

Feel free to continue the discussion there.

12:22 PM by Greg Anos in E-Book General | News

Will Spidey get psychotherapy? Will Bruce Banner get suppressed? Will any more characters get to die and then get better? Will comics get special, even longer copyright than other forms of entertainment? Stay tuned, as goody-two-shoes Disney will be soon be owning all the neurotic and stressed out characters of Marvel.

Stan - my heart goes out to you......

Ralph

NY Times

11:54 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

It's been 4 days since the US release of the Pocket Edition and Touch Edition. Now seemed like a good time to gather the early reports into one place. A fair number of MR members who have purchased one of the new Sony readers. We also know of a hands on video.

PRS-300 hands on review (by MR member DRMoze)
PRS-700/PRS-600 side by side (by MR member Wetdogeared)
PRS-600 hands on video (Thanks, Mobile Tech Review)
PRS-600 with lots of pictures (by MR member DougFNJ)
PRS-600 (by MR member cjs603)
PRS-600 unboxing ( by MR member afsandiego)
comments on the PRS-600 PDF zoom (by davidspitzer)

P.S. We also know of a video of the New York press event:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...363#post568363

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

It was the week that was. Here's what MobileRead's been talking about since last Sunday:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Sony Reader Daily Edition - ad photo leaked
• Sony Reader Daily Edition - SCOOP!
• Sony eBook Library (EBL) 3.0 links
• MR at Sony Daily Edition press conference
• Sony PRS-600 gets first firmware upgrade
• More details for the txtr emerge!
• Sony's London press conference - roundup

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• September 09 Book Club Nominations

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead Meetup in Paris, France Saturday, 19th of September

08:13 AM by AlexBell in E-Book General | News

I’ve had my ECO Reader about 36 hours now, and it’s time for a review.

I bought this reader because I wanted to be able to read Mobipocket and ePub ebooks on the same reader, wanted folders, and wanted a reader with an Australian support desk. The ECO Reader fully meets all these requirements, and I’m very pleased with it.

At the moment I’m using the same SD card as I used in my Cybook Gen3. In the ebooks folder on the card I have a folder for each author (and a couple for SF Anthologies and Mystery Anthologies) and have had no problem in loading ePub books into folders which contain Mobipocket ebooks. For example in the Trollope, Anthony folder I have ‘The way we were.prc’ and ‘Barchester Chronicles.epub.’ When I select the book I want the ECO reader instantly chooses the correct reader and opens the book.

I really like the folder setup on the reader. One can have multiple levels of folders. I have 20+ ebooks by Lois McMaster Bujold in three different series and one stand alone book. The first level folder I set up is Bujold, Lois McMaster. It contains the stand alone book and three subfolders. Each of the subfolders is named Bujoldn, series name, where n is a number given to a series and series name is the name of the series. I have renamed the files to show the positions of the book in the series. So when I open the overall ebooks folder I find the folders in author’s name order. When I select Bujold, Lois McMaster I see Spirit Ring (the stand alone book), and folders for the three series in order the series were written. When I select a series, for example The Sharing Knife, I see the books in that series in the order of the series. The ECO reader sorts by file name (which need not be the book title), and displays the book title taken from the metadata.

The support and information given by the vendor, DA Information Services, is excellent. All my enquiries have been handled very promptly and efficiently, and I am confident that if the reader does need service it will be dealt with just as efficiently and rapidly. As an example, one needs to install a Nokia battery when one receives the ebook reader. The package includes the battery, a screwdriver and spare screws as well as a cable, an Australian style wall plug, standard 3.5mm earphones, and a printed manual.

There are of course opportunies for improvement, as there will be with any device. Although the manual is full and detailed I found some of the explanations hard to follow. There is an option to order books within a folder. The manual states that the ebooks can be ordered by title, but as mentioned they are ordered by file name. Nearly all the many options are selected from a contextual menu revealed by pressing the key on the lower right confusingly labelled the OK key, but bookmarks are managed in a totally different way which I found counter intuitive. And I’d like to see more gradations in font size, especially between the smallest and next smallest in ePub books. These quibbles are minor. My Cybook will be relegated to spare or reserve, and the ECO Reader will be my first choice.

Finally, the manual recommends that one charge the battery for at least 12 hours before use. I strongly suggest that new owners follow this advice since this will prevent some minor glitches that I experienced when I started using the reader almost immediately. One can read ebooks while the reader is charging.

Regards, Alex