05:30 PM by RWood in Miscellaneous | Announcements

From the first upload on March 27, 2007 until yesterday, MobileRead members have posted over 8,000 free, well crafted e-books in multiple formats.

The milestones (as compiled by Zelda) are:

• March 27, 2007: First upload
• September 04, 2007: 1,000 uploads
• November 02, 2007: 2,000 uploads
• January 08, 2008: 3,000 uploads
• February 19, 2008: 4,000 uploads
• May 16, 2008: 5,000 uploads
• December 10, 2008: 7,000 uploads
• January 09, 2009: 8,000 uploads

Most of the e-books are in the "big 3" e-book formats of Sony BBeB, Mobipocket PRC, and eBookwise IMP; there is a growing collection of ePub books available. There is also a light assortment of other thinly used e-book formats including:

• FB (Fiction Book)
• RB2 (Rocket Book)
• PDF (A4, Letter, and 6" e-ink screen formats)
• Psion
• IMP (for the REB 1200)
• Hiebook
• MS Lit

I have been fortunate enough to be part of the members posting e-books that also include (in no particular order):

• Patricia
• HarryT
• Madam Broshkina
• nrapallo
• vivaldirules
• Dr. Drib
• mtravellerh
• Jellby
• crutledge
• Roy White
• tsgreer
• ravenne
• ProDigit
• mjh215

There are many more and I am sorry that AI cannot recall all of the names at the moment. On behalf of the rest of the MobileRead community I say, "Thank You."

Let the celebration begin, download a new e-book today.

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

Once again, our weekly roundup of highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Overdrive will Stop Supplying Fictionwise on 30 January 2009
• New Palm OS & Phone Debut at CES
• Samsung 'Papyrus' E Ink device announced
• PDAToday's Plastic Logic e-reader hands-on

E-Book Software - OpenInkpot

• New OpenInkpot snapshot available - now with LocoPDF

E-Book Devices - Sony Portable Reader PRS-700

• Two Weeks With The PRS700

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead mobile site gets an update

10:25 AM by Moe The Cat in Archive | OpenInkpot

The new OpenInkpot snapshot (20090109) is now available. This one includes the new LocoPDF viewer, with the ability to trim white space from the margins of PDF files.

Give it a try- Flashed or Live from your SD card. The OpenInkpot developers are looking for feedback.

Documentation:

* Installation Guide
* Users' Guide

Downloads:

* http://openinkpot.org/pub/snapshots/20090109

04:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Lo and behold, today our friends over at PDAToday managed to get a Plastic Logic rep to whip out his e-reader prototype for a quick look at the CES 2009.

What an amazing product for an early prototype, it felt and operated like a product ready to ship and use. I was told early samples will trickle out in mid to late 2009 with shipping units in early 2010.

Click here for their full commentary. Some (approximate) specs:

• Windows CE powered
• Dimensions: 8.5 inch x 11 inch x 0.28 inch
• Weight: < 16 oz
• Touch screen

YouTube clips:

Thanks to Bill for the tip!

02:06 AM by imagitronics in E-Book General | News

Amidst all the commotion from Palm, this seems to have slipped through the cracks:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/01...-e-ink-device/

I go the chance to play around with the Samsung Papyrus in the Samsung booth. While the Samsung representatives had absolutely no information about the Papyrus, I was able to find the information management, active digitizer notetaking, and, of course, book reading to be very functional.

Details are sparse. It doesn't look as though the device brings anything new to the table that we don't already have from iRex/Sony/Amazon - but I thought it was interesting just the same.

Tim

10:40 PM by RWood in E-Book General | News

After years of being behind the power curve, false starts, and major market share losses, Palm has introduced yet another new operating system for cell phones and related devices. Called webOS, the new OS described as task oriented rather than application oriented as other current competing cell phone operating systems are. Concurrent with the new OS Palm is also introducing a new cell phone called the Palm pré available in the first half of 2009.

The heart of the new OS is the simplified developer interface that requires only CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to develop applications. In short, there are no new programming languages to learn and almost all of the hardware is directly accessible through JavaScript.

The announced Palm pré has all the features expected of any modern Smartphone and will transition between communication sources such as Sprint EVDO and 802.11 b/g to ensure the best possible signal reception. The nearby picture of the new phone shows a very readable area for books. My first MobileRead eBook experience was PalmDoc on an old Palm OS equipped Samsung cell phone. This looks like the first real advancement since then.

Unlike some other prior Palm announcements that depressed the stock price, share prices rose 35% after the latest announcement. If the early enthusiasm is well founded then Palm is back and a viable alternative to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry.

Additional information is available from ars technical and Yahoo Financial. A Palm video of the pré is available here. More information at the Palm website.

03:05 PM by Snowman in E-Book General | News

This "heads-up" warning came through on the Fictionwise Group this morning:

"With effect from 30 Jan 2009, Overdrive is ceasing to serve files to Fictionwise customers."

There is an faq at http://www.fictionwise.com/help/Over...cement-FAQ.htm

DRM strikes again!

Snowman

02:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hey everyone -

We've rolled out an improved version of our mobile website. In addition to some enhancements to the interface, the update adds a few new features you can now use on the go.

Additions include the possibility to customize various settings (you need to be logged-in to do that), as well as the automatic redirection from our non-mobile site if you are browsing from a mobile device, the ability to subscribe to individual threads, to e-mail thread links to a friend, and to search within a thread.

Settings that can be customized currently include:

• hide/show smilies
• hide/show quotes
• resize/hide frontpage news images
• convert images in posts to links
• enable/disable the redirection of external links to a mobile transcoder
• increase/decrease the number of threads/posts displayed on a page

Not included yet is an iPhone-specific version (which we'd like to add at some point in the future though).

I hope that with these changes, it will be even easier to access your favorite e-book community with your mobile. As usual please don't be shy to post your feedback and suggestions for improvement here.

Alex