01:04 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Morpheus already mentioned Scott Redford's essay on e-books, which first appeared at Teleread. Since Scoot also submitted his essay to us, I feel it beneficial for discussion to republish it here:

eBooks: with courage and patience, we are getting there

Just how do we make the "e" in e-books stand for "easier"? Well, how about this? Let's scrap the existing digital rights management. Instead everybody in charge of administering DRM would be re-trained overnight as digital priests. They would certify "trustworthiness" to those seeking to download e-books.

Before downloads, customers would be visited by digital priests of their respective religious persuasions. With great pomp and circumstance, they would "pledge" not to forward their books to everybody in the world without compensating the authors and publishers. Break the pledge, and you'd find yourself in purgatory, hand-copying old encyclopedias.

Or maybe a totalitarian law would work instead. First-offenders guilty of unlawful content reproduction would have to wear a scratchy wool eye patch for one year. For a second crime, the patch would be now a mask. We could set up toll-free hot-lines and reward people for spying on their neighbors.

The Real Point

See my real point here? No easy way exists to loosen the DRM grip--this complicated issue can't be addressed with good old-fashioned guilt and fear. But e-book standards for DRM and formats would help. I am counting on the laws of capitalism, which always prevail. A demand will eventually be met with supply, and I'm hoping that the right set of standard will break from the pack and simplify the digital content landscape. That will be a blessed day. Microsoft, Adobe and Palm and the others now have their own special technology fee tacked on to the price of e-books. And that complicates merchandising. We e-book merchants would rather not have multiple cost structures for the same e-book.

Nor do we like consumers to be limited to books published in their chosen format or suffer multiple technologies just to enjoy a story. Nothing is more frustrating than having three different libraries on your handheld and forgetting where your recent fiction resides. I don't just hear customers complaints--I myself own a handheld.

Villains not

Who's to blame? I'm thinking nobody. Many authors and publishers break out in a cold sweat at just the mention of the word "Napster" and can you blame them? Their livelihood is at stake. They should, however, strive to better satisfy consumers desire for more content in digital form.

If a publisher has faith in their work, it's now accepted that expanding to e-book will deliver extra profit and drive hardback sales. Not all understand this. I still hear some authors express misguided fear that e-books will cannibalize their hardback sales. Publishing is not a zero-sum game, however--and that actually can be good. E-books add incremental value to the equation. Granted, companies tasked with encrypting content for them are an easy target, for they create the hoops through which we must jump. But the DRM heavyweights like Microsoft, Adobe and eReader are simply business people satisfying a need with existing technology.

No glass chin

Let there be no mistake, the future is bright for e-books--sales are on a steady rise. The industry took a couple of jabs during the Internet correction, but you'll find no glass chin here. More students are beginning to see e-books as an alternative for those pricey hardback textbooks. The computer savvy are learning the ease in pasting code directly from their favorite Java e-book manual, and there's even speculation that men are reading more romance as they no longer fear being seen with a floral book cover. Moreover, the Tablet PC is maturing, and the publishers are slowly but surely putting even more content in digital form. It takes courage, but we're getting there. Though it is a word often used in excuses, "patience" is needed by digital downloaders, me included.

Article by L. Scott Redford - scott@diesel-ebooks.com
Scott is the President of Diesel eBooks with over 35,000 popular and professional eBooks organized by 50 categories.

11:47 AM by Colin Dunstan in Miscellaneous | Lounge

PDAMill.com is celebrating its 2nd anniversary and for that reason has a 30% discount on any of its current 25 software titles.

All you have to do is put the products in your shopping cart and enter the promotion code MYPDAMILL - valid until 02/14 and only for the first 1000 purchases (phhh that is a lot; could they really reach this number in only two weeks?).

11:35 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

PalmSource decided to grant Ira Cook, the company's Vice President of Finance, an increase in compensation. From the latest SEC filling:

During the time that Mr. Cook serves in the capacity of PalmSource' principal financial officer, his annual base compensation will be $250,000 and he will be eligible for a discretionary quarterly bonus under the Company's bonus plan at the rate of up to 50% of his base quarterly compensation. In addition, Mr. Cook also received a stock option grant to purchase 40,000 shares of the Company's common stock which will vest quarterly, at the rate of 25% at the end of each fiscal quarter during which Mr. Cook continues to serve in the capacity of PalmSource' principal financial officer.

Maybe I should apply for a new job

11:26 AM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

EDGE stands for Enhanced Data for Global Evolution and is Cingular Wireless' network designed to be the fastest national wireless data network.

Equipped with EDGE technology, palmOne's Treo 650 can access accelerated data speeds averaging up to 135kbps, which is nearly three times the speed of a conventional wired dial-up connection. Cingular's EDGE network is available in more than 8,500 cities and towns and along 30,000 miles of highways. A variety of monthly data plans are available, including an unlimited plan for $44.99/month.

Read more in the official press release.

06:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Tam Hanna received information on unofficial SanDisk drivers (download link) that would allow you to operate SanDisk's SDIO WLAN cards on Palm TE and T3 devices (and perhaps even Treo 600 and Tungsten T). Tam also notes his source saying that the driver was never released officially because the card would draw too much power. It is up to you to give it a try!

06:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Both companies have one thing in common: they share a grim outlook. This is at least the quintessence of the article Holding Out for Handhelds appearing in today's TheStreet. Definitely a must-read if you're invested (or thinking of) in any of the two stocks.

The article is also quoting an analyst who believes that any comparison favors RIM, which is outgrowing palmOne and has much better operating margins. And palmOne had a history of problems with product transitions, so the analyst, which is another risk to its shares.

At least over the long term, the author believes that the prospects look brighter for both companies.

05:39 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Having so many books, wouldn't it be nice to have a software application to manage all of them?

From the description: eLibrary is such a software utility to manage your personal book collection (both print books and ebooks). Book information can be downloaded from the Internet; what you need to do is just enter one or more ISBNs, or simply use your barcode scanner.

eLibrary is free and a really valuable tool for every serious e-book reader (I am using it, too). Only caveat: it requires Windows.

Click here for the free download.

04:26 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

TadW revealed the quite shocking news that Pocket Mechanic, a famous storage card utility for Pocket PC, contains code that could hard-reset your handheld without warning if a pirated serial code was detected.

Tad now posted the technical evidence (scroll down to post #11) leaving no room for doubt that Pocket Mechanic is indeed a dangerous (and illegal?) piece of software!