January 3, 2008
The Kindle Digital Text Platform
I was rooting around on Amazon the other day, seeing what other kind of (non-book) content was available for the Kindle when I discovered the Digital Text Platform Amazon has made available for publishing content in Kindle format. "DTP" is listed as Beta, but I found it functional and easy to use. Basically you create all the metadata for the title, including pricing information, and then upload the content for conversion to the Kindle format. To test it, I created an eBook out of a series of articles I have written on content management and XML. They seem to want HTML ("The preferred format for uploading content is as a single HTML file"), but I got impatient when I then read you needed to assemble linked images in a zip file using special instructions. So I went with a single Word .doc file ("standard .doc files will often convert without a hitch"). For the most part, it did convert without a hitch, though it did a woefully bad job with a small number of very simple tables. To work around that, I simplified a couple of the tables and deleted the others. In fairness to Amazon, I worked quickly, and could have experimented with HTML tables.
If you're a Kindle owner and happen to buy the title, I would love to hear from you about the experience. Since I don't own a Kindle yet, I had to rely on the preview capability in DTP, which basically gives you an HTML view of the content.
From the introduction to the eBook:
The following articles, white papers, and blog entries were written between 2000 and 2006. They appeared in one of several publications: The Gilbane Report, eContent Magazine, E-DOC Magazine, or Transform Magazine. Some appeared in my blog, www.billtrippe.com, or its predecessor blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing. I undertook this compilation as an experiment in working with the beta version of Amazon.com's Digital Text Platform for creating content for the Kindle eBook reader.
I only edited the material lightly, so the articles are showing their age in places. Some links are likely out of date, some product references may be to versions of products that have since been superseded, and at least one product, XMetaL, has changed corporate ownership at least once since first written about in one or more of these articles. However, I chose these articles from many, many others I could have chosen because the material is evergreen and still useful, I think. I stand by what has been written here, especially for the price!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:56 AM
November 30, 2007
Kindle Still "Sold Out"
I keep seeing references to Kindle being sold out, but I have yet to find a number of how many sold. The main Kindle page at Amazon now says you won't get one by Christmas. This seems like a problem to me--missing Christmas sales and also not even promising a specific ship date.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:04 PM
November 19, 2007
Amazon Kindle
Amazon debuted Kindle, its eBook reader, today. I haven't seen it yet, of course, but I'm impressed by the number of titles they have available at launch. And the pricepoints--NYT's bestsellers at a standard price of $9.99.
Lots of interesting details about the feature set as well as the complementary content, like Wikipedia, newspapers, blogs. Another detail, reported by CNET, caught my eye:
Kindle, which was manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer, connects to its specialized Amazon store via an EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) cellular network through "Amazon Whispernet," built atop Sprint's EV-DO network. No data plan or monthly bill is required. "We pay for all of that behind the scenes so that you can just read," Bezos said, adding that he estimated that it would take "less than a minute" to download a book.
If it is really that easy to use and keep up to date, they are on to something.
WSJ.com has a blog roundup (subscription), and proving that Kindle seems to be real news, it even made All Things Considered. And, last but not least, PW weighs in.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:52 PM
November 13, 2007
Digital Text Community
Jon Noring of Digital Pulp Publishing has announced the start of "The Digital Text Community" (DTC), a public mailing list (on YahooGroups) devoted to serious discussion of digitizing "ink-on-paper" publications.
The full group charter is found at the group's home page.
DTC will be lightly moderated primarily to ensure civil discourse, and a separate archive of the discussion will be started and maintained (Jon notes that YahooGroup's default archive is poor, to say the least.)
Jon explained his rationale for starting the group:
The primary reason why I am starting DTC is that there is, surprisingly, no independent and dedicated forum to discuss the various, interrelated technical and non-technical issues of digitizing "ink-on-paper" publications, such as books, periodicals, etc.
Current discussion on digitizing paper publications is disjointly spread around in various nooks and crannies. For example, there are forums for particular digitization projects such as Project Gutenberg (e.g. "gutvol-d") and Distributed Proofreaders (which maintains a set of online-only forums.)
And then there are more generalized forums which touch upon various topics of relevance to text digitization, but which is not their main focus. Examples are Book People (which John Mark Ockerbloom is sadly closing the end of the month) and The eBook Community (another YahooGroup which I administer.)
The summary purpose of DTC is given in the last paragraph of the DTC group charter:
"This group is not affiliated with any particular project or organization, but rather is independent. It is hoped this group will be a bridge between the various text digitization projects, enabling information exchange for everyone’s benefit."
This sounds like a great new resource, and I have already subscribed. You can too, here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:27 PM
October 24, 2007
"We're thrilled with the early results from customers"
Jeff Bezos says Amazon's customers like DRM-free music. Not a word about eBooks though. David Rothman from TeleRead has some thoughts about the eBook angle.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:26 PM
October 13, 2007
Here and There
- Apparently, if it's online, it's trustworthy..
- MarketingSherpa has an interesting case study of how a newspaper tackled a redesign as it entered its 10th year online.
- Innondata Isogen offers a Post-Hype Playbook for the eBook marketplace.
- Imagine a whole evening of presentations on XForms.
- Adobe unveils "Thermo" and some other new technologies
- Quark users might be interested in a new resource site, Planet Quark.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:08 PM
July 17, 2007
The Dramatic Unity of Huckleberry Finn
ResearchBuzz offers up a nice find: The Ohio State University Press Makes Dozens Of Books Free
The Ohio State University Press has announced that it will be making “certain books” available for free download from its site. (You’ll need a PDF reader.) The books are available at here . There are actually over 60 books here, from Daniel Aaron’s Cincinnati: Queen City of the West, 1819–1838 to John Harold Wilson’s Court Satires of the Restoration. Click on the book title for additional information about the book and PDF files of various chapters. The books I looked at were out of paper print but still had very assertive copyright reminders.What I did NOT see was any way to actually search the content, so here’s the Google query you want: keyword inurl:books site:ohiostatepress.org. Add intitle:book title to the search if you want to restrict your results to a specific text.
If you want to go right to the Huck Finn book referenced in the title, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:10 PM
June 12, 2007
eBooks for Kids: BookFlix and More
This is interesting.
Two leading children's publishers, Scholastic, Inc., and Disney, will soon discover whether the laptop compares to the lap in the hearts of young readers.
Scholastic is officially launching BookFlix, an educational Web site pairing short films based on popular picture books along with nonfiction e-books that allow early readers to follow the text online.
Update: fixed the link.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:29 PM | Comments (2)
June 7, 2007
Steal this Laptop!
Abbie Hoffman would be proud. Ironically, Abbie's book is flagged as Copyright Protected on Google Books.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2007
Teleread Offers Kurt Vonnegut a Fond Goodbye
And includes a pointer to free downloads of some Vonnegut classics
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a sci-fi writer and satirist who wrote about heroics, vanities and greater sins, inspiring comparisons with Mark Twain, died yesterday at 84 with a full head of hair. You can read a Google News roundup and his New York Times obit along with a link-rich Wikipedia item.Via Wowio, you can download free ad-supported copies of [a number of Vonnegut books].
I played around with Wowio, downloading Slaughter-House Five. Really, it is not much to write about--PDF files with ads stuffed in every so many pages. The ads are awkwardly placed--they look like full-page magazine ads--and in the default settings of the reader they are just disembodied page layouts. In Slaughter-House Five, it looked to me like the ads disrupted Vonnegut's intended pagination. In at least one place, an ad separates an illustration from Vonnegut's description. The effect is jarring, but if I were a starving college student again, I probably would put up with it in exchange for a free book.
Many, many publishing blogs weighed in on Vonnegut today, and for good reason. He was an oversized talent, and many people of my age and a little older read every Vonnegut book, often more than once. He will be missed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:26 PM | TrackBack
April 9, 2007
A Tip of the Cap to...
... Project Gutenberg, for all its work, including a newly posted "eBook," The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866, which brings us, among other things, passages from Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebooks. Here, Hawthorne offers some thoughts about a trip along Maine's Kennebec River.
Saw by the river-side, late in the afternoon, one of the above-described boats going into the stream, with the water rippling at the prow, from the strength of the current and of the boat's motion. By-and-by comes down a raft, perhaps twenty yards long, guided by two men, one at each end,—the raft itself of boards sawed at Waterville, and laden with square bundles of shingles and round bundles of clapboards. "Friend," says one man, "how is the tide now?"—this being important to the onward progress. They make fast to a tree, in order to wait for the tide to rise a little higher. It would be pleasant enough to float down the Kennebec on one of these rafts, letting the[Pg 178] river conduct you onward at its own pace, leisurely displaying to you all the wild or ordered beauties along its banks, and perhaps running you aground in some peculiarly picturesque spot, for your longer enjoyment of it. Another object, perhaps, is a solitary man paddling himself down the river in a small canoe, the light, lonely touch of his paddle in the water making the silence seem deeper. Every few minutes a sturgeon leaps forth, sometimes behind you, so that you merely hear the splash, and, turning hastily around, see nothing but the disturbed water. Sometimes he darts straight on end out of a quiet black spot on which your eyes happen to be fixed, and, when even his tail is clear of the surface, he falls down on his side, and disappears.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:41 AM
April 6, 2007
eBooks No, But ePaper Yes?
"Electronic paper" edging toward reality
"Electronic paper" has long been hyped as the future of newspapers and books, but products like e-books have been slow to take off. That may soon change, say executives involved in the pioneering technology. While Internet companies are scanning libraries of books and making them available online, E Ink Corp., which emerged out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a decade ago, is seeing a surge in orders for its portable, foldable displays that mimic conventional paper to carry such books. Nine different companies launched products last year based on the technology," said Russell Wilcox, E Ink president. "In the last nine months we've gone from manufacturing tens of thousands of parts to millions of parts."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:03 PM | TrackBack
March 24, 2007
OUP on Google
OUP's blog today, in a response to the Financial Times article (subscription required) of a couple days ago, talks about what Google's digitization effort is doing for publishing - and how they are responding to it in-house.What we publishers have come to realize is that Google and friends have opened up the world to our content by showing us that discoverability and access leads to interest and opportunity. Every major media company is now thinking they need to figure out their share of the digital space.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:00 AM
March 21, 2007
More Thoughts on Google Books
Michael Cairns from the blog PersonaNonData wrote to highlight two recent articles on Google, one he wrote and one written by his colleague Peter Grabois. Both are skeptical of Google Books, for different reasons, and both articles are well written and very thoughtful. Michael also pointed me to a related article by Peter Brantley, who is one of the truly smart guys in the digital library world.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:00 PM
March 17, 2007
Those eBook Widgets
I haven't hidden my low opinion of Google's book scanning efforts. So I am intrigued that some of the larger trade publishers are stepping up and attempting to do their own digitization--and, notably, establishing their own methods of providing access to the digitized books. The efforts from Random House and HarperCollins have received a lot of attention, mainly because the two companies are such dominant presences in trade publishing. But a lot of the attention has been on their eBook "widgets," the viewing applications they have begun sharing. However, the real story is behind the scenes. Both Random House and HarperCollins are much more interested in having platforms that control the access to the content--allowing models like "look inside the book" and other kinds of partial access. To understand these offerings, you need to look beyond the widgets themselves.
As far as I can tell so far, these are really for promoting the print books and not for selling eBooks per se. The Random House site says, “The Random House Digital Page Initiative is an on-going project to index, digitize, distribute and set the terms for using book content online. As part of that initiative, Random House has developed Insight, a service that gives search engines and online retailers access to digitized book content over the Web.”
Both offerings are addressed to balance the need for access and publisher’s concerns about control and insight into how the content is used. For example, Random House’s documentation says, “For the publisher, Insight is a tool to get the publisher's digital content onto the websites of retail partners, search engines, publicity outlets, authors, blogs, and readers … the publisher's digital book content remains in the hands of the publisher. It … implements business rules to guarantee that ownership and management of the digitized content remains with the publisher; and it manages access to the content from third-party websites.”
Also:
- Both allow third parties (including booksellers, bloggers, and others) to embed the widgets on their own sites.
- Both provide backend systems that handle warehousing, distribution, and digital rights management.
- Both would like to provide the suite of technologies as a service to other, smaller publishers.
In terms of differences:
The HarperCollins/LibreDigital widget is based on the NewsStand technology. According to Todd Eckler, VP of Sales at LibreDigital, the primary difference with the HarperCollins version over the NewsStand version is more functionality for DRM and reporting.
The Random House widget is a Flash client. It looks an awful lot like Adobe’s Digital Editions, but it does not seem to be the same technology.
To my best understanding at this point, they both display PDF files, though LibreDigital does accept other formats (including OEB), and the Random House widget accepts all kinds of image formats as page files (their specifications say at one point “JPG, PDF, indexed text, etc.” and “jpeg, gif, png, pdf” at another point.) So I think it is fair to say that the LibreDigital tool is more of a conventional eBook platform that looks to ingest whole eBook files and the Random House tool is more of a page-turning device that is happy to manage and display page files of several different formats. Having said this, I can’t imagine too many people handing over a bunch of, say, JPG files to Random House with some kind of page manifest, but I may be missing something.
Interestingly, the early reviews on the industry blogs really seemed to favor the Random House widget. Fran Toolan of Issues in Publishing wrote of Random House’s widget, “It also has multiple features not found in Harper's. Some of the features include, displaying multiple sizes, searching for text strings inside the widget (using a Google text search), and offering ways to buy the book.” And C. Max Magee at Millions Blog wrote, “At a glance, the Random House offering is much nicer to look at, faster to load pages, and offers additional functions like search. So, if you want to know who winds the first round of the “Widget Wars,” Random House does.”
I think the real question down the road is who wins the next few rounds of the digital access wars. Google fired the first shot, but the major publishers are firing back--and trying to bring the smaller publishers along as allies.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:20 PM | TrackBack
March 14, 2007
Playing Around...
with the Random House eBook Widget.
Oh, click on it so you can actually read the thing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:31 AM
February 18, 2007
But How Does Dear Author Really Feel About It?
Adobe Labs Cooks Up Worst Ebook Reader in Ebook Reader History
Dear Adobe,
I have, often, derided the Adobe Acrobat format for ebooks. I have told people on this blog, in emails, on message boards, that this is my least favorite format and that you should only buy this format when there is NO OTHER OPTION. Buying an Adobe ebook, particularly one that requires authentication to read it, is akin to shaving your head when you are one of the most recognizable people in the world and, at one time, one of the most beautiful people in the world.
You’ve come out with a great new software called Adobe Digital Editions, for those people who love ebooks...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:24 AM
February 16, 2007
Brilliant
Hat tip to my Gilbane colleague Leonor Ciarlone.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:51 AM | TrackBack
January 28, 2007
File this Under "Not Exactly News"
Dear Author has seen the Vision of the eBook Future via Google and Random House and It Stinks
In 2004, Google announced its plan to scan every book printed. They began working with university libraries such as Harvard, University of Michigan, and Oxford. This caused the publishing industry some great consternation because an author’s work …
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:56 PM
January 18, 2007
eBooks in the K-12 Classroom?
TeleRead offers some thoughts on a WiFied eInk machine and perhaps a K-12 push for the Sony eReader.
Spurred by the threat of the rumored Kindle E Ink machine from Amazon, Sony is considering a WiFi-enhanced successor to the Sony Reader, as well as a push to get E Ink machines into the classroom.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:02 PM
January 9, 2007
A Companion to Digital Humanities
Landmark Digital Humanities Book Is Now Freely Available
A Companion to Digital Humanities is now freely available in digital form. This important 2004 book was edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth. It includes chapters by such notable experts as Howard Besser, Greg Crane, Susan Hockey, …
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:10 PM
January 6, 2007
Someone is Bullish about eReaders
E-Paper Display Company Plastic Logic Receives $100 Million Funding
In one of the biggest venture capital rounds ever in Europe, UK electronic paper display technology company Plastic Logic has received $100 million in venture funding. The new round was led by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
December 29, 2006
1984
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM | TrackBack
December 26, 2006
Two New IDPF Draft Specifications Available
Nick Bogarty of the Interational Digital Publishing Forum reports that two new specifications are available in working draft form and are ready for comment.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) and the Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0 (internal working draft v0.7) for public distribution and review as IDPF informational documents.
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. The specifications are available here (OPS 2.0) and here (OPF 2.0).
Feedback on the draft specifications should be made at the IDPF forums under "OPS/OPF 2.0 Public Drafts & Related Documents," and you can find a link to all IDPF specification documents here.
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.
The following documents may prove useful for introduction: the Working Group Charter, Specification Requirements, and IDPF member presentations on OPS, OPF & OCF.
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.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:06 PM | TrackBack
December 17, 2006
Another Sign of Life for eBooks?
S&S news: Digital archive plans—and Claire Israel’s defense of DRM
Simon and Schuster plans to have 12,000+ books from its backlist digitized by the end of ‘07, according to Publishers’ Marketplace. Download sales tripled this year, and DearAuthor credibly believes that “competitive pricing” helped…
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:04 PM | TrackBack
December 11, 2006
More on Microsoft Book Search
Again, as I mentioned in another entry, I have not looked too closely at it yet, but Microsoft Book Search has nice behaviour in the basic interface, and the image in this page was clearly digitized with some care.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:45 PM | TrackBack
December 7, 2006
Microsoft Book Search
Microsoft has launched its book search product. My initial reaction is mixed, though I haven't spent much time with it yet. On the one hand, it doesn't seem to work in Firefox (get used to seeing the word "Loading..." if you try to launch it) and it is really slow to start, even in Internet Explorer 6 (I haven't tried it in Explorer 7 yet). On the other hand, the interface for browsing a found book is much more attractive than Google Book Search and the scanning, at a quick glance, seems to be of a signficantly better quality than that on Google Books. Of course, beating Google Books on scanning quality is not exactly difficult.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:50 PM
Download a Good Book Lately?
Late in the last millennium I went to grad school, getting my MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College. Recently, a writer from the alumni office, Christopher Hennessey, interviewed me about the eBook business, and he ended up writing an excellent article. You can download a PDF of the entire magazine here (about 2.7 MB). I also took the liberty of creating a PDF with just the article itself, which is about 500K.
A hat tip to Christopher for writing an excellent survey of the value of eBooks to date.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:48 PM | TrackBack
Get Your Multimedia House in Order
“Do opportunities exist to call for more digital offerings, and are you prepared to spend wisely toward them? Looking back five years or so, some publishers put the cart before the horse, burning holes in their pockets for expansive digital publishing before the market was really clear.
“For instance, publishers that think they would benefit most from e-books need to know that a market exists, but it is not as big [as they might think] and there are plenty of third-parties who could easily handle production and hosting. On the other hand, medical and legal publishers with enormous electronic potential absolutely need to make a commitment to a digital presence and they need to adjust staff to handle it."
Sound like good advice? I hope it is. I gave it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:30 PM | TrackBack
December 2, 2006
The Google Book "Nightmare"
Also from if:book, count Brewster Kahle among the people who are not fans of Google Books.
"Pretty much Google is trying to set themselves up as the only place to get to these materials; the only library; the only access. The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare.".
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:15 PM
A Chapter for the Ladies
The joys of Project Gutenberg: baseball, as viewed in 1888.
On account of the associations by which a professional game of base-ball was supposed to be surrounded, it was for a long time thought not a proper sport for the patronage of ladies. Gradually, however, this illusion has been dispelled, until now at every principal contest they are found present in large numbers. One game is generally enough to interest the novice; she had expected to find it so difficult to understand and she soon discovers that she knows all about it; she is able to criticize plays and even find fault with the umpire; she is surprised and flattered by the wonderful grasp of her own understanding, and she begins to like the game. As with everything else that she likes at all, she likes it with all her might, and it is only a question of a few more games till she becomes an enthusiast. It is a fact that the sport has no more ardent admirers than are to be found among its lady attendants throughout the country.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:10 PM | TrackBack
November 30, 2006
DOIs for Books Gain Ground
Digital Koans alerts us to the news that DOIs for books are gaining ground.
According to CrossRef, the official DOI registration agency, over a half-million DOIs have been assigned to books or book chapters, and twenty of its members are using DOIs in this fashion. What’s a DOI? Here’s a short description from …
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:25 PM | TrackBack
November 10, 2006
Digitization at HarperCollins
If you are curious what HarperCollins is doing in terms of digitizing its content, this presentation (PDF) from the Frankfurt Book Fair spells it out some. HarperCollins is being aggressive with this. They cited the costs of digitization as an element in their recent disappointing quarterly profit, and clearly are committed to the efforts.
In addition to lower sales, [HarperCollins CEO Jane] Friedman attributed the drop in profits to continued investment in digital and global projects. HC has now digitized 12,000 titles as part of its digital warehouse, and during the quarter it converted 125 books to its new Browse Inside feature, which enables consumers to search HC books from the company's Web site. Friedman estimated HC will be adding 200 to 500 titles a week to the Browse feature. The company's Digital Media Café also launched in the period. "I remain excited by the digital world," Friedman said. HC's China initiatives also ate into profits in the period.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:33 PM
October 24, 2006
Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe announced Digital Editions today (press release here). Digital Editions is billed as a rich internet application for digital publishing, enabling users to acquire, read, and manage a variety of digital content. There is an obvious match here for eBooks, but the platform also has significance for digital editions of magazines, for example, and other content that would benefit from digital rights management (DRM) support.
Ryan Stewart already has a close look at ZDNet, and considers it "extremely compelling for both content providers and users on a number of fronts." Alan Safford has some more thoughts at PC World. David Utter of Webpronews.com discusses some of the hosting and distribution issues, and highlights that Digital Editions is the first Adobe product based on Flex 2 (a point Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch also mentioned this morning).
UPDATE: Publishers Weekly has more, focusing on the reader interface.
I saw it today, and it looked good. It is a Beta, but the interface is attractive and the performance is terrific. I didn't dig in too much, but what I saw was a set of books with an attractive point-and-click navigation and very quick retrieval and display of the titles in Acrobat and in XHTML. You can download it here. I did, and it installs very quickly and easily.
FURTHER UPDATE: Don Fluckinger has a great overview at PDFZone.com.
AND YET ONE MORE: Bill Rosenblatt has some thoughts on the DRM implications of the new offering.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:40 PM | Comments (1)
October 12, 2006
Simon & Schuster’s eBook Blog
TeleRead highlighted a new eBook-related blog at Simon & Schuster.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:58 PM
September 27, 2006
Sony Reader Roundup
TeleRead has a good roundup of reviews on the Sony eReader.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:24 PM
September 26, 2006
Sony eReader Available
The Sony Portable Reader System PRS-500 is now available. TeleRead has a very thoughtful article about some of the challenges Sony faces. Meanwhile, I keep offering to review the thing, but no word from Sony.
More here from paidContent.org.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:54 PM
September 8, 2006
Note to Google Books
When you scan a page that has an illustration with an overlay, lift the overlay up so the illustration is actually visible. Oh, and make the book square on the scanner bed so the page is not crooked. Oh yeah, and decide whether to scan the whole book in color or in black and white. Of course, you should also be sure there isn't some bizarre problem with the scanner first. And, needless to say, if the scan you end up with is completely nonsensical, you might not want to include it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:40 PM
September 2, 2006
Google Books Allowing Downloads: Blah, Blah, Blah
There was quite a buzz about Google allowing people to download PDFs of public domain books as of this week. Almost everything I read was incomplete, or wrong, and there was plenty of irrational exuberance. To me, any discussion of downloadable public domain books has to include Project Gutenberg, but few of the articles mentioned it. So much of the coverage is fawning, which means the project is doomed. It really is the dot.bomb era all over again. I suggest the cheerleaders start here and see how shoddy and incompetent the work is.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:18 PM
September 1, 2006
E-dictionary Studies
Does learning change when kids use electronic dictionaries instead of paper ones? TeleRead highlights some recent research.
“We can be very optimistic of the potential of these students proving that there will be no detriment to learning using eBooks. This optimism obviously begs continuing research.” - Prof. Richard Ballaver and Nicole Adams, Ball State University
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:07 PM
August 26, 2006
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
I don't know, but maybe they were going for an aerial view here? Every page I looked at in this book is badly done. Is this what some of the top libraries in the world want done with books that are nearly 200 years old? And when Willis A. Boughton donated this book to the Harvard libraries in 1933, did he expect the book to be manhandled this way? I go back to an earlier post I wrote, reflecting on how the president of the University of Michigan gushed about the role of Google Books in historic preservation. Did it ever occur to anyone that Google might know how to build a search engine, but they might not have a clue about how to handle and digitize books?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM | TrackBack
August 20, 2006
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
The thing I have noticed, scanning so many pages of Google Books, is that when the scanning of a book starts to go wrong, it goes very, very wrong.
But, hey, they've got hyperlinks!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:06 PM
August 16, 2006
Cracking PDF
Over at PDFZone, Don Fluckinger has a great piece about the re-emergence of ElcomSoft as one of the good guys--or not.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:50 AM
August 13, 2006
Dear Sony: Please listen to Jane...
If you have a keen interest in eBook markets and technology, you really should follow the TeleRead blog. This weekend it has a number of fine entries, including Dear Sony: Please listen to Jane about your eBabel problem—if you want to woo romance readers. The advice applies to all kinds of readers, including romance readers.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:38 PM
August 12, 2006
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
Check this out. And then the frontispiece photo, where they apparently failed to notice--or failed to do anything about--an overlay over the page. Once again, Project Gutenberg does it much, much better.
UPDATE: It also occurs to me that Google Books does nothing for the visually impaired, but other eBook efforts do.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:37 AM
August 11, 2006
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
Oy vey. Start here, and keep paging forward. Maybe the person scanning this book was drinking.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:15 PM | Comments (1)
August 10, 2006
Wise advice to Amazon
Adobe's Bill McCoy and TeleRead's Michael Banks weigh in on Amazon's new push to have publishers use the bookseller's Mobipocket format.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:15 PM
protectedpdf
On behalf of a client, I sat through a demo yesterday of a DRM technology, protectedpdf, from Vitrium Systems. I was impressed. It embeds the client right in the PDF file, eliminating the requirement for a separate plug-in or client download. It also showed an impressive flexibility about the types of business and use models you could implement. For example, one use showed a marketing white paper where you could view the first few pages of the PDF, but then had to enter personal information (name, address, email, etc) in order to view the rest of the white paper. I didn't dig in too much, but I liked what I saw.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:18 PM
But Did Anyone Bother to Check if Google Has a Clue?
University of Calif. Joins Google Book Scan Push
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:54 PM
August 6, 2006
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
One could guess at what this page is supposed to include on it, but, then again, maybe not. All of which makes this sound like a good idea.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:22 PM
Improving eBook Reading
Jon Udell has a practical suggestion for improving the reading experience with eBooks.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:00 PM
July 26, 2006
IDPF OCF 1.0 Updated
According to an email I received today:
An updated version of the Open eBook Publication Structure Container Format (OCF) 1.0 specification has been posted on the IDPF website. The updates to the specification were made based on IDPF member and public comments received to date during the current IDPF Member and Public Review. The review period will end on Friday, August 4th. The IDPF strongly encourages feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether IDPF members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of IDPF work. Feedback on the draft specification can be provided here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:55 PM
July 25, 2006
Sony Breaks Its Silence
Sony has been very quiet about their new eBook reader since an initial spate of publicity. But just today I received an email with a few details (not many really). I am reproducing the email here.
I continue to be underwhelmed by their marketing efforts. I contacted their PR folks after the initial announcements last December, and again a month or two ago. Still no word from them.
=================================================================
PICK A NICE SPOT FOR YOUR LIBRARY.
=================================================================
Thank you for your patience and for requesting updates on the
Sony(R) Reader, coming this fall, in time for the holidays.
It holds about 80 electronic books, is as easy to carry as a slim paperback and thanks to electronic paper, just as easy to read. Just load it up with tons of great electronic books from CONNECT(TM) eBooks, and you'll never read the same way again.
Explore the portable reader here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
EASY READING
Breakthrough technology provides clarity that's almost paper- like. View from nearly any angle and adjust text size to your
preference.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PERFECTLY PORTABLE
It's lightweight, thin, and holds about 80 books. More with optional memory cards. So take your own mini-library wherever
you go.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
LONG BATTERY LIFE
The rechargeable battery allows you to turn up to 7,500
continuous pages on a single charge (when not providing audio).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CONNECT EBOOKS
Designed with variety in mind, CONNECT eBooks will have over 10,000 titles online. You'll find many of the latest bestsellers and a deep catalog including more than 15 categories and over 100 subcategories. From mystery to history, sci-fi to self-help
and more, you're sure to find something to fit your taste.
- Sample titles that will be available at launch.
At Risk
by Patricia Cornwell from Putnam.
Number 9 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best seller list.*
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner from PerfectBound and Harper Collins.
Number 2 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list.
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown from Anchor and Random House.
Number 7 on the New York Times Paperback Fiction best seller list.
Digging to America
by Anne Tyler from Knopf Publishing.
Number 23 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best seller list.
- Categories that will be available.
Biography
Business
Entertainment
Fiction and Literature
Games
Graphics
Health, Mind and Body
Mystery and Thrillers
Nature
Politics and Government
Resources and Reference
Self Help and Improvement
Science Fiction
Technology
Thrillers
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:22 PM
July 17, 2006
eBooks Done Well
Andrew Pace, head of information technology for the North Carolina State University Libraries, likes what he sees from Springer's new eBook platform. You can check out SpringerLink for yourself here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM
Google Books Stupid Page of the Day
I subscribe to an RSS feed from Project Gutenberg, which tells me about titles that have been added to their library. One caught my eye today, Fairies and Folk Tales of Ireland, by William Henry Frost. Check out the Frontispiece art, which is just below the fold when you open the eBook. Now check out the same image on Google Books. Heck of a job, Google!
UPDATE: Goodness. What happened to this page? And this one? Those darned verso pages.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 7, 2006
Amateur Hour at Google
The more I look at Google Books, the more dismayed I am. Check out the following book about Nathaniel Hawthorne, An Analytical Index to the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: With a Sketch of His Life. Start here, and then scroll back a page. Why don't they just throw up on the scanner and reproduce that instead?
And what to say about this page? And this one? Do the people at Harvard know their books are being manhandled like this?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 24, 2006
More Progress on Digital Publishing Standards
I've discovered a blog, written by Bill McCoy, who is General Manager, ePublishing Business, at Adobe, and therefore keenly interested in the eBook business. He weighs in on some recent announcements from the IDPF.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:48 AM
