05:45 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Get some great science fiction e-books in multiple formats for free. They are available at this BBC e-book page. Books listed there right now are:

* Nightshade
* The Well-Mannered War (segments only)
* Human Nature (segments only)
* Lungbarrow (segments only)
* Scales of Injustice (segments only)
* The Sands of Time (directly from main e-book page)
* Empire of Glass
* The Dying Days (segments only)

The books are mostly available in PalmReader, Microsoft Reader and MobiPocket formats. Note that Sands of Time has a seperate link on the main e-book page for the complete book.

The indicated books are in chapter segments only due to rights issues, but there is a text-only page for Lungbarrow suited very nicely for iSiloX extraction. The others in segments only take a little more work than I was willing to do at the moment.

12:43 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

I was just told by a black cat named Aggie that my favorite website, Palm Addicts, is hosting a Videocast again. If you're what I think you are, i.e. totally crazy about mobile gadgets, don't miss the show. It's very fun to watch, more so because PA Editor in Chief Sammy is giving tribute to our site. Thank you, Sam!

Link to PA videocast

09:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

The IfraExpo 2006 has thrown open its doors in Amsterdam yesterday, and two Dutch dudes are showing off how beautiful the iRex iLiad would be if we were able to download digital newspaper content via WiFi onto it. The software used is apparently made by a company called SoliDAM. A quick glance at their site reveals that they are specialized in extracting PDF content ("Elara Callisto") and converting it to structured XML or bitmap formats for re-use in a content management system (such as iDS).

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay, but now would be a good time for iRex to start offering newspaper content. How many people agree with me?

08:44 AM by Bob Russell in Miscellaneous | Lounge

CBS News and other mainstream media are reporting that Google has agreed to buy YouTube despite Mark Cuban's public statements that he thinks Google is crazy for doing it.

"Google Inc. is snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a starring role in the online video revolution.

The all-stock deal announced Monday unites one of the Internet's marquee companies with one of its rapidly rising stars. It came just hours after YouTube unveiled three agreements with media companies in an apparent bid to escape the threat of copyright-infringement lawsuits.

The price makes YouTube, a still-unprofitable startup, by far the most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history."

07:03 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Usually it's only large scale consumer problems that get listened to by a large corporation. They are famous for being unresponsive to customer issues. Yet we have found today that Sony is listening to customers needs even before any actual complaint is filed with the company! Is Sony reinventing itself right before our very eyes? In the e-book world, Sony has certainly demonstrated a fresh new attitude.

Let's review what has happened. MobileRead members like Mobius and Lordvetinari2 had observed that some of the e-books at the Sony Connect online store were being priced too high - just under hardback prices even though the book was available as paperback. In most of these cases, the Connect store pricing had not reflected the paperback availability and so they had not lowered the corresponding e-book price.

At Mobius' urging, we set up a thread yesterday afternoon to highlight the pricing anomalies, with the intent of sending it in to Sony with a plea for consideration. You really don't expect a company like Sony to be especially responsive to customers saying "please change your store prices"!

To our great amazement, we woke up today to find that in direct response to MobileRead's identification of some out of line prices at the Connect store, those e-books have already magically dropped in response to our input. Way to go Sony! Thanks go to Nathan and MelancholyTea for the discovery. And a big thanks to the publishers also, for being flexible enough to allow that to happen. It's the publishers who set the prices, but as we see today, they are apparently willing to work with Sony to get things right!

And let's remember that this is not the first sign that there is something different going on at Sony. They seem to actually care about their customers. For example, in advance of the Sony Reader rollout, they also offered to do a Q&A with the product team for MobileRead readers.

Additionally, for the first time in Sony's history, they also held an event for a select few in the blogosphere, providing personal product time with the Reader before it's release. To our surprise, the Reader product team was not only excited about their product, and wanting to share information with the web community, but they were genuinely interested in our thoughts and input.

We had previously asked the question of whether Sony could return to the good 'ole days of the Walkman era. Obviously we undershot. With the positive response we are seeing to the Sony Reader product itself, and the way the company is demonstrating an interest in its customers concerns, maybe Sony is even reinventing itself into something better than it ever was. If this is their new way of doing business, we can surely look for great things from Sony in the future!

11:21 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

It's true, some Bloomberg journalists discovered the Sony Reader at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair:

Brian Murray, group president at News Corp.'s book unit HarperCollins Publishers, brought a new toy to Frankfurt -- his Sony Reader, a portable electronic book. About the size of a very slim paperback, it has a booklike display without the backlit glare of a computer screen. It is available online and will be sold for $350 at Borders Group Inc. bookstores in the U.S.

Murray loaded 15 books and a 1,000-page manuscript on to his Reader to peruse during the fair. ``I was pleasantly surprised once I started using it,'' he said, adding that he believes the Reader might catch on. ``The first two years will be about early adopters, as with most technology,'' Murray said.

Meanwhile, Borders is celebrating the "grand opening" of their new mega-bookstore in Manhattan. During the celebration which goes through Oct 22 you can win a Sony Reader (or perhaps buy one if you are still looking for a place that has the Readers on sale).

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

Controversy trails Google Book Search wherever it goes. Common sense would lead a person to believe that the project could only be good for the publishers. Alas some publishers like to see things differently. And despite all the recent lawsuits alleging copyright violation, Reuters has an interesting news piece telling us that at least for some publishers the search engine can actually work in their favor. Colleen Scollans of Oxford U Press has admitted during the Frankfurt Book Fair this week that "Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," with a "significant" growth in sales.

Not sure whom to believe, but could it be that Google Book Search is good for one publisher and bad for the other?

[via /.]

12:04 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Thanks to raevyn1 who dropped this one into my inbox today: John Dvorak hosted Neil Gaiman and Dan Farmer on his last videocast Crankygeeks and devoted about 3 minutes to a brief discussion on the future of e-books and on publishing them online. No super-brilliant insights, but it's interesting to glimpse what well-known writers think of the shape of things to come. Excerpt:

JD: Sony's e-book reader just came out. Do you do any of the e-stuff?
NG: I do some of the e-stuff. The only thing I really like e-books for is reading in the dark when you have like a wife fast asleep in the bed next to you who really doesn't want you to turn on a bedside lamp.
DF: Books are dinosaurs. We love books because we have this emotional attachment. When we grow up we love learning from books and they mean so much to us (I've written one myself). But kids these days they're going to say good-bye to books as soon as there is a good reader. I don't want to carry this book around I want to carry something that has all my books. When I am in the kitchen I want all my cook books in the one reader.
JD: E-book readers will continue to fail because they are inconvenient. There is no way you can flip through.
DF: You are suffering from the mentality of the ? of the present software. We are going get passed these technological limitations. I agree, we don't have any good ones right now. It will happen. It is deterministic. These things [pointing at a book] are gone. Within our lives - the kids will be laughing at us. They are already laughing at us!

JD: What do you think about the idea of publishing online for free and selling in the background?
NG: Fine. I don't have a problem with it at all. I think that the Internet for an author is the best advertising tool in the world... The main reason [why NG doesn't give out his books for free online] is because I have sold the rights to the books, the copyright, to the publishers, and I don't have the rights to put them up online myself.

Neil Gaiman is the award-winning SFF author of Anansi Boys, American Gods, and Neverwhere, just to name a few. I highly recommend you to check out his journal where he interacts with his readers and provides all sorts of insights into the world of a writer.

This Crankygeeks episode is offered for download in various video formats.