Posts tagged E books at Switched

Posts with tag e-books

Amazon's Kindle 2 Coming Early Next Year

by Kaiser Hwang, posted Nov 29th 2008 at 9:14AM

Remember those leaked Kindle 2 hardware shots from a while back? Well, they're real, but the rumored release date of sometime this past October is obviously wrong. Well, it was rumored to be correct, but sources are now reporting that the new release date is Q1 2009 due to Amazon head Jeff Bezos wanting a few changes in the software.

The Kindle is one of those strange devices where the high concept is fantastic: an eBook reader that ties directly into Amazon's huge selection of ebooks with a built-in (and free) 3G connection, courtesty of Sprint. Hell, even Oprah loves it. But the questionable design, lack of support for open and common ebook formats, charge for converting files not sent to your default Amazon email, and useless cellular connection when abroad (or in Montana or Alaska, strangely enough) have limited its appeal. Oh, and it costs $400.00.

We've personally been using Sony's eReader, both the PRS-505 and the new PRS-700. While they both lack a data connection and have a smaller selection of books available in Sony's online store, the ability to freely copy over PDFs and other document formats, as well as including support for everything from Adobe Digital Editions to the standard ePub format, makes Sony's readers a bit more palatable. Plus, the PRS-700 has a touchscreen and built-in LED lights for about the same price as the Kindle.

The ebook market is only going to grow as time goes by, so Amazon better have an ace up its sleeve if it wants to be the king of digital reading. [From: Engadget and TechCrunch]

miBook Electronic Cookbook Offers Step-By-Step Video Recipes

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 17th 2008 at 8:57AM

miBook Drags Cookbooks Kicking and Sceaming into the 21st Century

Companies has been trying to dream up a "kitchen computer" for years. HP has been pitching itsTouchSmart as a cook-friendly information center, computers have been crammed into refrigerators, and we've even tried out the OLPC as a 21st-century replacement for the cookbook.

The problem is, all these items merely put words on a screen, and don't actually offer anything that a physical cookbook doesn't -- until now. The miBook (pronounced "my book," don't ask us) is dragging your culinary tomes into the modern era, and all without asking you to drop a month's rent on a new gadget. The miBook has a 7-inch screen for displaying video instructions to guide you through the creation of a meal and stops automatically after each step, giving you a chance to replay the action. So, if you don't know how to, say, chop peppers for some sort of dish, then you can just copy what the miBook's video shows you.

The miBook also offers "how-to" multimedia videos -- which come on a little SD memory card -- on gardening, home repairs, pregnancy, parenting, and travel. It's $130, though, which you'll presumably get back by saving money on all those cookbooks you won't have to buy (or so the theory goes....).

Continue reading miBook Electronic Cookbook Offers Step-By-Step Video Recipes

Google to E-Publish Out-of-Print Books Online

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 11th 2008 at 8:42AM

Google Strikes Deal to Sell Out of Print Books Online

Google Book Search, while an impressive tool, has faced numerous roadblocks and lawsuits that have prevented it from reaching its full potential. Many books that have no existing copyright are available from the search giant's library, as are textbooks from many universities.

Things may finally be turning around for the company, which has a stated goal to index all of the knowledge in the world. Last month, Google settled its long-standing lawsuit with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for $125 million. Now, Google has struck a deal to offer electronic versions of copyrighted books that are out of print.

This means that the contents of the New York Times Best Seller List still won't be available for free perusal via Google, but many hard-to-find books that have fallen out of print will once again be available for sale.

The landmark deal is still awaiting approval from the courts, but seemingly overnight Google Book Search has gone from a good (if naive) idea, to what Neill Denny (editor of trade publication The Bookseller) called the largest bookstore in the world. [From: New York Times]

New Yorker Magazine Offers Digital Edition

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 5th 2008 at 12:10PM

Last week, the editors of The New Yorker unveiled an online, digital edition of the magazine, PaidContent.org reports.

While The New Yorker has been offering excerpts of the magazine in digital form for some time now, those articles were only made available online to coincide with the print edition's arrival in mailboxes and on newsstands. As of the most recent issue, the digital edition will arrive in e-mail inboxes just after press time.

A payment of $39.95 will get you a one-year subscription to the digital edition, which includes access to The New Yorker's online archives, dating back to 1925, the year of the magazine's founding.

That the 83-year-old publication, a bastion of traditional magazine journalism, has so fully embraced the digital age could very well be described as nothing less than momentous. We're just waiting to hear about the newest run of The New Yorker cartoons, complete with Flash animation. [From: PaidContent.org]

Google to Publish Books Online

by Will Safer, posted Oct 29th 2008 at 3:22PM

Google's next foray into content delivery won't be video or music but books – and the Web search company isn't talking about selling the latest Nicholas Sparks best-seller to be read on a dedicated digital reader. Instead, Google will be working with publishers and authors to produce online-only books that will be read on the computers that consumers already have.

While Sony and Amazon would have you believing you need a special device just to read a digital book, Google co-founder Sergey Brin says a computer monitor does the job just fine. "You don't have to look at it at a funny angle, and today's monitors have better resolution than ever."

Four years ago, Google's Book Search project began scanning out-of-print books – a seemingly smart thing to do and a good service for people trying to track down some old, maybe unpopular tomes. But publishers responded with lawsuits, claiming Google was infringing on their copyrights. Since then, Google has also scanned in-print books and included links for consumers to buy the whole book when they find a work they like.

This time around, after agreeing to settle the suit for $125 million, Google is working with the publishers to make sure everyone involved gets their due. Court approval of the settlement is expected for summer of 2009, and that's when authors who have registered with Google will be able to make their books available. The authors will set the price and get about 50-percent of the sale. Out-of-print books still under copyright will be easier for publishers to arrange for sale on Google Book Search, so you might not have to dig so hard at the used book store or the library for a missing novel or poetry compendium. [From: USA Today.]

Is Oprah Ditching Books for the Amazon Kindle?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 24th 2008 at 11:11AM

After making sure that Obama will win the next election with her golden touch, Oprah appears to have made it her task to sell an overwhelming amount of Amazon Kindle e-book readers. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, will be the guest on today's episode, in which Oprah will apparently talk about her new favorite gadget, and we don't think she's gonna be talking about the rabbit.

A trailer on Amazon features clips of Oprah talking about her "new favorite gadget," which she called "life changing." The video doesn't actually say what the gadget is, but the Financial Times's Chris Nuttall says it could be the Kindle, which makes sense since Oprah is an avid reader and whatever she recommends on her show or puts in Oprah's Book Club usually sells through the roof.

Tune in at 4pm today for confirmation that Oprah has bestowed her grace upon the device. Hey, maybe she'll give out a free Kindle to everyone in the audience. Oh, and Amazon, please don't ever use the phrase "what it is" ever again. Thanks. [From: Financial Times, via Silicon Alley Insider]

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'Moby Dick' Shows Up on Twitter -- 140 Letters at a Time

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 28th 2008 at 2:09PM

Twitter, the social networking site/service with a strict, 140-character limit for status messages (known as "tweets" in Twitter-speak), has sprung to huge popularity lately as more and more people want to share what they're up to right this minute. We've also seen how the service/site has helped some people to share information about disasters, but now one Twitter user has come up with a rather interesting use for the service: He is twittering the entirety of Herman Melville's classi novel 'Moby Dick' -- 140 characters at a time.

'Moby Dick' clocks in at a little over 200,000 words. Each tweet (a single Twitter post) is coming in at around 20 words or so, meaning something like 10,000 tweets will be required before (spoiler alert!) Ishmael and the whale have their mighty confrontation. No Cliff's Notes here. [Source: Twitter]

German Publisher to Publish Print Version of Wikipedia

by Will Safer, posted Apr 24th 2008 at 4:57PM

Make room on your bookshelf for Wikipedia.

German publisher Bertelsmann will publish in September a printed, bound version of the German Wikipedia, compiling and condensing the most referenced entries on the German version of the popular collaborative reference Web site.

"The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia," will carry a price tag of 19.95 euros, or about $32.

The German version of Wikipedia has about 750,000 separate articles. 'The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia' will have about 25,000 entries, each about 15 lines each, and the whole book will be about 1,000 pages.

Wikipedia online is a constantly updated, collaborative effort, so the book version is intended to be a snapshot of the current interests of German users. Bertelsmann assigned a staff of 10 people to identify which articles would be included, condense them, and then do a round of fact-checking. This last point may be interesting to readers who know that Wikipedia is sometimes criticized for allowing bad information to appear on its pages. The German Wikipedia site, however, is regarded as the most accurate of all the Wikipedia sites.

Bertelsmann will give one euro to to Wikipedia for every copy of the book that is sold. [Source: The New York Times].

Darwin's Complete Works Now Available for Free Online

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 22nd 2008 at 11:12AM

Thanks to the U.K.'s Cambridge University, Charles Darwin's complete works are now available for free online at the Web site Darwin-Online.org.uk. The venerable institution has digitized more than 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images by Darwin, and made them all searchable. Only about 50% of the materials that will ultimately be available in 2009 -- the bicentennial of Darwins' birth -- are currently online.

Some of the materials on the site have never been published or transcribed before, such as Darwin's field notebook from his voyage to the Galapagos. The original notebook was stolen in the 1980s, and the version online has been transcribed from microfilm. Other works first published by the site include the 'Journal Of Researches' (1839), 'The Descent Of Man' (1871), 'The Zoology Of The Voyage Of HMS Beagle' (1838-43) and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the groundbreaking 'Origin Of Species.' In addition to Darwin's own writings, the online catalog will feature supplementary texts about Darwin, including contemporary views, references, obituaries and recollections of his life.

All of this is impressive and points toward the future of digital libraries and digitized resources. However, we hope that online resources of the future won't look like a public library homepage circa 1995. While we don't judge a book by its cover or anything, we think such a monumental undertaking deserves a bit more flash, and we mean that in every possible sense. [Source: Darwin Online, via BBC]

Amazon Kindle Hacked, Leading to More E-Books for Readers

by Tim Stevens, posted Dec 13th 2007 at 8:54AM

Kindle Protected Files Hacked, Still Protected

Just a few weeks after its release, the Amazon Kindle has already had its DRM cracked. DRM is of course Digital Rights Management, the bane of many legal digital music download users. DRM is applied to the Kindle's files to keep users from simply sharing digital versions of books, magazine, and newspapers with friends.

Surprisingly, the new DRM-breach doesn't enable enable users to subvert that DRM and share those files. Instead, the development has expanded the library of file types that are readeable on the Kindle. Currently, the Kindle uses a modified version of the MobiPocket file format, created by a French eBook company that was purchased by Amazon back in 2005 when the Kindle was just a twinkle in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' eye.

But Reverse Engineering's Igor Skochinsky, the developer behind the DRM-crack, has discovered is that it's possible to take existing MobiPocket files and modify them to be viewable on the Kindle, something that was previously not possible thanks to the MobiPocket DRM. This means that the already reasonably impressive library (90,000 titles) of Kindle titles is now even greater. This is good news for readers, but some of the steam of this discovery was let out with word that Fictionwise, a major e-tailer of MobiPocket eBooks, is also now letting you directly download files in Kindle format, even for books you've bought in the past!

Anyhow, for other MobiPocket files that aren't going to be converted for you, Reverse Engineering provides a few scripts you can try to get them Kindle-ready

So what does all this tech-developer intrigue mean for you? More digital books for you early-adopting e-readers ou there -- -- assuming you managed to get one of the things to read them on.

From Reverse Engineering

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