03:37 PM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

E-book readers have long been touted as a great help to people with poor vision thanks to their ability to enlarge the font size.

Now Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo and Jin-Sun Park have gone one step further to create an electronic reading device which can display... braille.

According to the article on Yanko Design :

Visually challenged people require braille books in order to read. However, not many books are available in braille due to cost and inefficiency. Translating a 500 page book into braille nearly doubles the thickness. EAP is a technology that can dynamically change the surface pattern by way of an electromagnetic signal - simulating braille text. Not exactly a new idea but a nice executive nonetheless.

This device could open whole new worlds of books to the blind. Let's hope this prototype makes it into production soon.

Thanks to MR member Alisa for the scoop ! Please join the discussion here.

via Gizmodo.

04:09 PM by sirbruce in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Yep, they're legit!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...R.R.%20Tolkien

On Harper Collins in EPUB, PDF, LIT, and MOBI:
The Trilogy
Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

The Hobbit
The Children of Húrin

Unfortunately the "trilogy" book is not yet available on Amazon. Harper Collins site says all the books will be available on April 20. EDIT: It is now.

EDIT: They are also available on Fictionwise with a 100% credit.

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

Previously at MobileRead:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Adobe Teams Up With Stanza to Create Open EBook Catalog Standard
• "drmfree" tag introduced at Amazon
• Ebook Readers discussed on Marketplace
• Jetbook now available at Bed Bath and Beyond
• World Book Day : 23rd April
• Pirate Bay founders found guilty
• 24th April : E-books at The Libraries of the free University of Brussels
• Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM)

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Free Ebook: World Fact eBook

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Reminder: MobileRead Paris Meetup saturday, 18th April!

06:59 PM by anurag in E-Book General | News

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get).

From
http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/04/over-...n-the-way.html

Also includes some interesting commentary on formatting issues with Kindle 1.

08:23 AM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

To all our members in or near Brussels (Belgium), MobileRead member BlogusOperandi informs us that on the 24th of April, the Libraries of the Free University of Brussels (Bibliothèques de l'Université libre de Bruxelles) will consecrate a day to demonstrations and discussion about e-books, from 10am to 4pm.

Throughout the day, il will be possible to try out several different models of e-book readers : Sony PRS-505, Bookeen Cybook, Irex Digital Reader as well as non-dedicated interfaces which support e-book reading applications : iPhone, Nintendo DS, netbooks... They will load the machines with different types of documents : novels, scientific articles, archival documents, class notes, conferences, newspapers, comics, mangas... If you would like to test some of your own files (pdf, txt, html, epub, mobi, lrf...) on these machines, you are welcome to bring your own SD card.

In addition, there will be conferences about digital reading, demonstrations of digitisation of books on a professional scanner and seminars.

This day is open to all without registration, including those outside of the university community of the ULB, everyone is very welcome ! If you are anywhere near Brussels, don't miss this opportunity !

More information here (article in french) :
http://blogusoperandi.blogspot.com/s...%A9lectronique.

Thanks BlogusOperandi for sharing the news !

Original post (in french).

05:53 AM by HarryT in E-Book General | News

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor (£2.4m) in damages.

For more information, see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

12:16 PM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

World Book Day is coming up on the 23 April. This international event organised by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) got its start in Spain in 1923, where the commemoration of Miguel de Cervantes' death by local booksellers combined with the celebration of St. George's Day to create a new traditional exchange of flowers and... books.

The intent of World Book Day according to the UNESCO :
By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.

23 April: a symbolic date for world literature for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo. It was a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.

The idea for this celebration originated in Catalonia where on 23 April, Saint George's Day, a rose is traditionally given as a gift for each book sold. The success of the World Book and Copyright Day will depend primarily on the support received from all parties concerned (authors, publishers, teachers, librarians, public and private institutions, humanitarian NGOs and the mass media), who have been mobilized in each country by UNESCO National Commissions, UNESCO Clubs, Centres and Associations, Associated Schools and Libraries, and by all those who feel motivated to work together in this world celebration of books and authors.

MR member Saladdin proposes we try to think of ways to make ebooks part of the celebration : for example, going back to the original Catalan tradition of booksellers offering a rose for every book purchased, and florists giving a small book with every rose purchased, and men offering roses to women who reply with a book, he proposes that we might give virtual roses for ebook purchases, or perhaps we could send e-roses to authors we appreciate (provided their work is available as ebooks, obviously ! ). Sounds like a nice idea to me !

So, how will you celebrate World Book Day ?

Thank you to Saladdin for the tip !

World Book Day on wikipedia.

World Book Day on the UNESCO site in english and in french.

Note that the UK apparently celebrates World Book Day on 5th March 2009.

11:45 AM by nekokami in E-Book General | News

Caught this on National Public Radio (NPR) Monday night. Here's the link to a page containing text and the audio, in case you missed it.

New e-readers get a big push

E-readers allow users to read books digitally, but sales of the handheld devices have grown slowly. That may be changing as Amazon and Sony, along with some well-funded startups, push a new generation of e-readers. Mitchell Hartman reports.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/d...13/pm_e_books/

Marketplace is a daily radio program on NPR that discusses topics of economic interest.