01:14 PM by sic in E-Book General | News

Peter Sorotokin, the lead architect of Adobe Digital Editions, started a blog with technical articles about the product.

http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleditions/

This is good news as digital Editions does not have proper documentation, especially regarding the XSL-FO page layouts - an area where Adobe extended the ePub e-book standard.

12:19 PM by jharker in E-Book General | News

Just ran into this article over at New Scientist. Some researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a new material that's a kind of flexible crystal. This material is perfect for color e-paper because it reflects ambient light and requires no backlighting.

The really new aspect of this material, though, is that it can change color to become any color in the world: all the way from infra-red to ultra-violet and all colors of the spectrum. It selectively reflects the colors in ambient light. This paves the way for true full-color displays that have never been seen before, anywhere. All existing display technology has a limited color gamut, and is incapable of producing all colors that the human eye can see. With these new crystals, e-paper may also become the first display technology to truly reproduce pictures of the world as we see it!

The article quotes the researchers as saying the technology could be on the market in only two years, but I imagine it'll take longer than that. Still, very exciting!

The New Scientist article is here.
The researchers' new start-up company, called Opalux, has a web page here.

04:03 PM by RWood in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

As jasonkchapman has noted in this thread, Fictionwise has started to offer their multiformat ebooks in Sony LRF format (that's the one without DRM). They say that they are about one-half of the way through converting their 16,000 multiformat titles. They still offer many more titles in a variety of secure formats but not for the Sony Reader.

What is most interesting is that they are using kovidgoyal's libprs500 for the conversion. This is the first known commercial application for the libprs500 package.

Fictionwise is the third commercial publisher to offer non-DRM ebooks for the Sony Reader. Steve Jordan Books started offering Sony format several months ago in addition to their other supported formats and Babblebooks has added the Sony Reader format to their extensive audio book offerings. Both of these publishers employed BookDesigner to create their LRF files. The Sony Connect store is still the only known source of DRM protected ebooks for the Sony Reader.

This is a major step forward for both Fictionwise and the Sony Reader community.

11:28 AM by NatCh in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hey, gang,

The editors have been discussing the current MR Logo, and wanted to get an idea what folks thought about it. Amongst ourselves, about all we've decided is that it looks like a thumb (rather reminds me of the recent Hitchhiker's Guide movie, actually).

Here it is:

08:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

I am a great fan of Google Earth, and no, it's not because you can play the creepy stalker guy without getting hurt. This week the Google Earth blog revealed a new feature allowing you to place a "Google Book Search" layer in Earth to reveal text snippets of public domain books that reference a particular location.

For example, let's say that you're interested in Detroit, Michigan. After flying there in Google Earth, you'll find that one of the book icons is for "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson." Clicking on the book icon brings up the pop-up balloon with the following text snippet:

"With respect to the unfor-tunate loss of Detroit and our army, I with pleasure see the animation it has inspired through our whole country, ..."

[via O'Reilly Radar]

06:22 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

As many are scratching their heads about what's going on over at Mobipocket, one thing's for sure: Their engineers ought to sleep a lot less soundly these days. Since Wednesday, August 15, Mobipocket has reportly experienced a major technical problem with their DRM server - causing it to be turned offline. Third-party e-book retailers like Fictionwise selling protected e-books in Mobipocket format have temporarily switched to an alternative DRM provider, OverDrive's Content Reserve.

Check out our current discussion for the latest status.

(image courtesy of defectivebydesign.org)

04:17 PM by Adam B. in iRex | iRex Developer's Corner

It looks like iRex didn't cripple Minimo too much on the iLiad. After hacking a few configuration files, look what I can do.

Hopefully I can set it up so it's usable without having to launch it from the terminal.

This thread has been closed and a beta has been released.

You can find the new thread here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15448

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

In case you've missed any MobileRead news from this week, here is our usual roundup:

E-books - News

• HarperCollins offers digital book content for iPhone
• Video of full color E Ink display in action

E-books - Elsewhere on the Net

• Producing ePub documents from Adobe InDesign

E-book Devices - iRex iLiad

• Feedbooks.com iLiad Downloader
• PDA Functions for your iLiad. Calendar, Contacts, Todo List
• Linux 2.6 Kernel Port for the Iliad

E-book Devices - Sony Portable Reader

• Sony Reader customization hacks collection
• SciFi Tech blogger gives Sony Reader a B

E-book Devices - HanLin eBook

• HanLin eReader V3 next-gen E Ink device emerges