e-books Australia

NB: Archive pages are in general preserved in toto. Accordingly, outdated links on archive pages are not updated.
However, they may be deactivated if no longer working. In the latter case, where the links were represented
in words and not URL format, the previous existence of such links will no longer be apparent.

E-BOOK ARCHIVES

Vol.1, No.4, February 2001

Vol.1, No.5, June 2001

Vol.1, No.6, October 2001

Vol.2, No.1, January 2002

Vol.2, No.2, April 2002

Vol.2, No.3, August 2002

Vol.2. No.4. November 2002

Vol.2. No 5, February 2003

Vol.2, No 6, June 2003

Vol.3, No 1, December 2003

Conferences, Events, Festivals, Forums, Seminars,Talks etc

*Developing and managing e-book collections, a Workshop
John Rylands University Library, Univ. of Manchester, UK. Wed. 2 Feb. 2005.
Presenters: Ray Lonsdale, Reader in Info. Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, & Chris Armstrong, Director, Information Automation Ltd.
Topics included the meaning of the term e-book; the range of e-book publishers and aggregators and the nature of e-books available; an understanding of how e-books are being used for reference purposes, reading, and in support of learning & teaching; advantages and disadvantages of the medium; collection management issues associated with bibliographical control, selection, acquisition, access, licensing, and archiving; and the different ways of promoting awareness and use of the e-book format. A day was barely adequate for such a range of goodies. http://www.ukeig.org.uk/content/public/activities/meetings/02feb05ebk.html

*7th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL 2004) Dec 13-17 2004.
Everbright Convention & Exhibition Centre International Hotel, in always international Shanghai, China.
The theme was: Digital Library: International Collaboration and Cross-Fertilization. Speakers included: Prof. Zhang Xiaolin on Metadata in Digital Libraries; Prof. Hsinchun Chen on Knowledge Management Systems: Development and Application; Prof. Ian Witten on Building digital libraries using open source software & Prof. Erich Neuhold addressing Context-enhanced Digital Library Services. http://icadl2004.sjtu.edu.cn

*E-books: how to make them work School of Business Information John Moores University, Liverpool UK, Wed.10th Nov. 2004. A seminar from the Multimedia Information and Technology Group (North West). Included a case study of consortium purchasing of e- books & their impact on an academic community (e-books from the NOWAL perspective, by David Whitehurst from the University of Manchester); a JISC presentation (from Carolyn Rowlinson Deputy Director, Stirling University Library); & an insight into some current e -book research (Linda Ashcroft, Reader of Information Management, Liverpool John Moores University).

* Exploring Digital Books and Content - an Audiobook & E-Book Expo. From the Alliance Library System & the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center, East Peoria Illinois USA, October 29 2004.
The latest in web-based ebook management systems, handheld players, and collaborative projects; exhibits and ideas. Speakers included the legendary Tom Peters, currently of TAP Information Services addressing Audiobooks Past, Present & Future; Steve Potash of Overdrive & OeB on The Future is Here: Libraries Delivering Audio and Video Content Over theInternet; Jenny "the Shifted Librarian" Levine on Introduction to MP3 Players and Other Handheld Devices for Librarians and Judy Dixon on The Digital Talking Book Project at NLS, Digital Magazines & Web Braille. Plus Jane Chamberlain, Sharon Ruda, Diana Sussman and more. Recordings of some of the proceedings are available, in audio format, natch – at: http://www.mitbc.org

* 8th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) 2004 Sept.12-17 2004 University of Bath, UK. Edward Fox (no not that one, the one from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) chaired a session on Digital Library Architectures; Ian Witten (University of Waikato, New Zealand), who seems to be getting around a bit lately, chaired another on Music Digital Libraries, while James Davenport (University of Bath, UK) got all close & thingie with Personal Digital Libraries. Oh, and yes there were a few mainland Europeans with something to say too. Proceedings will be via Springer, but the rest is at: http://www.ecdl2004.org

*Second International Conference on the Future of the Book 29-31 August 2004, Beijing Friendship Hotel, Beijing, China.
Yes, one conference on the future of the book, even if it was held in glorious Queensland, was definitely not enough. For this second one in a growth industry, the overarching theme was Challenges & Opportunities in the Digital Era. Naturally (well hey, he pays my wages) the guest speaker lineup was headed by John Shipp, the e-tuned head honcho at the Library of the University of Sydney, speaking on: Australian Higher Education Initiatives in e-Publishing.

And in addition there really were so many more fascinating & provocative speakers, of whom a goodly – no let’s face it stupendous - number were also Australians (e.g. Joanna Brown, Tony Burch, Patrick M. Callioni & Lorraine Connor; not to forget Lisa Gye, John Kennedy, Dr Kurt Lushington, Diana Marks & Paul Mercieca, (with Mike Ottoy Oz-unattributed). More still: Drs Lynne & Dale Spender , Pearl Tan, Sherman Young, Dr Margaret Zeegers, & Dr Pat Smith. Why not just declare “The e-future is Australian” & be done with it? Sorry, a touch of delirium there. Better just refer you straight to the website at:
http://book-conference.com/index2004.html

Oh, and the third conference, by the way, will be at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK from Sunday 11 September - Tuesday 13 September 2005. You can find their natty, book-based webpage at:
http://book-conference.com

Electronic Resources and Electronic Publishing Tilburg University, the Netherlands, 10- 13 August 2004. Talks included: The future of e-publishing and the role of universities in the value chain by Professor Hans Roosendaal of the University of Twente (that's fair dinkum); Trends in e-publishing by Prof. Donald King (University of Pittsburgh); & Do Libraries DARE? by Leo Waaijers. We hope they do. http://www.ticer.nl/04elres

*8th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ElPub 2004) 23 - 26 June 2004, University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil, from the International Council for Computer Communication (ICCC). Theme was: = Building Digital Bridges: linking cultures, commerce and science.
http://www.elpub.net

NB: All ElPub digital papers that are freely available may be found at: http://elpub.scix.net

* The Digital Library and e-Publishing for Science, Technology, and Medicine CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 13 -18 June 2004. Addressed: changes in the information chain; new roles of publishers on the Internet; the library as the information gateway/ as publisher; licensing options; library consortia; electronic preprints; document servers and institutional repositories; reference linking & more. Rick Luce was in his element provoking discussion on a Swiss cheese board of tasty topics. http://www.ticer.nl/04stm

* Libraries in the Digital Age 2004: (LIDA) Interuniversity Center, Don Frana Bulica 4, 20000 Dubrovnik & Island of Mljet, Croatia, May 25-29, 2004. Human Information Behaviour & Competences For Digital Libraries was the challenging theme. Our original Croatian URL (http://knjiga.pedos.hr/lida/) had problems at time of press, but you can surely obtain a PDF download in English or Croatian from: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00002816

Don't forget Read an E-Book Week, March 6-12 2005

Australian News

What's all this phone-e stuff?

From Perth, Western Australia, we received an announcement in October 2004 that highlighted both the current flux in the nature of e-readers and the increasing market share of the convergence phone/PDA device. Ebook.com supremo Stephen Cole reported that his Ebooks Corporation had entered into a five-year distribution agreement with the renowned Nokia Corporation of Finland, to distribute electronic books via a new generation of smart phones. Indeed these Nokia users will be able to find, buy, download and read books directly from their handsets.

Which raises the issue- should we even still call such mobile devices telephones anymore? If a device can connect to the Web; find, buy & load books for you and allow you to read them; function as a PDA; send written (well kind of) messages; take photographs and send them to your friends; possibly make coffee and who knows what next, do we have any business continuing to label it a phone (from the Greek word meaning voice or sound)? The cumbersome alternative description "convergence device" may be technically useful, but it's hardly a compelling phrase. Perhaps the brain-numbing speed of evolution in this area will call forth a whole new name soon. Suggestions, anyone? Techster is not acceptable, Jason & Melinda.

Nokia convergence phone with Dan Brown e-book

Pressing On - Uni. Publishing goes Digital

Representatives from the digital presses of Sydney, Monash and the Australian National universities met earlier in 2004 to discuss possible future cooperation. All are treading different paths at present, and the directions cooperation may take are still unclear. While SUP is treading the Lazarus trail, Monash & the ANU are both newbies in a still fledgling Australian university digital imprint movement. However an initial agreement between Sydney & Monash calls for Monash to forward POD (print on demand) requests for books to Sydney to handle, while Monash will deal with electronic journal print requests.

ANU: Their digital press had 9 titles in print when launched in May 2004, and has a non-commercial philosophy. Moreover ANU aims to develop more as the "Eprints ANU" repository than an e-press, and indeed has a finger in another important pie called APSR, the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories. APSR in turn is an initiative funded by the Australian Federal Dept of Education, Science & Training (DEST), & involves the ANU with Sydney Uni., the University of Queensland and the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing. See:
http://eprints.anu.edu.au

Monash: By contrast Monash aims to be a commercial undertaking, with a schedule of releasing its first book and other material in November 2004 and aiming to then "go for it". They're looking for "a sustainable electronic publishing model" providing for "the identification and pursuit of commercial opportunities" in order to field the best of their scholarly material, particularly in the humanities and social sciences fields, ASAP.
http://epress.monash.edu.au/index.html

Sydney: Sydney University Press is itself long established as a physical imprint (1962), but ages ago became moribund. It was mourned or pilloried, according to conviction, as a sad contrast to lively and impressive contemporaries such as the vibrant Uni.of Queensland Press, QUP.*

However the SUP name was re-registered in 2003, and by reinventing itself as a digital and print-on-demand (POD) operation SUP hopes to thrive again. If it succeeds, it will be thanks especially to the dedicated efforts of Dr Creagh Cole, director of the library's pioneering SETIS digital project, & Innovation & Development Manager Ross Coleman. An initial number of titles have been released with some fanfare (25 classic Australian works & 3 SUP backlist titles), although lack of funding for additional staff positions makes a rapid expansion of the press a moot issue at present. See:
http://www.sup.usyd.edu.au

Meanwhile a larger meeting in Melbourne in 2004 between the Australian National University (ANU), Melbourne University, Monash, RMIT University, the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the University of Western Australia (UWA), and CSIRO publishers resulted in the formation of the Australian Scholarly Electronic Publishing Group. With Cathrine Harboe-Ree of Monash as foundation convener, the group has formed task forces to examine the various faces of scholarly electronic publishing with a view towards a broad national strategy.

*QUP, by the way, (or UQP if you prefer) is still mulling the e-question, although the University's newfangled Cybrary, a library that includes 296,000 e-books, suggests it will be no slouch once a decision is taken. In fact UQL's Cyberschool programme is already providing teachers and students in Queensland primary & secondary schools with access to a variety of quality electronic resources for teaching and learning.

City of Sydney Digital Encyclopedia
The new City of Sydney Council, headed by the redoubtable Clover Moore, is reported interested in developing a web-based Encyclopedia of Sydney. They're also said to be interested in a print-on-demand angle to the proposed long-term digital project. Sydney University Press (SUP) may become involved, and a initial meeting has already been held to discuss the prospect.

Southern Cross flutters over Hanoi

It would have been inconceivable in '74, but thirty years have healed the wounds of some old wars, even while a subsequent generation of leaders have been busy opening new ones elsewhere. The news - that a wholly Australian-owned tertiary institute has opened a campus in Hanoi, Vietnam.

According to a report by the Vietnam News Agency, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's new RMIT University Viet Nam, Hanoi, will cater for 650 students and offered a B.Com degree course from October 2004, with software design, information technology and multi media courses to follow, plus the inevitable Master's Degree in business management. RMIT have been in Ho Chi Minh City (the township formerly known as Saigon) since 1998, as the first foreign university to open in postwar Vietnam. Indeed the "Royal" recently received Vietnam's "Golden Dragon Prize 2003" for education, an award for foreign businesses that achieve industry excellence.

Of interest to this newsletter is that the Hanoi students will have access to an e-library of 15,000 e-books plus 500 databases. Moreover the campus will have a full wireless network, so that students will be able to read their e-texts anywhere in the University on a handheld computer or PDA. Which puts them immediately on a par with leading Australian universities. A lesson the "developing" world is learning is that when you start from behind, it's easier, paradoxically, to go straight to the front rank with an appropriately modern mindset.

CAUL wades into Open Access River

CAUL, the Council of Australian University Librarians, entered the Open Access controversy in 2004 by signing an agreement with BioMed Central, a leading Open Access provider. Seventeen Australian tertiary institutions will become members of BioMed Central as a result. Each member institution will pay the article-processing charges for its staff when they publish in any of BioMed Central's peer-reviewed journals, meaning that Australia tertiary researchers in the biomedical field can both publish for nothing, & have their work freely and rapidly available as e-text on the Net.

The Open Access movement has arisen as a result of the crisis in scholarly publication, caused in part by a steep rise in recent years in the cost of subscriptions to commercial academic publications. The primary benefit of Open Access is that it provides free online access to research, including peer-reviewed research, and may also have additional immediacy by avoiding commercial publication delays.

The rationale behind many existing commercial charges for web access to e-text has been called into question in recent years. And various constraints on such access have been strongly condemned. These existed naturally in the physical print world, but have been artificially introduced into e-publication, to the intense annoyance of librarians, academics & students alike.

Of course, wherever publication of e-works occurs there are genuine costs. Moreover an "Open Access" situation also creates its own new dilemmas. If for example individual academics - or their institutions - end up paying the real costs of scholarly publication, instead of a commercial publisher incorporating them into subscription fees, where does this leave the researcher or institution unable to afford this expense? Now that the blame game is on in earnest, it may be that richer institutions or governments will have to directly subsidise their poorer brethren, or Open Access may end up replacing old sins with entirely new ones.

BioMed Central has already signed agreements with at least five U.S. consortia, making the movement a significant one in the USA and of growing importance in other areas, not the least by the powerful example it is setting. Since 2002 the organisation has garnered more than 400 institutional members and publishes over 100 peer-reviewed journals.

As a result, just as the philosophically-related Open Source software movement has induced even the secretive Microsoft to release some of its source code into the public arena, Open Access has already caused several major commercial suppliers to revise their former "ours under copyright forever" dog-in-the-mangery, and make at least some older research freely available as a universal Web resource.

******

Editorial

I'm holding in my hand a portable Omni colour DVD player, which cost only $A299 as a store-opening super special. It'll play MP3 music too, or allow you to view Jpeg still pictures. Overall it looks suspiciously like a mini laptop computer, and although this one lacks the necessary software a future model could easily be adapted to become a formidable multimedia e-reader as well.

Now look at the phenomenally successful iPod, from Apple. Marketed essentially as a music centre (obtain, store, play), the various models ranging in price from US $249 to US $599 have sold more than 5 million units to overwhelmingly younger users in little over a year. The iPod will also allow you to download third-party e-reader software, or read directly through its Notes function. Thus it can double as an e-reader, even if far from an ideal one. This single device alone provides a huge boost to the number of young people who can potentially e-read on the go.

Another recent handheld theme has been the rampaging success of the clumsily-named convergence device, something that is a mobile phone*, PDA, e-reader and even camera all in one. It's part of a broader trend, in which the distinctions between desktop and mobile computing, still and video cameras, single and multiple media possibilities, & unique and merged communication capabilities have all become blurred, and may even melt away in future. And the multi-function phone's potential is expanding rapidly - for example Samsung's new SPH-V5400 phone, restricted to Korea so far, includes a 1.5 GB integrated mini-hard drive.

What has been happening lately is that the hidden synergy of all things digital is finally roaring into the mainstream. A device can now double as a file transfer or storage machine as easily as it can take photos, show movies, play music, compute, display books or images or be a means of communication with persons or networks near or far. The digital world is no longer a dawning dream, it's now here with bells on.

This website both reports the e-news as we see it and sets out some individual points of view. In particular, we chronicle the bewildering kaleidoscope of available e-readers, while continuing to advocate an inexpensive, universal, dedicated, open format device as a thoroughly desirable goal for both education and the consumer market. At the very least, such a reader could serve as an entry-level introduction to e-books for both students and the general reader alike.

Meanwhile, events have their own, often unexpected, momentum. Who could have predicted a few years back that book-sized e-readers would long languish while Palm-sized devices prospered mightily? It will be a brave or foolish person who today makes a confident prediction as to what will be the leading device used for e-reading in as little as three years time.

That does not mean that opportunities should not be seized boldly now. The future does not just happen, it evolves, heavily influenced by the efforts of the convinced and tireless, and especially of those with a broader vision and a keen sense of moment.

So just as the masses happily buy 1.2 megapixel digital cameras while serious photographers look on in horror & demand much better, an adequate, inexpensive, essentially single-purpose e-reader may yet be a future roaring success for the cost-conscious of the earth - who are an awful lot of people, after all. If the better-heeled demand a "portable media centre" with lashes of trimmings, and get it more & more cheaply in the years ahead, then a simple e-reader could be given free to students, and "free" also to adult consumers willing to subscribe to a modest book plan.

Such bold steps are needed if e-reading is to achieve even a small fraction of its huge potential within a reasonable frame of time. So who is willing to step forward and lead us from the digital book dawn into the e-book day?

Omni 7.2" portable DVD player

Previous readers are aware that it's been quite a while since the last newsletter. With other interests and commitments competing for time, maintaining quarterly editions has proved too difficult (unless someone pays us to do this!). So we're only describing the newsletter as "periodic" from now on. We do hope to bring you some interesting additions to the website during the year though, including a few original e-books that we'll take the initiative in introducing (even if other sites host them). So do check from time to time here at www.e-book.com.au to see what's new.

* Let's hope the ubiquitous mobile phone doen't turn out to induce brain tumours or other nasties.

International News

Afghanistan

A more welcome Bush Administration export to the third world than bombs and bullets is e- books to Afghanistan. The venture is to provide women there - long purposefully kept in ignorance by the reactionary Taliban and scarcely more progressive warlords - with primary public health information. These ones are based on the LeapPad, more usually known as a user-friendly combined e-reader/book device for children.

The e-books are an interactive combination of images and Pashto & Dari text, and 20,000 will be issued by health clinics with the aim of improving the health of women and their children. They are paid for under a US government grant through the Health and Human Services Dept, in cooperation with LeapFrog Enterprises of Emeryville, California. And not a Halliburton in sight…

Out of Africa

A recent event was the Fifth Ghana International Book Fair, held in the capital, Accra, on 9th-14th November 2004. In launching the run-up to the fair, Ghanaian Deputy Minister of Education, Youth & Sports Mr. Joe Donkor called on publishers to ensure that African books will penetrate the markets of developed economies. Interestingly, he added that he hoped the fair would show strides made by Ghana in the area of e-books development.

In conjunction with the fair there was also a national reading competition for elementary school pupils. It's a concept already promoted here by for example NSW's premier Bob Carr, with the pancreatically depoliticised Mark Latham having done a worthy trot of reading to children during the year past as well. Meanwhile, Australia's youngsters are now, it would seem, permanently infected with SMS syndrome - the texting disease. Pidgin English is a doddle compared to Textlish. So when will we see a politician promoting the e-reading of real words?

On a more serious note, a report out of Washington DC announced that a new "Hope on Africa" project, to help combat the consequences of the African HIV/AIDS epidemic, would include the dispatch of 60,000 solar-powered e-book devices to assist teachers across Africa.

Meanwhile from Kano, Northern Nigeria, local e-book enthusiast Auwalu Diso has been in touch with this newsletter to report presenting a seminar in December 2004 entitled “A Comprehensive Guide To Electronic Books”, for tertiary institution teachers at the northern state level. The event reportedly attracted much interest. Mr Diso has also started publishing a free local newsletter called "e-Book Source."

Arabian e-books

Most Arab nations have lagged in the e-area, although penetration of for example PDAs in the Gulf States has leapt ahead in recent years. And we won’t even refer to whose sons were famously filmed using US brand-name handheld devices (I could say a lot more there, but hey, too many people are trying to kill me already, at least as a Web contributor).

Now Saudi Arabia has leapt into e-learning in earnest, prompted by an education ministry decision to grasp the electronic future. And December 2004 brought the cheery news that King Abdulaziz University now boasts some 16,000 e-books. With King Saud University in Riyadh reportedly leading the adoption of e-learning in its curriculum, King Khalid University is expected to follow suit over the next twelve months. Meanwhile the Arab Open University has 12 e-learning based courses, while a pilot e-classroom project has begun in five Riyadh secondary schools.

Most educated people who don’t go round invading other people’s countries know that Arab civilisation and learning was once the glory of its age. Indeed the mathematics of the Greeks, advanced medical knowledge and many other cultural and scientific treasures might have been lost altogether if not for the past diligence of Arab scholars, who of course gave us a system of numbers far superior to the clumsy method of the Romans, a wealth of beautiful architecture and much else. Let’s hope the future brings an impressive revival of Arab learning, and the eclipse of obscurantism on both sides. And if e-books have a part to play in that, then let’s all be very proud indeed.

Artmedia's ePublishing News has reminded us that the Microsoft Reader eBook Catalogue site has been updated. Providing a centralised catalogue claiming to list all identified Microsoft Reader format (.lit file) e-book titles, both free and for sale, the site certainly has many, many thousands. You'll find basic bibliographic information for each plus the book jacket, with a link to the actual title or a portion thereof in the case of freebies. For books for sale a link goes instead to a list of online retailers. A bonus for those browsing the Web with a PocketPC (Windows OS of course) is that this site will recognize your browser & feed you a simplified webpage version. Check it out at:
http://www.mslit.com

Canada eyes better devices for Visually impaired In April VisuAide Inc., a Canadian developer of digital audio book readers and other products, announced a $13.1-million R&D project for the development of "innovative digital devices for persons with visual disabilities". Throwing in boodle to assist are Technologies Partnerships Canada, with an investment of $3.9 million, and Canada Economic Development, with $800,000. The object is to further the adoption of affordable technology for the blind and visually impaired.
http://www.shc.ca/rp/visuaide

Meanwhile a revised & expanded version of the Project HAL (Handheld Accessible Libraries) report was released in the USA. The new version now profiles and reviews seven devices for digital talking books and other types of digital audio content used by print-impaired individuals. The latter include blind, visually impaired, physically challenged, or dyslexic persons. Read the report at: http://www.tapinformation.com/links.htm

E-specially yours, the Author

Signs that US authors, at least, foresee a greater role for e-book sales in the future came in June 2004, with a recommendation to members from the (American) Authors Guild. The Guild urged members to focus on e-book royalties during contract negotiations. Noting that that Random House's new e-book royalty rates had been reduced from 50% (the best rate offered by a major print publisher) to 30% or less in most cases, Guild president Nick Taylor stressed that "E-book royalty rates will matter".

He also warned of a new danger in that large online retailers such as Amazon.com may be able to command steep discounts from publishers as the price for reaching its customer base. Said Mr. Taylor: "Authors have to take care that they don't wind up paying for that." This was because discounts of 65% often trigger "high-discount" clauses, which shift most of the burden of the added discount to the author by drastically reducing royalties. Read more at: http://www.authorsguild.org/news/urges_members_negotiate.htm

IEEKS - there's a million of them out there

The first month of 2004 brought news from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) that they'd posted their one-millionth online technical document. What fashionistas might call a perky little pixelated number in pure silicon was more soberly, "Novel Frame Buffer Pixel Circuits for Liquid-Crystal-on-Silicon Microdisplays", published in the Jan. 2004 issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

IEEE must be the best place in the world for technical documents, unless four million downloaders are all wrong. And the Institute is also responsible for stuff like the Wi-fi standards (see Wi-fi below). By the way, access to IEEE's online documents is available through institutional subscriptions, by individual online article purchase, or through subscriptions available to IEEE members. The one-millionth online document however may be read for free (in PDF format) by the few who might understand it at: http://www.ieee.org/products/onlinepubs/news/0104_04.html

E-xempt

Korea announced last year that from July 2004 e-books would be exempt from value-added taxes, in sharp contrast to the European Community, which slapped the dreaded VAT on their previously untaxed e-book sales… Meanwhile an earlier report (May 2004) said that leading Korean e-book company Booktopia is now selling more e-book downloads to mobile phones than to PDA's - five times as many in fact.

New E-book Society aims high

It's about time we mentioned the E-book Society. Formed in London in Dec. 2003 by "a small group of writers, academics and computer scientists", the society's website was launched in March 2004. The group has quite a number of aims, including developing an International E-Publication Identifier Code (Iepic), the creation of an online database for e-publications, and the creation of a free library. But most especially they're interested in promoting "the e-books of the future", by which they mean enhanced digital titles that offer a lot more than the mere reproduction of printed text (think multimedia and interactivity).

The society's goals are very ambitious, & whether they attract enough membership, interest and financial support to realise them remains to be seen. Still, the initiative itself is a bold and dynamic one, and ginger groups such as these are probably essential if the e-book future is to arrive sooner rather than much later. http://www.the-ebook-publisher.com/joining01.htm

Flip Far from a Flop

From Singapore in November 04 we heard that the Japanese online media developer Softbank has bought 10% of Singapore-based electronic media specialist E-Book Systems, in return for a US$3 million cash injection. E-Book Systems are the Digital Flip people, & their Flipviewer e-reader software has been downloaded off the Web by an impressive six million people so far. The two companies plus two private investors have also joined in a venture called Kabushiki Kaisha (E-Book Systems KK). The latter will focus on the Japanese and Korean markets, & is already involved with the Japanese subsidiary of Toys R Us in developing a subscription site for children's picture e-books.

See me, hear me, watch me, read me

From Megan Leach of Canada's www.cnews.canoe.ca website comes interesting news about a new form of digital book. We all know you can either read an e-book (i.e. a text file), or listen to an audio book version (deriving from a sound file). Now a Florida company, AV Books Inc. of Lighthouse Point, is offering both in the one hit. Their books, recorded on CD-ROMs, appear on screen synchronised with an audio narration of the text. In fact the text sections even highlight as they are narrated.

The books can be used on any computer that includes or is linked to a CD or DVD drive. But as well, since the audio is stored on the CD as MP3 files, the sound alone can be downloaded to a portable music player such as an IPod, or the disc itself played in an MP3-CD player. To prevent unauthorised copying by those ubiquitous burners, the buyer has a unique username & password, which must be used in combination with a copy serial number located on a label inside the CD case of each legal copy.

You can adjust the speed the audio text is read to you, while the e-reader software included on the CD-ROM presents the book in a format identical to a printed version, including turnable pages and a colour dust jacket. Bookmarks, highlighting, search and print functions, are all available too. Voice recognition programs can also be used to operate the book experience.

The combination of oral and visual text could make the novel "AV book" a winner in education, particularly at the elementary level. And of course among the sight-impaired it might also prove popular as an experience they could share with the fully sighted. For example a grandparent of failing sight could still absorb a book equally with a child.

For the ordinary sighted reader though, there are several possible benefits. You can either just listen, or turn off the sound & just read, at a whim, a switcheroo not normally available in other media. At the practical level you could interrupt your visual reading to deal with a multiplicity of mechanical tasks while continuing to hear the text uninterrupted. Having an educational text read to you might also help you "get" points that your eyes were missing.

And most comforting, when your eyes get tired you could just turn on the sound, close your lids and continue to experience the spoken text, a feature that might just make this a boon for travellers or those confined to bed. View the site at:
http://www.avbooks.com

Audiovisual e-book

As e-books continue to make headway, new initiatives confirm their significance. For example during 2004 Cornell University began to trial an Internet-First Publishing Project. As the name suggests, Cornell's scholarly publishing now first appears online instead of in physical print. Students can then print out the academic texts if they wish, or pay a fee to order an "official version with high-quality printing". Such print-on-demand cut through the high costs traditionally associated with low-run academic works.

E-books in the UK

Books are a big deal in Britain, traditionally more of a reader nation than some other Western states. Indeed the total UK book market was worth around three billion pounds sterling in 2003, which in a country of around sixty million population translates to about fifty pounds spent on books each year for every man, woman and child. With resident titles like Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, the Brits are not short of native best-sellers either.

Still, only around 6% of the UK book market consists of books sold online, to a value of about £215m in 2003. And of that only a small fraction again were e-book sales. Online book sales are growing though, with Amazon's UK subsidiary (Amazon.co.uk) leading the push. And the specifically e-book share of that market may yet boom, since in the education sector Government bodies are providing a strong impetus for online resources and e-texts.

An example of this was a recent agreement signed by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) and Thomson Gale publishers. JISC has led the way in stimulating e-book projects & studies in Britain, and the agreement - in which every UK tertiary institute will be able to freely access twenty-one top electronic reference titles in perpetuity - is an early fruit of their efforts.

Public and academic libraries too are testing the e-book waters on a large scale. Companies already supplying either text or audio e-books to UK public libraries include ebrary, the Gale Virtual Reference Library, netLibrary, OverDrive, Safari Technical Books and Audible.com. Libraries have also learned the power of consortial purchase. For example the North West Academic Libraries consortium NoWAL spent £500,000 to purchase 12,000 titles from netLibrary in 2004 - the largest collection of e-books in Europe. Two other consortia, Co-East and Co-South, are at present involved in e-book pilot projects. And Manchester University has made every book published in English between 1453 and 1800 available online for its students.

A problem with UK e-books is that many publishers there are resistant to the concept. This point was highlighted when Darren Waters of the BBC News Online's entertainment staff interviewed the Australian founder of global e-bookstore ebooks.com, Stephen Cole, during 2004. Mr. Cole complained that where e-books are concerned "Publishers in the UK have been much slower off the mark than publishers in the US", and were less interested in backing the concept. For example Random House UK had them in theory, but listed only twenty-six on its site, the most recent added two years ago.

However smaller publishers may yet lead the way. The Bookseller reported in September 2004 that small publishers in the UK have pledged to support industry-wide initiatives to adopt electronic trading, following an Independent Publishers Guild seminar on the E4Books project, which outlined plans to make the book publishing industry "fluent in e-commerce" by 2008. Obviously if publishers become comfortable with the Web and e-sales, it can’t be forever before the penny drops concerning the sale of e-titles.

Where many UK publishers do seem to see an e-book future at present is not in general reading but in educational texts. This actually fits well with some early e-book theory, where major development in the educational market was predicted by some to precede rather than follow a more general mass consumer acceptance. The student always lugging heavy loads of textbooks around is ideally placed to benefit from a lightweight alternative with instantly searchable text and other benefits.

Stage left, to their own devices?
Certainly, if there were to be a cheap or free e-reader issued to UK students in connection with their studies, then those same young people might also spearhead e-reading in the broader population later in life. There is no agreement however on how portable texts are to be read in UK education (as indeed everywhere).

Some see the high quality but expensive laptop as the most likely device, others the cheaper small PDA/handheld computer, or the newer combination phone/PDA. Never properly explored in Britain is the original concept of a book-sized dedicated e- reader requiring little computing power and modest outlay.

While the discontinued Rocket eBook was certainly a pleasing and indeed admirable e-reader, a similar model is once again available (albeit temporarily only in the USA & Canada), in the form of the EBookwise 1150. Another such device - but more technically advanced - also exists currently in the Sony Librie. The Librie, featuring a premium book quality display and superior power-saving technology, was released in April 2004 in Japan. However it remains tied there to a restrictive access model and an exclusive proprietary book file format. Those factors at present doom that device to be merely a means of accessing rentals of a limited proprietary collection of books, a bit like the "circulating library" membership of times long past.

New devices similar to the Librie with advanced book-quality screens are likely to be available relatively soon. Speculates one e-book pioneer, "If you had a large enough order for a Librie type device, or even an eBookwise - say for a million school kids - you could obtain them for US$50 each, issue them for free, & save the cost on cheaper updateable e-texts rather than the expensive printed variety. It's amazing in fact that no-one has so far tried to do this."

Such a concept would require both government backing and agreement on several thorny questions (e.g. Which device? Which text format? What copyright/DRM arrangements?). Such a strategy is not inconceivable for the UK education sphere however, if the will to do it were there.

In the more general reader market, concepts such as the $0 e-reader device tied to book purchase over an agreed period, on the mobile phone "plan" model, have yet to be tested anywhere in the world. Such possibilities remain wide open for a venture by a fearless private entrepreneur. However the education e-reader is an idea requiring only high-level political support to be feasible. It would be a true feather in John Bull's hat if after all the brouhaha elsewhere about Britain having become an American lapdog, the UK were actually to lead the e-way in the West.

Ground control to Major Tom, your book's unread, is something wrong?
Or, new and as yet rare uses for e-books

Okay, so you're a Luke Skywalker clone lazily circling the sinister planet Necromuncher while lunosynching behind a convenient moonlet, waiting for a gap in the Imperial Defence Net so you can zap down to the surface and daringly do derring-do. And you're bored and want to read something, but you've already perused ad nauseum the one p-book they allowed you to bring (& that was the emergency manual). All right Lukealike , what to do now? Why read an e-book of course!

Actually, it's already happening. Earth station did indeed beam up e-books & music files to US astronaut Air Force Lt-Col. Edward Fincke, who left terra firma on 18 April 2004 from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome, for a six month sojourn on the International Space Station. And the same for Russian cosmonaut Gennady I. Padalka, who was also issued an e-reading device.

And what did they read their books on? Initially all we heard was "a handheld computer ". Oh coyness, what private virtue or undisclosed marketing agreements lie concealed in thy bosom? But subsequent press releases were more forthcoming. The e-reader in question was actually HP's iPAQ Pocket PC, now in use by the Expedition 9 crew aboard the International Space Station, where the handy HP's will also be used to record daily crew procedures, write personal memos and check email and calendars.

Edward & Gennady's space reading matter was not the only free out-there publicity for the iPAQ. Down on the ground at NASA's Johnson Space Center and Russia's Star City Space Centre the iPaq h5550 devices are being employed "during the training process and to evaluate new applications for future flight crews to use".

Moreover the cosmic iPaqs were left on the space station after Fincke returned from his mission, and will be reconfigured for each new crew. Even more exciting for HP, their CEO Carly Fiorina has been appointed to the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. Glowed Alex Gruzen, a senior VP at HP's Personal Systems Group: "HP is driving mobile computing to new heights with leading-edge technology, enhancing the astronauts' productivity and helping them sustain a personal connection to life back home." It would be fair to guess that HP's trad. reputation for reliable equipment (my six year old HP printer is the only piece of all my PC-related manufactures that has never malfunctioned) probably paid a major part in its selection.

Cynics however note that, as opposed to Palm OS devices, all Pocket PCs of whatever make run on Windows, & that NASA is too careful to actually run space flights themselves on incarnations of the famous software that has cornered the market in "mixed emotional response" (& it sure as heck burned me up again recently). Imagine venturing away up there in space in a distant quadrant of the galaxy, & receiving a message that MS will no longer support the operating system that's keeping you up there? Or worse, receiving an update patch that actually decloaked your protective shield? Um. Reminds me of the report of a certain US naval vessel that .. OK let's not go there, the US feds hate me enough as it is…

Space Ipaq

Who's Reading What?

Best selling e-books for 2004

Now that the full year’s statistics have been compiled we can pass on a list of last year’s best sellers from the Open eBook Forum (OeBF). Headlining in fiction is the fact that it was a Dan Brown year, the controversial author taking out the top three spots with The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and Deception Point.

Also worth noting is that e-book revenues for the third quarter of 2004 were up a solid 25% to US$3.22 million over the same period in 2003, with individual copies sold up 11% to 419,962 units (meaning that people were willing to spend more on individual titles, reversing an earlier trend). While the statistic shouldn’t quite set hearts a flutter given the low base figure it is nevertheless encouraging, & a tap on the nose for those who persist in claiming that e-books “died” some while ago. On the contrary, some would say that we’re just revving up the motor slowly before really getting started!

Incidentally the OeBF’s figures are not exhaustive, quite a number of smaller players not being represented, but they are the best presently available (the latest quarterly figures include statistics from eBooks.com, eReader.com, Fictionwise.com, Mobipocket.com, OverDrive & nearly twenty other retailers and distributors). And here, with thanks to OeBF Executive Director Nick Bogaty for permissions, is the top thirty e-book bestseller list for 2004:

eBook Bestsellers

1. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown Doubleday $14.95
2. Angels & Demons, Dan Brown PocketBooks $6.99
3. Deception Point, Dan Brown PocketBooks $6.99
4. Digital Fortress, Dan Brown St. Martin's Press $5.99
5. Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear Del Rey $6.99
6. Holy Bible, New International VersionInternational Bible Society Zondervan $14.99
7. I, Robot ,Isaac Asimov Spectra $4.99
8. Electronic Pocket Oxford English Dictionary & Thesaurus Value PackOxford University Press $19.95
9. Darwin's Children, Greg Bear Del Rey $6.99
10. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate DictionaryMerriam-Webster $25.95
11. The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren Zondervan $15.99
12. The Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason Dell Publishing $17.95
13. State of Fear, Michael Crichton HarperCollins $19.95
14. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate ThesaurusMerriam-Webster $16.95
15. Letters to Penthouse XIX, Editors Of Penthouse Warner Books $5.95
16. The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach Broadway Books $14.00
17. Pandora's Star, Peter F. Hamilton Ballantine $9.95
18. The Year Ahead 2004, Susan Miller Barnes & Noble Digital $9.95
19. God's Debris, Scott Adams Scott Adams $4.95
20. Prey, Michael Crichton HarperCollins $7.99
21. The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? Hank Hanegraaff, Paul Maier Tyndale $4.99
22. The Medici Dagger, Cameron West PocketBooks $5.99
23. Foundation, Isaac Asimov Bantam Books $4.99
24. The Procrastinator's Handbook, Rita Emmett Walker Publishing $5.00
25. Song of Susannah, Stephen King Scribner $19.95
26. Electronic Pocket Oxford English Dictionary Oxford University Press $18.00
27. The Dark Tower, Stephen King Scribner $19.95
28. The Big Bad Wolf, James Patterson Time Warner $5.95
29. Against All Enemies, Richard A. Clarke Simon & Schuster $14.94
30. The Art of War, Sun Tzu PDM Classics $2.95

Meanwhile, what are library patrons reading?

This brings up an interesting point. If you don't have to pay for a book, do you read something different from what you might buy? Or are those who mostly use libraries different in their reading habits from those who mostly buy their books? A worthy field of study. In the meantime, here's a list from US-based Overdrive.com, a large e-book wholesaler to libraries, of their ten most borrowed e-books for the first half of 2004.

1. Dude, Where's My Country? -- Michael Moore
2. The 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People -- David Niven
3. The Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook -- Michael R. Eades, et al
4. The Big Bad Wolf -- James Patterson
5. How Would You Move Mount Fuji: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle -- William Poundstone
6. 3rd Degree -- James Patterson
7. The Lovely Bones -- Alice Sebold
8. 101 Best Tech Resumes -- Jay Block
9. Left Behind - Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
10.1984 -- George Orwell

Over at Questia the most-read e-books were different again. Questia is a commercial online library based in Houston, Texas, and fields around 50,000 books and close to 400,000 articles. It's pitched mostly at students of the secondary, undergraduate and postgraduate varieties, as well as educators and private researchers. Because of Questia's search based access in which pages rather than entire works are the primary means of reading their figures are derived from individual borrower "page views" adjusted for the length of a work. Here's their July 2004 list.

1. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. U S Govt Printing Office, 1979. (months on list = 20)
2. Dracula , by Bram Stoker, Maud Ellmann. Oxford University Press, 1996. (months on list = 1)
3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , by Mark Twain. P.F. Collier & Sons, 1920 (months on list = 2)
4. Encyclopedia of American Parties, Campaigns, and Elections , by William C. Binning, Larry E. Esterly, Paul A. Sracic. Greenwood Press, 1999. (months on list = 1)
5. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 , by Robert Middlekauff. Oxford University Press, 1985. (months on list = 1)
6. Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies , by Richard L. Davis. Praeger, 1998. (months on list = 25)
7. The World of the Autistic Child: Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders , by Bryna Siegel. Oxford University Press, 1998. (months on list = 16)
8. Leadership for the Twenty-First Century , by Joseph C. Rost. Praeger, 1993. (months on list = 25)
9. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction , by Damien Keown. Oxford University Press, 1996. (months on list = 21)
10. The Importance of Learning Styles: Understanding the Implications for Learning, Course Design, and Education , by Serbrenia J. Sims. Greenwood Press, 1995. (months on list = 13)
11=. Lies!, Lies!!, Lies!!! The Psychology of Deceit, by Charles V. Ford. American Psychiatric Press,1996.(months on list = 4)
11=. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , by Mark Twain. P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1912. (months on list = 2 )
13. Iliad , by Homer, Stanley Lombardo. Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. (months on list = 5)
14. A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner, M. Thomas Inge. Chas. E. Merrill Publishing Company,1970 (months on list = 7)
15. Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality, by Lynda Gratton. OUP,1999. (months on list = 15 )
16. Classroom Management: Sound Theory and Effective Practice , by Robert T. Tauber. Bergin & Garvey, 1999.(months on list = 4 )
17. Racism: A Short History , by George M. Fredrickson. Princeton University Press, 2002. (months on list = 4)
18. Ethics, the Heart of Leadership , by Joanne B. Ciulla. Praeger, 1998. (months on list = 7)
19. Human Behavior in Today's World , by Waris Ishaq. Praeger Publishers, 1991. (months on list = 7)
20. The Clinton Legacy, by Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman. Chatham House 2000.(months on list = 2)

Some Net libraries did well last year

By the end of 2004 Web e-book supplier netLibrary (now an subsidiary of the huge OCLC library cooperative) fielded a collection of more than 40,000 e-book titles, from more than 300 publishers. Of course that statistic would mean little without customers, but in fact more than 5,500 libraries and organizations were accessing netLibrary e-books by then, making the netLibrary model both a stayer and a grower.
http://www.netlibrary.com

Questia meanwhile, grew a great deal too. (By February 2005 it boasted over 50,000 complete books, more than 119,000 journal articles and over 159,000 newspaper articles). Indeed it claimed to be the world's largest online library of books and journal articles. All selected by librarians too! Imagine that. http://www.questia.com

A good 2004 year was also had by ebrary (which increased its customer base by more than 63%). By early 2005 the company offered more than 60,000 titles, including full-text e-books, reports, maps & other documents, from more than 200 publishers, made available to over 500 library customers in 60 countries. CEO Chris.Warnock also reported technological improvements and enhancements to the ebrary searchable database model, the Dynamic Content Platform(dcp).
http://www.ebrary.com

Palming off a name

What's in a name? With all due respect to the late great Bill S., quite a lot actually. Especially in an era when "branding" is the concept being used to sell not only goods and services but even foreign policies, Presidents, and whole nations, by a certain high-powered fraternity of global smoothies-for-hire. So recent moves by the Palm family of companies are a puzzle indeed at first sight.

The Palm name is so well known and respected that you'd think that the Palmies would want to stick like glue to their popular moniker. It's not that long since this newsletter tried to clarify all the various Palm name permutations - now instead they're disappearing fast.

The company delivering Palm content, now called PowerByHand, announced in June 2004 that its Palm Digital Media electronic book store has been renamed eReader.com. The former PDM carries over 13,000 titles and already leads the e-book retail field.

Not stopping there, the Palm Reader software, which comes in half a dozen varieties & can be used on both Palm and Pocket PC devices as well as Windows and Macintosh notebook and desktop computers, has been relabelled as simply the eReader. It still hails from the company called PalmSource however, and the Palm devices themselves still come from palmOne, although we're not certain that won't change too. All up it’s a big positioning gamble by Palm in its market struggle against the Microsoft backed PocketPC.

But why throw away the advantage of a well-known & respected name? Apparently, to pitch yourself in a broader way, as software and content that is more nearly universal rather than associated with just one operating system. That way, if the Windows OS devices or even third players were to win the PDA hardware wars (in which phone combination devices are an increasingly large player), then content & software previously associated with the " Palm" name could still compete equally.

An example of the new Palm strategy in action came in August 2004, when the Palm now called PowerByHand purchased a European mobile content portal, Munich-based Mobile2Day.de. Mobile2Day.de has 6,000 Symbian applications and some European cross-platform content. Palm has been surprised at the continuing strength of its loyal European customer base, and evidently sees Europe as a valuable expanding market for future, more broadly pitched software & content.

Palm's new catholicity is an interesting "bob each way" strategy. Loyalists however object that it's rather less than a vote of confidence in previous customers, to whom the Palm brand, like the Apple Mac in the world of computers, is often as much a declaration of where they stand philosophically as it is a consumer purchase.

PS: Sony's decision to can the Clie in America, and reports that the Clie might be junked altogether in the not-too-distant, throw an even stranger light on matters Palm. The eclipse of the Clie has meant that around 90 percent of Palm software is now produced for Palm branded devices, making the recent separation of PalmSource and PalmOne seem, well, a pointless palm-off. Let's hope hairs on the palm are not involved in all this.

Going, Going, Going... the Sony Clie

Google This!

December 2004 brought the news of Google’s massive commitment to an e-book scanning project that will add dramatically to digital text content available on the Web. The owners of the world’s most popular search engine will partner with heavyweights the New York Public Library, the UK’s Oxford University, and Harvard, Stanford and Michigan universities in the USA for the ambitious new project.

Michigan University alone will permit the digitizing of more than seven million titles over six years, with Stanford and Oxford committed to a similar all-out effort. Harvard and the NYPL have taken on more modest pilot projects. (Harvard’s book Depositry will furnish forty thousand little-used titles to the plan). The actual work will apparently be done by Google employees. Details of file format and other technical issues have not been disclosed, although the material will be presented as image files.

Titles digitised will be added to the fledgling Google Print database. There will be individual library links to titles, and parallel links to allow purchase of a book. Out-of copyright material will be available as full text, although printing will not be possible.

Meanwhile copyrighted texts will not be available to read –instead just basic bibliographic information will be accessible. So the scheme is not the “universal Web public library” that some assumed, nor could publishers ever allow it be so without cutting their own throats further down the line.

Naturally enough, such a mammoth effort requires some assurance that all this data will be as future-proofed as possible. After Google supplies participating institutions with a digital file, it’ll be up to participants to do just that. While Stanford will rely on a standard of three copies on regularly-checked magnetic tape cartridges, Michigan is invoking precious metal with a plan for gold CD-ROMs estimated to last at least three centuries (let’s hope that CD players are still around then).

Critics have questioned whether it is feasible to do all the scanning & digitisation at the rate announced, and we too are sceptical. However, whatever is actually achieved will nevertheless represent a major advance, and undoubtedly foreshadow greater projects to come.

A potential downside is that some financially strapped great libraries may now sit on their hands as regards their own digitisation projects, hoping for a future offer from Google or a rival to do it for nothing. And who could the rivals be? Yahoo in partnership with the British Library, or Microsoft in a deal with the US Library of Congress have been two supersized suggestions out there. Although there is no evidence yet to suggest that those are other than idle speculations, obviously competitive ambitions cannot be discounted. Indeed, the mentality of corporate culture is such that the boldest moves often inspire copycat manoeuvres in fairly short order.

Another thorny issue is that many Librarians have realised that their focused collections of unique, copyright-free material – which can be quite substantial in the case of many leading or unique institutions – are potentially saleable in digital form, and possibly might prove lucrative. In any event, it’s a huge step to make them freely available anywhere in the world. The risk is that they may devalue their significance for their “core clientele” (on whom their funding may be based), or even risk undermining their own raison d’etre if anyone on the Web can access their holdings for nothing. Where idealism clashes with survival issues, will libraries opt to restrict or evolve, or simply perish? Money will talk somewhere in all of this, but whose language will it speak?

One thing’s for sure. When e-books have the weight of Google and some of the world’s leading libraries behind them, who can doubt that the e-book era is truly dawning? The day that follows – heralding the eventual worldwide availability of all published texts at any time through an Internet connection – although of course you’ll have to pay for copyrighted titles and perhaps some other material - will be the greatest development in the history of the book since the printing press. It is as inevitable in the end as it is magnificent in concept. The text, universal and digital, will be liberated to the status of human birthright.

Library News

EBL launch a triumph of cooperation

In our last issue we reported that the Ebooks Corporation, aka ebooks.com, would be launching an eBook Library platform (EBL), designed primarily for academic and research libraries. In June of this year EBL was duly announced as up & running at the American Library Association's annual conference.

Options available in EBL's lending models include multiple concurrent use, unlimited access and short-term circulation. As well, individual e-book chapters can be set aside for reserve lending or be included within course packs. Then there's online and offline access, read aloud, and document delivery solutions. All in all a thoughtful package from a library point of view. Indeed advisers to the deal have included a number of universities & libraries & Oz's very own CAUL (the Consortium of Australian University Libraries/Council of Australian University Librarians).

The EBL collection is now reported to comprise content across all subject areas, focusing initially on recent publications, mainly in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM). Providing heavyweight clout to EBL are academic publishers Taylor and Francis, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Kluwer and World Scientific Press.

Distributors Blackwell’s Book Services and Dawson Books have signed partnership agreements regarding content for North America, the UK and Australia. Indeed EBL e-books are to be integrated into Collection Manager, Blackwell's web-based collection development and acquisition system, so that Blackwell's customers can browse and purchase e-books along with their other orders.

Publishers will likely appreciate EBL's innovative publisher interface, called Pi. For Pi, Nielsen BookData will supply a helpful Dynamic XML service from its international bibliographic database. The result -instead of the daunting data-entry task of providing up to thirty items of metadata per book when submitting new electronic titles, publishers will be able to simply enter an ISBN and Pi will do the hard yards for them.

Let's hope reality and theory will merge seamlessly in this bold new venture.
http://www.eblib.com/

Hong Kong University Library is now providing wireless catalogue & digital resource access to its authorised users throughout the university's campus. It's a service called Library@Hand, & is customised to Palm PDAs.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, February 2004 saw the launch of an advanced digital library for students of the Open University of Malaysia (OUM). Electronic resources include 24,000 e-books, 35,000 e-journals plus online databases in the disciplines of humanities, social sciences, science and technology. The general public, including primary and secondary school students, researchers and businesses, may also participate for a fee, with short-term daily membership available as well.
http://www.oum.edu.my

New Zealand Libraries Go Digital en masse

One of the broadest national consortia ever formed has arisen from a survey sent to NZ libraries in mid 2002 by the National Library of New Zealand, which also rejoices in the Maori title of Te Puna Mâtauranga o Aotearoa. The NLNZ survey sought expressions of interest in establishing a digital purchasing consortium, and advice on the best way to do so.

In the wash-up, 164 libraries agreed to participate, to purchase access to a range of full-text electronic resources that would be available to everyone in the small but frequently progressive South Pacific nation. The NZ Ministry of Education also helpfully agreed to fund all school library access to the e-resources for the first year of the venture.

The scheme was launched in February 2004, with resources provided by international library vendors Gale and EBSCO. The buzzword of the project is information democracy, so the resources purchased will be accessible via the Internet from not just libraries but also the schools, homes and businesses of the country's far-flung population.

The collection includes many local and international full-text journals and magazines, while photographs and graphics are another focus area. And biographies. Kiwis are for some reason keener on biographies than any other form of writing. But with illustrious alumni like LOTR director Peter Jackson & Mt Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hilary, as well as many sporting figures and rock stars (the latter usually exported across the Tasman for larger success), they'll have quite a few interesting local ones to choose from.

Glowed Library & Information Association of New Zealand/Aotearoa (LIANZA) President Mirla Edmundson, “This is an amazing opportunity… It puts the library and information sector on the map as innovative and enterprising, while demonstrating we are a profession interested in actively delivering information into the libraries, businesses, schools and homes of the country.” National Librarian Penny Carnaby agreed, saying that the initiative was a spectacular example of Kiwi ingenuity and community spirit. “Although there have been many attempts internationally to form across-country purchasing consortia for electronic resources, very few have actually made it to fruition," she added.

New Zealand, known jocularly in Australia as the "Shaky Isles" for its earthquake prone nature, now looks to adding electronic adjectives to its many international descriptors. So in reverence we promise not to tell any jokes about binary sheep.

Quotable
"Until the equally ridiculous extremes proposed by both sides converge, eBooks, like everything, will bog down in a morass of industry fears and consumer entitlement complexes. We'll need a great eBook reader with trendy clout and not just livable, but convenient, DRM to really break open the market" . An online comment by a Mr Sanford of Dallas, Texas

Devices

*Economists are often only accurate or useful to any significant degree as economic historians, and there are many good reasons for this. One of these is the habit of many practitioners of this arcane art to believe that "the Market" is some deus ex machina, or indeed a predictable force based on logical deduction. The truth is that far from being logical people can be very strange indeed in the way they spend their money, an activity which often relates heavily to fluctuating cultural preconceptions rather than what they can afford or sensibly ought to do.

Try to get a moderately affluent Aussie or American to spend as much on a meaningful painting as they would on a new set of golf clubs or a fashionable new mobile phone, and see how far you get. As far as e-readers go, do people regard "something electronic to read things on" as an item they will part with over $100 for? In most cases not so at present, unless it is described as a handheld computer, convergence device, or something else that is a contemporary buzz-word. Yet they might spend more than that on a mute & minor-function memory stick, which is bizarre, really. The prediction of this newsletter is that the dedicated e-reader will succeed best when it costs you nothing or very little up front, however you pay for it in other ways. Ignorance of this psychological aspect of marketing has likely cost the development of the e- reader years of delay.

*Meanwhile, 2004 saw a larger than usual slew of new models and devices in the crowded field of gizmos with e-reading capability.

The Sony Librie - is this the future of e-readers?

Headlining the new devices was the Sony Librie. The specs of this new entry (see below) are indeed impressive. However the huge disappointment here was that it was released only in Japan, and only as a means of accessing a restricted list of titles available only in a unique proprietary file type, for a temporary (two-month) loan. In other words, the Librie was whittled down to an electronic library card to a dark-horse collection, when with the right marketing approach (and perhaps an optional colour version) it could have been a whiz-bang device with the potential to take the e-world by storm.

Sony has responded to some degree to the criticism of how it has handled the Librie (not to mention its discomfort with the apparent low sales of the device). It now allows device owners to use software approved by Sony to convert Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, (X)HTML and RSS documents to the Sony BBeB format. Actually, RSS items & (X)HTML documents can be converted into BBeB text, but Word etc only into image files, a trap for many players

This improvement does mean you can have your own personal documents - and even some copyright-free books - on the e-reader as well as your BbeB loans. However you can’t have commercial texts there that aren’t from the device consortium’s own store, much less in other than its proprietary format; and that's precisely the limitation that helped doom the Gemstar devices.

Librie Factlets

Real name: Sony LIBRIé EBR-100EP

Price : ¥41,790 ( equivalent roughly to A $535, UK£215, US$405, in late January 05 currency).

Screen display quality: Excellent - seems like a physical book. Uses e Ink in a static display. The resulting reflective screen looks basically the same under all lighting conditions and viewing angles. Resolution is 170 pixels per inch (PPI), SVGA resolution = 600x800 dots.

Size: Offers a 6in screen (paperback book size). Text size may be increased up to 200 per cent with no visible deterioration in appearance. The LIBRIé is 13mm (about ½ in.) thick, & weighs a mere 300 grams (10.6 ounces) including case and batteries, being therefore lighter than most books.

Memory: 10MB inbuilt (c. 20 books) plus memory stick slot for up to 250 MB more.

Operating System: Sony Linux OS. Runs On: Motorola MX1 Dragonball processor.

Power source: E Ink itself uses very little power, so it's claimed that the four AAA batteries required will enable you to read about 10,000 pages. It's a pity that rechargeables aren't used though.

Colour version: Not yet. Maybe in two years time.

Audio/multimedia: Rear mono speaker, headphone jack.

File format: Exclusive proprietary BBeB (BroadBand eBook) format (will allow audio as well as text presentation).

Controls: Page forward and back, scroll menu.

Available content: The joint content suppliers are a consortium of Sony plus 15 major publishers and newspapers, an initiatitve called Publishing Link. Through their Timebook Town website they offer two-month single book loans at 315 yen each or up to five books a month for 210 yen each.

Access: USB 2.0 port for downloading. Books are first downloaded to a Windows PC, then transferred to the reader via that port or from a memory stick You may also transfer them to other devices & read them with the Librie LE for Windows ebook software.

Misc: Allows up to 40 separate annotatable bookmarks per book,, separate clipboard for further notes. Tappable built-in miniature Qwerty keyboard.

Extras: Three Japanese dictionaries, an encyclopaedia.

Sony LIBRIé

Return of the Rocket

Actually I must apologise for the inaccuracy of that headline. For what has been triumphantly resurrected (in December 2004) is not quite my all-time favourite e-reader device, the Rocket eBook, but rather its Gemstar successor the REB 1150, now reincarnated as the eBookwise-1150.

Past readers may recall our fervent advocacy of a sub-$100 book-sized device as vital to the prospects of the “cheap, universal, portable e-reader device”. I first drew up a design for exactly that as far back as 1992, and what a moment it was in January 1999 to hold a Rocket in my hands in Palo Alto, California. Admittedly the Rocket eBook was a bit heavier than hoped for, a flaw its successor has overcome. So imagine the dismay with Gemstar when with the Rocket's successor device the new owners raised the price, dropped the screen resolution and fatally restricted the content.

Where are we now? It’s a mixed bag. The eBookwise-1150 just cracks the price barrier at US$99, and has the same lower but acceptable screen resolution of the Gemstar 1100 REBs - indeed is the same device rebadged. It’s not totally DRM restricted (you can at least load your own Word, RTF & HTML documents), but it’s not exactly wide open either, with the old proprietary file type conundrum thrust in your face. But there does seem a determined push to get major publishers & leading content on board. The "EB-1150" file format, by the way, is designated as.imp. Without going sentimentally overboard, this model will probably ride a wave of nostalgia and frustrated desire to some immediate success, but the long-term prospects are much less certain.

The eBookwise website is an offshoot of popular e-book retailer Fictionwise.com, who are behind this rebirth (another e-publisher, Blackmask, has also added the format). The pleasing goss. is that Fictionwise are not just flogging leftover devices but plan future improved models. With E Ink now on the Librie and other high quality book screens in the pipeline, such a course would certainly appear prudent. By the way, the device is only available in the USA & Canada currently, so all the other keen "rest-of the world" lesser beings will have to endure frightful pangs of deprivation for the moment (but wot about us fan's what’s already got converter plugs then, Scott & Steve? Hmm?). Good luck to Fictionwise anyway. http://www.ebookwise.com

eBookwise-1150

Palms (by any name)

In April 2004 Palm released two new models, the Zire 31 and the Zire 72 (to succeed the Zires 21 and 71).

The PalmOne Zire 31 has to recommend it a record low price for a brand-name colour PDA. The screen resolution (160 x 160 pixels) isn't exactly great though in a colour device, and frankly this baseline model doesn't impress. If you gave one away for a present you might later feel embarrassed by the evident low performance of your gift, unless the recipient was say under twelve years old and easily impressed by any colour technology at all (unlikely when Gameboys abound and PS-2 and the Xbox are rampant).

But hey, if you have very little to spend and just have to buy something with the Palm name written on it, you can't avoid considering this 200 Mhz under-performer. It boasts, if that's the word, a modest 14MB of free memory, but does have a nifty hands-on five-way button to minimize awkward stylus use. You can also use it to look at photos in a degraded (that’s the right word) presentation. Naturally it includes the usual core PDA features, and its saving grace for a young 'un might be the ability to play MP3 music files. As a colour e-reader, ho-hum, we deserve better. That said, it works okay, and if your definition of great food is greasy stale chips, go for it. RRP: $A299 (Best Net price $A249)

PalmOne Zire 72

As they say, pay more get more. Works every time where the manufacturer is honest, & Palm haven't earned their good reputation by cheating people. At double the price of the Zire 31, you're struck here by both the features and the quality, with some caveats.

Bright, quick and sharp - in a word, high quality - is the only way to describe the Zire 72 screen. Forget the mere figures, the 320 x 320 pixels embarrass the Zire 31, there's no other word for it. A 320 Mhz processor makes a huge difference, and 24 Mb of free memory is a tidy slice more than the lesser model.

This device makes a pleasing colour e-reader, no escaping that. There's also built-in Bluetooth for those who want it, and you can work with or even create Word and Excel documents too. The Zire 72 hosts several additional capabilities such as movie playback, voice recording and an inbuilt slow-shutter 1.2-megapixel camera. The latter is OK for basic prints and setpiece snaps, though not of course enlargements, movement or anything fancy. More razzle-dazzle lies in the ability to take digital movies including audio, though the resolution is basic and you of course have to record them onto an SD card because of the memory size issue.

An irritant is the fact that unlike even the 31 model the Zire72 offers no protection for the glorious screen. Encase it or risk it. RRP was originally $A599, but by Christmas they were available for $499, & seen at $429. Compare to save, folks.

The Palm Zire 72

Tungsten T5 & friends

November 2004 brought the Tungsten T5, a Palm range-topper for "mobile professionals". Boasting 215MB of non-volatile memory storage, there's an excellent 320 x 480 colour screen, plus Bluetooth. And USB drive functionality as well. With a very credible Intel 416MHz XScale processor pushing it along, this is a heavyweight entry. A rechargeable Lithium Ion battery is good, and it supports SD, SDIO & MMC expansion cards. A built-in mono speaker, or stereo headphones (not included), allow you to listen to audiobooks or music MP3 & RealAudio. And of course you can read e-books galore on the quality screen, the whole deal running on Palm OS 5.4.

However the rapid arrival of the T5 makes one uneasy about how quickly it in turn will be superceded. For example, why no inbuilt Wi-fi? No cradle? Case an extra? And the 5.4 Palm OS is already yesterday's news. Whatever was Palm thinking? Anyhow, by Christmas 2004, with its Tungsten E sibling down to $A399, the T5 was retailing in Australia for around a pricey $A750 (look around for cheaper). Which at any rate is less expensive than PalmOne's $A987 Treo 600 Smart Phone, a PDA convergence device with digital camera to boot. The Treo would indeed need to kick at that price.

PalmOne Tungsten T5

Someone asked about the Tapwave Zodiac. We mentioned it last edition, but let's recap. Basically it's similar to the Tungsten T5, but with a gaming emphasis. There are actually two models, the modestly-memoried Zodiac 1 (32MB) and the Zodiac 2 (128MB). Otherwise it's ranged & priced about the same as the T5, with a screen identical in size & quality & a similar Palm OS version.

However the Zodiac has extra video & graphics capability (e.g. an integrated ATI Imageon W4200 graphics accelerator with FatHammer X-Forge 3D graphics engine), stereo sound & souped- up 1540 mAh rechargeable Lithium batteries to cope with all that. Running on a Motorola i.MX1 ARM9 processor and sporting a pressure-sensitive analogue joystick, this is definitely one meant primarily for the players. Nevertheless it has great potential for multimedia e-books too. Meanwhile they throw in the PalmReader software pre-loaded, & give you two e-books on the included CD. Amazingly the Zodiac weighs only 6.3 ounces. Tapwave hang out in Mountain View, California.

Ipaqs Galore

In July 2004, Hewlett-Packard emulated Palm and split their Ipaq Pocket PC product names into "business" and "personal" varieties. The business ones keep the Pocket PC moniker however, while the private consumer types are now to be known as Mobile Media Companions. Both types run with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC or for Pocket PC-Phone Edition as their operating system. (Note that the mobile" Windows 2003" is onto its second edition, so just as Windows 98SE was really Windows 99, the "2003" is more recent than it sounds, with useful improvements such as a better Pocket IE).

Top of the range overall is the IPaq Hx4705 Pocket PC, priced in the States at a very corporate $US649 (it debuted at an eye-popping $A 1,199 in Oz, but can be had considerably cheaper). Fancy features include a navigation touchpad and a blitzing 624 MHz Intel Bulverde processor. For wireless it has integrated 802.11b (Wi-fi) and Bluetooth. The screen is a bigger 4inch VGA display, and memory is 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM.

A little behind at $US600 in the States, but quoted at a steep $A1,244.00 in Oz (look for much better), comes the IPaq H6315, running on a Texas Instruments OMAP 1510 processor. Apart from less oomph it has a bit less of most things compared with the "705", including a 3.5in screen and 64MB of Flash ROM. But it glories in a built-in camera & a snap-on keyboard. Moreover the H600 series all have integrated GSM/GPRS too. We're talking phones here folks, in fact a historic first - the first Pocket PCs with triple wireless capability (Wi-fi, Bluetooth & conventional mobile phone capability all in the one device). There's IrDA too, and USB natch. But do note that it's a PDA/phone rather than the other way around, if phone appearance matters to you.

At the new Mobile Media Companion level HP has released two Rx3000 series models. They're driven by Samsung S3C 2440 processors and both have a standard 3.5-inch color screen. The top-end Rx3715 model is very multi-media oriented. With a handy 152MB of available memory you can even watch a little video on it - or read a crackerjack all bells & whistles e-book complete with sound and visual fury. Natch there's an inbuilt camera, albeit only 1.2-megapixels, and 802.11b Wi-Fi. Still, at a US price of $500 ($A799 in Australia) you'd expect all that for your money. It's more modest sibling the Rx3115 omits the camera and down-sizes to 56MB of available memory. Availability of the latter is uncertain as yet. Locally they were flogging a tweener RX3417 model for Christmas 04, with an available capacity of 96MB & including the1.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth & Wi-fi, seen at $A680 by the keen comparer. One wonders though if too many Ipaq models don't confuse more than anything.

Anyhow down the corridor there's also the cheaper Ipaq Rz1700 series, with entrants from both the business and personal divisions. In fact both the Rz1710 Pocket PC and the Rz1715 Mobile Media Companion are priced the same ($US279 in the USA, seen at $A388 locally), which I suspect may cause endless confusion. What's the diff. anyway? They both run with a 203 MHz Samsung 2410 processor, and a modest 25MB maximum of available memory, & for cheaper you don't get a camera or inbuilt Wi-fi. In fact only the software access emphasis seems to vary. A standard 3.5-inch color screen display, & a SD slot will keep you out of trouble for use as an e-reader though.

Ipaq rz1700 series

Axiomatic

HP's IPAQ (see feature article Ground control to Major Tom) was not the only PocketPC to have its trumpet blown in 2004. Reviewers also praised Dell's Axim X30 Pocket PC. The base model, with a 312MHz processor & 32MB of memory to go with a bright, sharp screen that won praise for the 240 x 320 display offered, was a relative steal at $A380. Up the scale was another model boasting Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, double the memory and enhanced security, at $A499. With these more than competitive prices vis-à-vis its rivals, one fully respectable reviewer went as far as to describe the Axim as "Still the Best Pocket PC Deal" around. There's also a high-end model with a fast 624MHz processor, but at that price point comparative advantage is no longer the key issue.

The Axim X50v model, released locally at the end of 2004, was by contrast a range-topper at $A849. A goodly 9.4cm (3.75in) screen offers appealing full VGA resolution, and there's inbuilt Wi-fi & Bluetooth, SD & CF slots, & even a collapsible wireless keyboard. Useful memory tops 150MB, 91MB of which is crash-proof non-volatile, while the device will not flinch before the high-pressure user with its gutsy 624Mhz Intel Xscale processor. There are lots of corporate-friendly features too, so this is road warrior delight territory. If the boss paid for it, don't let on that you're reading Dan Brown on it too, though. You're not supposed to have any spare time, remember? For financially-strapped executives there are lesser X50models down to $A599.

Dell's Axim X30 Pocket PC

Linux Devices

November 2004 also saw the debut of a new Linux-OS PDA from Sharp, the latest in the Zaurus line. Initially available only in Japan, this novel Sharp Zaurus sports an impressive 4GB hard drive. Running on the same 416-MHz Intel XScale processor as the one powering the new Palm Tungsten T5, the Zaurus offers a wundebar high-res. 3.7-inch VGA (640 by 480) screen, has 64MB of SDRAM, and 16MB of flash memory. It weighs 10.5 ounces, which is about 298 grams to those of us not imperially inclined or metrically challenged. With such a huge hard drive you can store uncounted oodles of text books or a fair bite of the multi-media variety thereon. So if the high Japanese price ($US730) for this little gem could be moderated, there may be significant demand, at least among the Linux fraternity, for a model for the Ferenghi.

And for lovers of Linux OS, we may have some surprising good cheer for you in our next update. A clue:close your eyes and hold out your Palm...

The Ipod as colour e- reader - praise be

Apple's stunning success with the iPod was a standout marketing achievement of 2004. Of course most people think of the device as a music centre. Less well-known is that it can also feature as an e-reader, by using the Notes function. That's assuming you're hardcore young, twenty-twentied & thoroughly at ease with the tiny, as otherwise the concept might seem a touch bizarre. But it's out there. There are now even, from Christian California, free downloads of three different text versions of the Bible available for third & fourth-generation iPods, plus purchasable audio versions.

Of course e-reading on the iPod was viewed as an afterthought by Apple, & if they really want to promote it they need to show a little more design interest in future versions. Indeed one Ipodiac on the Web called for Apple to get real and release an iRead device just for that purpose instead. With high resolution colour-screen iPods set to become standard for the larger models during 2005 (aha!), there's a secular inspiration tending to the divine.

Colour Ipods

I, Rowboat - the iRiver H10

What is this? The iRiver H10 is, well a device, that's for sure. It weighs a tiny 96 grams and can be more or less whatever you decide, apparently. Can it be used as a colour e-reader? Certainly, if a tiny 1.5in screen display is acceptable to you (it's high-quality anyway). There's no need to download software for reading either, as there's an integrated text viewer.

Or the iRiver can be an mp3 audio player/portable jukebox/radio (listen or record)/ picture viewer & miscellaneous media presenter. A startling 5 GB micro-drive makes for easy ubiquity. It's available from February 05 in four "elegant" colours & Bill Gates thinks it's great. (Well he's gotta be right once in a while). Actually it's not just a whim on his part, as the Korean-designed & built iRiver has Windows Media Player integration among various Microsoft benefactions (they also include a tie-in to Microsoft’s "Digital Media Hall", the MS counter-swipe at iTunes). Other features include a removable, rechargeable battery & built-in touchpad. The price? $A499 or less (less is best!), reported in the UK at £199.00, and America $US280.

The goss: They're planning an even smaller one, the H10 junior. No bigger than a cigarette lighter they tell me, with a "mere" 2 GB of memory & 60 hours' battery-operated playback. You'll see it first in fact at the CeBIT 2005 show in Hanover, Germany, 10-16 March 2005.
http://www.iriver.com

iRiver H10

We won't review the Creative Zen Portable Music Centre, as at a thousand Oz smackeroos without even a phone it's just too expensive to think about. It is a beauty though. And yes, you can use this as an e-reader, with it's jazzy 3.8in colour LCD screen and huge 20GB hard disk. But we're an awfully long way from a "cheap, portable universal e-reader device" with this Windows-oriented razzle-dazzler. For rich kids & serious media types only.

Creative Zen Portable

Casualties

In June 2004 SONY announced that they would no longer be selling any new models of the SONY Clie in the United States, a casualty of intense PDA wars and increasing competition from other devices, especially the converged (PDA-enabled) smart phone. In fact Clie development and sales continued for the Japanese market with a final new model in September 2004, but our sources now tell us that even in Japan the Clie will be discontinued in July 2005.

Nano Nano

We've all heard tell of those intriguing little nanobots that one day may repair you from within or alternatively eat you alive. Well in May 2004 a company called NTERA Ltd announced the imminence of NanoChromics displays (NCD), a technology it claims is superior to LCD. They're supposed to be available about now in fact, but only for the low-resolution display market. A high-resolution nano display (e.g. for notebooks, PDAs, and dedicated e-readers) is predicted soon, though.

NCD technology, they tell me, will be able to use nanostructured semiconducting metal oxide films as electrodes, along with a massively dense layer of electrochromic viologen molecules, to produce displays that look like ink on paper, which is to say offering a pure white background and very high contrast ratios. That will range them squarely against E Ink and other products claiming the same ability, which also have the nanochromatic advantages of bistability and low power consumption.

What advantages could the nanos bring to the emerging feast of superior quality, low power, stable screen technologies that already includes the Librie? One possibility is price. NCDs can be produced on existing LCD manufacturing lines, to allegedly produce superior quality displays at a lower cost and with better yields.

Initial NCD products will be monochrome, & NTERA is currently working with "several major display companies" to create these to a standard suitable for e-readers. Meanwhile colour displays are also under development. These will be filter-based initially, with brighter "intrinsic" colour displays a future aim.

NTERA had better hurry. An Israeli rival called Magink Display Technologies is already advancing into colour digital ink, in a partnership with Mitsubishi. In fact colour Magink is on billboards in Japan right now. But they're not cheap, and the e-reader version seems a way off yet. However in July 2004 VantagePoint Venture Partners & friends of Silicon Valley tossed in $US27 million to promote Magink into the US market .

Meanwhile Xerox Corp. subsidiary Gyricon LLC is already shipping "smart paper," a thin electronic sign updatable via wireless radio signals. However it's not bendable. The well-funded U.S. Army announced in February 2004 a plan to remedy that disadvantage by spending US$43.7 million over the next five years on a centre at Arizona State University that will develop flexible electronic displays for military purposes. Philips Electronics, however, will likely beat the Army to it, as they'll start making a test line of bendable electronic displays this year, with release of a consumer product likely in 2006. Why the US military is spending $47 million to invent a wheel that's on the way anyhow is one of life's great mysteries. But aha y'all, the other one's made by those snivelling, less than American Europeans, y'know, and what's life without a little 'ol pork-barrelling anyhow?

So this is a technology war that's certainly hotting up. NTERA, by the way, is a Seattle-based company with production facilities in Taiwan and Ireland.
http://www.ntera.com

Ntera screen display

Memory

*Toshiba set a record -the Guinness Book of type no less - in late 2004, with the world's smallest hard drive. At 0.85-inches (about 2.1cm) the new drive comes in 2 & 4 GB varieties to start with. With such large chunks of tiny permanent memory now available for portable devices, the way will be open in future for even mini e-readers to store any amount of sophisticated multimedia e-books as readily as the text variety.

*By contrast, Hitachi's new 1.8-inch hard drives with ZIF connectors seem positively oversized. That is, until you learn that these new Travelstar C4K60 models come in 20GB & 30GB varieties (strangely enough the larger one represents the better $ value per gig). Sweet also is that they use less battery power than comparable alternatives, a factor that some new device purchasers should have begun noticing from around the end of 2004.

*Meanwhile in removable memory, manufacturer SanDisk has released an 8GB CompactFlash Type I card. It's the size of a matchbox, and with that capacity you need to worry about writing and reading speeds. In fact you can write a gigabyte in less than two minutes (9MB per second), and read at 10 MBps. Worry more about the price, as you'll pay through your piercings for this state of the art stuff. We've been told $US960 in America, meaning well over a grand in Oz. You'd better really need it. Wait a minute, don't I recall a 4GB card from them at about the same price just a breath or two back, in April '04? In three years they'll probably be free with a coupon in the Sunday papers.

*And early in 2004 another manufacturer, SimpleTech, announced an 8 GB CompactFlash Type II card. The price however was so horrifying I refuse to dignify it in print.

Technical Warning: Even some very recent devices use the file allocation table standard FAT16. CompactFlash cards larger than 2GB use FAT32, the newest standard, & are therefore incompatible with all of those. Is obsolescence planned? You betcha. The price we pay for progress is that whatever you buy will be old-hat in six months time, which unfortunately is the only guarantee worth its weight in gold these days.

And the Partial Retraction : Well, it turns out that the nice folk at Sandisk thought of this one too. Seems the 4GB cards anyhow have a three-position switch, so you can use either a single FAT32 volume or two separate 2GB (FAT16) volumes according to the specifications of your device. Good one guys.

Wi-fi

*PalmOne announced for late 2004 a Wi-Fi SD card for handhelds such as the Zire 72 & the Tungsten T3 & T5, some of whose owners were pining for more wireless connectivity than the increasingly irrelevant Bluetooth. It costs $US129 & is very small

*What's the next "coming thing" in Wi-fi? Well so far there's been 802.11a, b & g. The next standard will leap ahead to 802.11n, probably available in early 2007. That's the word from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) who make up this stuff, albeit with less than sexy titles. Meanwhile there's a new Wireless "Pre-N" Router, and also a Notebook Network Card, available from Belkin. It's faster & has a better range than anything so far. Not everyone needs it, but if you want to use Wi-fi to transfer large files or video it could be the go. Indeed the MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology involved may turn out to be the core of the new n standard.

*If you're travelling - in some 25 or more countries at least - it's now possible to locate wireless public Internet access services from one dedicated website. Do this in advance if possible, as it may take a little while. The Wi-Fi Alliance offers this service, & what's more participating locations can display a Wi-Fi ZONE logo at their venue. So if you can remember what their logo looks like you'll see them at a glance! Note the logo or use this Zone Finder service at:
http://www.wi-fi-zone.org

Security

*And while we're talking Wi-Fi Alliance, what have they been doing about the vexed question of Wi-Fi security? Well, the Alliance reports that one group of products has successfully completed "Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) interoperability testing." Respected mag. PC World tested WPA certified products & found the new protocol worked for all that were claimed. However the magazine noted that the end user may not know whether the product they're using is certified or not. Anyway it's progress, and WPA therefore replaces Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). WPOT next?
http://www.wi-fi.org/OpenSection/pdf/Whitepaper_Wi-Fi_Security4-29-03.pdf

Wild Thing, you make my PDA go BLIIING

Now here's a scary one. The first " backdoor Trojan" tailored specifically to PDA's was found in the wild in August 2004, though there has been no significant spread since. But this undesirable development is definitely a wakeup call.

Evidently from Russia with malice, the nasty was named the Brador trojan & requires drastic action to get rid of it. Indeed a complete OS reinstall is recommended. Unchecked, this particular piece of wickedness will allow an intruder to read all your files & play havoc with them at will, steal your passwords, or load their own applications to do who knows what with - in a word control your handheld from afar.

The problem is that Windows OS PDA's, especially older ones, have hardly any or no defences against such things (thanks yet again Bill). Yes the evil was targeted at Microsoft, here the Windows CE operating system.

Brador was followed in November by a Trojan codenamed Skulls, directed at mobile convergence phones using the Symbian operating system. This bug was hidden in a piece of freeware called Extended Theme Manager. To get rid of "Skulls" you have to reset the phone to factory defaults, but you'll lose all your data in the process.

And in December 2004 another deadly Trojan, also aimed at convergence smart phones using the Symbian operating system (what's with that?) appeared. This one was hidden in an alleged Symbian game version called MetalGear.a, which is definitely a young person's thing (so the maker couldn't even pretend he was some kind of glorious young anarchist striking at evil aged corporate types). This malware actually contained three bits of considered nastiness; two Trojans, plus a version of the Cabir worm that seeks to spread itself by sending a file to any Bluetooth-enabled phones nearby.

So if you read email on a Windows CE PDA, a Symbian convergence phone, or any type of handheld device really (for other OS nasties are likely to follow, sadly), do not open any attachments you're not 100% sure of, or access dodgy websites. It remains a jungle out there. Our advice: get antivirus software for your handheld too, keep it updated, and above all be careful. A little paranoia is a wholesome value in today's computing environment.

Briefly...

Electronic versions of papers have tended to be rather different from print versions. With the electronic newspaper clearly the way of the future, the New York Times introduced in '04 an e-version identical to the print one, but with "with all the benefits of interactivity and electronic navigation ". All we need now is a high quality e-reader larger enough to display a full format to maximum benefit (on a Palm sized device is pushing it). The Sony Librie seems to point the way, but don't forget that "cheap & universal" are the other two legs of that design wishlist...

A Guide to Producing Readable, Accessible Onscreen Text by Bruce Ingraham & Emma Bradburn , University of Teesside "The purpose of this site is to provide some guidance on how to format text documents, especially long text documents, so that they may be easily read from computer screens without the need to print them off." The guide "extend(ed) our earlier research into reading texts from PCs to include a range of handheld devices (PDAs and bespoke eBooks). The report prepared for them is one of the key documents on this site and readers may wish to begin with it". This is worthy stuff. http://readability.tees.ac.uk/

EPrints Handbook is a guide for researchers and their managers to Self-Archiving and Open Access, using EPrint software, managing an EPrints Service and Installing an EPrints Server. "Drink deep or not at all".
http://software.eprints.org/handbook

Mobile Device/PDA Buyers guide

Compare before you spend, at this handy site. Facts, news, rumours, gossip. All the good stuff, in other words. They used to be pdabuyersguide.com, but what with convergence devices etc the name seemed old-hat, so they're now as follows:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com

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