08:45 AM by nrapallo in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Well, after much discussion , extensive polling and considerable arm-twisting , we have upon us a time and place for the 1st Toronto Mobileread.com Meet-up!

It will be a gathering to see the latest gadgetry (e-ink in all its glory) as well as those tried and true legacy ebook readers (what started it all...) and some in-between attempts...

So, mark it in your day planners, bring your ebook reader and come join us for some lively discussions (Did someone say DRM?...) and general friendliness attributed to Torontonians the world over...

Current attendance list (confirmed)

ficbot - Toronto (North York) (1)
nrapallo aka GIGABYTE ATTACHMENT MAN - Vaughan (Woodbridge) (1)
shighfield - Toronto (Scarborough) (1)
lance_ - Toronto (1)
pholy - Toronto (1)
Verencat - Montreal (2)
PeterT - (1 or 2)

Maybe list (possible)

MelC - Toronto (1)

So... please confirm here, or ask for more information, and get that word out that Toronto is having it's first Mobileread.com Meet-up...

p.s. Sorry for the short notice, but these things are 90% planning and 10% actual results...

05:33 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Interested to find out which e-book devices currently support the Adobe ePub format (including ADEPT DRM)? Adobe kindly sent us a link to a list that seems fairly up to date:

Supported eBook devices (Adobe)

The list includes: Astak EZ Reader, Astak EZ Reader Pocket PRO, Astak Mentor, BeBook One, BeBook Mini, Cybook Gen3, Cybook Opus, COOL-ER, Elonex eBook, Hanlin V5, Hanlin V3, IREX Digital Reader 1000S, NUUT2, Sony PRS-300 Reader Pocket Edition, Sony PRS-505 Reader Digital Book, Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition, Sony PRS-700BC Reader Digital Book.

Thanks also to keng2000 who already reported the news to us.

01:57 AM by mtravellerh in E-Book General | News

According to the New York Times, Sony is going to adopt the ePub-format in a new, exclusive way!

On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.

Sony will also scrap its proprietary anticopying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied.

It seems as if Sony will strengthen the support for ePub (in its ADEPT attire), selling ePub eBooks over their proprietary bookstore. The bookstore will open up to other hardware platforms using the ADEPT engine (txtr, Jinke's Hanlin clones, Bookeen Opus (and Gen3), Cool-er, Elonex and so on).

It's unfortunately not very clear what is going to happen to Sony's own BeBB-format and it's not even known if it will be supported at all by the new models 300-600. This may evolve in a bad situation for long time owners of Sony readers.

Sony seems to try to reposition itself in the marketing war that rages on between Sony and Amazon with Apple as a potentially new rival in the ring with the rumored Apple tablet.

By opening up their hitherto closed system, they should be in a nice position to boost their sales, considering that Sony does offer a very large choice of books already.

BTW:

'Later in the year, the company will begin selling a third Reader that will, like the Kindle, allow users to buy e-books wirelessly.'

All right, folks! That might be a nice reason for Sony's press conference next tuesday. Let's wait and see!

Please discuss this in our ongoing thread here.

Edit: Sony's official press release is online now here:

In an effort to take the confusion out of digital book formats, Sony today announced its plan to convert its eBook store to the industry-standard EPUB format by the end of the year. Adopting an industry-standard format and Adobe® Content Server 4 (ACS4), a popular, cross platform server software solution that copy protects downloadable eBooks, allows Sony to make its eBook store compatible with multiple devices and its Reader devices open to multiple sources for content.

New point: Sony seems to say that they will make available the epub format to the 500:

Sony will also provide an update path for owners of the first edition Reader, model PRS-500, so early adopters of the Reader will be able to enjoy this benefit as well.

.

10:28 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hi folks! In order to accommodate for languages with characters that are not covered by the Latin1 set for "Western" languages, we're in the process of converting our database and switching the database client to Unicode.

Before we do the conversion on our live system, however, we need to make absolutely sure that we don't screw it up. For this reason we have set up a beta test server where features can be tried out without doing any harm.

So - if you like to help us (speaking a language with interesting character sets, like Russian, Chinese, or French is a big plus!!), please send me a quick message for the login details.

To all volunteers: thanks for helping us to improve this community!

05:35 PM by M0zza in E-Book General | News

It's all based on the work done by members here.

It’s [the Sony Reader] also comparatively easy to tweak and hack, thanks to the way it’s designed. The core operating system is MontaVista Linux, and though the speed of response of the e-ink screen and the lack of a full keyboard means that you can’t really use it as a general purpose computer, there is a fair bit that you can do with it.

How to hack a Sony Reader (The Register)

04:39 PM by AlfonsVH in E-Book General | News

According to De Morgen and eReaders.nl, the websites boek.be and boekenbank.be will start selling e-books for the Belgian market in October.

At the same time, the Sony Reader will be launched in Belgium.

Great news if you ask me!

06:13 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Reading Recommendations

And the trophies for the 2009 Hugo Awards go to:

• Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
• Best Novella: “The Erdmann Nexus”, Nancy Kress
• Best Novelette: “Shoggoths in Bloom”, Elizabeth Bear
• Best Short Story: “Exhalation”, Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
• Best Related Book: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008, John Scalzi
• Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director
• Best Editor Short Form: Ellen Datlow
• Best Editor Long Form: David G. Hartwell
• Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
• Best Semiprozine: Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
• Best Fan Writer: Cheryl Morgan
• Best Fanzine: Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
• Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu

Congratulations to the winners!

A full voting breakdown is available here (PDF) and full nominations details are available here (PDF).

Related: Your Poll vote for Hugo Award for Best Novel

05:54 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

It's almost two years since its introduction and we still don't know any official numbers of Kindle sales. This doesn't stop the wise guys from Wall Street to crunch their numbers through super-secret spreadsheet algorithms. So did Jim Friedland from the research house Cowen, who's estimating that we'll have 1.5 million active Kindle users by the end of 2009 -- a number to even double to 3.0 million by the end of 2010. Does this sounds crazy to you? No? Then how about this (emphasis mine):

Within 5 years, he [Mr. Friedland] estimates, 17% of active Amazon customers will own Kindles - or 4% of the total U.S. population.... In five years, he predicts, Kindle device and content revenues will be 10% of North American sales, or about $2.3 billion in GAAP revenue.

Well, let's say I am "cautiously optimistic." But after today's housing bubble I tend to take things from Wall Street with a hefty grain of salt.

[via Barron's Blog]