10:40 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

There are a number of ebook related events coming up in May. If you can make it to one, we'd like to hear from you.

The first is at the University College of London on 12th of May, E-books and E-content 2009.

IDPF will have its annual conference, Digital Book 2009 in New York. It's also on the 12th of May, with a half day of workshops on the 11th.

Book Expo America will also be in New York City this year (and the following 4, actually). Conferences will start on the 28th, with the trade show running from 29 May to the 31st.

It's unfortunate that 2 of the conferences will both be on the 12th. The one in London might suffer because virtually everyone in ebook hardware and software will be in New York. At least, they were last year.

08:22 PM by CommanderROR in E-Book General | News

Dear Mobileread.com members,

I have exciting news for you today! We were invited to do an Interview with representatives from German ebook startup Wizpac about their new eink based reading device, the txtr (www.txtr.com).
The interview was done today, live at the Leipzig Book Fair and I've got it all on video. The original material is HD 720p .mov which we unfortunately can't upload to the server without compression, so you will have to make do with Youtube HQ. I'll try my very best to preserve as much quaility as I can.

In addition to the interview we have a little bit of footage from the device in action, however, the two devices on display in Leipzig were early prototypes so you really only get a short glimpse. The information in the interview should be enough to keep you happy for a while though...
To round things off I took a few snapshots of the txtr in comparison to my STAReBOOK and iRex iLiad.
When I first saw the device I thought it's a 5" screen, but it's actually 6" just like the Cybook and Sony Reader. It looks smaller because the shape of the "frame" is different. Very interesting effect.

I'm uploading this in stages, the short demonstration clip and the photos first, the long interview video (approx. 20 minutes) will be up a little later.
Leave comments and ask questions, the guys from Wizpac are keeping an eye on this forum and anything you have to say might help them make the device even better...and might give us another excellent eink device to spend our hard-earned money on!

Pageturning Video

Video on Youtube in HD quality.

Interview Part 1 (thanks to Moejoe/typewriterhead for the conversion!)

Video on Youtube in HD quality.

Interview Part 2 (thanks to Moejoe/typewriterhead for the conversion!)

Video on Youtube in HD quality.

11:33 PM by ChrisZA in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

OK, I spent some time on this (and several other) forums migrating from a working MobiPocket Windows Mobile solution to an iPhone solution (all FREE, no jailbreak required). I thought the following guide might be useful to others; either n00bies to ebooks, else experienced sony/kindle users trying to get into the iPhone platform. This info exists on the forum, but without good guides and 101's around, this should serve as a good kickstart for some. Don't flame me - rather add your thougths and alternatives to the thread

IMHO, the iPhone is a perfect reading device; clear screen, large fonts, night reading, and always with me! I've got it working reasonably well (better than MobiPocket on WindowsMobile I might add) on Windows Vista, but this guide will work for other desktop platforms too.

Software required:

• Stanza: The reading app on your iPhone. Get it from the appstore, it's free.
• Calibre: Stanza desktop does not manage your library, and you need to do that if you have more than a few books. Calibre is free, and works on multiple desktop platforms.

Using Calibre (it's not too intuitive I'm afraid):

• Install (get it here)
• Use "Add Books from multiple directories" to get it to load your existing eBook collection. Now, it'll handle nearly all formats that I'm aware of, and will pull them all into 1 library. PDF's, LITs and PCRs all mixed and treated the same; you'll see how well this works now...
• Set your default output to EPUB (button in top right area). This is the standard that Stanza works best with
• Clean your library up:
  • Set up free ISBNdb.com and LibraryThing.com accounts. Calibre helps with this. It's worth the minor effort; with these u get a very (the best I've seen) intelligent assistant to help you ID your book's ISBN, and from there u can get the cover art
  • For each book, press E to edit metadata, then use button "Fetch metadata from server". You will be given a list of likely matches to your book title and author. If not, you need to check the title and author in this same screen - they may have silly filename characters that need editing. You'll figure it out easily enough
  • Once you have the metadata, click "Fetch cover image from server". Select cover, and close with "OK"
  • Do for all books, and your books will be nicely completed with author, title, publisher, date, cover, and in most cases a synopsis (blurb)!
  • Consider adding tags; if you do this, they will appear as subjects in Stanza iPhone. Nice for separating fiction classes, non-fiction subjects, hobbies & interests, etc. Note that from the above metadata, stanza will automatically group authors so don't tag them.

• Now you need to covert all your books: Select the lot, make sure you have chosen 'EPUB' as the output, and click "Bulk Convert" button. Just accept the box that comes up as blank. Now, here's where calibre comes into it's own; even tho you had mixed formats, you will end up with all books having both the original format, and the desired EPUB format, BUT your library will still look like a single list. Nice! Gone are the days of storing multiple directories for different devices.

Getting your books into Stanza:

• This is surprisingly easy. Do not try to open each book in Stanza desktop and then 'share' to your iPhone. Takes time, covers get lost, and some LIT files will not open. Rather:
• Use settings in Calibre (minute hammer button in top right area) to check the 'Content Server' is started
• Make sure your iPhone and PC are on the same WiFi network
• In Stanza iPhone, choose 'Online Catalog', then the '+' button in bottom right
• Choose 'Add Stanza Catalog', and enter a name (eg My PC library) then
  http://192.168.1.2:8080/stanza
  The red text needs to be the IP of your PC on the wifi network. [add a link sometime on how to find this]
• Now download each book - 1x1 I'm afraid unless someone can suggest how to do this faster...
• That's it; a complete library, nicely organised, on an awesome reading device. Forget Kindle, forget WindowsMobile's head start.

Tips/Tricks:

1. Set stanza to have a black background and white text; you can then read at night without your spouse complaining
2. For now, I am rating my books by changing the title in Stanza; I put a score of 1-5 at the front. It's not great, but stanza does not rate books, and any ratings you do in calibre do not get carried across to stanza.
3. This one is more sophisticated, but well worth the effort:
   If you have a large library (ie over 100 books), AND you have them organised with tags so that stanza groups them under the subject button, there is a way to get that stanza grouping benefit without having to download them all 1-by-1. With Calibre2Web from itimpi, you create an online catalog of your books with awesome structuring; drill by author, subject (tag), series, title letters, and even recent additions! Why is that cool; now you actually never need to put the books on you iPhone at all! Your library becomes so accessible and organised, that you can browse online (3G, wifi, etc) and only download books 1 at a time for reading, then delete afterwards. Think it thro a bit; you feel a need to keep books downloaded and with you, but in reality you only need a few wit you at a time, AND the ability to get a few more very easily (for when you are about to go out of coverage). So, here's how:
   • First download Calibre2Web here (you may have to read thro the thread from the bottom to find the latest version)
   • The text file explains how to run it from windows (windows only I'm afraid). It's really rather easy.
   • Now, you have 2 choices, and this is where it gets tricky:
     1. If you have a web site of your own, just copy your entire library structure and the new _CATALOG directory to the server, and follow itimpi's instructions on adding an online stanza catalog to your iPhone.
     2. Otherwise you have to turn your PC into a web server on your wifi network. That requires some savvy; set up a website in IIS mapped to the calibre library directory, disable or open your firewall, find your PC's IP, then do as per itimpi's instructions to add an online stanza catalog to your iPhone. If you know this stuff it's dead easy, but if you don't, rather stick to option 1

Right now, the ONLY thing that prevents this combo from being 100% perfect is that stanza (calibre is not the culprit) does not allow one to rate books. Rating is usually the way to indicate that you've read a book, and in large libraries it becomes tricky to know what you've read and what not. IRL one uses the dog-eared state of the book to determine if you've read it or not - ebook solutions really should not ommit this functionality.

10:52 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

As some of you may already know, this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions associated with it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.

A quick backgrounder: kindlepid.py is a small Python script allowing you to derive a Mobipocket-compatible personal identifier (PID) for your Kindle reader. This PID in itself has nothing at all to do with reading any copyrighted content. It is only used to make legitimate e-book purchases at stores other than Amazon's.

We believe in the freedom of speech and we encourage you to continue expressing your views and thoughts on tools like kindlepid.py. We only ask you not to provide any how-to instructions, source codes and/or links for obtaining kindlepid.py.

We would like to remind you to apply common sense when using the private message system, and not to use it for sharing information how to obtain or use kindlepid.py. We stress that we respect your privacy and that we do not monitor private messages.

Lastly, I would like to ask you for assistance and to contact us - using the report post feature for example - should you detect content that might not follow the guideline above.

Thank you for your understanding!

Alexander

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

Gosh we've talked a lot this week. Here's your weekly round up of MobileRead's events.

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Switzerland gets the Sony Reader on April 3rd
• Brother to release 9.7" Document Viewer
• Ectaco JetBook update coming on 2 April
• Interview with Wizpac, creators of the txtr at Leipzig Book Fair
• Video of the Hanvon 5" touchscreen E-Ink reader

E-Book Software - Calibre

• calibre 0.5.0 released!

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Reminder: Kindle 2 giveaway ends tomorrow!
• Winner of the Kindle 2 giveaway!
• Amazon uses DMCA to restrict where you can buy e-books
• 10,000 e-books. Yes, you hear that right!

12:00 AM by Charbax in E-Book General | News

I did a video review of it at CeBIT 2009 that I posted here:

You can watch this video on Youtube in HD quality.

Please spread it around if you find this interesting!

It's a 5" stylus E-Ink touchscreen using Havon's alternative to wacom technology.

I think that this form factor could be pretty much perfect. The non-touchscreen version is said to be sold by Havon at $180, perhaps the touchscreen version with WiFi doesn't have to be much more expensive than that.

I think that they need to remove all the unecessary bezel around the screen, it should I think only have some buttons on the side of the device, not on the front of it. Cause I think that a 5" screen form factor is otherwise potentially perfect to put in the pocket using an appropriate thin synthetic or leather screen protector case.

Then of course, they need WiFi and HSDPA built-in for this to be usable to the level of being a Kindle alternative.

For software upgradabillity, I think that they need to load some type of Google Android on it. Then the community could build software for it to do interesting things with the stylus such as worldwide collaborative reading and annotations sharing and annotations filtering. Commentary around all texts. Posting of handwritten comments eventually with server-based handwriting recognition to blog posts. More advanced features to the stylus functions such as doing stuff to words when doing certain drawings on them, like crossing words out deletes them or makes them eventually change background color or something. Depending on which type of collaboration mode the user would be in.

Using Android I think would make it possible to have Google Reader, Google News, Google Books on this. And more. There should be a Chrome and Firefox plugins to easilly select web pages and articles from ones PC browser that should then be pushed to ones E-Reader device wirelessly for later reading.

Previously on this forum this company has been referred to with the name "Hanwang" somehow. But to me it looks pretty clear the company name now is Hanvon.

10:13 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I just received an email confirming that Ectaco is planning to release an update for the JetBook on 2 April. The update will include Epub and Mobipocket support, but will not include support for Mobipocket DRM.

Jetbook Review
buy it at Fry's

01:24 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

The Brother SV-100B reader will be available this June 1st.

This 9.7inch reader has some interesting features that have not been seen on these size devices so far.

• 9.7inch 150dpi eInk screen
• Bluetooth connectivity which can extend a PDA's display
• MicroSD card slot (Max 2GB)
• 83 Hours of continuous use battery life
• PIN code to lock and encrypt the data

Unfortunately there is no information about what markets this will be available in and what document formats it will support. The specifications state "proprietary format" and it looks to have a similar print to device driver like feature that the iRex DR1000 provides.

Please discuss in the thread started by our eagle eyed member Druidsbane:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41912

via Engadget