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

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

E-books, Book Recommendations
Decisions, decisions: Buy paper book or e-book?

E-books, News
Plastic Logic raises $100 million to enable the first “take anywhere, read anywhere”

E-books, Reading Software
Unpatched Adobe Reader users in jeopardy

Miscellaneous, Announcements
Best wishes to you all for 2007

05:51 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Stefano Di Paola and Giorgio Fedon uncovered a serious cross-site scripting vulnerability that affects unpatched versions of the Adobe Reader plug-in which is used to view PDF files from within Web browsers. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to run malicious Javascript code on compromised systems. Security researchers advise us to update Adobe to at least V7.0.9 or V8.0.

Alternatively, you can disable the Adobe Reader browser plug-in (in Firefox within the Settings / Content / Filetypes menu). Or alternatively, use Foxit Reader instead.

Original paper discussing the vulnerability: link (PDF!)
Technical explanation of the vulnerability: link

[via CNet]

04:44 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Reading Recommendations

I am a fan of e-books. No question, no doubt. For me, they are more convenient, easier on my eyes and more fun.

But paper has some important advantages that haven't gone away:

*) No DRM - Not tied to one type of Reader hardware or software technology
*) No DRM - Can still read the paper book in 30 years if I decide to keep it
*) No DRM - Can pass the book on to someone else when I'm done
*) Wide selection of titles available for sale
*) Better pricing... sometimes

Some people have emotional ties to paper and like the tactile feel and all that, but for me that's actually the electronic advantage. I love the feel and emotion of reading an e-book. I guess I'm just a gadget lover at heart.

If it seems like this topic never seems to go away, you're right. It's because we are constantly faced with the same kind of decision if we like e-books. In the case of Sony Connect, there are a lot of great books there at very reasonable prices. It is easy to purchase the e-books, and I love to read them on the Sony Reader.

But now I want to buy: Failure Is Not an Option, by Gene Kranz. It happens to be about the Apollo program by one of the guys that was right in the thick of the project. It's one of the pricing anomolies at Sony Connect, so I can either buy the paperback at Amazon for $10.20, or pay $13.59 for the Sony Reader version, with no guarantees that I'll have any way to read it after I switch to the next latest greatest e-book reader technology. (Because of the DRM, primarily, but also the BBeB format that is not widespread.)

What to do? I'm leaning toward the cheaper and more permanent paperback because I don't like feeling like I'm throwing away money. It's also a book that I might end up wanting to keep around long term. If it was a novel that I only plan to read or look at once, I'd probably buy the more expensive e-book version and just feel cheated out of a few dollars by the price.

Normally I wouldn't share such a common decision, but I have a feeling that it's one that we all make over and over again. It's not just about this one book, and this one buyer. It's really a big picture question. We just don't talk about it much at the individual purchase level. We tend to talk about "big and important" topics instead of the simple decision we all face. I'm curious what other people would suggest that I do and would like to know how other people make their decision.

So tell me what you recommend! Should I buy paper or e-book? And if the price was a bit under the paper book price, like many of the Connect e-books? What then?

Note: Please, please, please don't turn this into another DRM ranting discussion. Yes DRM is relevant, but let's not focus on DRM arguments. Let's keep it about how you would decide which version to buy!

12:34 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Plastic Logic raises $100 million to enable the first “take anywhere, read anywhere” electronic reader products

New volume manufacturing facility to ramp-up in 2008

Cambridge, UK – 3rd January 2007 – Plastic Logic announced today that it will build the first factory to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale. The facility will produce flexible active-matrix display modules for ‘take anywhere, read anywhere’ electronic reader products. It will utilize Plastic Logic’s unique process to fabricate active-matrix displays that are thin, light and robust; enabling a reading experience closer to paper than any other technology.
Read more >>

(includes "high resolution" images and videos!)

Hat tip to Francis at the Baen Bar

12:26 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Dear fellow MobileReaders,

May I wish all of you a joyous and peaceful New Year. It's been an extreme privilege running this community, and I am thankful for all your great support and the fun we've had together during 2006.

Thank you again and all the best!

PS: My personal New Year's Resolution: Stop procrastinating - My New Year's Eve plans: A wonderful dinner with my family at an Italian restaurant.

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

Welcome to another digest entry of MobileRead, where we transform the profound into the bite-sized.

E-books, News
Simple guide to choosing a Creative Commons license for your work
IDPF requests technical comment from MobileReaders

Miscellaneous, Announcements
MobileRead wins two PA Reader Awards for 2006!
Apologies for the outage

01:03 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Duh, we just had our first real outage. It's somehow related to Murphy's Law I think, because it was only the last two days when I was unable to access the Internet for other reasons.

I wish I could say who was to blame for the outage, like a squirrel which somehow squeezed its way into our server, but the truth is: I don't know. A note popped up in my e-mail saying that our Apache server went down on December 28, 2006 05:22:23 PST. A simple restart did the trick - alas with a day delay thanks to my absense. We'll make sure this is not going to happen again!

Thanks to everyone who informed us, including David @ TeleRead, Laurens, Simon, Roland, Daniel, and everyone else!

Anyways, I hope everyone of you saddled up and is ready to ride into a Happy New Year!

02:07 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Nick Bogaty, Executive Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), has just informed me that the IDPF's Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) Working Group has released two working draft specifications:

* The Open Publication Structure (OPS) 2.0 (internal working draft v0.7)
* The Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0 (internal working draft v0.7) for public distribution and review as IDPF informational documents.

Nick indicated that the team would appreciate feedback from our more technical readers. The IDPF strongly encourages feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether IDPF members or not, for the sake of improving interoperability and quality of IDPF work. The Working Group requests that comments to the specifications be made before Wednesday, January 31st in order to facilitate revision of the specifications.

Feedback on the draft specifications should be made at http://www.idpf.org/forums under "OPS/OPF 2.0 Public Drafts & Related Documents". All IDPF specification documents may be found at http://www.idpf.org/specs.htm.

Related Stories:
The fight for a reflowable e-document standard
Industry adopts new e-book standards

And finally, for those who are interested to learn more, here is some additional (detailed) information to get you on your way...

Document Summary

The OPS 2.0 and OPF 2.0 specifications are successors to OEBPS 1.2 which was released as an official IDPF specification in August 2002. The OPS specification describes a standard for representing the content of electronic publications. The OPF specification defines the mechanism by which the various components of an OPS publication are tied together and provides additional structure and semantics to the electronic publication. OPS/OPF will increase the viability and adoption of the previous OEBPS standard as both a cross-reading system interchange and production format as well as a final publication delivery format.

Both OPF and OPS are aligned with the OEBPS Container Format (OCF) specification which defines the standard mechanism by which all components of an electronic publication may be packaged together into a single archive for transmission, delivery and archival purposes. The OCF specification was released as an official IDPF specification on October 27th, 2006.

The OPS/OCF documents were submitted to the IDPF Board of Directors as an Informational Document as defined by the IDPF’s Policies and Procedures, section 4.6.1. While Informational Documents do not have an official specification status in the organization, the Working Group felt it important that IDPF members and the public have the opportunity to review the draft specification in order to obtain feedback on the current state of the proposal as well as to alert IDPF members that a proposal is forthcoming in order to allocate appropriate resources for a proper review. The document is expected to be submitted to the official IDPF output process in Q1 2007 which consists of Board of Director, public, intellectual property and membership review and a final membership vote.

This document was approved for submission by the Working Group on Thursday, December 14th and approved for release by the IDPF Board of Directors as an Informational Document on Friday, December 22nd.

Additional documents that may prove useful as an introduction

* Working Group Charter: http://www.idpf.org/idpf_groups/oebpswg.htm
* Specification Requirements: http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/info...quirements.htm
* IDPF member presentations on OPS, OPF & OCF: http://www.idpf.org/events/presentations.htm

Document Output Procedure

The OPS/OPF 2.0 documents are currently informational documents. All public comments made on the specification will be considered by the Working Group and, if appropriate, edits to the working drafts will be made. The Working Group expects to submit a final draft specification to the IDPF official output process in Q1 2007.