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]

05:13 PM by Madam Broshkina in E-Book General | News

They're hugely different devices, sure, but could the iPhone be stepping on the Kindle's toes again? CourseSmart, which offers subsciption-based, notes-capable eBooks online, has released a full-featured iPhone app for their subscribers. In other words, yes. The app is free, but you'll need preexisting subscriptions to textbooks in order to access any. It's actually a shrewd, if somewhat obvious move for CourseSmart: lots of college kids have iPhones and iPod Touches, and while taking notes and reading long passages might be a little cumbersome on such a tiny screen, the ability to carry all your books in-pocket, complete with search and bookmarking capabilities, is a pretty big value-add.
As far back as May, it was clear that Amazon was pursuing CourseSmart for e-textbook content, an effort that may have culminated in a wimpy partnership with McGraw-Hill—a CourseSmart partner—which netted the ebook reader, and specifically the textbook-reader DX, about 100 regular old e-textbooks. This looks like something of a snub to me, or maybe just a lack of initiative on Amazon's part, but I get the feeling there's a still a lot going on behind closed doors here.

Via Gizmodo

More info here:

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/s...10/daily9.html

03:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

A small teaser for our Astak and Jetbook friends... in the next few days we will launch two new forum sections dedicated to your favorite e-book devices. We decided that there is sufficient demand in our community to justify the addition of these new sections -- plus more sections to come very soon.

Stay tuned!

03:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Edit: Just received word from Sony that there was a mix up with the dates. The event is now scheduled for Tuesday, August 25 - so one day later than originally announced.

Whoa! It's only been a few days since Sony announced the PRS-300 and the PRS-600, but today they have sent us an invitation to a press conference scheduled the morning of Monday, August 24 Tuesday, August 25 in New York. Sony's Reader team is going to be there and the big question we're all asking ourselves: What is it that the Reader team would normally do at a major press event? What say you, rumormongers?