05:51 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Who said you cannot make a fortune by selling e-books without DRM? Self-published by its authors, the book Getting Real sold more than 23000 copies in PDF format in fewer than 8 months.

But 23,000 readers isn't enough. We want millions of people to read the book. So today we introduce two new flavors that make the content even more accessible. And, in one case, completely free.

Unfortunately you can only read the book online and its copyright does not allow you to redistribute it in any other form. Still, if you are into building successful web application, Getting Real is a recommended read.

Thanks to bowerbird for the tip.

02:33 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Scotty, arivero and I were talking about how to maintain a proper upload/download/feed location for our current development efforts.

Here is my thought. Assume the following:

IPKG repository for the iLiad:
http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad/feed/

Uploads / downloads:
http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad/users/
http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad/projects/

http://projects.mobileread.com/reader/users/
http://projects.mobileread.com/reader/projects/

1. A developer/hacker has a dedicated directory with full FTP rights (upload/delete/rename/etc.). Depending on his reader device, the directory would be publicly accessible for downloads @

   http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad/users/<developernick>
   or
   http://projects.mobileread.com/reader/users/<developernick>

2. A project manager (any developer/hacker who is trusted) has full access to all directories. Upon request, he can move files from a developer to an appropriate project tree. Projects are publicly accessible for downloads @

   http://projects.mobileread.com/iliad/projects/<projectname>

3. Anonymous uploads will be supported and have to be managed by project managers before they become publicly downloadable.
   
4. Packages in the iLiad IPKG repository are immutable -- they cannot be changed or removed but new versions can be added by trusted persons.
   
5. Every 1hr, the maintainer/package file of the repository will be automatically refreshed.

• Subversion. Unless we're going to work on a major project, together in a group, I don't think subversion is currently needed.
• Wiki uploads. Files on a Wiki are hard to manage and don't scale well. Wiki's are OK for uploading images or documents, but not really for anything else.

Now I am curious for your feedback.

05:06 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

iRex has just issued an upgrade patch for the iLiad device, closing two security holes that were recently discovered by our forum members. Unfortunately, if you decide to upgrade you may lose the opportunity to install and run your homebrew software. Feel free to join our on-going discussion about the release.

The patch also fixes a couple of software bugs mainly related to the content browser and the PDF viewer. Our Wiki has a full list of changes.

05:41 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

If you happen to pass through the Plastic Electronics 2006 conference in Frankfurt this week, make sure to visit Plastic Logic who is demoing a 10" 150ppi flexible display based on E Ink Imaging Film. Before you fall asleep in your chair, make sure to read the last sentence again. The key word is flexible. Unlike the Sony Reader and the multiple clones we are expecting to arrive from the Far East soon, this technology could actually enable us to twist, bend or throw e-paper just like you would do with normal paper. From the press release:

John Mills, COO Plastic Logic, commented, "Our plastic electronics technology is scalable in both screen size and resolution and this achievement is another important step along our path to 10" 150ppi flexible displays in mass production in 2008."

Related: Flexible display design concepts from Plastic Logic

01:58 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Today Adobe is launching a new application that is called Adobe Digital Editions. Looking to build the e-book market and reach the millions of people who are still waiting for a proper e-book solution, Digital Editions is a lightweight, consumer-optimized software for reading and organizing e-books and other digital publications.

You can download the public beta of Adobe Digital Editions from the Adobe Labs Web site.

Why isn't Adobe PDF and the Adobe Reader sufficient?

In 1993, Adobe introduced its Acrobat system utilizing the PDF format, which was a spinoff of the older PostScript format. Because of its ability to translate a document's original fonts, colors and images into a file that can be opened and read on most computer systems, Adobe PDF has become a staple of modern business. Nevertheless, while PDF is still the preferred format for paginated presentation today, it has failed to become a mobile solution and the universal standard for e-books.

The Adobe Reader software was originally developed for enterprises and knowledge workers. Many of its features are not needed by the regular e-book user; in fact, most of us agree that Adobe Reader feels clumsy, bloated, slow and unnecessarily resource-intensive. And it seems to get less suitable for e-books with each version upgrade.

Adobe Digital Editions: reading e-books with open standards

Adobe realized that while PDF is great for some things (for instance textbooks with complicated illustrations and sidebars), at certain times, there is the need to support reflowable content. While PDF can support reflow to some limited extent, it's not its strong suit. This is especially true for mobile devices, which are getting increasingly popular for reading e-books (like in the Far East) and for which reflowable content is a precondition. So until now, the average non-technical consumer was faced with a myriad of alternative choices, including MobiPocket PDB, Microsoft LIT, Sony BBeB, eReader PalmDoc, and other more obscure formats, making it almost impossible to figure out what e-book format makes sense for him. Also publishers have not been vastly amused by the higher cost involved to distribute in all these formats, especially when they had to pay e-book conversion houses on a per-title basis.

To address the problem of format confusion and DRM hassles rapidly and effectively, Adobe has joined the IDPF and worked together with publishers, authors, hardware and software providers, service providers, retailers and organizations on a new document format, OEB, and a new ZIP-based container format, OEBPS OCF, which are both based on open standards. You can read more about IDPF and its rival OpenReader in Bob Russell's excellent essay The fight for a reflowable e-document standard. These proposed e-book standards are intended to enable consumers to buy any title from any source and view it on any e-book reader. In short: interoperability of e-book devices and formats - hopefully along with broader availability of content.

Which brings us to Adobe Digital Editions. It looks and feels a bit like the New York Times reader Microsoft has been working on. The main difference: it's built on open standards. And unlike Adobe Reader, it feels more lightweight, consumer-optimized and is simpler to use.

There are two key views of the application: reading view and library view. The reading view presents itself with a very simple user interface, where you can perform easy searches (nothing complex like regular expressions), switch to various reading modes, and view the table of contents (if available). If you don't move your mouse for a few seconds, you'll get a full-screen experience with the user interface temporarily disappearing. Like in Acrobat Reader, you can pan and zoom to your liking. In the library view you have the ability to organize and adjust your content. For instance, you can sort by author, title and so forth. You can also roll over content to get information (through metadata associated with the books). It's again kept very simple to streamline the user experience and make reading more pleasureable.

While you can read normal PDF documents with Digital Editions, what's really new and interesting to us is its ability to work with "liquid" reflowable textual content. This type of content will make a lot more sense on a small screen, where text size and presentation (including vector-based graphics) is automatically adjusted to the limited screen size. In addition, Adobe uses Extensible Style Language-Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) as a tool to adapt the major page layout depending on a combination of font size and screen size. For instance, if you have enough screen and smaller font size, you get three columns; but if you increase the font size, you'll get only two columns; and if you make the screen size smaller; the reader will automatically reduce to one column.

Many people still think e-books = PDF. Adobe is going beyond it and I am sure it'll take a while to sink in.

Facts you should know:

• lightweight, 2.5MB free download (it's 10 times smaller than Adobe Reader)
• seamless download and installation (no need to manually install the reader
• just click on read and it will seemingly install)
• download consists of a single executable (digitaleditions2x0.exe) which is when unpacked about 6.5MB in size
• automatic updates
• v1.0 release expected in early 2007
• cross-platform: Windows (available 10/24), Mac OS X and Linux in the works
• supports Adobe PDF, flowable XHTML-based content (OEB), Flash SWF for rich media (at some later stage)
• works online and offline
• remembers the last reading location and viewing mode for each e-book
• simple search / go to page x / chapters (if supported by the document)
• rendering technology is written in fast native C (and is the same rending code that is used for the Sony Reader)
• user-interface/skin is based on Flash/Flex
• works with existing Adobe Content Server eBook DRM and forthcoming hosted Digital Editions Protection Service
• no longer requires a separate DRM activation step as previously required with eBook DRM for Adobe Reader 7

Limitations (found in a private beta, build code r226d27):

• no audio output (tested with "Shrek Sound FX Edition" e-book)
• no right mouse button context menu
• no annotations
• failed upon password-protected PDF (no error, just wouldn't open)
• no option to manually adjust the size or appearance of fonts for PDF documents
• lacks printing capabilities
• no manual control over column formatting at a given screen and font size

Roadmap:

• social networking (ability to share annotations and reading lists among a group of people)
• browser-based operations (e.g. allow e-book retailers to offer sneak previews of e-books online)
• new hosted content protection service (with content for the consumer not glued to one particular device)
• contextual advertisement as a new business model for publishers
• "push" delivery of content subscriptions/webcasts
• mobile device versions of the software
• multimedia interactivity to create new reading experiences

Screenshots:

Library Thumbnail view

Library List view

Reader Single Page view

Reader Double Pages view

Reader Fit to Width view

Reader Zoom view

Reader Gui disabled

Resized PDF content

Resized PDF content

Illustrated PDF content

03:03 PM by nekokami in E-Book Formats | Workshop

Ok, fine. The big publishers (except Baen) are convinced that everyone is going to steal/pirate/recklessly broadcast eBooks without crippling DRM, which none of us want.

Question is, do the authors feel that way? Let's not forget, they're the ones who create the content. They sell to publishers because publishers buy their content. However, many authors are less than happy with their relationship with traditional publishers and booksellers. Authors sometimes have reason to question whether the publishers are being honest about sales, they are frustrated with publisher decisions about marketing, etc. Authors I have communicated with are also somewhat disturbed by the trend of Amazon and similar to promote the resale of books. The authors themselves don't get much per book as it is. Reselling books gets them nothing.

There are a lot of services a good publisher can provide, both to authors and readers:

• Editorial services, i.e. selecting good readable content from the "slush pile" -- but what if their opinions don't agree with mine?
• Working with authors to improve content (except when editors actually mess up good books because they can't help fiddling with them)
• Copyediting/proofreading (except when copyeditors make changes that authors or readers don't like)
• Artist/illustration coordination
• Marketing and promotional activities
• Printing, order fulfillment, shipping
• Keeping track of which authors are owed what for their books

But the present publisher model has been around for a long time. So could we do better now?

What if we had a website where:

• Anyone could create an account and upload a book/document, and the system would record and display the author and time/date of upload. If desired, a comparison could be used to ensure that the upload seems to be relatively original (e.g. a system like TurnItIn could be used, and the score could be automatically displayed next to the file entry).
• Books/documents in this repository could be purchased for download for whatever the author feels like charging, with a small cut for website maintainance. No DRM. The text would be formatted in some relatively open format, e.g. RTF, unless the document involves a lot of complex formatting and needs something with more page definition. A clear "license," selected from a list of prepared license documents or uploaded by the author, would describe what licensees are allowed to do with the text, but this would be based on human contracts, not technological fixes that don't work.
• Anyone could recommend changes to the author, using a communication method (private messages) on the site. This could also be used to report copyright violations, if someone spots one. (Authors could also set up discussion areas, if they wanted to. So could readers.)
• Anyone could offer to copy-edit a book/document, or illustrate a book/document, and either be compensated for their time by the author, if the author and editor come to some agreement, or:
• Anyone can review/recommend a book/document from the list and, if someone buys it based on that review, they get a cut of the proceeds. If the author's license allows it, the reviewer can copyedit and/or format and/or illustrate the book, as well. They are compensated for their effort by people finding it worthwhile to buy copies through their recommendation links/lists.
• Customers can rate reviewers and reviews as well as documents, and the system can compute relationships such that if I like the books that A reviews, and A likes the books that B reviews, I can get a weighted list that shows A's picks as well as B's picks. This information can be used to customize views of the document list.
• Anyone can tag a document with keywords using a folksonomy so similar documents/books can be found, or append a "if you like this I think you'll like X" link with their affiliate code. After a while, purchase data (or even text comparison data) might also help find similar works.
• The system can automatically produce lists of "bestsellers," "new books," etc. in any of a variety of categories.
• Participants with specific academic credentials could also register and "peer review" entries, to form low-cost online journals.
• To further promote broad readership, a "print on demand" function might be available, provided the author of the work didn't already have a restrictive contract with some traditional publisher/printer.

The idea is to distribute publisher functions. Anyone can become an author, if their content is good enough. Anyone can become an editor, if their judgment matches that of enough other people to make it worthwhile to look for their picks. Everyone who works gets paid, in proportion to how much their work is valued by others. This would be different from Amazon and other systems that allow users to enter reviews and create lists of books because reviewers would be compensated when a customer buys a book because of their review. It always amazes me how much effort some people put into writing reviews on a site like Amazon. Some of them are really good reviews, too. I've bought books based on some of those reviews. Those folks should be compensated for their effort.

This kind of system could be jumpstarted by starting with reviews which include "affiliate" links to existing content (even if it does have DRM), so it doesn't need to run exclusively on its own authors. If the system could also get an initial volume of valuable content (e.g. the Baen books might be a good fit, or Cory Doctorow, if he wants to participate), more authors might start to see this as a viable alternative to working with traditional publishing houses. They wouldn't get the advances up front, but they would get nearly all the proceeds, and their books would stay "in print" longer, and be available to a wider range of readers, probably for lower cost. The system would also be more honest about the nature of a license, and more specific about what the content creator intends with the license. If the author selects an option that says "you can loan a copy of this file to a friend -- encourage them to pay for a license if they like it," we'll all know we can do that. If the author picks a license that says "I priced this book dirt cheap so your friends can all afford their own copies," we'll know that, too. (Probably only a few authors, like Cory Doctorow, will suggest that downloaders freely forward their books to all and sundry. But an option to let customers set their own value, with or without a recommended price, could also be available to authors.)

So, does a system like this already exist somewhere? Or am I the only one who thinks this would be cool?

03:30 PM by CommanderROR in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Protection for your beloved e-reading device is now available! M-Edge, a company that specializes in making cases for PMP and e-reader devices, is now selling two types of Protection for the iRex Iliad.

A "sleeve" and a "jacket" model are available, the Silicon case is under development, slated for release on or around the 25th of October. The sleeve is 34.99$ and the Jacket is 39.99$.

Best of all, a member of the M-Edge team has joined our forum and is asking for "candid feedback" so they can make "...the best jacket possible for the Iliad."

Join the discussion here

01:08 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Aside the obvious E Ink technology, what makes the iLiad and the Reader similar is the fact that both devices run on Linux. While we are still waiting for iRex and Sony to release SDKs, clever MobileReaders have found their own ways to gain shell access to both devices.

Here is a current round-up of all hacking attempts:

Sony Reader

• Remote read/write access via USB
  Igorsk reverse-engineered the USB communication to the Sony Reader to enable remote read/write access to the device, including making full dumps of flash partitions.

  Discussion:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8051

• Executing arbitary shell scripts
  Igorsk (he is our man!) wrote a tool to reflash the Sony Reader with a modified firmware that allows you to run arbitary shell scripts stored on external media.

  Discussion:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...?threadid=8179

iRex iLiad

• WEP configuration input validation vulnerability (Firmware 2.7)
  Arivero discovered how you can execute arbitrary script code on the iLiad leading to full shell access (I leave the rest to your imagination).

  Discussion:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8144

• Open X server port vulnerability (Firmware 2.7)
  Design256 discovered how you can remotely access the X server on the iLiad and do all kinds of interesting things (such as running KDE's Kicker panel).

  Discussion:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8125

  Screenshots:
  Running KDE's Kicker panel
  Browsing the Web

• Undocumented access to the iRex Delivery Server
  TadW reverse-engineered some of the XML commands to communicate with the iRex Delivery Server (iDS), and I wrote a small PHP script as proof of concept.

  Discussion:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7812

  Screenshot:
  Accessing iDS with PHP