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

My goodness, is it Sunday again? Well, for those of you who've missed the highs and lows of MobileRead over the past seven days, this is your one-way ticket to catch up:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Move Over eFlyBook, "Reader Plates" Have Been Cleared For Landing

E-Book Devices - Sony Portable Reader PRS-500/505

• Improved Sony Book Store Opens Friday 11/14/08!
• New Sony eBook Store Launched

12:21 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

It's a few hours ahead of their 9AM PST launch schedule, but I noticed that the new eBook Store is already live, both on the web and via Sony's eBook Library software.

It's too quick for anything much more than shallow first impressions, of course, but here are the ones I've got so far.

On the web site the new layout seems much snappier and easier to deal with -- most notably, the sliders within sliders appear to have met the quiet end they so thoroughly deserved (think "not with a bang" here). I can't say for certain that they're totally gone, but they didn't rear their ugly heads in a few minutes of clicking around. There's still no way to buy via a browser, but that's not something we were expecting, really, just hoped.

Now turning to the look via Sony's eBook Library software. The look there is ... pretty much identical to the browser look. The drawback to that is that the Library navigator pane shows up on the left, which shoves the Book Store part off my standard ratio screen, requiring a scroll bar to see the whole thing. I imagine that it'd be fine on one of the newer, wide-format screens however -- I'll have to wait 'till I'm on the other computer to check that.

Display of lists of books is pretty similar (minus the scroll within scroll approach) and I noticed that when clicking on an author's name to see all of their books, it displays it in the same way as a regular list of books, rather than on the former "about the author" page arrangement. I count that as an improvement, because it shows more books per page and more information about them the new way, however, I would still like to have access to the "About the Author" info, it was a nice plus over what you find in a "regular" bookstore.

I haven't bought a book in the new system yet, but I did look at my list of things I've bought before. Lo and behold! I saw beside each of my previously purchased books a lovely checkbox, and down at the bottom, a "Download All Checked Items" button. This is a massive improvement! Not earth-shattering of course, but it's nice to see the idea catch on.

Navigation is still a bit underwhelming in some respects, for example, getting to your purchased books requires going through the "My Account" page, but overall ease of movement around the actual pages has massively improved, so I'm going to put that down in the plus column.

Well, that's what I see on a first pass, but I know there are many other differences and improvements. What changes do you see, and what do you think of them?

12:09 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

This is a bit old, and it's somewhat off topic as far as e-Reading goes, but we have a few pilots among us, so I think it will be of some interest.

Some may recall from the early days of the iRex iLiad that the eFlyBook was the first B2B application of that device. iRex originally had such applications in mind when it developed the iLiad: to sell the devices to other companies who would then load their own applications on them and resell them to end customers. They now seem to be seeing some moderate movement in the area of newspapers.

eFlyBook was conceived as a documentation management aid to pilots, and came (still does) loaded with "all of the U.S. digitized terminal procedures, IFR high and low altitude enroute charts, U.S. airport facility directory, [and] the FAR/AIM" (from the eFlyBook main page), all of which updates for a subscription fee.

Now another company, called Reader Plates, has released something similar for the Sony PRS line of Readers. It's less comprehensive, containing only the Terminal Approach information, but it seems to be the same deal where the content is updated by subscription. To read their descriptions, it is, naturally, the bee's knees when it comes to small craft navigation.

For those like me who might wonder how you'd get around what must be a rather large set of documents (13,000 of them, as it happens), they say they have the procedures "organized in a hierarchial [sic] menu by state, city, airport, then procedure type."

There is a more in depth review located here, for those who would like the reactions of actual pilots to the system, and more details of the product itself on their company page.

10:12 AM by MarciaCat in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Looks like the new, improved Sony eBook Store will be opening Friday at 9:00 a.m.! I got the following announcement in my email today:

Dear Fellow Reader,

We are excited to announce a new version of our store launching later this week.

Our enhancements will include larger cover images, more book information, expanded categories, and improved search to make your online shopping experience more enjoyable.

As a result, the eBook Store from Sony will be unavailable from 9:00pm PST on Thursday, November 13 through 9:00am PST on Friday, November 14 (12am-12pm EST). Please make sure to complete all pending purchases before 9:00pm PST on Nov. 13 (12am EST).

The new store will be opening 9:00am PST on Nov. 14 (12pm EST). We look forward to your feedback.

Thank you,

The eBook Store Team

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

Previously at MobileRead:

Portable Devices - Other Devices

• Mobipocket support OTA purchases on Blackberry

E-Book Devices - iRex Digital Reader

• GTKSudoku Application Release

05:14 PM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

I've ported a Sudoku application for the DR1000.

This is definitely a cool application if you do Sudoku. You can generate new puzzles, or use some that have already been created. It has buttons to check if you have any errors, and also to solve the puzzle for you.

I can create regular 9x9 puzzles, and also the crazy large 16x16. It does take a little while to generate the 16x16 board and puzzle, so have patience the first time you select that.

To install: Unzip Sudoku.zip to the root of your SD card. For example, if your SD card shows up as the E:\ drive on your computer, you should have an E:\Programs folder after you unzip it.

After installing, you'll be able to select the Sudoku icon from the Documents/Programs folder on your device. From there you can press new for a new puzzle, or open to open an existing.

Note: the keyboard is off in the screenshot because it's running in the emulator. On the DR, the full keyboard is visible.

I did modify the sources a bit from the original program, so I've attached those as well.

11:12 PM by DaleDe in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

A new feature for Blackberry users is Over the Air purchase of Mobipocket eBooks directly from the device. See:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/Downloa...ice=Blackberry

Forget your desktop computer: the Mobipocket Reader now gives you Over The Air (OTA) access to the entire eBook catalogue from your Blackberry. At any time, and you can be anywhere, you will find your favorite stories among more than 65.000 premium titles ! Download and try free samples, read other reader's reviews, buy and download instantly the titles you like... all from your Blackberry.

Move over Kindle and iPhones, Blackberry has joined the group.

Dale

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

My goodness, is it Sunday again? Well, for those of you who've missed the highs and lows of MobileRead over the past seven days, this is your one-way ticket to catch up:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Authors Guild and Google reach settlement: Millions of scanned books to be available.
• Ectaco JetBook to support ePub AND Mobipocket in 2009 !

E-Book Devices - iRex Digital Reader

• FBReader Release for the DR1000S