Australian e-book newsletter April 2002 quarterly edition

This April quarterly newsletter is intended as the last before the site www.e-book.com.au is re-launched to become a full Australian e-book portal website. On this site in the not-too-distant future we hope you'll find lots of relevance for both Australians interested in the e-book world and our many supporters around the globe looking for that invaluable Aussie insight.

Where American websites can sometimes appear to barely acknowledge the existence of a world beyond the United States, & even many European sites may seem insular at times, the special quality of our Australian perspective is surely to be interested in the whole of the world in all its variety & uniqueness. In addition, because as Aussies we don't take ourselves as seriously as some, we're not afraid to be sceptical & irreverent where we think it due.

We also acknowledge that being only a bit player in the wider scheme of things, our additional Australian contribution may well be to help bridge the communication gap that too often exists in this area, as in so many others, among the many tribes of squabbling humanity. If we have a philosophy to this it's that all peoples deserve respect, all institutions & projects are the better for keen scrutiny, & all of humanity is both fallible & flawed, yet a perennial source of hope. The e-book itself - halting in its development, flawed in its implementation, yet full of immeasurable promise for the future - is perhaps a fitting metaphor for the continuing struggle of the human race to improve itself.

Special feature:
Bruce's Red-Hot Web Tip:
How to Prevent Viruses & Spam Reaching Your PC*

Everyone with a shred of sense should have anti-virus software on their PC (Zone Alarm is a good free one, or, if you can afford it, Norton is another goodie, particularly as part of their Internet Protection software). Still, such software as a one & only line of defence may not be enough these days, with so many twisted souls out there determined to wreak havoc.

Then there's also the problem of ever-growing amounts of unwanted spam (junk email) cluttering up your Inbox, which if you're out & about on the Web can grow to plague proportions. So I want to give a free plug to a great new program I can personally recommend, called MailWasher. This is designed to prevent emailed viruses & spam from ever actually reaching your PC in the first place.

Basically, it allows you to look your email over on the mail server before downloading it, so you can eliminate all the unwanted ones. It also alerts you there to possible viruses & known spam. Even better, it enables you to bounce viruses & spam back to where they came from with just a click, & put previously unknown spammers on your own personal blacklist. If you read any emails in MailWasher they will only open as plain text files, so if they contain a virus they cannot endanger the server. Truly fabbo.

Amazing but true, you can get MailWasher for free, legally & no strings attached, from http://www.mailwasher.net. Or you can make a donation of your own choice to the developer, which if you find it really helps you might be an honourable thank-you for such a useful public service.

If unsure of anything, or you have any problems with it, check out the FAQ at: http://www.mailwasher.net/faq.php#_Q._How_do

(Back)

E-Content: Dreams and Realities: E-book LITC event 10 April 2002, Abbey Conference Suite, South Bank University, London U.K. Jointly sponsored by Britain's JISC & Dawson Books as a follow up to the E-Books 2001 Conference, this event discusses what the coming years have in store for managers of e-content. Speakers include Clifford Lynch, Janet Lees & Louise Edwards

1st Australian Festival of the Book, Bowral, NSW Southern Highlands, April 26-28 2002. A free community event presented by the South Coast Writers' Centre, the Wingecarribee Shire Council & the Southern Highlands Booksellers Association. The festival celebrates the 200th anniversary of the first book printed in Australia (which by the way was New South Wales General Standing Orders printed by George Howe (1769-1821), a Creole transported from the West Indies who quickly became the second official Government Printer of NSW. Chris Hosking of e-Info Solutions will be among those attending, and in the Henrietta Rose Room of the Bowral Town Hall on Sunday 28th April at 2.30pm an e-book demonstration and presentation will be held.

Open e-Book Foundation (OeBF) Annual Members Meeting and Cocktail Reception, April 30, 1:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. The W Hotel, 541 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y

BookExpo America (American Booksellers Association Convention & Trade Exhibit), New York City, May 1-5 2002 E-books don't make such a big splash this time, but one session will feature the discussion: Will e-books Circumvent Agents? (… A growing number of professional authors are expressing interest in having their original or out-of-print books published in e-book format - over the objections of their agents. Although the agents' concerns may sound reasonable, some authors feel their agents are too conservative or are out of touch altogether…. are agents in danger of becoming irrelevant to the relationship between author and publisher?) Wedneday 1 May 1:30PM to 3:00PM : Room 1E14

Update: Note also Saturday, May 4 : How Should Libraries Recompense Publishers and Authors in the Digital Age? (1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m., Room 1E15)

American Library Association (ALA) Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia June 13-19 2002
Pre-conference Sessions include:

LITA: June 14, 9:00am-5:30pm What is XML? How Can XML be Used in Libraries? A panel of experts in the field of XML will explore this question beginning with an overview of XML…. They will illustrate the uses of XML in the library community…. Document exchange through XML will also be discussed. The session will conclude with a report of actual success stories from libraries using XML.

RUSA : June 14, 8:30am-4:30pm Digital Reference @ Your Library Are you ready to launch a digital reference service at your library? Whether you're just getting started, want to tinker with existing services, or need reassurance that your services are comparable to other libraries, attend this workshop to get practical answers

Update: Scottish group of the Library Association Multimedia, Information & Technology Group (SLAMIT). 14 June 2002 - 2nd Annual SCURL/SLAMIT e-books seminar, Wolfson Suite, Edinburgh University. Contributions to be mulled o'er include: e-books and the work of the JISC e-books Committee (Louise Edwards JISC Collections Manager); e-books in Danish Public Libraries (Esben Fjord, Aarhus Public Library, Denmark); Findings from the EBONI Project (Monica Landoni & Ruth Wilson); & An Academic Librarian's Perspective (Liz Stevenson, Edinburgh University Library ). Coutts, netLibrary & Palgrave MacMillan will also be stirrin' the porridge

Update: Open Publish 2002: Second Annual Conference for Standards & Process in Publishing, Star City Casino, Sydney, 29 July -1 August 2002. With Digital Rights Management, intellectual property issues, e-books & wireless and mobile publishing solutions a major focus, there's lots of stuff about XML XDHTML, PDF, good ol' cascading style sheets & the mysterious XSLT. Presenters include Nick Carr of Allette Systems, Nick Hodge of Adobe, John Allsopp of Western Civilisation (it's a company?), Linda Harkin of Australian Consolidated Press, Teresa Mulvihill of Digital Boardwalk and a whole e-phalanx from Singapore.

Update: Australian Innopac Users Group (AIUG) -Victorian Innopac Information Resources Group

*Meeting at Deakin University August 30 2002: will discuss: Managing e-material (Part One) -The Financial Issues

*Meeting at LaTrobe University December 13 2002 will discuss: Managing e-material (Part Two) - The cataloguing and acquisitions issues

Update: Medical librarians, we recommend you check out Teri Embrey's article, "Working with Wireless". It appears in the June issue of Teacher Librarian , and looks briefly at how wireless devices are used in business, medicine, etc. and how they can be used to support the curriculum.

PS: We welcome news on e-book events in any country: Email the editor at the adddress at the base of this page.

In an announcement to library staff on March 25 2002, Irene Rossendell, Technology Libraries Co-ordinator for the University of Sydney Library, confirmed that a draft policy on electronic textbooks (e-texts) and electronic encyclopedias had just been approved by USL's Library Policy and Management Advisory Committee (LPMAC).

The USL has for some years been developing an advanced electronic journal collection, and expanding its scholarly electronic text centre SETIS. More recently, an e-reserve has been added, and lately also a Course Online Readings Service (CORS), to make regulated access available to all digitised text-based copyright materials required for student course work. The move into e-monographs (e-books) and e-encyclopedias has been slower to gain acceptance, but perhaps was inevitable as a logical extension of this "go electronic" policy.

The more than twenty libraries in the University of Sydney Library system comprise the largest university library in the Southern Hemisphere, & the biggest library in Australia in terms of copies held. " USL" has however often been regarded as cautious in its approach to new trends, and this caution was reflected in the e-book policy draft, which warned that " As an emerging area of resource provision many issues - and indeed many of the resources and suppliers/publishers - are volatile and grappling with them does involve an element of experimentation and risk." However the report also pointed out that " potentially (e-books)… are an important future resource for managing Undergraduate course material and providing access to research material or difficult to obtain titles".

The historic report noted that e-texts and e-encyclopedias would change user habits in the future and offer added accessibility to material on a 24 hour, 7 day a week basis. But change would inevitably also flow through the library's own processes. For example, because e-material might need to be obtained by regular licencing rather than simple direct purchase, there needed to be a conceptual change in the budget process for monographs, to provide a recurrent steam of funding for existing titles. Such funding also needed to support "a level of experimentation in providing these new resources to monitor their use and effectiveness".

Other recommendations included that preference for purchase be for web-based, one off fee titles of e-texts/e-encyclopedias where possible. However the variety of payment methods current in the e-world (e.g. pay per copy, pay per page copied, costing per title/volume, subscription to collections of titles etc) meant that flexibility was needed in developing payment procedures. The caveat was added too that subject librarians should ensure the reliability of non-academic publishers who offered e-texts before recommending purchasing from them.

Archiving was also seen as a major issue & was considered essential for research material.

Further major recommendations were that e-texts requiring proprietary software, or machine or device dependent titles, should not be purchased unless there was an overwhelming need. In general e-texts should be available via the web and include remote access availability unless there was a compelling reason otherwise. There was clearly a fear of being tied in irretrievably to any particular commercial enterprise by a premature or overly restrictive decision about technology. A separate fund equivalent to 15% of the 2001 "8Gen" allocation was established as a generous initial level of allocation for e-book purchase.

Comment: With USL now on board, it seems likely that tertiary education in Australia is at last beginning to come to grips with the age of the digital book.

Pam Saunders (Children's & Youth Resources eBook Project Manager at the Yarra Plenty Regional Library) reports that Yarra Plenty and Brisbane City libraries have joined forces to purchase a collection of netLibrary titles. Darwin Public Libraries may soon join them to become the third public library offering some netLibrary e-books. Meanwhile Yarra Plenty is also trialling the innovative children's e-books offered by Tumblebooks, (follow the links from Yarra's web page, www.yprl.vic.gov.au ).

Update: WA: Are you out there?Pam Saunders is also toodling over those few thousand odd kms to Perth, West Australia, in May, and is hoping to visit WA libraries with an interest in e-books. There have got to be some of you over there??? C'mon people, we'll make you famous.

:Update: We haven't really featured eBooks.com before, even though it is actually an Australian company founded by an Aussie. Reason? In the past pioneering founder Stephen Cole's site featured only titles for reading on desktops & laptops ( PCs & Macs).

Now with a change of heart by Stephen, thousands of titles in the Palm OS format will be released in the coming months, meaning you can read them on a large range of e-reader devices, such as Palm Pilots, Handsprings, Pocket PCs and more. Ebook.com will be partnering with Palm Digital Media and OverDrive in this venture, Even better, around the end of 2002 MobiPocket format e-books will also be available from the site.

Enthuses Stephen "We have agreed with the dynamic French company, MobiPocket, to license their cross-platform system. Cross-platform means that you'll be able to buy just one file that can be downloaded to your PC, laptop, PocketPC, Palm, eBookMan - or even your phone. For people like us, who have been battling with competing platform implementations, this kind of interoperability is like eBook Nirvana. Watch for MobiPocket at the end of 2002".

The Seattle Bellevue Hilton Hotel was the venue for the fourth annual EPPIE e-book awards in mid-March 2002. After the extended agonies of marathon presentations like the Oscars, what better than to simply list the winners? Which were:

Contemporary Romance: Cowboy In My Pocket by Kate Douglas (Hard Shell Word Factory)

Fantasy (tie): Winters Orphans by Elaine Corvidae (NovelBooks, Inc.) & The Crystal Throne by Kathryn Sullivan (RFI West)

Fantasy / Paranormal Romance Shadow In Starlight by Shannah Biondine (LTD Books)

Horror (tie): Borderland by W.J. Calabrese (Wings ePress, Inc.) & Fate by Robert Arthur Smith (NovelBooks, Inc.)

Mystery (tie): Twice Dead by Elizabeth Dearl (Avid Press) & Buried In Baltimore by Louise Titchener (Hard Shell Word Factory)

Non-Fiction (Philosophy): The Price Of Freedom by Alexander (Sandor) V. Domokos & Rita Toews (Crossroads Pub)

Romantic Suspense (tie): Sirens Song by Kimberly Grey (LTD Books) & Midnight Intentions by Michele Bardsley (Self-Published)

Western (tie): Ride A Cold Wind by Judith R. Parker (E-Pub2000) & Man Hunter by Dusty Rhodes (Self-Published)

Young Adult: A Star For Courage by Elizabeth C. Main (Hard Shell Word Factory)

Quasar (Cover Art): Cowboy In My Pocket, cover by Kate Moore (Hard Shell Word Factory)

Special Award: Friend of E-Publishing: to Kathryn Falk, Lady of Barrow, publisher of Romantic Times Magazine

GEMSTAR releases REBs in Germany: Gemstar has now launched its e-readers onto the German market. There's the GEB 2200 ( = the colour REB 1200 with modem modifications), priced at 649 euros. It's available from http://www.Bol.de. The monochrome REB 1100 will be available soon as the GEB 2100, according to eBook Media.

First the straight story: Q-Net Technologies announced on 11 February its Q-Reader, an electronic reading device. It uses Internet connectivity, has PDA features and is email capable. The device was launched at the International Book and Publishing Show in Beijing, China on January 10th. Over 24,000 units were ordered by distributors from all over China during the three-day show.

The handheld device was developed together with the Liaoning Publishing Group of Shenyang, China (LPG) It is of paperback size & can download, store and display the equivalent of 25-30 books in both English and Chinese. First digital publications for the Q-Reader will be available from: cnbook.com.cn.

Said Q-Net President and CEO Fredric Mann II. "The Q-Reader opens up the world to a broad range of people. It is an affordable, fully interactive device that will allow students and professionals to consult educational and research resources from around the world." Q-Net expects to introduce its planned wireless and student models to the global market later this year.

Now: Further reports on this story are curiously lacking. Is it in fact the Xinhua device repackaged? (see October newsletter). If so,why would this be? For, perhaps, legal reasons? Well whether or not that guess is correct, there's a related story we're sitting on that involves considerable & quite regrettable skullduggery. So why sit on a sensational story? If we were just journalists, no way. But there are other considerations worth thinking about. Such as that it's not necessarily in the best interests of the development of e-readers to release that bizarre tale just yet.

Why not? Well, if the Chinese have an excellent device which they can release into the marketplace soon, at a price which will allow e-book readers to really take off, then that's much to be commended. If someone else has a similar device they're dragging their feet on, one that they want to eventually release at a price level few except Americans with their super-charged currency will be able to afford, it's difficult to cheer the latter possibility on & still be true to the e-book cause.

Moreover, considering that the alleged 1995 origins of the modern e-book reader also involve the apparent purloining of Australian ideas from 1992 (& that's a story we also have documents on), it's difficult to be 100%r sympathetic to cries of outrage about intellectual property theft that may soon emerge from those who it's a fair guess to say have benefited mightily from an earlier bout of the same.

Q-Net has finally released its Q Reader e-book device - into the Chinese market only so far. As well as the e-book features mentioned above, the e-reader also has PDA capabilities in both Chinese & English, and in addition can be used for email. With 24,700 initially ordered, the e-reader seems to have a bright future in China at least, particularly if large-scale production enables the unit price to fall. For now the price is unavailable - there's just the coy phrase "well below laptop computers".

Prediction: this REB-style, book-sized device should be technically advanced, have a screen superior to any e- book reader currently available, & make a very satisfactory e-reader all-up. In fact it could be just the thing to revive the large-sized e-reader market. That is, if it is allowed into the wider international arena.

And why wouldn't it be? Mmm, could there be a danger of a legal case - say some U.S. university sueing someone if it was? We could be very wrong about that of course, so we earnestly enjoin you to take no notice at all of those remarks so that no-one has any basis to sue us.

But we will say that, at the moment, the Q Reader people stand a better chance of making a go of the larger e-reader device than the ham-fisted folk from Gemstar. And somehow we don't think anyone will even consider sueing us about that remark. And they tailored their own cap, too. Unfortunately the wider e-book community has had to wear it.

Fujitsu announced in Tokyo, March 12, 2002 the world release of Pocket LOOX, its Pocket PC 2002 handheld PDA (see pic. at base). Well almost - the new device will go on sale in the second quarter 2002, but was previewed at the ceBIT exhibition in Hannover, Germany. Pocket LOOX will offer applications such as Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. Powered by an Intel PXA250 processor with 32Mb ROM & 64Mb RAM, it will feature a 64K-color indoor/outdoor touch screen display with handwriting and character recognition software. Included are a Compact Flash (CF) Type II card slot and Secure Digital (SD) memory slot, giving the Pocket LOOX a variety of expansion possibilities. The device weighs only 5.9 ounces and measures 5.15in high by 3.2 inches wide by 0.7 inches deep, with a Lithium-Polymer battery plus a second battery plug-on module.

In Europe Fujitsu Siemens Computers will offer the Pocket LOOX with a mobile telephony function through an added GPRS* plug-on module, while in Japan Pocket LOOX will boast an integrated Bluetooth module for wireless communication. Pocket LOOX will be available at the end of May in the United States with an estimated street price of $US599.

Palm meanwhile released some new colour models in its (northern) spring lineup. (March 2002). There's the $US279 M130 and the deluxe M515 ( $US399). So handhelds really are getting meaningfully cheaper, as these prices are about the same as monochrome units cost in the past.

According to PC World the Palm M130 is the lowest-priced color PDA with an expansion slot on the market. Similar to the monochrome-screen M125 it also has 8MB of memory. The M515 meantime resembles the current M505 model &also has a color display and 16MB memory. Both have SD card expansion slots and wireless capabilities using the Bluetooth Secure Digital Input/Output (SDIO)* card, which is priced separately at $US129.

Chief disadvantages of the cheaper M130 model, besides being a little smaller, is that the screen is less readable in sunlight than the M515's as the backlight is not adjustable: In fact it's always on, meaning shorter battery life. However the rechargeable lithium ion battery is topped off each time you put the device in the USB synching cradle (both are included n the purchase price). The M515 also has Flash memory, making OS software upgrades easy. Which compares favorably to certain Pocket PCs…

Both Palm models come bundled with DataViz's Documents to Go for viewing, editing, and creating Word- and Excel-compatible files and viewable PowerPoint files, as well as MGI PhotoSuite Mobile Edition for storing, viewing, and sharing video clips and still images.

* Palm's $129 Bluetooth SDIO card enables users to create a "personal area network," whereby consumers can wirelessly send data from their handheld to their Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, laptop, or printer.

Update: And yes, An O.S 5.0 Palm for Australia soon! Well, make that the last quarter of the year. But this one's special -so special that I can't confirm yet whether it'll be in colour or monochrome, although colour is more likely. Rated as a follow-on to the Palm i705, it'll feature wireless GPRS, allowing for data transfer at speeds of 56-144 kilobits per second (compared with the i705s sedate 14.4 Kbps top speed). That's four to ten times as fast folks!

Further: What about Pam's mooted Bluetooth device? It's still coming, probably earlier than the above, possibly around August. So that's an even earlier O.S 5.0 in prospect.

Last year Microsoft unveiled a prototype of the Tablet PC, which it claimed would be the Next BigThing in portable computing. And clearly, make a good, if pricey, larger e-book reader. Now, Motion Computing, a U.S. start-up company, has announced it will exhibit a demonstration Tablet PC at a trade show in late June. Motion Computing hopes to be selling the " slate-like" Tablet later this year.

For an operating system the Tablet will use Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Expect both pen and voice input for its "slate" features. Compared to a notebook computer a Tablet PC will weigh less & be easier to use, and the batteries will last longer. Price? Aye, there's the rub. Being new it'll set you back maybe $U??? Which despite some currency improvement will still be a heck of a lot in Aussie money. See http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,100304,tk,mcx,00.asp

Marilyn Ottoy of Australia's EInfo Solutions (who supply Sydney's Shorelink Library Group with e-books and content) reports that the company also offers an e-reader formatted Classic Digital Library - with currently around 400 classic titles growing at the rate of about 20 titles per week. These are presently available in Softbook, REB1200 & Hiebook formats Einfo also have written software called ECCC for distributing content to e- readers - it's a software package that controls the publication and distribution of material across an organisation or company to individual reading devices. Content is either "pulled" at the request of an individual or is "pushed" to them by virtue of their position (e.g. updates to manuals).

Marilyn says that the ECCC package includes extensive reporting and audit trail facilities and allows the administrator to retrieve documents from the e-book devices in situations where the document may have been distributed in error or is out of date.

Update: Marilyn Ottoy reports that lots of Australian public libraries would like to start using e books but are having trouble with funding. " To combat this problem," says Marilyn, "we have been able to source a number of Softbook 250e's from the US and package them up with our own classic library, which contains over 400 titles, and make them available for a fee of only $50 per month. This way the libaries can trial this technology without a larger financial outlay. We see this as a way for libraries to get moving with ebooks without having to wait for funding or grants and so spread the word!" Spoken like a true enthusiast.

In a press release on June 11 2002, Adobe announced the release of Content Server 3.0 for the secure distribution of PDF-based e-books. The latest release lets libraries loan PDF-based e-books and includes new licensing options. Content providers and businesses may also use Content Server 3.0 to offer digital subscriptions of Adobe PDF content to consumers or employees.

According to the release, libraries will be able to instantly deliver existing Adobe PDF e-books and other digital materials to patrons. The e-books are easily checked in and out, and may be integrated with a library's existing catalogue system, simplifying management and eliminating extra work while providing a high-quality user experience.

It's important to note that though the patrons use the library's web interface to check out and receive e-books, they do not need to be connected to the Internet to read them. This represents a significant advantage over netLibrary & other wholly web-based models. Libraries also can set usage rules so that e-books expire after a certain amount of time or on a specified date. When the lending license expires, the e-book is automatically disabled on the patron's computer and returned to the library catalogue

"To make it easy for libraries to add these new capabilities", the press release continues, " Adobe has teamed with leading library solutions providers, ebrary, Baker & Taylor, Follett and netLibrary.... Through these eBook solution providers, Content Server 3.0 can be easily integrated with a library's existing IT infrastructure."

However if libraries prefer to directly manage the process, the Adobe Content Server is available through Adobe distributors such as OverDrive, and can also be licensed directly from www.ebooks.adobe.com . Prices are mentioned & would require careful analysis.

If you hate beta software, or view it with caution as a result of past bad experiences, then regard this item is premature. But if you just like to know what's coming up soon, or perhaps even enjoy pioneering software that may be seriously flawed & perhaps drive you crazy (well someone has to do it), then you'll be interested to know that Adobe has released (on 19th March) a beta version of its second Acrobat Reader for Palm handhelds.

Adobe's Product Manager for Readers & eBooks, Jon Lin, mentioned additional support for Macs (for Mac OS 9.X and Mac OS X.1), new European language versions to come (French, German and Spanish) and password protection support as the key extensions in the new software version. He also noted with a glow of pride that the first version of this software has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times since its release in May 2001. The Adobe company claims that "PDF files created using Acrobat 5.0, Adobe InDesign(R) 2.0 and Adobe PageMaker(R) 7.0 will offer the best reading experience on Palm Powered devices because they are automatically tagged with information on page structure and organization. This allows for easier and more reliable text re-flow on a handheld device." The improved software will work on Palm Powered devices with Palm OS 3.5 or higher and a minimum available memory of 315Kb.

The latest release also includes high resolution and color support. This beta is an English language version only. For the adventurous it may be downloaded at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/palmbeta.html

REDMOND, Wash. & CLEVELAND-Microsoft Corp. and DRM company OverDrive Inc. announced on February 19 the release of e-book authoring and conversion tool suite OverDrive ReaderWorks 2.0, for creating Microsoft Reader e-books with MS ClearType. The companies claim that more than 250,000 people and thousands of schools and publishers worldwide have already used the previous version of OverDrive ReaderWorks to build Microsoft Reader e-books.

New features of ReaderWorks Publisher 2.0 include the ability to create Microsoft Reader e-books directly from Word documents. Other improvements include Navigation Workspace and Tour Wizard tools for creating custom tours through an e-book title; table of contents support for Microsoft Word; bookmarks and additional styles. There's also flexible e-book cover page options including support for building smaller e-book files; enhanced support for external HTML tags & improved support for Open eBook (OeB) and XML tags.

OverDrive also offers OverDrive Connect, an ASP service that enables Web site content to be instantly delivered to visitors as Microsoft Reader e-books. By adding a link from a Web site to the OverDrive Connect Server readers can immediately download any article, document, manual or Web page to their computer, notebook or Pocket PC. The company says that by using optional DRM technology, premium content and copyrighted material can be securely wrapped and protected for distribution. The available Software Developers Kit (SDK) can be used to automate the e-book process and convert documents, Web pages and entire libraries into the Microsoft Reader e-book format.

ReaderWorks Standard 2.0 is available at no charge. ReaderWorks Publisher 2.0 has a suggested list price of $US149. The ReaderWorks products are available at http://www.overdrive.com/. Microsoft Reader 2.0 can be downloaded for free at http://www.microsoft.com/reader/. So there.

At the recent London Book Fair (17-19 March) SOFTWIN ( a Bucharest-based provider of conversion and other services to the publishing industry) launched version 2.0 of intuitext.com, its free online conversion service. First released at Seybold's Boston conference last year, intuitext.com is an online conversion tool to enable automated conversion of documents to XML and XML-based formats.

The new 2.0 version improves by expanding the range of accepted input formats to documents in virtually any native format, like Adobe PDF, QuarkXPress, MS Word or Page Maker. Moreover, users are offered a large choice of output formats, including HTML, OEB, MS Reader, Gemstar and other proprietary e-book formats

Intuitext's key features are a claimed 100% preservation of the original aspect and the creation of text flow. These capabilities are reinforced in version 2.0 "to provide an accurate conversion process whatever the input complexity - a small novel, large textbooks or technical documentation". Softwin's past customers have included Jouve, SGIT, Euronumerique, CiTEC, Hearst Business Media, goReader, Motor Solutions & MacMillans Palgrave. Websites are www.softwin.ro & www.intuitext.com.

* Electronic book viewer software TomeRaider has been updated to work with the Pocket PC 2002. TomeRaider is described as " a powerful text reader application with database-like capabilities, including excellent compression of data, good indexing, fast navigation, and searching." If that sound interesting, read more of a review at: http://www.PocketPCmag.com/May02/tomeraider.asp

Update: The Next Palm Operating System, Palm OS 5.0, is expected to be available in June 2002. It'll include better security -128-bit data encryption plus Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support for Internet e-mail, Web browsing, and commercial transactions, improved multimedia support, for recording and playback of CD-quality audio, high-resolution displays, and customizable colour themes; & in the communications area will have built- in 802.11b wireless ethernet support, as well as the ethernet and Bluetooth support of the previous version. As well it'll support the more powerful ARM family of processors, meaning that future Palms could be convergence devices & even smart phones. And support multimedia e-books too.

*From Overdrive, on February 26, came an announcement of the expansion of its global digital content network into the UK academic publishing and textbook markets, through a strategic partnership with swotbooks.com, a leading UK academic Internet bookseller. The swotbooks.com e-bookstore will launch in the early northern spring 2002. Swotbooks will work with UK publishers to upload their titles into OverDrive's global digital content clearinghouse Content Reserve. Content Reserve already has thousands of titles from leading UK publishers including Cambridge & Oxford University Presses, Taylor & Francis, Lonely Planet and the UK divisions of publishers HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill and Time Warner Books. The OverDrive/Swotbooks alliance will also open up a direct channel for US publishers seeking to distribute their titles electronically to UK university students and other academic consumers.

*And in another OverDrive coup the company launched on March 19 Digital Kiosk, an all-in-one "online vending machine" for the sale of protected digital content. OverDrive supplies complete merchant account services with international currency support and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology with each ready-made Digital Kiosk, enabling publishers and retailers to protect and sell e-books, audio books, music and digital media over the Web.

Meaning, says OverDrive, that "Digital Kiosks provide a complete retail system with catalog, shopping cart, real-time credit card processing, secure hosting and 24/7 technical support." The DRM available can only be either from Microsoft or Adobe. Says Steve Potash, OverDrive CEO, "Now any publisher can sell e-book and digital audio book products directly from their own website," for a cost of under $US5,000 ready to go"

Which can work out a lot more expensive in other people's currencies Steve. Sweetening the price pill though is the lure that ""Digital Kiosks also include a retail account with OverDrive Content Reserve (www.contentreserve.com) providing access to an extensive inventory of resaleable premium content from over 300 publishers including HarperCollins, Random House and McGraw-Hill". Digital Kiosks also feature a "Direct Buy Link" where each product has its own unique web address (URL) so publishers, agents and authors can promote product sales by placing a Direct Buy Link to a specific title in web pages, email, print ads and other advertising materials.

OverDrive, founded in 1986 and headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, describes itself as " a strategic partner of Microsoft Corporation"

DRM company InterTrust has let go 85 of its 184 employees following disappointing licensing revenues. The latest staff cuts are the fourth within the last year; from an original payroll of 444. The company is also to" explore strategic alternatives" with the help of investment bankers Allen & Co. Meanwhile InterTrust has also filed an "interference" claim with the U.S. Patent Office, over two recently issued Microsoft patents covering items which InterTrust says were originally invented by InterTrust in 1995-96. Last April, InterTrust filed a lawsuit against Microsoft charging the company with patent infringement.

ION Systems Inc has developed several interesting pieces of software of e-book relevance. There's Web Eyes, described as a reading interface software solution that extends and enhances the reading experience of electronically delivered content for sighted, low-vision, dyslexic and scotopically-sensitive customers. It's actually a browser plug-in that takes existing web content designed for sighted users and makes that content accessible in various other ways. These include user-driven font sizing for text (4 points to 144 points); additional resizing for dialog boxes, tables, forms & graphics; dynamic column resizing (newspaper style); page turning in true e-book fashion; independent navigation for keyboard and mouse supporting all disability-compliance standards; shaded background reducing reflectivity & other valuable features for the vision impaired, or those among the rest of us who finding reading online sometimes less than ideal.

Then there's also the stand-alone eMonocle, an "XML interface technology facilitating efficient reading of complex content for all reads". eMonocle, while specifically designed to read the Open eBook (OeB) file type, is extendable to recognize other XML file types. Again, it provides special accommodations for sighted, low-vision, dyslexic, scotopic and blind readers. A worthy feature is that it also allows for users to customize printing at various font sizes & in single or multi-column print.

Which brings us to their deployment of EMMS (Electronic Media Management System) and the announcement Feb. 21 that ION Systems, Inc is the first company worldwide to license IBM's Electronic Media Management System for publishing. ION will deploy EMMS to provide digital rights management for the secure distribution and sale of a wide variety of e-content available through GalaxyLibrary.com. GalaxyLibrary is an e-publishing service for content owners that provides conversion, management and distribution of digital content in popular file formats for PCs, handheld devices, print-on-demand, Braille and traditional print. In addition to using EMMS for GalaxyLibrary content, ION is launching an ePublishing Service Bureau for other companies who need to distribute secure digital content.

"This announcement marks the beginning of IBM's DRM support for the publishing industry, " said Scott Burnett, Marketing Director for IBM Digital Media. EMMS will display Open eBook (OeB) file format using ION's eMonocle™ application, Ion reports that with its patented non-scrolling, font resizing interface, the eMonocle XML viewer allows users to easily control their reading experience regardless of platform, physical challenge or visual impairment. As part of its ePublishing Service Bureau ION is bundling eMonocle as one of three viewers with an EMMS Client Library application to provide secure viewing of OeB, PDF and handheld device formats. See http://www.ionsystems.com

The Houston Chronicle reported in February that online library service Questia had cut its previously reduced staff once more, leaving a remnant of less than 30 employees - only about 10% of the original work force. Worse, the Chronicle claimed that Questia has sold only around five thousand subscriptions to its service (aimed primarily at university students) since its launch in January 2001. The company later denied that figure but kept mum on its own version. It did admit closing its New York office. Questia boasts over 70,000 titles and articles & hopes to obtain further financing in order to saddle up & quest onwards.

netLibrary's purchase by OCLC was completed on January 24th 2002, for a price of around $US10 million. Publishers Weekly says that netLibrary will remain in Boulder, Colorado, (in more modest premises) under founder/CEO Rob Kaufman. The sale includes netLibrary's MetaText digital textbook subsidiary.

Immediate changes following the takeover included netLibrary dropping its e-reader software that supported off-line viewing of netLibrary e-books. As well, from April 1, 2002, the cost of "Prepaid Ongoing Access" will increase from 50% of retail list price to 55%. The "Annual Service Fee" option (previously called "Annual Access Fee") has been increased from 9% to 15% of the cost of the title, and there are also cost caveats concerning voluntary technology migration.

In general however librarians appear to approve the takeover of netLibrary by one of their own cooperative groupings, especially as there seemed to be no viable alternative available. PW reported that it's unlikely netLibrary will be moving in an individual consumer direction, particularly because OCLC's charter allows them only to serve libraries. Instead, the company will try to build revenue through library sales as it aims to become the sector's main e-book services and content provider. The good news is that netLibrary hopes to move from a one book/one user model to site-licenses, but that plan may yet come unstuck due to publisher opposition, supported by some authors.

…while eBRARY thrives While netLibrary and Questia were finding their very survival in doubt ebrary in mid-January seized the moment to pitch its e-book system ebrarian to libraries around the world. Ebrary's titles have unlimited, simultaneous access for users, unlike netLibrary's single viewer rule. Moreover, a library purchases access to ebrary's entire, expanding collection and not on a title by title basis as is currently required by netLibrary. With automatic whole collection access and no charge for viewing - only printing or copying incurs fees - ebrary seems to have a model with wider appeal to consumers than either of its rivals. However publishers are so far less enthusiastic, releasing only a relative few of their titles.

Libraries offering access to ebrary can either subsidize patron print & copy fees or make the users pay themselves. Each library also pays a service fee. Ebrary provides free MARC records with embedded URLs & offers MARC record updates for new titles, & has about 5,000 e-book titles so far, spread amongst more than a hundred publishers. The latter include CUP, Elsevier Science, McGraw-Hill and Random House. Strongest areas are Business & Economics, Classics, Education, History, Medicine, Philosophy & Political Science.

Ebrary has also made its associated requirements less onerous & ebrarian 2.0 is significantly improved compared with beta predecessor ebrarian 1.0 .The new version is currently under trial at Stanford, Yale and the (Northern Californian) Peninsula Library System. From March 1 ebrary were also offering a limited complimentary trial of their new service at http://www.ebrary.com.

Update: Ebrary by the way announced on March 11 that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations University Press -and The World Bank Group - will make their publications available through its online channels. Which adds some serious street cred. for researchers.

More Ebrary Expansion: Ebrary has signed on the dotted line with Coutts Library Services ( for U.K., Europe, North America and the Middle East) ; iGroup ( for Asia, Australia and New Zealand); and E-libro.net (for Latin America, and Spanish language libraries in the U.S.) to act as distribution partners.

*When Barnes & Noble dropped its e-distribution partnership with Gemstar, Powells.com were temporarily the only online source for Gemstar e-books (the company has its own proprietary access over the phone). Since then, Gemstar has launched its own online e-bookstore at: http://www.gemstar-ebook.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/eBookstore . Early reports suggest the Gemstar store is marginally cheaper than Powells but suffers from a more cumbersome access procedure. However it's a bright 'n breezy website, & is well worth a visit by owners of REB devices (the Rocket e-Book, REB 1100 & REB 1200), or the merely curious.

There are many rumours flying around about the fate of Gemstar's e-book interests, & indeed some people are writing off the REB e-readers altogether. Which if true would be a sad end for a fine device, and leave many individuals & not a few libraries world-wide stuck with useless equipment. However the wilder claims seems premature, if not altogether erroneous. The Gemstar Web e-bookstore is still open for business, & some sites are still advertising the devices for sale.

What is known is that RCA appear to have stopped making the REBs, and Gemstar has bought at least some - and possibly all - remaining unsold manufacturer's stock from them. Gemstar itself denies that the REBs are a dead duck. Gemstar spokeswoman Lauren Snyder suggested that now RCA is out of the picture some other company might make new versions of the devices for Gemstar.

What is certain however is that Gemstar has lost a lot of money on its (to be charitable) misguided foray into the e-book business. If the company was doing well, perhaps it could afford to merely re-evaluate the manufacturing angle. But Gemstar is not doing well.

Indeed since the start of the year, Gemstar shares have lost more than two-thirds of their value. At close of trading May 3 2002 they sold at $US8.72, the lowest figure since Sept. 1998 and a very sick number compared with a 52-week high of $US 31.00. For the financial year ended 12/01, although Gemstar corporation's revenues rose 68% to $US1.37 billion, they were far from making a profit - instead they recorded their second net loss in a row (before extraordinary items), a loss which rose from US185.8 million to $US597.5 million.

That's a lot of money to lose in any business. Obviously CEO Henry Yuen - with significant stockholder Rupert Murdoch anxiously at his elbow - has to ask himself if the company can afford a continuing debacle on their e-book operations. However these men are business people. If you can't make a go of a business, rather than simply close it down the obvious option is to try to sell it. So the real core issue here is, who might buy Gemstar's e-book business if they decide to sell it, and with what motive?

There are possibilities with widely varying outcomes. In a cynical ploy Microsoft or some other large software player could buy up the REB business, just in order to close it down & prevent others resuscitating it. Or again, such a mega player could opt to continue the Gemstar closed proprietary strategy, but convert the device to its own software push. A player as big as Microsoft has the clout to possibly make a success of such a tactic.

Or again in the best case, a "white knight" could purchase the REB business to re- launch it in the original direction of NuvoMedia & the Rocket e-Book, as a range of "open" devices which could form a template for the e-book future. The REBs could be made in large numbers as inexpensive, high quality, robust e-readers, suitable for a wide range of purposes. Let's cross our fingers & hope above all for a good outcome for the broader e-book community.

Baker & Taylor reported on January 25 that an "eContent delivery and management solution" called ED would be available sometime this year, to provide public and academic libraries with a "turnkey solution" for delivering e-books and related services to their patrons. Like netLibrary, ED will provide access to e-books through a "one user at-a-time" model, which will please many publishers but may disappoint libraries & their users. ED's e-books will be integrated into B&T's collection development & purchasing tools. So far ED has access to seven publisher's content.

On March 14, 2002 Texterity, Inc announced that it is providing conversion and validation services for Baker & Taylor's ED™ system. The services include web-based, automated validation that checks for ED and Open eBook (OEB) compliance. Once files pass the validation test, they are automatically loaded into the ED system. Says Evelyn Fazio, Baker & Taylor's VP of Electronic Content Acquisition. "We provide publishers with a 'self-service' option, which allows them to submit files, get immediate feedback, and get titles loaded into the system, as well as providing them with a 'full- service' option where Texterity can assist with conversion."

San Jose, CA, March 4 2002 - Taking the initiative in its defense strategy, Moscow-based software company Elcomsoft asked Federal District Judge Ronald Whyte to dismiss criminal charges against it. Elcomsoft was charged under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) following a complaint filed by Adobe Systems Inc, for creating and distributing software that could permit electronic book owners to convert the Adobe eBook format and make use of e-books without publishers' restrictions. The software was designed by Elcomsoft's employee Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov, who was also charged & held in custody previously. After a public outcry Adobe earlier withdrew its support of the case against Sklyarov, and the government has suspended its prosecution of him & released him conditionally.

Elcomsoft's grounds for requesting dismissal of the case were that the company distributed the software from inside Russia, and the DMCA does not apply outside the United States. Elcomsoft also advocated that the government had not properly claimed a "conspiracy." The judge heard arguments from both sides and is expected to issue a ruling shortly. Two additional motions from Elcomsoft to dismiss the charges (on constitutional grounds) are to be heard before Judge Whyte on April 1. The defence argued that the DMCA is vague, overly broad and has been misapplied in this case.

ElcomSoft CEO Alex Katalov's response to questions as to why his company had developed the contentious software touched on the raw nerve of the DRM struggle . Namely, the lessening of consumer rights in the purchase of software compared with traditional books and other physical products . Argued Katalov: "This tool allows the legitimate owner of the Adobe eBook the same rights they would naturally have with a book they purchase, and this is called 'fair use' rights."

" In the offline world, we purchase a book and can give it away, tear pages out, send to a loved one, read it to our children and so forth. The AEBPR tool enables 'fair use' by allowing the owner of the Adobe ebook to copy or transfer their book to other technologies. For example, if I wanted to transfer a novel to my PDA for convenience, I could do that. If I were blind, I could use this tool to copy my content from Adobe's eBook to an audio player so I could hear and enjoy it."

The quandary of software companies is that if they admit traditional rights, which seem reasonable to the onlooker, they see no means of preventing the software being copied illegitimately too. However against that it is argued that clever code inserts can prevent more than a defined number of copies being made, at least by the vast majority of consumers.

Internet advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) declared itself opposed to Adobe's continued support for the prosecution of Elcomsoft. . "We're disappointed that Adobe continues to push for criminal prosecution of creators of tools that allow the public to exercise their rights," said Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "We were hopeful that, having publicly withdrawn their support for throwing Mr. Sklyarov in jail, Adobe would not push the prosecution of his employer." Earlier on February 4 the , EFF filed an amicus brief in the Elcomsoft case supporting Elcomsoft's position that the DMCA is unconstitutional because it impinges on protected speech and stifles technological innovation. Another amicus brief was also filed by a group of over 35 law professors opposing the DMCA law.

April 02, 2002: Attorneys for Russian software company ElcomSoft lost the first motion in their challenge of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, when Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court denied a motion to dismiss the case against them for allegedly violating the DMCA. The attorney for ElcomSoft, Joseph Burton, had argued that the alleged violations took place outside the jurisdiction of the court. But Judge Whyte disagreed, noting that the software was offered for sale on a Web server located in the U.S. and was purchased by people in the U.S.

Undeterred, ElcomSoft's CEO Alexander Katalov declared: "This uncharted territory called Cyberspace, will be defined and redefined time and again until we get it right. For me, this case is nothing less than redefining the DMCA in the hopes that we are the ones to get this one right".

Two other defence motions are pending. In one, Elcomsoft's attorneys argue that the DMCA violates the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression, while in the other they claim the law is unconstitutional because it is too vague. Court hearings resume on April 15.

U.S.judge Ronald Whyte of the Federal District Court (Northern California) rejected on May 8, 2002, motions by Russian software vendor Elcomsoft to dismiss criminal charges brought against the company under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), concerning its e-book software .

Judge Whyte rejected two legal challenges to conclude that the DMCA's ban on copyright circumvention tools is constitutional even if the circumvention tools are used for legal purposes.

Lawyers for ElcomSoft had suggested that the DCMA law negates the notion of fair use for consumers found in other copyright legislation. Judge Whyte in effect agreed. "Nothing within the express language (in the Act) would permit trafficking in devices designed to bypass use restrictions in order to enable a fair use, as opposed to an infringing use," he ruled. However he did not find that the Act was wrong in so stipulating. "… all tools that enable circumvention of use restrictions are banned…Without the ban on trafficking in circumvention tools the government's interest in promoting electronic commerce, preserving the rights of copyright holders and preventing piracy would be undermined."

The ruling was a major setback for opponents of the relevant sections of the DCMA. One aspect of his ruling is likely to bother a U.S government in draconian mindset, though. Ruled Judge Whyte: "The government contends that computer code is not speech and hence is not subject to First Amendment protections. The court disagrees. Computer software is expression that is protected by the copyright laws and is therefore 'speech' at some level, speech that is protected at some level by the First Amendment.".

However he also ruled that such speech is not entitled to full First Amendment Protection. " Doing so would turn centuries of our law and legal tradition on its head, eviscerating the carefully crafted balance between protecting free speech and permissible governmental regulation", Judge Whyte further ruled.

In a continuing David v Goliath saga an appellate court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, upheld February 13, 2002 its original decision denying a motion from giant publisher Random House for a preliminary injunction against tiny e-bookstore RosettaBooks. Therefore the latter can continue at present to sell the e-books for which it holds electronic publishing sales rights. RosettaBooks CEO Leo Dwyer enthused "We see this as another important victory for Authors, Agents and all those with a vested interest in the development of a dynamic ePublishing/eReading market place"

The ruling, countered Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum, "was on procedural grounds, not on the ultimate legal merits of our arguments". So the battle is not yet over, as according to Applebaum Random House intends to continue with the original case. Comment: But having recently closed its own electronic imprint Random House now seems to have left itself open to accusations of "dog in the manger" attitudes & even big-corporation monstering of small independents.

March 19 2002: Are Internet service providers responsible for material on their networks? Not necessarily, it seems. A U.S. federal judge has ruled that America Online is not liable for the unauthorized posting of some e-books on its Web server.

Update: Palm Digital Media has announced its top-selling e-books as of May 2002. Palm has more than 5,000 e-book titles available & sold more than 180,000 e-books in the Palm Reader format during 2001. The books can be read both on Palm's own handheld and related devices & on Pocket PCs. The Top Ten fiction & non-fiction best sellers were as follows:

1."Antares Dawn" by Michael McCollum, Jabberwocky Literary
2."Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor" by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds, St. Martin's Press
3."Spider-Man" by Peter David, Ballantine Books
4."Shanghai Baby" by Wei Hui, Pocket Books
5."Murder Is Easy" by Agatha Christie, RosettaBooks
6."Everything's Eventual" by Stephen King, Scribner
7."The Sins of the Fathers" by Lawrence Block, HarperCollins PerfectBound
8."Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown, St. Martin's Press
9."Three Days of the Condor" by James Grady, RosettaBooks
10."Star Trek, The Next Generation: Stargazer: Gauntlet" by Michael Jan Friedman, Pocket Books Palm Digital Media

1."God's Debris" by Scott Adams, Scott Adams, Inc.
2."The Procrastinator's Handbook" by Rita Emmett, Walker & Co.
3.The Holy Bible, New International Version from Zondervan Publishing
4."The Agile Manager's Guide to Getting Organized" by Jeff Olsen, Velocity Business Publishing
5.Webster's New World College Dictionary from Hungry Minds
6."The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey, FranklinCovey, Inc.
7.Webster's New World Compact School and Office Dictionary from Hungry Minds
8.Random House Roget's Thesaurus from Random House Reference
9."What Would Machiavelli Do?/Throwing the Elephant" by Stanley Bing, HarperCollins PerfectBound
10."The Multi-Orgasmic Couple" by Chia and Abrams, HarperCollins PerfectBound

Palm Digital Media are now resurrecting the old idea (or should that be the once & future idea?) of e-books on a disk or card, by offering the PalmPak® eBook series.They're on MultiMedia cards, & available for Palms m125, m500 & m505 models. So far there are three available, the Sci-Fi PalmPak bearing four SF titles by Peter Hamilton, the Mystery PalmPak with six tales in the "Harry Bosch" detective series by Michael Connelly, both $US29.95; & for $US10 more a personal finance seven-book PalmPak by the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" dude, allegedly detailing the secrets of financial success.
Psst: the real secret of financial success is to write books about it.

Follow the World Cup at the official FIFA World Cup site. There you can score many free World Cup e-books in .pdf format, to read on your home computer or laptop. The World Cup 2002 e-books are crammed with all the important goodies like match schedules, information on all the teams and the competition groups. And unlike a "regular" book, the e-books will be regularly updated during the event with scores, statistics & other info. (as only an electronic book can be!)

Audiobook Month is a five-year old campaign designed to create greater awareness of audio books among consumers, retailers, librarians and library patrons. It's sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, who hang out at www.audiopub.org.

Audio books are great for those with restricted vision -but it's silly to make them languish under a "disability" tag. Why - because all other folks can enjoy them equally too! Like the old-fashioned but imaginative radio dramas our forebears once harkened to, or the mobile beat of our favourite music today, they allow us to take in some entertainment or soul food while doing the housework, travelling or a million other boring but necessary things that could do with some livening up. They come in lots of formats & mediums, so there's likely something there to appeal to most anyone.

Something most e-book enthusiasts are aware of is that not only are e-books great for reproducing traditional form of texts, they have huge possibilities in the areas of interactive & multimedia applications, potentialities impossible in a printed book. While most of this development lies in the future, there are examples available now to pique our curiosity.

In this spirit the companies GlobalMentor, Inc. and John Wiley & Sons, have released an e-book entitled Graph Theory and Geography: An Interactive View. To quote from the press release "this revolutionary volume allows mathematicians and geographers to view graph theory in a new and vibrant way. The electronic format takes full advantage of online tools such as animation and Java applets to allow readers to follow processes as they happen, while hyperlinks allow readers to move easily through the text for quick reference to theorems or definitions."

The book may also include another potential unique advantage of e-books - the ability to update existing versions - in that " In the event of future enhancement, readers will be able to purchase upgrades for a small fee after paying the full price for the main product."

In the same spirit, check out sites that offer moving time line illustrations in dramatic ways that printed books can only reproduce with a multiplicity of maps or endless superimpositions of dotted lines. See examples at: http://www.archaeology.usyd.edu.au/research/time_map/index2.html

Update: Watergate! Deep Throat's identity to be revealed in e -book June 17 - maybe

. Connoisseurs of the '70s may be intrigued to hear that former White House counsel John Dean has announced he will be publishing an e-book on June 17 that will finally reveal the identity of "Deep Throat".

Deep Throat, for those too young or too old to remember, or who took so many drugs in those days that they've quite forgotten, was the anonymous informer who so successfully undermined U.S. President Richard Nixon by means of his or her leaks to crusading journalists at the "Washington Post". (By the way, whatever happened to crusading journalists? Did they all fall victim to the relentless corporatisation of the media? )

The book is apparently being released in electronic form to come out quickly in time for the 30th anniversary of the fabled Watergate break-in. However Dean has already pegged several different people as being Deep Throat in the past, so whether he has any real evidence to prove he's finally figured it out remains to be seen.

Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net) early April announced that its 5000th e-text has been made available free on the Web. Kudos are certainly due to this public-spirited organisation. The text in question is a English translation of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Time for a breather? Not likely! The Gutenberg folk, whose project dates from 1971, hope to double their Web library to 10,000 e-books by the end of next year.

The popular New International Version of the Christian Bible (a translation first issued in 1978) has now been published as an e-book, as of March 1 2002. It's available in Gemstar (Rocket), Microsoft & Palm Reader formats. The publisher is Zondervan, a Michigan USA "Christian communicatioms company" founded in 1931. Zondervan however is now owned by the giant HarperCollins conglomerate, itself a subsidiary of ex-Aussie Rupert Murdoch's mega-business News Corporation. Verily, verily I say unto you…

Update:

As you can see above, Zondervan's New International Version of the Bible in e-book format topped Palm Digital Media's list of best-selling non-fiction e-books for April 2002. However a Bible totin' reader has emailed us to cast down claims that Zondervan brought out the first e-book New International Version, correctly pointing out that he bought a NIV Bible for his Palm IIIx back in 1999, an edition "with footnotes, bookmarking, full-text searching etc". So that version, still available from http://www.laridian.com/palm/default.asp?ring=servant, preceded Zondervan's by almost three years.

Sic transit gloria mundi. Palm Digital Media by the way, perhaps mindful of the camel through the eye of the needle parable, also offer the longstanding King James Version of both Old & New Testaments for free. Or if you have $US7.95 to your name, the site http://www.topicsites.com/ebooks/gemstar-bible.htm offers the same KJV in Adobe eBook & Adobe pdf, Gemstar, hiebook, HTML, Microsoft, MobiPocket, MS Word, Palm - & even plain text - formats. Which reminds us, to keep up the religious theme, of what a confusing Tower of Babel the e-book format issue is these days. Other religious scriptures now available as e-books include:

* The Book of Mormon, in the above ten formats plus a record-breaking eleventh (the latter called Instant eBook, an HTML variant which reads only on Windows PC computers or tablets under Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser version 4.0 or higher).

*The Koran / The Quran, is available in at least MS Reader & plain text.

Please let me know details of other religious scriptures available as e-books & I'll add them to this list.

UK Electronic Textbook Design Guidelines Released

Ruth Wilson, Research Fellow in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Strathclyde, U.K., has announced the release of the EBONI (Electronic Books ON-screen Interface) Project's Electronic Textbook Design Guidelines. EBONI was a project funded under the JISC/ DNER Programme for Learning and Teaching, which ran from August 2000 until March 2002, with the aim of setting a strategy for the development of e-books within U.K. higher & further education. JISC is the influential Joint Information Systems Committee of the U.K.

The guidelines are the result of extensive evaluations of electronic books involving over 200 students, lecturers and researchers from a range of disciplines and backgrounds in UK Higher Education. They are available at

http://ebooks.strath.ac.uk/eboni/guidelines/index.html

Further information about related research at Strathclyde can be found at http://ebooks.strath.ac.uk/. Enquiries about the project itself should be addressed to eboni@ebooks.strath.ac.uk.

Canadian e-Anthology

Canadian eAuthors (CeA) has launched "Looking in. Portraits of the Canadian Soul", an original anthology of stories by 14 Canadian e- authors. Available free in html, html large print or .pdf formats at: http://ceauthors.com/ceanthology.htm. Says "M. D. Benoit, the editor: "This unique e-book embodies the meaning of being Canadian for our eAuthors; the diversity that is Canada, its land and people…"

Learn more about e-books and electronic publishing in Canada, at http://www.ceauthors.com (Thanks to TEN & Eva Kende, CeA Spokesperson).

The Seybold E -Book Zone, launched early in 2001, has ceased existence as a separate report (although the archive will remain at http://www.seyboldreports.com/ebooks/index.html). Seybold's further e-book coverage has now been merged into the Seybold Report & their The Bulletin (not to be confused with the venerable Australian publication of the same name).

Correction: Mark Walter, Senior Editor of Seybold Publications, based in Pennsylvania & these days a Key3Media company, has objected to our report concerning Seybold in the January newsletter. Although our source for that report is normally authoritative, it seems that on this occasion facts were confused with those in another report. For the record, it was the parent company Key3Media which "downsized", not Seybold itself, the downsizing number reported is evidently incorrect & the investors mentioned are not Seybolds. Our apologies to Mark and Seybold.

Palm Releases Report on Handhelds in Education Palm Inc reported on March 8th the results of a study supporting the use of handhelds in primary & secondary education. The Palm Education Pioneer Program awarded $US2.3 million in technology grants to 175 U.S. classrooms from a broad socio-economic range. Independent R&D organization SRI International monitored the overall experience and effectiveness of using handhelds for teaching and learning. Ninety-six percent of respondents agreed that handheld computers are an effective instructional tool for teachers; 93 percent that having a classroom set of handheld devices will have a positive effect on teaching practices and 73 percent that handheld computers are more easily used in the flow of classroom activity than desktop computers. Overall it was felt that handheld technology in classrooms can improve the learning process & classroom management, and inspire more collaborative learning activities.Read a fuller report (there's downside too) at: http://www.allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2002/03/08/palm_education.html.

Texterity Dexterous with the Dough

March 12, 2002 SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass.-Texterity, Inc. announced it has successfully raised $US2.7 million additional in investment & working capital. Most of the money was subscribed by the Brook Venture Fund and Venture Capital Fund of New England ("VCFNE"). Said Martin Hensel, Texterity, Inc's president: "The funding enables us to continue developing and offering new services, based on our core TextCafe conversion technology. Additionally, Texterity will be able to increase sales and marketing efforts." Martin added that "This investment shows that VCs believe in e-books…They're not concerned whether they take off this year or this month. They know e-books make sense." Texterity's s TextCafe, has previously been noted with approval in this newsletter, & their expansion to date seems to indicate both a worthwhile service & sound business model so far.

E-Author Buzz Publisher's Weekly reports that novelists and e-authors Doug Clegg and M.J. Rose have launched a new Web-only publishing venture called Pigeonhole Press. The first titles from the Press will be four interactive e-workbooks called BuzzBooks, and include Buzz Your Book by M.J. Rose & Doug Clegg, Buzz Your Zine by Angela Adair-Hoy, Buzz Your MP3 by Brian Freeman and Buzz Your Online Auction by Matt Schwartz.

They're downloadable for $8.95 and provide Web links to online exercises and worksheets. As well all four link to a free online forum. Messrs Clegg & Rose estimate they'll need to sell 5,000 copies of each book to break even. The strategy, according to Rose, is to be "market-oriented" and use authors who have launched online communities with at least 50,000 members. Clegg added that the e-books and sites will be continually updated to reflect "what worked and what didn't work. We've created a branded line of books that absolutely must be e-books. They're not just print books in e-format."

A free e-book called Discover Buzz gives an overview of the company and samples of the titles available. It is downloadable at: http://article.publishersweekly.com/UM/T.ASP?A12.56.605.3.170860212 Forthcoming titles in the Buzz line will cover film, business, Web sites, hobbies and journalism.

MediaBay Adds Audiobooks

MediaBay, which recently added downloadable audio to its offerings, will soon have "thousands of books." The company has a partnership deal with OverDrive and will sell titles from publishers including McGraw Hill & Time Warner.

Update: Fictionwise to sell Secure Format e-Books too

Web ebookstore Fictionwise .com, one of the most successful of its kind, has previously sold e-books without DRM protection, i.e. in unencrypted format (see Story 6 in our January newsletter). Now they'll also make some available in a "secure Mobipocket" format", enabling them to stock best-selling titles from Random House, St. Martins, Time Warner, and McGraw Hill. "Secure" Mobipocket eBooks can be read on most popular handheld devices including PalmOS, Pocket PC, WIN CE, Psion, and Franklin eBookMan, and Fictionwise says,soon on personal computers too. Comment: MobiPocket is certainly proving its utility as a cross-platform software for the smaller handheld devices.

Quote on e-publishing. "The first wave hasn't become a market of any great scale. But that's okay there's another wave right behind it." Random House's technology expert Richard Sarnoff sounds an optimistic note, in an interview with Publisher's Weekly's Steven Zeitchik.

Update: Lies, Damned Lies & True Statistics

According to Australia's National Office for the Information Economy *, in an international comparison of developed countries for the percentage of households which own / lease a PC, Australia ranked second, with 64% of Australian households estimated to own or lease a computer. Was America first? Nope, surprisingly South Korea had the highest level (70 per cent). At the other end of the list, France bombed out at 35%.

For households connected to the Internet, Australia ranked equal 7th on 52%, with the leaders Hong Kong and Sweden ranking 1st equal at 58 per cent. France again held up the rear, at 22%.

Oz rules on being the least sexist & ageist though - Australia ranked 1st in both the equity of access between males and females (lowest difference in access between genders), and in the equity of access between age groups (lowest difference in access between age groups). And you thought we were really awful! Italy gets the wooden spoon for political incorrectness in both the latter categories.

Unsurprisingly though, Americans have the world's cheapest Internet access (in terms of the price of 40 hours of Net access) - a mere 23.8 US dollars. However Australia comes in at an encouraging third position there, at 42.9 US dollars. Worst off is Ireland, where they charge a leprechaun's pot of gold apparently - well 75.4 US dollars anyway. Begorrah!

* at http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/info