04:28 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Thanks to raevyn1 for reporting to us that computer security experts Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte are both proud new owners of the Sony Reader, which they discuss in their latest podcasts.

Links: Episode 85 (transcript), Episode 86 (transcript)

Some interesting topics were raised, including how the Reader helps visually impaired people, how it solves the problem of carrying heavy books during trips, the annoyance of DRM, how battery life plays an important part, and how E Ink is still new technology waiting to be explored.

Highly recommended listen even if you already know your Reader inside-out.

07:27 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Formats | PDF

At GiveAwayOfTheDay, there is a one-day only offer for free software every day. It's just as addictive for many people as Woot!, which offers a new tech deal every day.

Today's free software package, is PDF to HTML Converter Pro, normally about $50, and on the surface it seems to be pretty useful. But I am not familiar with it, so we won't really know until someone tries it and shares the results with us.

The catch is that you have to download it and activate your copy today. It's only good on the computers you activate it on. The idea of giving away software on the site is that you will learn to love it, and buy upgrades or new copies in the future.

Update: Tues 4/10/07 - More free PDF conversion software, same site. This time it's for conversion of PDFs to image files. One day only, and probably Windows only. Thanks to Ante (aka "orcinus") for the tip!

07:01 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-book Devices, Future E-Book Devices
Beware of the Apple iReader, fool!
Bend It like Paper with Plastic Logic's e-reader prototype

E-book Devices, iRex iLiad
Distributer Named for the iRex iLiad -- in France

E-book Devices, Sony Portable Reader
BusinessWeek gives Sony Reader a 3.5/5 in second round
Sony Reader official developer site launched - PRSLabs.com

E-books, Content
PDFRead v5 available on Sourceforge

E-books, Elsewhere on the Net
Manybooks Mobile

E-books, News
It's April *2nd*, and rumors flying that iTunes and EMI are about to dump DRM
E-books one of the biggest technology flops?
E Ink says it may launch color e-paper next year
Microsoft follows Apple's lead on non-DRM offerings
DRM, or not DRM: that is the question (poll)

Miscellaneous, Lounge
Free broadband Internet from Google
Your vast electronic library... is it safe?

10:09 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Indeed, a very interesting question asked by Robert Nagle over at TeleRead: If you had the chance to decide among two similar e-reader devices, of which only one supports DRM content, which device would you pick? Any reason to pick the device that does not support DRM?

Make sure to also check out the readers' comments @ TeleRead... some good answers there!

09:55 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

A reporter of the Times just got a sneak peek at the prototype of a still unnamed, bendable e-reader from Cambridge spin-out Plastic Logic, sounding quite thrilled:

One of the trial designs seen by The Times comprises a screen backed by soft, white leather, which is folded over and buttoned in the manner of a wallet. The fact that it looks more like something one might buy in Gucci than in Maplin will no doubt add to its appeal.

There are some hints in the article of what we may expect from Plastic Logic's first e-readers:

• "dimensions of a magazine", three available sizes ("A4, handbag and pocket")
• "black and white" initially (2 colors)
• matt display
• no backlit
• "upload content from a source"
• in talks with "a number of leading newspapers"
• "display the text in a publicly available format"
• color and video maybe in later models
• price of first model: £100 ~ $200

Rumor also has it that the reader is due on the US market for the 2008 holiday season.

09:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Formats | PDF

Sometimes, simplicity wins the day. PDFRead is an OS-independent application to convert PDF and DJVU documents into various e-book formats with just a few mouse clicks. It is similar to the popular PDFrasterFarian tool in that it uses several image processing filters to generate highly optimized content for e-book readers.

PDFRead was written by the truly gifted Ashish Kulkarni along with the help from various other MobileRead members including Falstaff, alex_d, and sammykrupa. For an ongoing discussion on PDFRead check out this thread.

07:43 PM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

So you collect e-books, do you? And maybe you have a big collection of music, video, pictures and audio books also. How confident are you that your precious collection is safe?

It's the sort of topic we don't like to think about and so we tend to stick our head in the sand and hope for the best. So let me shake up your world a little bit. Believe it or not, there are a lot of ways you can easily lose that content. Here are a few to be aware of...

* Hardware failure - This is the most obvious danger. Your disk drive crashes and poof, you lost your precious files. And disk drives do fail. You had better make sure your important data is also stored somewhere else. Even the recent stuff, if it's important.

But if all else fails, and you can't afford a data recovery service, try the little known trick of putting the hard drive in your freezer for a bit to aid in the rescue. A quick web search should give you the details.

* User failure - This one is also a danger, but people tend to lose sight of how easily you could lose your data due to your own stupidity. We all do stupid things when we are in a hurry or distracted! Suppose you decide to make a clean backup, for example, and wipe out the backup copy to make room for the new backup. Murphy's Law says that it's probably time for the original data drive to fail! Or what if you push your changes the wrong direction and now both of your drives look like an old and incomplete backup copy? Have you tested your backup process to make sure it works? You know what they say - an untested backup isn't a backup at all.

* Media failure - I'm safe, you say, because I've backed everything up on optical media, like homemade DVDs or CDs. Not so fast! It turns out that the optical media you used is not so permanent. In fact, if you marked it with a permanent marker, it could already be degrading. I've found out first hand that my optical copies of files are in jeopardy, but was lucky enough to discover it in time to buy a new drive that was better at reading the fading media. Bottom line, don't assume home made DVDs and CDs are long lasting.

I'm not sure how long SD cards and boxed up hard drives last, but depending on the temperature conditions, it might not be as long as we would hope.

* Site loss - That's only something that IT shops in big corporations worry about, you say. But, suppose you have your backups on hard drives, and they are plugged in with your main computer. Now suppose there is a lightening strike or a fire or a flood. Not only did you lose your primary files, but you lost your backup files. Ouch!

Depending on how much data you have, there might be a pretty reasonable Internet backup service out there that can protect you, but if you a really dedicated collector with multiple terabytes, it probably isn't a great alternative. Fortunately, that's not really an issue for most e-book collectors because the files are so much smaller than audio or video.

* Technology Shift - Are you sure that you will still be able to use your backup files in the future? If you stored it on tape, you need a compatible tape drive and driver/library software. If you have it in unusual formats, such as a compressed disk image using your favorite backup software, will you still be able to use it in 20yrs? What about when Vista replacement comes down the road forcing a complete and incompatible rewrite of software you have been depending on, and none of the file handling software exists anymore?

Or maybe you have your content in the next latest greatest format. But it flops and in 10 years no software can use it or convert it. Do you really want to convert your whole library, and have to find an ancient system on eBay to use for the job? It's a good idea to stick with standard and generic formats wherever possible.

* Business Shift - Are you depending on your online e-bookstore to be your backup source of purchased e-books? This is probably a pretty good backup, except when your book seller goes out of business, or their whole business direction changes and it's not worth their while to keep your library for you anymore.

I'm sure our readers could provide stories along these lines, or even entirely novel ways of losing important files. So I'm curious what people are doing for small and large libraries of content or other important documents like insurance papers, financial records or medical documents. It's tempting to put many of those things in electronic form if you have a scanner, but you have to think about how safe you feel about it being as permanent as a box or file cabinet with paper.

The good news is that these dangers don't usually hit. The bad news is that they do happen.

So is anyone out there feeling completely comfortable with the safety of their important data? How far do you go to protect it? Or are you feeling vulnerable because you haven't worked out exactly how to do your backups? What's acceptable risk? Maybe you even wish you hadn't spent so much time collecting those files, after you realized all the care taking and protection they require?

Let us know in this survey how you feel about the safety of your content!

05:37 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Microsoft changes tune, now wants to sell DRM free songs

via Tech.Blorge.com

On the heels of the Apple/EMI DRM dump, Microsoft has announced that it's also working on offering non-DRM music -- with a slight Microsoft spin on the matter:

Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team said, Microsoft has been talking with not only EMI but other record labels “for some time now” about offering unprotected music on its Zune players in an effort to meet the needs of its customers.

Ms. Asher further commented,

Consumers have made it clear that unprotected music is something they want.

No, really? Do you think?

Also, reportedly EMI is talking with other providers about removing DRM from their content in channels other than iTunes, though they wouldn't confirm that they were talking with Microsoft specifically (which, of course, Microsoft already has), but that suggests that there may be yet other outlets getting into the game now.

All in all, this particular wall of DRM sandbags seems to be crumbling nicely.

Full article