03:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Adobe on Tuesday issued a new version of Reader and Acrobat to fix what they called a "critical" security vulnerability in the programs that hackers could use take control of affected systems.

Adobe recommends that you either use their automatic update feature to install version 8.1.1 or manually download and install the update.

Disclosure of the security exploit and official description: link and link

11:01 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Google officially released the alpha version of their open source OCR software yesterday. ArsTechnica has more of the technical details and a hands on review.

"Google's involvement in the project is motivated by the company's interest in digitizing printed documents. Open-source OCR technology could be valuable in many other contexts as well. Government agencies that want to digitize paper records, for instance, could one day benefit from OCRopus. Although OCRopus is weak in many areas, it has some real potential."

In terms of current quality, "OCRopus was able to provide readable output in about half of our tests." You can see more details in the ArsTechnica article, but it sounds like they have some work to do. Not sure if the beta expected in 2008Q1 addresses accuracy or not, but this is probably just the beginning.

Some if the tech tidbits shared:
* Built on HP's open-source Tesseract OCR engine
* Released under Apache License 2.0
* OpenFST library is used for language modeling
* Designed to be modular - to allow future support for non-Latin languages
* Developed in Lua

06:03 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The good folks over at EcoGeek gave the latest Sony Reader a spin. They like best: itsimproved screen. They can live with: the additional memory. They don't like: the high price.

Read the full review here.

Thanks to Yvan for the news!

06:33 PM by aapezzuto in Miscellaneous | Feedback

Ive been working with some of the staff to try and restructure the MobileRead Wiki to make it more usable. One of the things that I need to know to make a good set of recommendations is what people use MobileRead for. I'm looking for all reasonable use cases for a person who has interacted with this site for less than 30 days. It is understood that people will create new content, and find tools that can meet their needs (or even alter tools to meet their unmet needs) given enough time, but that expands "reasonable" to much... and I just don't want "Time Travel" to be a reasonable use case!

What I have come up with so far:

• I'm into books and reading
  • I'm into electronic books
    • I'm looking for resources to download books
    • I'm looking for ebook software
    • I want to learn about ebook related stuff
    • I want information to help make a buying descision (reader or software)
    • I want information to make a format descition(software, purchase, archival)

• I want to talk to other people
• I want to share something
• I want to help out
• I want to know what mobile read is
  • I dont know, I followed a link here

Missing anything?

10:40 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Kevin Tofel at JkOnTheRun is reporting that eReader Pro for Windows Mobile is not only updated, but now is free, and even comes with a few free e-books ("Jungles of Tarzan", "Swiss Family Robinson" and "A Tale of Two Cities").

Also of interest, Kevin notes that it "... looks like you can browse the store, get basic book info, purchase and then download your content right over the air". As always, you need a data plan and you may be charged for air time and data transmissions by your wireless carrier, but it's interesting to see eReader doing an update like this. If you have a PalmOS smart phone, not to worry. You can still purchase e-books over the air the old fashioned way, by browsing at the eReader web site and downloading the book after you buy it.

01:03 PM by Wizard-mag in E-Book General | News

While once again dreaming about A4 flexible e-ink display promised by the Plastic Logic to be delivered in 2008, I have noticed that on 3 September they put out two new press releases concerning their future manufacturing operation in Dresden:
Plastic Logic Appoints Director of Quality
Plastic Logic Appoints Vice President, Manufacturing for Dresden Operations

While most of the releases is about the new appointees, whose appointments themselves might be significant signs of progress in preparations for the beginning of manufacturing, the first also says, "Following the topping-out ceremony last month, Plastic Logic is well on schedule to begin with production in the middle of next year." And furthermore, according to the second, "the construction of the production facilities is well on the way to completion in December of this year."

This looks like they are well on track and gives us a more precise information when to expect their products to be rolled out. I think it might reinforce hopes of all those dreaming of an A4 e-ink device, even though I know I am on the more optimistic end of the spectrum.

11:44 AM by Bob Russell in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

The Bookeen blog has posted a picture of what the packaging will look like for their third generation reading device, the Cybook Gen3. I know the box shouldn't matter all that much, but somehow just seeing a decent box can get you all excited about a product. (Click through to the full article page, and then click on the thumbnail to see the full sized picture.)

Watch MobileRead or the Bookeen blog for upcoming news. Or subscribe directly to the Bookeen newsletter here.

First spotted by MobileRead member tompe.

09:34 PM by adinb in E-Book General | News

Looking through Newlaunches.com I just noticed some pictures of Bridgestone's new A3 4096-color e-paper display. Only 80 DPI though.

Bridgestone Japan has developed an A3 sized color electronic paper it was showcased at the FPD International 2007 exhibition held at Yokohama. The A3 sized electronic paper has a display area of 435 x 326mm and can display 4096 colors at 80dpi resolution. The display makes use of QR - LPD (Quick-Response Liquid Powder Display) which the company has been developed over the years. The charged particles repel each other delivering a response time of just 0.2 mini seconds. Apart from being the biggest the electronic paper is also the thinnest in the world at just 0.29-millimeters.

More pictures at the original article here.