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

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

E-books - News

• E-books reportedly doing well in Japan
• Ellen Hage's new blog on e-books
• MobileReader Paul Biba gets mentioning in NYTimes

E-books - Elsewhere on the Net

• E-book store price comparison / BooksOnBoard a good deal

E-book Devices - iRex iLiad

• iLiad Manual Comic Strip Downloader Released
• iLiad Reflash from Compact Flash (aka Unbrick) available to all!

Miscellaneous - Lounge

• Where did you first hear about the Sony Reader or iRex Iliad?

01:06 PM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

To all users who have wanted to install 3rd party packages, but were afraid to do so for fear of bricking their iLiad's, your day has come.

Today, all users who request the SHELL hack, will be proved with the ability to reflash (aka unbrick) their iLiad's in case of a problem. If you've requested the shell hack in the past, you will need to request it again here: https://myirex.irexnet.com/user.php/developer connect to IDS. It will download a small update to enable the unbricking ability.

You can find further documentation here: http://developer.irexnet.com/reflash-from-cf

Let the open development begin!

10:19 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

The New York Times devoted a full article on where we are today with e-books, and lo and behold, MobileRead regular and Palm Addicts Associate Writer Paul Biba had the honor to make the introduction.

When Paul Biba, a lawyer in Bernardsville, N.J., finds himself stuck waiting, he likes to pull out his Nokia E61i cellphone and read one of the 20 or so books he usually stores on it.

The virtual bookshelf in his pocket currently has science fiction like "Falling Free" by Lois McMaster Bujold, all of the novels of Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, "Eminent Victorians" by Lytton Strachey and the September issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

"Once you get use to having books with you, you get use to reading in places where it never occurred to you. If I'm waiting in line at the supermarket counter, why not read one of my science fiction magazines?" he said. "Believe it or not, I'll sit down in my chair at home, pull out my phone and read a book."

continue

The article also mentions the Sony Reader, IDPF, e-book sales forecasts, various e-book vendors, and the Plucker viewer.

[via TeleRead]

05:52 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Mobilereader Ellen Hage launched her new blog, Tech From an E-booker's Viewpoint. It's fair to say, with no exaggeration, that Ellen is a true e-book devotee. She owns more e-book devices than you could count with two hands and she earned a PhD degree in Organizational Management for her dissertation on e-book self-efficacy and usage levels across age and gender. She also wrote multiple TeleRead entries as a guest blogger. In other words, her blog is a must destination for every unquenchable e-book junky looking for the latest trends and news on e-books!

Congratulations Ellen, and good luck with your blog!

11:06 PM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

Reported by Anime News Network (emphasis mine):

The Digital Content Association of Japan has announced on August 8 that the mobile phone sales of electronic books, including manga, grew 331.3% from 1.6 billion yen (about US$14 million) to 6.9 billion yen (US$58 million) in 2006. The non-phone Internet sales of electronic books grew 69.7% from 4.8 billion yen (US$41 million) to 8.1 billion yen (US$68 million). The association projects that mobile phone sales of e-books will increase to 11.7 billion yen (US$99 million) in 2007, compared to a projected 9.4 billion yen (US$79 million) for Internet sales.

(continued)

Not too bad, eh?

Related: Japan: Mobile phones driving market growth for e-books

09:27 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Sometimes we almost take it for granted that the whole world is familiar with the various e-book devices. The Sony Reader, for example, has been on the tech news, and is advertised on-line and in magazines.

With PDAs, I remember that when I was working in a marketing department, I saw a few Palm Pilots. But it was only when I saw a WSJ article and then an advertisement in a local office supply store that I really paid attention in a serious way, and decided to get one.

So how did you first hear about your reading device, which one is it, and what caused you to first think seriously about buying one?

11:35 AM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

This is very similar to the automatic version here, except that you manually initiate the download.

Due to the instability of this page with iRex's html viewer, you will need to install my latest port of FBReader

When you select the program, it will check to see if it's updated today. If it has not, it will automatically open the connection manager, and download the day's comics. When finished, it will open FBReader and display the comic page. If it has already downloaded, it will simply open FBReader with the comics.

You can unzip the program into any directory you'd like.

Edit: The attachment has been updated to allow directories with spaces

Edit 2: If you are having prolbems viewing all of the images and have unbricking support, see this post

07:15 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

While the world continues to wonder why most e-books still sell at Hardcover prices, the good folks over at Dear Author spent some time comparing the prices of various online e-book stores. Some of the interesting observations they made:

• Fictionwise Buywise doesn't make sense if you buy less than 27 e-books (@ $6.00 per book) a year.
• BooksOnBoard sells e-books at comparatively lower prices
• Simon & Schuster sells Simon & Schuster e-books at a 35 precent discount

Link: Price Comparison: Which E book Retailer Has the Best Prices

Related: Downloaded books cost how much?