09:31 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Katherine Mansfield said, "The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books." A flurry of recent price breaks for the Sony Reader (apparently both intended and unintended) has me wondering how many of us are actually reading together with a friend or family member. Outside of book clubs or school assignments, does anyone actually do that anymore?

This topic naturally brings the Sony Reader to mind because of the way the Connect store is set up - you can read Connect store books with any of the Sony Readers set up on that same account. Even before the device was released, Sony had envisioned families reading together. Yet, I only know personally of one couple who does that. (They are MobileRead members, of course, and they read Baen science fiction. We discussed the Sony Reader over lunch last year, and they have since bought a pair of the e-ink devices.)

In this fast paced world full of so many entertainment choices, I wonder if the nostalgic idea of reading books together has just faded into a historical curiosity. I hope not.

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

• Fujitsu Super Frontech Vision EP takes e-paper to new dimensions
• Legacy formats are ticking time bomb for lost data
• *Transparent* E-Paper at Purdue University

E-books - Elsewhere on the Net

• 5% storewide discount at Fictionwise this weekend

E-books - Content

• How to create your own e-books for Digital Edition

E-book Devices - Sony Portable Reader

• New offer from Sony Credit card on Sony Readers!

Mobile Devices - Others

• Raon Digital Everun UMPC is a great e-book reader

Miscellaneous - Lounge

• eBook Readers - similarity with other hobbies

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Dedicated Cybook forum Opened at MobileRead!

11:36 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Making a splash with his very first post, one of our newest MobileReader, Zach, brings us news of a really great offer on the Reader from the Sony Credit Card division: Get a Sony Credit Card, and you can buy a reader for $50, plus you still get the current Connect Store credits. Details here.

Everybody be sure to thank Zach for the tip!

01:13 AM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Nanotechnology yields nanotransistors and nanowires, and e-paper you can see through!

The folks over at Purdue University have decided not to let the uber-geeks from MIT have all the e-print fun. They've created an entirely transparent e-paper.

(Please note that the image here isn't the stuff -- the uber-geeks at Purdue haven't provided any actual images, so I had to make due)

The first image that flashes to my mind is this stuff, over a white background, with a back-light behind that, or maybe in between.

The first things that popped into their minds, evidently, included: "e-paper and flexible color screens for consumer electronics to 'smart cards' and 'heads-up' displays in auto windshields."

Most of the linked write up is recapitulation of the advantages of e-papers vis a vis conventional display techs, plus discussion of how previous approaches failed to yield fully transparent results. And a fair amount of disjointed exuberance over what they've done -- arguably well earned exuberance.

You can get the gist of what they've accomplished from the study's Abstract:

ABSTRACT

Fabrication of Fully Transparent Nanowire Transistors for Transparent and Flexible Electronics

SANGHYUN JU1, ANTONIO FACCHETTI 3, YI XUAN1, JUN LIU3, FUMIAKI ISHIKAWA2, PEIDE YE1, CHONGWU ZHOU2, TOBIN J. MARKS 3*AND DAVID B. JANES 1*
1School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University; 2Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California; 3Department of Chemistry and the Materials Research Center, and the Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing, Northwestern University

In this study, the authors have demonstrated fully-transparent thin-film transistors (TFTs) on both glass and flexible plastic substrates. The TFTs utilize wide-bandgap semiconductor nanowires as the active channels, and transparent conducting oxides for the gate, source and drain electrodes. The transistors exhibit good performance characteristics, including relatively high on currents (up to 10 microamps per nanowire) and high on/off current ratios (required for digital applications in order to achieve low power operation).

For those who want as much detail as they can get, here's the full article.

A special thanks to "The Watcher" over at the Baen Bar for pointing this out!

05:17 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Pst, you didn't hear it from me, but TigerDirect.com has the Sony Reader PRS-500 in stock for the unbelievable price of USD $99.99, and no strings attached! There is no indication how many are left, so better hurry before they are all gone.

Thanks to valkyriesound for the tip!

Link to the deal and discussion: here

09:32 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

According to a BBC News story, "The growing problem of accessing old digital file formats is a 'ticking time bomb', the chief executive of the UK National Archives has warned." It is probably fortunate that librarians and archivists are on the early edge of dealing with such problems. Firstly, because they tend to be more equipped and more determined to find solutions. And, secondly, because they carry much more weight with the public.

E-book readers are well aware that there is not only a format longevity issue, but that it is greatly compounded by the addition of DRM, in conjunction with the rapid changes in computing technologies and platforms.

Amazingly, Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age". He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole." So there is now another war for the preservation of documents in open formats. Microsoft "has developed a new document file format, called Open XML, which is used to save files from programs such Word, Excel and Powerpoint." On the other side of the spectrum is the "Open Document Format".

Throw those together with all the reflowable e-book standards and you have a real alphabet soup of formats. Will we ever see sanity in the e-book and document worlds? Good question!

09:53 AM by HarryT in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The random thought occurs to me that the eBook reading community is much like that of any other technical hobby. There are those who buy devices that are on the market now in order to actually use them, and there are those who are more interested in the technology of the devices than their actual use, and for whom the "next generation" device will always be more interesting than what's available now.

Thinking about it, every "technical" hobby I've ever been involved with - fishing and astronomy to name but two - has been much the same. They are those who buy the equipment to use it, and those for whom the equipment itself is the "be all and end all", and who never actually seem to get around to using it despite sometimes spending vast amounts of money on "gear" which lies lies around unused .

I'm not sure that this means anything, but it struck me as being vaguely interesting.

I very definitely fall into the category of those who enjoy the actual reading. I'll buy a new device if it makes reading a more enjoyable experience, but I'd rather be reading on something than waiting 6 months for that elusive "next generation" device which somehow always seems to be just beyond our grasp .

I wonder how many people would admit to being in the "more interested in the equipment than in using it" camp?

05:37 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

The earliest hands on reports for the Digital Everun UMPC are showing up, and according to Chippy at umpcportal.com, it makes a great e-book reader.

"I downloaded MobiPocket reader just too see if it was any good in portrait mode. It was good! I think this is going to make a very nice e-book reader indeed. The text was legible, even when zoomed out you could easily read the test. With the keyboard you can flick through and the mouse makes it very easy to access the menus too.

I've never been a fan of e-books. Just like I enjoy having a CD case with cover art, I also like to have the paper book rather than a few hundred thousand bits on a disk. This might change my mind though. With the long battery life, light weight, good screen and the (rather large) bonus of having a full PC in your hand, it makes better sense to me than a dedicated device."

UMPCs are going to experience a lot of growth as they get more powerful and less expensive. That will most certainly drive a lot of interest in e-books. Before long, there will be some amazing device choices for e-book fans.