11:31 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Many of us long for the day that there are comprehensive public services available on the Internet. Already there has been much progress, and my local libraries offer some e-books and audiobooks for loan.

But the other side of that, in the long run, is that there is potentially not enough justification to fund community library buildings or maintain large city libraries. I'm not suggesting that this is going to happen in the near future or even our lifetime, and the physical books still have value and need to be preserved. But as I look at these pictures of libraries around the world, I can't help but feel the great loss if library buildings were shut down in favor of smaller buildings. We take it for granted, but personally I'm not ready to lose the ambiance and tactile joys of traditional libraries, and all the additional opportunities to gather, study or get away.

Reading at a Borders book store just isn't quite the same.

Via BoingBoing.

11:08 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Senko has an interesting ScreenMirror product that turns your backlit LCD screen into a mirror when the backlight is off, and becomes transparent when the backight is on. In addition, anyone snooping to see what you are doing is blocked from seeing the screen at more than a 45 degree angle.

That might be interesting for e-book reading purposes... for example, by any guy who for some reason might be reading a romance novel! But clearly this would be useless for an e-ink reading device because it will not have a backlight.

iPod and mobile phone versions are available, but the company claims that they can be cut to custom sizes fairly easily, so it could be used on a PDA, smartphone or even maybe a UMPC.

From Textually.org and Sci-Fi Tech.

08:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

My goodness, is it Sunday again? Well, for those of you who've missed the highs and lows of MobileRead over the past seven days, this is your one-way ticket to catch up:

E-book Devices, iRex iLiad
Get a quick Sudoku fix on the iRex iLiad
iRex iLiad upgrade 2.7 released

E-book Devices, Sony Portable Reader
Best Buy gift cards can be used for Sony Reader Connect Store e-books
RSSOwl patch for the Sony Reader
Sony's Dan Albohn talks about the Sony Reader on TV clip
Early Sony Connect e-book sales to top $500,000 by end of October
M-Edge Jacket to be available for Sony Reader in November

E-books, Book Recommendations
OJ Simpson confession book is sure to be a best seller

E-books, Elsewhere on the Net
Project Gutenberg's regularly updated Top 100

E-books, News
Why aren't e-books more successful? - by Walt Crawford
Microsoft joins Cornell U in mass book-scanning project
Demand for downloads of digital magazines surges

E-books, Reading Software
uBook V0.9h beta released

Miscellaneous, Announcements
If you receive a "Server made a boo boo" message...

Miscellaneous, Lounge
World's first laser TV may lead to the end of plasma TVs
Amazon Askville beta - 20 invites here
Easy hard drive data archiving with a USB hard drive adapter
Happy Birthday to Sammy McLoughlin of Palm Addicts

Mobile Devices, Handhelds and Smartphones
CorePlayer regularly phones home or will deactive itself
TeleRead launches Palm TX e-book forum

12:22 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The new batch of e-ink devices are still so new that there aren't a lot of third party accessories yet. But a new neoprene case for the Sony Reader (PRS-500) will be available in November. The case allows you to read without removing it, and offers additional protection. No indication of whether it needs to be removed to use the docking cradle or now.

From the M-edge web site, "The Sony Reader eMotion Jacket is the ultimate for on the go eBook fanatics... [and] provide superior protection for your Sony Reader... [they] are stylish padded cases that feature a read-through design and clear vinyl screen protection so you never have to remove your Reader to use."

M-edge joined our discussions here with some additional information in response to Stuart Young's discovery of their site.

The primary interest in third party cases for the Sony Reader will probably be due to protection concerns, because the supplied case (and Sony's optional color choices) are quite nice.

Related:
A Neoprene pouch case for the Sony Reader that seems to already be available.
An iLiad version of the M-edge case

03:40 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The Oct 20, 2006 ePage Insights newsletter from Nick Hampshire is reporting some early figures for the number of Sony Readers that have made it to market. Here are some interesting tidbits to whet your appetite, which are directly quoted because of the sensitivity to specific wording:

* An initial batch of 10,000 units of the new reader was delivered to Sony US in September
* ...these went on sale in around 750 shops across the US as well as via online outlets such as Amazon and of course Sony’s own online sales operation.
* One of the main high street outlets were 300 Borders shops, these typically sold out of the dozen units they had received within the first two days.
* ...with the first batch likely to be sold out before the end of October we can be confident that first month e-book sales will have topped $M 0.5.

For more information, you can subscribe to his newsletter at Digital Publishing News. There is also an RSS feed there, but I couldn't get it to work. There may be some sort of sign up process required.

At any rate, this is the first realistic stab at sales figures that I've heard so far. It's not clear how accurate these numbers are, nor what his sources are, but if they are accurate, this is a very encouraging beginning for the Sony Reader.

Note: From some great observations in the thread discussion, it seems that the intent of the original article may have been to say that e-book sales (not Reader hardware sales) will have topped $500,000. But the information is sketchy and we obviously don't have the details sorted out... yet. I have adjusted the thread title, and will try to contact Nick (the oritinal article's author) for clairification.

10:22 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The Sony Reader is the focus of a short news segment at News 10 Now, where there is both a video segment and a text article about the Reader. It's quite well done, fun to watch, and includes the comments by Dan Albohn from Sony.

Plus, at the end they ask people if they would buy a Reader, with some interesting responses. Even to get one person who wants one in such a small sample would seem to be a tremendously positive sign for the potential success of the device. Well, unless the reporter had to ask hundreds of people the question before he found one!

04:49 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Last year we predicted that Zinio was to become the leading provider of digital magazines. Our prediction seems to be right on track as the company is now reporting impressive growth rates:

• More than 55 million digital magazines were delivered since 2002
• 154% year-over-year growth in monthly transactions for Jan-Aug 2006
• 166% year-over-year growth in monthly transactions including single copy sales
• 170% growth in monthly visitors since 2005
• Delivery of more than 10.9 million magazines in Jan-Aug 2006
• Delivery of more than 55 million magazines since 2002
• 3.4 million registered users.

Related: Extracting content from Zinio Reader

04:22 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

Gowerpoint's uBook has always been one of the better tools to read e-books on a Windows Mobile device. It supports various formats natively, including more obscure stuff like CHM, RB, and unencrypted MobiPocket, has skinning support, and allows you to adjust fonts in uncountable ways.

Changelog of V0.9h beta:

• First release candidate for uBook 1.0
• Fixed Install
• Fixed issues (and speed) with embedded RTF images
• Remove Easy/Advance modes and replaced them by having +/- control for each section
• Added Option to disable the file name at the top of a slideshow
• Changed Auto-Text-Open to have a 3rd choice: open only when one text is in the zip file
• Changed Lock screen mode to toggle on and off on a double clik
• Fixed issues with PML and HTML parser
• Other Bug Fixes

You can download the trial version of uBook from here.