05:17 PM by rhadin in E-Book General | News

Galley Cat reports that nearly 250 Kindlers have joined an informal boycott of Kindle ebooks costing more than $9.99. They even have a boycott tag.

Granted that 250 Kindlers isn't a large number -- yet! -- but if it spreads this could bode badly for Amazon unless it can coerce publishers into lowering the price. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Are there any MR Kindlers who are members of the boycott or who have insider knowledge of its success/failure?

12:47 PM by Moejoe in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Despite public protests the French Parliament has passed a controversial new law that will see alleged copyright infringers disconnected from the Internet. In addition, France’s Minister of Culture Christine Albanel has stated that under the new law, ISPs may be ordered to block The Pirate Bay.

http://torrentfreak.com/france-to-bl...harers-090403/

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/50...te-graduee.htm

UPDATE: on 9th April 2009 this Law was rejected

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

Missed some of our big stories this week? Time to catch up:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Demi Recipe Reader = eBook Reader?
• CES 2010: Astak bets on bigger E Ink displays and color
• Horror Mall now offers DRM free Ebooks
• Detroit Newspapers to test Plastic Logic Readers this year
• Amazon Kindle coming to Walmart by the end of the month [April Fools]
• Sony, Google and Barnes & Noble To Partner For Sales of Google Books [April Fools]
• Commercial ePubs in Germany disappoint
• Who Do You Suppose Is Talking To Verizon?
• E-book sales up 68.4% to $113 million in 2008
• Savory - a calibre port running on the Amazon K2

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Dr. Horrible and the Chaotic Imperative - free ebook [April Fools]

E-Book Devices - Amazon Kindle

• Kindle 1 Font Mod Tool v0.1

09:24 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

That headline is not a joke or an exaggeration. The foremost K2 hacker, Jesse, has released software for the K2 that lets you download and convert Epub and PDF documents. You can find out more on his blog. The discussion of this is already started over here.

06:07 PM by AnemicOak in E-Book General | News

According to the Association of American Publishers sales reached $113 million in 2008, up 68.4%.

The PDF they posted uses 2002 as a base year and includes additional data for 2003-2008.

The report shows an overall compounded 57.8% growth for ebooks from 2002-2008 while other categories either lost or grew very little.

In 2002 ebook sales were $7,337,000.00

In 2003 ebook sales were $19,772,000.00 up 169.5%

In 2004 ebook sales were $30,271,000.00 up 53.1%

In 2005 ebook sales were $43,832,000.00 up 44.8%

In 2006 ebook sales were $54,396,000.00 up 24.1%

In 2007 ebook sales were $67,233,000.00 up 23.6%

in 2008 ebook sales were $113,220,000.00 up 68.4%

Thought this info would interest some of you. I know it's still nothing compared to pbook sales dollars wise, but it's encouraging just the same.

The original posting of the report...
http://www.publishers.org/main/Indus...2008_Stats.htm

The PDF showing the stats...
http://www.publishers.org/documents/S12008Final.pdf

Related : IDPF Reports Wholesale US Ebook Revenues up 173%

11:25 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

The folks over at Yahoo Tech are reporting that as many as five different e-reading device makers have approached them about providing wireless service for their devices -- presumably, they're looking for something like Amazon has set up with Sprint.

Tony Lewis, who heads an initiative within Verizon Wireless to provide access to non-phone devices, said Wednesday that five companies have approached Verizon about wireless connections for e-readers.

"You're going to see a lot of e-readers out there," Lewis said. "The interest level is tremendous."

Lewis wouldn't say which manufacturers Verizon has been talking to. But he hinted that they are looking at entering parts of the e-book market that the Kindle doesn't focus on, like college textbooks.

Buried in the third-to-last paragraph is this tidbit: AT&T is eying the game as well:

AT&T Inc., the second largest wireless carrier after Verizon Wireless, has also been talking to e-reader manufacturers, said Ralph de la Vega, the company's head of consumer services. Since AT&T's network is more similar to ones used overseas, it could support international e-book readers, he noted. The Kindle can download books only in the U.S.

It doesn't take much thought to guess that Sony's probably in there somewhere -- not only have they committed to releasing a wireless Reader at some, as yet unspecified, future time, they're actually mentioned in the article, but only by way of neither confirming nor denying that they're one of the mysterious five.

Of course, those keeping count know that any group of five e-reading device manufacturers would almost have to include Sony, especially if Amazon can't also be in the group. The pool has been expanding lately, but it's still a pretty small puddle.

So, assuming Sony is most likely in there, who do you think the other four might be?

Via Electronista.com

EDIT: D'oh! I just realized that wallcraft had already posted this over here. Sorry 'bout that, I wasn't trying to ignore you.

04:59 PM by lovebeta in Amazon Kindle | Kindle Developer's Corner

This tool helps you to modify the fonts Kindle 1 used to render the ebooks. It is especially useful if you want to use Kindle 1 to read books in non-european languages, such as Chinese. This mod is applicable to Kindle 1 firmware 1.2 only. (I actually don't know how to do it in firmware 1.0.8 or lower.) This mod, however, does not apply to the NetFront browser.

DISCLAIMER: The author makes no guarantees and holds no responsibility for any damage, injury or loss of property that may result from the use of this mod! PLEASE PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

USAGE:
1. Make sure that you have firmware 1.2 for your Kindle 1.

2. Unzip the enclosed package to the root of your SD card. That is, "update_font_mod.v1.bin" and "\custom" should be in the root directory.

3. Put the SD card into your Kindle 1. Navigate the menu: "Home" -> "Settings" -> "Menu" -> "Update your Kindle" -> "OK".

4. Wait for the update to complete. Kindle should automatically reboot and you will be done after that.

CAVEATS:

1. Due to the usage of symlink, you will loose the usb access to your Kindle memory. You can however still access that space using Kindle itself.

2. There appears be a bug in the java mobipocket reader, that it cannot correctly make line breaks in CJK (because they don't have spaces between words). The link breaks were only correct for the smallest font size. This however can be somewhat remedied by inserting non-visible blank spaces between CJK characters.

RESTORE:

1. If the Kindle can still boot into the normal screen, use the enclosed "update_font_restore.v1.bin" to restore to the factory setting.

2. If the Kindle cannot boot normally, pinch the reset hole on the back of your Kindle while hold down the "home" key. When the Kindle boots into the recovery mode, select 2 to "reset firmware". You will be back to factory setting this way, but you will also loose everything on the kindle memory.

Overall I think because of the second restore methods, this mod is fairly safe.

CUSTOMIZE:

The included \custom folder is just for illustation purpose. Currently I only changed the default serif font to "DroidSansFallback" because DroidSansFallback contains fairly complete unicode characters and is free. Feel free to modify it to your needs. Remember that you have to bring your own font, as well as modify "font.properties" for this to work.

ACKNOWEDGEMENT:

Special thanks to igor for his great effort on ebook hacking. I also took cues from similar hacks for the K2 by clarknova and superzhou.

01:46 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

I've already done my April Fool's joke, so it's safe to share this.

Joss Whedon, the creator of tv series, movies, a musical, and a comic book, has announced a new book. It's a sequel to last summer's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

I haven't read it yet. Frankly, I'm surprised he had time to writer it. Here is the download link:
http://whedonesque.com/drhorrible