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A U S T R A L I A N E - B O O K N E W S L E T T E R <<< for local and international digital book news - to subscribe see information at base>>>
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| December 2003 newsletter below |
Conferences, Events, Festivals, Forums, Seminars,Talks etc
*2004 SLA/IASL (School Library Ass'n/International
Association of School Librarianship) Joint Conference To be held at Trinity
College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland from 17-20 June 2004. The conference
theme will be From Aesop to e-book: The story goes on...
http://www.iasl-slo.org/conferences.html
5th annual Buying & Selling eContent Conference April
25–27 2004, Marriott's Camelback Inn Resort, Golf Club and Spa, Scottsdale,
Arizona. For those interested in the same.
Among keynote speakers are Allen Weiner of Gartner Group, Inc., who will talk
on "In Search of Perfectly Portable Content", by which he means allowing copyrighted
material to move freely from device to device without uncontrolled copying
(aye, there's the rub).
Then there's Louis Borders of KeepMedia on "From Books to Content",
and Anthea Stratigos of Outsell, Inc. on "Content Industry Outlook". Other
prime topics include "The Convergence of Software and Content", "Business
Models: Innovative Content Packaging & Pricing" and "Evolving Models for Licencing
& Rights Management". If momentarily bored there's always golf, and you can
quaff a cocktail or two before "authentic southwestern gourmet meals", whatever
they are, as the sun sets over the beautiful Arizona mountains.
http://www.buy-sell-econtent.com
eBooks in the Public Library Conference March 16th, 2004,
McGraw-Hill Auditorium, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York City, NY. Over
16,000 US public libraries now lend e-books to their communities 24-hours
a day, 7 days a week. Further details can be found at:
http://www.openebook.org/library2004
ePubLondon at the London Book Fair 11th - 12th March
2004 Pillar Hall, Olympia Exhibition Centre, London. Said to tackle key business
issues in electronic publishing, it's the fourth annual international conference
for "examining change and development in electronic publishing across all
markets and platforms… will track, demystify and anticipate digitally driven
change through the views and experience of publishers themselves". So there.
http://www.lbf-virtual.com/page.cfm/Link=39/t=m/goSection=13
Computers in Libraries 2004 March 10-12 2004, Hilton
Hotel, Washington DC. Some presentations will be e-book relevant, e.g. "PDAs
in the Library: The Whole World in Our Palms" by Megan Fox; and "Getting Pushy:
Delivering Content to PDA Users" by Colleen Cuddy, Systems Librarian, NYU
School of Medicine.
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2004/CIL2004PreProgram.pdf
Don't forget Read an E-Book Week, March 7-13 2004
1st Middle East & Gulf Region Hand Held Device Summit, Dubai, 9-10 December 2003, in The Emirates Towers Hotel. Organised by the ARABCOM group, and held under the patronage of Sheikh Maktoum Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is Chairman of the Dubai Technology & Media Free Zone Authority.
Over 400 delegates attended from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and other countries; from both Government and private sectors. Speakers came from both the Arab states and from the USA, Europe, UK, Asia, Canada, & Australia. Many major IT companies participated, and the conference was judged a big success. http://www.mepocketpc.com/pdasummit2003.htm
3rd Scottish annual e-books seminar, Wolfson Suite, Edinburgh University Library, George Square, Edinburgh, Wednesday 24th September 2003. Speakers from major e-book players, including librarians, researchers, user groups and publishers, explored the challenges of e-book integration, issues of access, content availability and promotion. All with a pitch of " Are you still nervous about e-books?"
The orators included Colin Galloway (Glasgow University) chairing & also presenting on the work of the Scottish e-books Content Working Group, and Ian Jennings from the netLibrary Users Group. Jamie Cuthbertson & Kim Main from the Royal National Institute for the Blind explained issues affecting visually impaired customers when accessing e- texts.
As well, Ann Wales demonstrated how e-books have been successfully integrated into the NHS e-library; and John Fox from North Lanarkshire explained the use of e-books to promote life-long and e-learning with the Login to Learn project. More at the Gaelic-slanted URL: http://www.slainte.org.uk/Eventsca/0309/03092400.htm
DRH2003 (annual Digital Resources for the Humanities Conference) Aug. 31- Sept.3 2003 Held in the Elwes Building, Uni. of Gloucestershire's Park Campus, Cheltenham, in England's green, pleasant and occasionally sunny land.
Headlining was Meg Bellinger of Yale University Library on "Digital Preservation". Presentations included Carolyn Baker of Oxford University on "Developing digital collections in an international context", while Peter Robinson, De Montfort University, asked plaintively "Where have all the publishers gone?" Ylva Berglund, of the Oxford Text Archive, looked at free e-books and their potential use within the Higher and Further Education community in a talk called, unsurprisingly, "An Investigation into Free Ebooks."
From the University of Sydney Library, Ross Coleman spoke on "The Australian e-Humanities Network - building a community of scholars, practitioners and activists". His paper described the establishment and development of the Network, & addressed key issues and themes therein. (If you want to learn more about the Network, check out the Australian e-Humanities Gateway . The Gateway includes a searchable database containing details of current projects in the e-Humanities field across many disciplines in Australian universities.
On the lighter side of things, John Walsh of Indiana University spoke on Comic Book Markup Language (CBML), a TEI-based XML vocabulary designed to accommodate the XML encoding of comic books and graphic novels. He observed "The text--from the familiar speech and thought balloons to the graphically rendered POW! SMASH! BANG! sound effects--is inextricably bound with the image," and noted sagely, "The digitized comic book--no matter how meticulously encoded--cannot be sufficiently represented in XML alone". Sounds like a job for - Superdigitisor!
Meanwhile Hilary Malaws, of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales reported on "Shared Web Information Services for Heritage, or to be precise "SWISH - The Concept", followed by the papers of Jo McCoy, "SWISH -The Technical Solution" and Diana Murray, "SWISH -The Vision". Hmm. American readers should note that this paragraph does not translate accurately into their patois.
On the social side, a Conference dinner in the Gold Cup Suite
of Cheltenham Race Course, an excursion to Sudeley Castle, visits to Cotswold
villages & guided walks around historic Cheltenham & Gloucester (incl. the
fine Gloucester Cathedral) topped off events, rather. Bizarrely though, conference
papers are not published on the Web, but are available in bound form from:
http://www.drh.org.uk
ECDL 2003 17-22 August 2003, in Trondheim, Norway. ECDL 2003 was the 7th in the series of annual European Community Digital Library conferences. ECDL has become the major European forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. More at:: http://www.ecdl2003.org
DORM papers Some months ago (on 29-30 May 2003), a Digital Objects Repository Management forum entitled " Information Infrastructure: Backing Australia's Ability" was held at the Veterinary Science Conference Centre, University of Sydney, as part of a consultative process being undertaken by the Higher Education Information Infrastructure Implementation Steering Committee. It included reference to e-prints, electronic publishing, digital theses & resource discovery. Papers from the forum are now available at: http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/dest/forum.html
OeBF 2003 Annual Meeting Presentations Presentations
from the Open eBook Foundation's third annual meeting are posted on the OeBF
website for public viewing at:
http://www.openebook.org/events/presentations.htm
1. Twelve Month PDA e-Book Trial at Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Victorian e-book library pioneer Pam Saunders is again at the forefront of her state's digital book initiatives. As Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service e-book Project Manager, Pam has launched a twelve-month trial to assess the demand for acceptance of e-books on borrower's own handheld devices (e.g. Palm Pilots & PocketPCs) in a public library environment. Enthuses Pam, "… the library already loans e-books through the web, but we are amongst the first in the world to offer e-books directly onto borrowers own PDA devices".
The trial service will operate initially from the library's existing collection of almost 300 e-titles, mostly works of fiction, located at www.libwise.com/ozebooks. However the collection will expand during the 12-month trial to reflect the reading preferences of 50 volunteer patrons, who will be encouraged to give regular feedback concerning issues such as preferred book categories and ease of navigation.
The library's e-collection, which uses Mobipocket reading software, was built by Aussie e-book company eInfo Solutions. Mike Ottoy, the company's CEO, sees this project as "a very important milestone in the development of eBook technology and supporting infrastructure". Adds Mike, " At the end of this 12-month trial we will have a far better picture of who will read what in an e-book format, what they look for in an e-book lending facility, and whether existing technology, in this case PDA technology, is an acceptable medium". A research paper will also be written at the end of the trial.
Yarra Plenty e-books may be reserved, becoming automatically available upon expiration of the existing loan period. Each borrower can loan up to 3 e-books at a time. The books will stay on the borrower's PDA device for 3 weeks and then "vanish", and be available for another borrower. http://www.yprl.vic.gov.au/Ozebook1.htm
2. Strathfield Public Library looking at Multi "e" tablets
Strathfield Public Library in Sydney's mid-west has received a grant to develop a Multimedia Centre in their new library, with e-books as a draw card. The grant comes from the NSW State Government , through the State Library of NSW. Strathfield's Sean Finlay is thinking of a mix of PDAs and dedicated e-book readers to kick off the library's e-book collection.
3. Aussies in there first again
Perth, WA- based company eBooks.com beat the giant Amazon.com
to the punch by announcing last September 24 that it has indexed its entire
collection, enabling fast searches across every word in every title in its
25,000 book database. The big difference - all these books are already e-books,
whereas Amazon has paradoxically allowed searches in the digital files that
lie behind its printed titles. And while Amazon immediately ran into flak
from the (U.S.) Author's Guild & others for its bold move, eBooks.com received
only applause from the sidelines. The searches give intelligently ranked results
in the Google manner, so that most relevant book is likely to come up first.
http://www.ebooks.com
4. Queensland No Slouch In Aussie Universities Digital Archives Push
The University of Queensland now maintains an "eprints @UQ" digital repository, which at a count in August 2003 contained 425 items. The repository covers material across twenty years (1983-2003), although the bulk of it is material created since 1998. This includes e-books, e-chapters, online journals, various articles, working papers, conference papers and proceedings, posters, miscellaneous research output, and pre-publication (draft) material.
The OAI-compliant* repository "showcases the research output of UQ academic staff and postgraduate students across a range of subjects and disciplines, both before and after peer-reviewed publication". Formats used are HTML, ASCII text, PDF & Postscript. Interestingly, the software that creates the archive is available free (from http://www.eprints.org).
Meanwhile the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne now also maintain similar digital Repositories. The ANU E-Print Repository has the larger archive of around 1,460 items, with material back to 1987, while the smaller collection at the University of Melbourne (just under 200 items) boasts the oldest individual item, dating back to 1945.
* The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) develops and promotes interoperability standards to facilitate the efficient dissemination of digital content.
5. Digital Rights Management Guide released for Australia
An Australian Digital Rights Management Guide has recently been released. The guide "will greatly assist creators, producers and traders in getting information, ideas and resources for the management of their content in the digital environment", according to the Australian Government's cultural and recreational newsletter.
Written for the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), the guide was prepared by the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA). IPR Systems P/L (a digital rights management company), SecureNet (a consultancy firm with expertise in digital security) and Gilbert + Tobin (intellectual property lawyers) assisted, while Donna Parkes was responsible for design. One would have hoped EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia) would have been allowed a Guernsey too, but…
The Guide is in six parts. You can download all of it, any of the six, or an Executive Summary, from: http://www.dcita.gov.au/drm
6. Aussies Aid Africa -Virtually
The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) has this month given a grant totalling Sh258 million to enable Kenyatta University (KU) in Nairobi, Kenya, to offer degree courses on-line. An African Virtual University (AVU) centre was established at the university in 1997. Along with Ethiopia's Addis Ababa University it will now offer accredited diploma and degree programmes in conjunction with two Australian universities.
Specifically, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) will offer courses in computer science and business administration, while Curtin University of Technology will contribute management courses. From the USA, Georgetown University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania are also involved.
Kenyatta University has established an AVU digital library with more than 4,000 full-text on-line journals, plus more than 8,000 e-books contained in a database. It also has links to the World Bank electronic resources, on-line dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases.
E-newsletters and the future of communication on the Web
Our current newsletter metamorphosed into a half-yearly rather than a quarterly edition this time around. Sorry about that folks, but time available recently was limited by other demands. On the plus side though, we'll shortly have an opportunity to prepare some useful new pages for you on the website. So check them out around February next year.
Meanwhile the future of e-newsletters in general has itself become increasingly problematic, as inboxes everywhere are overwhelmed by an ever-growing avalanche of infuriating spam & virus-ridden email. It is reported that more than half of all email sent is now spam. Worse, for some people with high Web exposure 90 percent or more of their e-mail nowadays can be either junk or positively dangerous.
It gets worse. Morally deficient spammers & anti-social virus mailers often hijack the PCs of unsuspecting folk to help spread their mischief, and may even temporarily overrun many group servers. So individuals and organisations have been forced into drastic counter-measures. Some valuable defences are indeed evolving, but the spammers, like intelligent germs, are evolving along with them. As a result, increasingly heavy-handed protective software and high-octane server parrying may eliminate or "bounce" the genuine newsletter along with the nasties. Some take the lesser, but still damaging, path of excising all HTML, or indeed any enhancements beyond plain text.
What hope is there of imminent relief?
In Australia a Senate committee report tabled on 29 October 2003 recommended that two anti-spam bills be made law. Despite disagreement about controversial elements of these bills, they were indeed passed by the Senate early this month ( although they're unlikely to be signed into law before April 2004). However even a very good Australian anti-spam law will do very little to solve the problem.
For in fact, home-grown spam & viruses comprise only a tiny proportion of the difficulty. Reflecting both America's dominant position on the Web and its freebooting, capitalist culture, individuals in the USA are by far the greatest source of the world's spam problems.
There is finally an anti-spam law coming in the USA too, possibly in January 2004. Ironically it will override a more effective state law that was intended for California. However it is not at all certain that such laws will deter other than the more law-abiding of the army of spammers.
Without a dedicated corps of savvy specialists to provide effective enforcement, an anti-spam law will simply be flouted with impunity - and worse, innocent people will be blamed for the misdeeds of others. Unless ISPs, users & software-makers can agree to cooperate at an unprecedented level, it's possible that the very concept of email will have to change drastically before a permanent solution can be found.
The worst case? If the free & easy exchange of messages on the Web recedes into history, then the crooked, greedy spammers, together with the silly attention-seeking kids who make viruses, will finally have wrecked a noble experiment in human communication.
I'll have French e-fries with that - Mobipocket now in Overdrive
OverDrive Inc., the USA based global e-book wholesaler, announced on November 11 that it would now support Mobipocket. The French-based Mobipocket is a free, multi-device, e-reading software. More to the point, it is popular & well-featured, with enthusiastic supporters throughout the world and a large fan base in Europe. This deal will make over ten thousand commercial titles available in Mobipocket format. That's from 150 leading publishers, through OverDrive's Content Reserve, for resale to retailers and libraries worldwide. Previously Overdrive confined itself to the "big two", i.e. Microsoft Reader and Adobe Reader formats.
Besides desktop & laptop PCs, Mobipocket can now be installed on Palm OS devices, Symbian OS devices, a variety of smartphones, Pocket & Tablet PCs, the Franklin eBookman, the Sony UX50 clamshell device, the Garmin iQue and various other handhelds. As well as e-books, you can even have news bulletins sent to a wireless email account at desired intervals each day via Mobipocket, to read on the go. This last requires installing Mobipocket's Web Companion software on your PC.
NB: Many users of "convergence devices" -combined mobile phone/PDAs- now use Mobipocket to read e-books. Sales of such "smartphones" are booming, with some analysts even predicting, if rather wildly, that they will outsell conventional mobile phones in the years ahead. Mobipocket itself boasts over 1 million e-book downloads since March 2000.
Britain acts to preserve web pages, e-books
In various countries or jurisdictions, certain libraries are entitled to receive free "deposit" copies of all locally printed publications of stipulated types. Such a dispensation vastly improves the chances that such items will survive in the longer term.
Now a law has been passed in the UK to include copies of electronic publications in this rule, where these are substantially different from printed versions. On 31 October 2003 MP Chris Mole's private member's bill received the royal assent, as a new law covering a range of unique .uk material. It includes records of key events on British websites, major CD-ROM or online directories, news resources, online periodicals & unique e-books.
Similar laws have already been passed in France, Norway and Denmark, while a voluntary scheme has been in operation in Germany since March 2002. Says Chris Mole, " We must ensure that the 21st century is not written about in future centuries as a new Dark Age where significant data and records are missing because certain formats were not collected and saved for posterity. This new legislation means that a vital part of the nation's heritage will be safe and accessible as an important resource for businesses and education users in the future".
EBookBase hopes for home run with PDAs
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2003, a joint announcement from US-based Franklin Electronic Publishers and French company MobiPocket SA reported their launch of eBookBase, a "wholesale eBook distribution service exclusively targeted at mobile devices".
The concept is for publishers to have access to many online retail sales outlets for e-book sales, while dealing with only one contact point for matters of distribution, payment, and security. Both publishers and retailers may be members of the service. Publishers will pay a per-copy fee for digital rights management (DRM) services from the eBookBase. There is no charge to retailer members, who may sell any of the titles they chose.
Titles inputted into the eBookBase will be available in four languages, in Mobipocket's popular "cross-platform" format. They'll be downloadable to most PDAs and e-reader devices including those running the Palm, PocketPC, and Symbian operating systems. Other devices targeted are the Microsoft Smartphone and Tablet PCs.
The service began with a list of over 10,000 titles available, from over 100 publishers worldwide. Initial members include Random House, AOL Time Warner, McGraw-Hill Professional, Oxford University Press, Klett, Elsevier, Franklin, Numilog, Fictionwise, Cyberread, RosettaBooks, and SeattleBooks.
Bold Amazon move stirs both controversy & e-book interest
Online book retailer Amazon.com has introduced a type of online text searching for more than 120,000 titles it sells as physical printed books. The new " Search Inside the Book II" service provides a full page image, or series thereof, of pages matching the search term query. Moreover you can read a few adjacent pages to assess the relevance in situ.
Amazon as a business has always tried to personalise the book shopping experience, and offer unique features of online service to increase its customer appeal. So it had already dipped a toe in the text-search water by an existing "Look Inside the Book" feature. That service allows views of specified pages such as front and back cover, the table of contents, the index and even a sample chapter, as a bonus for browsing potential buyers.
The new, more extensive service means, ironically, that it is the online digitized text -or Web e-book - that will offer a unique opportunity for purchasers of printed volumes to check that what they are ordering is what they really want. The advantages of such a service can scarcely fail to arouse more interest in e-books themselves. In improving the accessibility of printed books, Amazon may also be helping pave the way to a developing e-book future.
The new service has however stirred demurs & even a little heated opposition from some publishers and authors. Technically it may either violate copyright, unless provided for specifically in a contract, or alternatively be a reasonable new case of "fair dealing". That depends on rival interpretations not yet tested in law. Amazon, however, is counting on the facility demonstrating an undeniable increase in sales. In that case, publisher/author opposition is likely to dwindle to a very few, who may choose to opt out of the service if the principle means more to them than profit.
In fact, there is already some hard evidence about the effect. Amazon reports that so far sales growth for titles in the program has "outpaced growth for titles not in the program by nine percent". That's not a stupendous amount, but equally, few authors would refuse a nine percent rise in their royalties without strong cause. Publisher attitudes will likely be the same. And indeed, at one count more than three dozen publishers had approached Amazon to date to join in the text-search programme, while a mere fifteen authors had asked to have their books removed from it.
US military base offered far-reaching e-book service Holbrook Public Library in South Dakota, USA, offers a special PC-based e-book library service for users connected with the nearby Ellsworth military base. The service, which requires registration at the base's own library, is available at any time from any location in the world. Eligibility is for active-duty service personnel, family members, retirees, Ellsworth government employees and students of the base education centre. More than 11,000 net-Library e-book titles on a wide variety of topics are currently available to Holbrook Library users at terminals in the library, or on other computers via the Internet.
Mac Attack Apple supporters have been hoo-ing & haa-ing for some time about the Mac OS X version known as "Panther", notorious in Windows fashion (aah!) for a number of teething troubles that have divided would-be updaters. To the rescue came the first in a series of "Take Control" e-books, namely Joe Kissell's "Take Control of Upgrading to Panther." Since the release of this title, a number of further Panther installation issues have arisen, however, & some previous ones have been clarified. So, in a gratifying display of the potential of e-books to be much more than static renditions of printed texts, a free update to the title has now been made available. Bravo Joe.
Free e-book release helps Microsoft spread its .NET A September e-release by Microsoft deployment expert Olivier D'hose, is alleged to demystify the complexities of building .NET installations. Olivier D'hose is a Senior Program Manager for Microsoft's Operations and Technology Group. His e-book, fulsomely entitled " The Developer Shortcut Guide to Building Installations for .NET and .NET Compact Framework Applications" was published by InstallShield Software Corp., in conjunction with Realtimepublishers.com.
The book has three chapters, "Understanding Microsoft .NET",
"Deployment scenarios for .NET applications" and "Understanding the .NET Compact
Framework". It was the second shortcut guide from the publishing combo, which
had the previous month released "The Administrator Shortcut Guide to Software
Packaging for Desktop Migration". Gentle hint to both: Even longer titles
are possible, but…
http://www.installshield.com/microsite/dotnetinstallation_ebook1
Flip, don't Flop
We've previously mentioned Flipviewer's " 3D realistic page-flipping book interface", & they're a leading variety of this type of software for multimedia e-books. Now eBook Systems Pty Ltd , the makers of the Flip suite*, has appointed Softbank Media & Marketing Corp. as their sole distributor in Japan and Korea. As a result SBMM will be releasing about twenty children's e-books in the Japanese market this December, including titles by renowned children's authors Yoko Kitayama and Shomei Yoh.
Enthused SOFTBANK CEO Masayoshi Son, " I have high expectations that Digital Flip technology will contribute much to the proliferation of rich media broadband content." As well it may. But be aware that heavy-duty multimedia e-books are way best on broadband however - in fact they may overwhelm a dialup connection altogether, in which it's a case of flip right out.
*There's also FlipPublisher, FlipAnalyzer and FlipAMS Ad Management System.
Unhappiest e-book story of 2003 - Gemstar ceases its e-book operations
We told you so, and we were right. But it gave us no joy, all the same. In 1998 it truly was a buzz to cradle the wonderful Rocket eBook in our arms and dream great dreams of the digital future. Alas, stupidity and short-sighted venality won the day, and the Rocket de-evolved into the ill-fated REBs. Gemstar, controlled by the hapless Henry Yuen & soon to fall under the puppet mastery of Rupert Murdoch, plowed on regardless to disappear into the e-book twilight.
Enough said. We hope all owners of REB devices have read carefully the information available (including the Gemstar announcement) from our eBookWeb friends at: http://12.108.175.91/ebookweb/discuss/msgReader$2205
1. Japan treads the path not taken
Books that electrify as a positively charged slogan to promote digital titles? The possibility is there now for Japan's Electric Book Business Consortium, which came into being on October 1 2003. Nineteen major Japanese companies and many smaller ones have grouped to promote the use of e-books and e-reading devices. On the electronics side the association includes leading industry firms such as Toshiba, Matsushita (Panasonic etc.) and Kenwood, with equally prominent names among publishers.
As we've previously reported, Japan has been following its own path on the e-book way for quite some time. In fact there was an earlier consortium led by Sharp some five years ago, but it fell by the wayside. Sharp moved away from dedicated e-readers and is currently pushing e-books for combination mobile phone/ PDA devices, distributed through the J-Phone network in conjunction with the Cybird Co.
The new grouping however favours an open approach to display and file formats. Consortium working groups will begin by studying a range of issues from e-readers to title distribution. Differing from the earlier "push" Yuusuke Suzuki, president & CEO of the eBook Initiative Japan Co. Ltd, says that the focus will not be restricted to Japanese e-books but will also invite participation internationally. The ability to display images well in addition to text will also be treated as important.
An example of Japan's "other path" is Matsushita's prototype Sigma Book, in which two A5-size LCD panels with XGA resolution comprise an unusual double-spread e-reader. The initial version is monochrome, but a colour model is under development. The b& w version will possibly sell for around 30,000 yen and the display type speaks of battery life of months rather than days at a time, & that from mere AA batteries. This e-reader is predicted to be a hit with consumers such as manga fans (although we in turn predict that the colour version might suit the latter much better).
Another different direction the Japanese are pointed in was in fact long ago advocated in this newsletter. Namely, that instead of physical bookshops regarding e-retailers as the enemy, bricks & mortar stores could complement the Net as an e-distribution medium. E-book customers could bring their own memory card to a bookshop to have a new title downloaded for them, & then upload the book file to their preferred reading device at home. As well, stores could sell a reusable card pre-loaded with a bestseller. And knowing the long Japanese fascination with vending machines, e-book kiosks are another possible hit. With portable memory drives increasingly cheap & ubiquitous such a sales avenue looks ever more sensible.
2. Sony the way to go home?
Meanwhile another Japanese major, Sony Corp., together with 14 publishing, printing and newspaper companies, was off on its own e-path. In November the group announced a dramatic new venture, Publishing Link LTD, an e-book rental business set to start up in Japan around March 2004.
Sony will take a leading 41 per cent stake in the new company, while four other partners will together hold a 51 per cent majority. The other nine smaller participants will hold the remainder. But the sensation here is the first practical use of E Ink. One member of the consortium, Toppan Printing, has been a major investor in the Massachusetts-based E Ink company , contributing some $US30 million towards developing the radical new "electronic ink " technology.
Central to the group's plans is a new e-reader device using E Ink's electronic paper display. The monochrome e-reader's screen will measure 6 inches (15cm) diagonally, and Toppan is now making masses of monochrome electronic paper for the device. Meanwhile the fact that E Ink is also developing electronic paper for both colour and moving images points to a de luxe model a little further down the track.
How will the e-lending work? Customers will download rental e-books to their PCs from the Web, & then transfer them to the e-reader (not wirelessly though, for security reasons). The e-reader's software will then allow the customer to read the item for a certain period of time. It's a closed proprietary situation, in which Sony will use its own BBeB format derived from XML for managing the data concerned.
Will the Sony group clash head on with the Electric Book Business Consortium referred to above? Not necessarily. Each grouping claims to be open to newcomers, and some companies have in fact already joined both.
Our analysis is that a sales model and a rental model for e-books might conflict, or on the other hand they might mesh nicely together. It all depends on price, and whether formats and delivery models are antagonistic or complementary. These three factors could create a layered but integrated market, or instead collide like an ocean liner striking an iceberg. If the latter, unfortunately, one at least is likely to sink with all hands. Even in Japan, the e-book market is not yet large enough to allow for any unscathed exits in a clash of the titans.
*Oh, & we've just learned that both Toshiba and Matsushita have been developing extra tiny (the first sub-1-inch) hard drives, which Toshiba at least will exhibit at a trade show in Las Vegas next month (January 2004). Such advanced miniaturisation could tailor neatly with their e-reader plans.
Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Palm Digital Media must be feeling rather flattered then, just now. That's because Adobe, the PDF people, have just opened (Dec. 17, 2203) a Digital Media Store, offering " a wide variety of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) digital content".
As well as e-books there are newspapers & magazines, including BusinessWeek, Popular Science, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and USA Today. You can browse by subject, or do an individual search. There are also "eDocs", which are basically "everything else", such as comics & graphic novels, study guides & workbooks, reports, essays, maps and newsletters.
All can be read using the free Adobe Reader 6.0, the latest version of Adobe's .pdf reading software. Headlining e-book in the store is Dude, Where's My Country by Michael Moore, available for $US $11.87. The Adobe Digital Media Store can be found at: www.digitalmediastore.adobe.com *
*Or, thanks to clever updates to Adobe products, you can equally reach the new Adobe store just by clicking the 'Get eBooks Online' button in Adobe Reader or Acrobat 6.0
Despite the gloom brigade, e-book sales continue to grow
From the USA reports show that e-books continue to speed ahead in sales, although off a very low baseline. For the year ended August 2003, the mostly-print Association of American Publishers figures show that their e-book sales jumped 498% to US$600,000 (these figures exclude digitally oriented publishers such Palm Digital Media or the many independent e-book retailers). The AAP's separately measured audiobook sales, a more mature market, increased by 15% to $10.4 million.
Meanwhile a survey sponsored by the Open E-book Forum showed that e-book sales registered with them for the first two quarters of 2003 (from data submitted by 34 e-publishers and retailers) rose 30% in value and 40% in volume compared with the same period in 2002. These OEBF 2003 half-year figures comprised 660,991 e-books representing revenue of nearly US$5 million, compared with $3,828,250 in the corresponding half of 2002.
The third quarter figures for 2003 from the OEBF continued the encouraging trend. Quarterly sales were 377,095 e-books, up 64% compared with the same period in 2002. Sales value was $2,591,469, up a lesser 37%. The difference indicates either that people bought less expensive titles, or, more likely, that prices came down overall. And there were 2,159 titles published in the quarter, up 74% on the 1,241 titles published over the same period in 2002. (For the full year to mid 2003, e-titles released were up 144%).
Important to note is that these latest figures represent sales by only thirty e-booksellers, albeit the largest ones. As our "Buybook" Web pages show, there are hundreds more outlets for e-books on the Web, and their sales contribution in toto must be significant.
Scott Pendergrast, co-owner of the leading US independent Fictionwise.com, believes his company alone will sell a million dollars worth of e-books in 2003. And Ryan Wuerch, CEO of PalmGear, the company that now owns Palm Digital Media, estimated in September that PalmGear would sell around 1.3 million e-books over the next 12 months.
What's selling? The top three genres were science fiction/fantasy, reference, and general fiction. These categories were followed by mystery and suspense, romance, business, religion, the classics, and erotic material.
B&N Bomb however
A casualty of 2003, though, was the e-book arm of BarnesandNoble.com, the Barnes & Nobles subsidiary which has undergone a controversial reorganisation this year. In explanation, BN.com vice-president Daniel Blackman said “Sales did not take off as we and many others expected". BN.com customers were given until December 9th to download their e-books, but won't now be able to reload titles they've paid for in the event of file problems or upgrade woes.
Much unfavourable feedback worldwide followed the news of the B&N decision. Many e-book fans also attacked the DRM 5* involved. Said one Ed Hansberry, "If there was ever an acceptable argument for DRM5 encrypted eBooks, it just died". Indeed for many, including a number of e-publishers, DRM (digital rights management) continues to be the Achilles heel of e-publishing. ** Others however argue that it is vital to maintaining an ordered market and to combat pirating. This is one controversy that will not go away any time soon.
Meanwhile parent company Barnes & Noble has also sold its Memphis, Tennessee, print-on-demand facility to digital specialist Lightning Source. The two decisions mean that one of the leading US book companies has in effect withdrawn from the digital cutting edge of the industry, to concentrate on immediate profits. Sounds like the B&N counter has become a home for bean-counters instead.
*DRM5 is a current copyright- protection mechanism of e-book encryption, tying digital rights to a limited number of devices permitted to read the books.
** Many e-book fans feel that some of the big-publishers have over-priced their e-books, offering only a small discount to the paper variety. Another complaint is that the rigours of modern DRM (in old fashioned speak, electronic copyright protection) have added too much complexity to many e-books, & increased the risk that customers could lose their books altogether.
A third opinion is that establishing a new technology may require markedly favorable pricing policies (an example given is how DVD players have sold phenomenally well since they were swiftly dropped below the price of VHS video recorders). Publishers have their own perspectives, and the e-book industry is a rare case where many small niche players are doing better than the big ones.
Could the content guard itself?
While we're on the topic of DRM, an intriguing proposal from security firm Cryptography Research is doing the rounds of interested parties. They advocate "Self-Protecting Digital Content". Namely, that where potentially "crackable" software is at present assigned to safeguard digital copyright, the very content should instead do the job & monitor itself.
So the concept of an "intelligent book" would take on a whole new meaning. Lest readers fear that the text itself might leap up and bite them on the bum for any transgression, proposal co-author Benjamin Jun speak merely of content that "can make decisions… (and) act on its own by using embedded cryptography and other techniques."
The new approach would essentially program content that could monitor its own use and even update its security via the Web. If that sounds a trifle sneaky & scary… well I'm with you there. In our view, books should be sufficient unto themselves, rather than a covert part of someone's law enforcement programme.
Mr. Jun might be able to sell his idea to the purveyors of the
US Patriot Act though. Who needs to bother librarians and booksellers about
what people are reading, if the book itself could report you for reading it?
George Orwell*, please report for a technology update.
http://www.cryptography.com
* Some Web devotees will know that a person calling himself Winston Smith has in fact created a program that enables users to make copies of Microsoft .lit (e-book) files they have purchased, in ways not authorised by the folk at Redmond. We won't go there right now...
And for a regular critical look at e-book happenings, we'd like to recommend to you David Rothman's TeleRead blog at: http://www.teleread.org/blog
E-Books feature in political trial
E-books scored a dubious first recently when they featured in an ongoing political show trial in Egypt. About the only upside is that since e-books have generally made little headway in Egypt so far, the novelty shock value may stimulate interest in them there and in the wider Arab world.
The background is that after fierce anti-Iraq-war demonstrations in Cairo on 20-21 March this year, alarmed Egyptian security forces rounded up hundreds of activists, to give them the message that whatever the cause, such openly independent behaviour would not be tolerated. A 35-year old engineer, Ashraf Ibrahim, knew police were looking for him, so handed himself in on 19 April.
Most other detainees were subsequently released, but Ashraf was detained without trial and evidently "overlooked" for the next four months, until he went on a ten-day hunger strike. Then police "threw the book" at him, charging him with leading an illegal organisation aiming to topple the government, possessing publications related to this organisation with the intent to distribute, and sending false information outside Egypt which damaged the state’s reputation and position abroad.
The alleged organisation is Al Ishtirakiyeen Al Thawriyeen (The Revolutionary Socialists), but if it really exists at all it seems more like a parlour gathering than a credible political force, being claimed to have only five members. Moreover Mr. Ibrahim is the only alleged member who authorities have bothered to charge. The suspicion, therefore, is that this is a symbolic accusation really meant to intimidate any on the left in Egypt, rather than a genuine individual trial. For the main evidence revealed so far, apart from a rough drawing Ashraf says was faked by his accusers, appears to be the defendant's possession of certain e-books.
The offending e-items are entitled Bolshevism; History of British Trotskyism; and Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For. To Western eyes this seems remarkably slim evidence to base such charges upon. After all, on this basis - using one of the more sinister features of America's celebrated Patriot Act - you could convict of treason virtually any history student who was doing an essay on Communism.
Mr. Ibrahim’s case has attracted much interest. Usually it is Islamists who are the accused in such political trials, and this is the first prosecution of an alleged dangerous leftist in Egypt for twenty years. In Ibrahim’s defence, lawyers have rallied from organizations active in calling for political reform and human rights promotion in Egypt, including the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists (APHRA) and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR). Representatives from Human Rights Watch have also been observers.
We wonder if representatives of the " Mid-East freedom 'n democracy- totin' " Bush Administration will turn up, though (apart from the usual spooks)?
Giving e-books, with a difference
For those with free time on their hands and a spirit of e-book giving, do take a look at Distributed Proofreaders. DP was founded by Charles Franks in the year 2000, to support the digitization of Public Domain books for Project Gutenberg. Yes, you too can become an official proofreader, to help get public domain (free of copyright) books online & available to the whole world gratis. The original text is displayed together with the same page as a web image file, for you to check for mistakes. Do as few or as many pages as you like.
Which brings us to give a pat on the back to one Karen Lofstrom of Makiki, Hawaii. Karen is helping Distributed Proofreaders prepare what will be Project Gutenberg's first book in the Hawaiian language, "The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai". The story was first printed in Hawaii in 1863 from a recital by S.N. Haleole. Karen hopes to help resurrect more literature in Hawaiian - much was published in the Hawaiian newspapers of the 19th century, but has since largely disappeared from view.
Mahalo, Karen, for helping take us to the windward side (e
Kailua e).
http://www.pgdp.net/c/default.php
In Brief
*Late in October 2003 Project Gutenberg's founder, Michael Hart, announced that Gutenberg has passed the milestone of 10,000 free e-book titles now available online, with the publication of the historic Magna Carta. * Harry Potter audio books, all published by Random House's Listening Library imprint, have achieved sales of three million copies. That makes the series an audio as well as print winner for children's titles * If you're selling e-books in the European Community (EU), beware. A 15% VAT (value-added tax) now applies to e-commerce sales there, but curiously not to print books.
Hello e-lovers, wherever you are… For lovers of romantic e-books there's now a special Yahoo Group. And there's an intriguing freebie twist to the plot here. Every time an author or publisher posts an e-book promo to the group, said promoter must give away a free copy of the e-book to the group moderator, who will select a winner to award it to from among those who have recently "posted" a message to the group. In other words, be an active participating member & you will have repeated chances of acquiring a novel piece of free love - err, let me rephrase that - a free romantic e-novel will be yours. So if literary love is your fling, check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebooklove
And another Yahoo e-book group, this time for independent e-publishers. Join the Ind -e-pubs group by emailing to : Ind-e-pubs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Or check it out at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ind-e-pubs
Audio book freebies
Yes indeed, there are some free audio books available from a site with the appropriate name of www.audiobooksforfree.com. Quite a few in fact, especially many classics of literature and a few non-fiction items. They're allegedly all well read & quite enjoyable. Any catch? Well their books are available in a range of file sizes, and only the 8 Kb/sec ones are free. Meaning that if you want top quality sound you'll still have to pay for it (at $3 to $6 per book). And you have to register on the site to obtain them, & supply some personal information too.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
*In October the Gale company announced a new product for libraries, the Gale Virtual Reference Library. This is a service where from a menu of over 85 e-reference sources -encyclopedias, almanacs, and series - a library selects those it feels most appropriate for its clientele base. The available choices cover items deemed suitable for the needs of children, academics, or a general audience.
Gale then manages the availability of the selection, which can be linked from the library's OPAC through MARC records and is available 24x7. The collection can also be accessed from a common menu integrating any other Gale electronic resources, or Ingenta electronic journals, that the library concerned possesses. While navigating is in HTML, traditional page layout is available as a PDF. http://www.gale.com/ebooks
Safari Tech Books Online
*Then there's Safari Tech Books Online, which announced the addition of its 1,500th e-book back in July and adds a hefty chunk more each month. Safari offers new content focused on IT students. The same comes from the many imprints of publishing majors O'Reilly and Pearson (it's actually their joint venture), as well as some Microsoft Press titles.
Safari's subscription service allows institutions to select books according to a "slot" model that bears studying. The whole deal also operates as a fully searchable database. "Many of these books are available in Safari before they hit the book shops, enabling us to keep our customers abreast of the very latest IT developments," enthuses Steven Hall, ProQuest's Global Vice President of Publishing. Subscribing libraries are also given the option of swapping old books for new titles every 30 days, which helps combat the instant obsolescence problem that this field is particularly prone to.
Safari also has three other electronic reference libraries in
the marketplace, viz. "Safari Bookshelf for the individual technologist, Safari
HelpDesk Online for enterprise knowledge workers and Safari Business Books
Online for business professionals". More at:
http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com
Overdrive Digital Library Reserve
*Meanwhile market steamroller Overdrive, Inc., announced that over 150 publishers, including many big industry names, have now joined its Digital Library Reserve. The available collections focus on more popular titles, and such best-selling e-books can be selected and downloaded from a participating library's website for offline reading on PCs and virtually all PDA devices. The e-books borrowed automatically expire and check themselves back into the collection. Overdrive offers a case study experience of one customer, the Cleveland Public Library, available at: http://www.overdrive.com/whitepaper/CPL_case_study.pdf
eBook Library
Another, forthcoming, entry in the commercial library stakes hails from ebooks.com, the parent company of which is now called the eBooks Corporation. They're developing eBook Library (EBL) a software platform to deliver their e-book catalogue to academic and research libraries.
EBL will have a flexible & multiple-concurrent-user lending model, which eBooks Corp. terms "non-linear lending". Although this may conjure up images of books tossed though the air to borrowers with a fine leg spin, it will certainly please larger libraries frustrated by the single user concept. They also use the mantra "seamless integration" to describe how their e-offering will mesh with existing collection and circulation management systems.
To be precise, they avow that librarians will be able to order, receive and catalogue an e-book with a single click. And they conjure up a delightful picture of a librarian receiving a request from a scholar by email or phone, buying the book, and making it available to the user all within a few minutes. Budget permitting, of course. "Do garlic chains and crucifixes come with that?" asked one Acquisitions person (who shall remain nameless), horrified at what such a prospect might do to promote ravening hordes of academics pounding ceaselessly on her door day and night.
Other handy features are the eReserve and ePacks. With the former, individual e-book chapters can be made available for reserve library lending. EPacks enable the assembling of "packs" of chapters from several books, to create an e- reserve coursework package. For the local yokels, the boast is also made that " EBL's collection of Australian books will be second to none".
EBooks Corporation reports it has established an EBL board of advisors, made up of academic and research librarians & publishers from the USA, Australia, Europe & the UK. This board will help develop and refine standards for EBL's library functionality, user testing of the beta product and ongoing product feedback. http://www.ebl.ebooks.com
NB: Before becoming too enthused about any particular company's digital offerings, check two things in particular -what are the loan limitations and how much will it cost you? As well, if the whole thing is going to be managed remotely for you, then how reliable is the service provided? We advise checking directly with libraries that have accepted that particular company's service, & asking them for their candid opinion, rather than simply taking customer lists at face value. A virtual library can still have very real problems.
*HP dreams the dream again - and good luck to them
Hewlett-Packard's Digital Media Lab in Bristol, England, has been working on the design & technology of a new, book-sized e-reader (about the dimensions of an open paperback). And what is really interesting here is that using the device mimics much of the tactile & visual experience of reading a print book.
For example, the prototype has touch strips around the edges. By flicking the strip at the base you can "turn the page" in a visual as well as a literal sense. You can also skim over a few pages by "leafing through them", in a manner that feels & looks similar to the traditional paper experience.
The intent is clear - to make it possible for a technophobic or techno-hesitant public to use an e-book reader that will provide them with an overwhelmingly familiar reading experience. From there they can quickly move on in mental comfort, to utilize and enjoy the numerous advantages an e-reading digital experience can offer.
This "back to basics" type of design holds huge potential for the large, older market of readers who are more repelled than attracted by anything that speaks to them of geekery or elitist techno-babble. At the same time, USB ports and wireless connectivity will ensure that whoever gets to load content for these readers will still be on the cutting edge of real technical progress.
The HP Bristol lab, managed by Huw Robson, is also working on improving the potential of electronic newspapers. This is a field that some believe will be a first, spectacular triumph for the updateable digital text. While others work on electronic ink and similar, purely technical, issues, HP is looking equally at the essential reader experience.
One such case: in a newspaper the reader mentally "zooms in" on a particular feature, and ignores the rest of the page until he's ready for it. An e-paper could allow you to do the same. You'd literally zoom in from an initial whole page view, and then out again when finished with that story by means of a single tap, rather than clicking on an URL to a separate entry, as with existing online newspapers. By such means, a traditional newspaper page could be fully re-created electronically, smoothing the path to widespread adoption of the "everlasting up-to date newspaper".
When will the new HP device be available? Huw Robson is talking a couple of years yet. That'll give HP plenty of time to mull over critical issues like price.
Our earnest advice: a high-priced dedicated e-reader is like a $20 ice cream. Who (apart from people enjoying spending other people's money) really wants one? Price stupidity has been a large factor in enormously slowing the early spread of the e-book. Show me the $0 e-reader - like the $0 mobile phone - and I'll show you a device with huge popular potential. We're still only in the grey, troubled dawn of the e-book era, and it'll take larger minds than the blinkered bean-counters of traditional "fleece the early adopters" commerce to speed the sun's arrival.
Prototype HP e-reader
The Sbook
Matsushita Electronic Industrial (the Panasonic people) have placed an order with First International Computer (FIC) Co. of Taiwan, for a new e-book reader device. The Sbook will sport a monochrome bi-stable nematic LCD screen. We've referred before to this revolutionary biNem concept, which uses power only when the screen display changes. It thus allows for enormous battery life for text e-books. The Sbook will weigh only about 525 grams (just over a pound in imperial measurement), is extraordinarily slim, and is the size of a B5 page. It incorporates a built-in Secure Digital (SD) card. Panasonic hope to sell 100,000 of them in 2004.
FIC will also make 30,000 e-readers for the Chinese market for 2004. The screen won't be biNem but they'll be sold at around 20,000 yen, about half the cost of the Panasonic model.
Pocket PCs
*The endless stream of new Pocket PC models continues. Toshiba have two new series, the e400s and the higher-powered e800s. The former field a 300 MHz chip, 64 MB of RAM & 32 MB flash memory, while the e800s boast a 400 MHz processor, 128 MB SDRAM and doubled ROM, in the form of 32 MB inbuilt flash memory plus a further 32 MB flash disk.
Both series offer hands–free applications, including text–to–speech conversion and voice commands to launch applications. The e805 reading screen stands out with a highly desirable 480 by 640 pixel display, unusually good for a Pocket PC. The e800s also sport built-in wireless connectivity, but expect to pay over a thousand $A for them. The e400s should be only half the price of their muscled big brothers.
The HP iPAQ h4155, Dell Axim X3i, and Sony Clie TJ35 are three other very recent device releases with respectable credentials.
Meanwhile the NEC MobilePro 900, with a large 8.1" HVGA color screen, pushes the boundary between itself as a Pocket PC, and a small notebook. From the other direction comes the Fujitsu LifeBook P1000. The latter is a full Windows notebook, but a tiny one, weighing just 1kg and sporting an 8.9-inch color touch screen. It features integrated ethernet and 802.11b (Wi-fi) wireless networking, and runs on the Windows XP Home OS.
IPAQ h4355
Unlike most other PocketPCs this new iPaq has a built-in miniature keyboard.
That makes for much faster than on-screen entry, for anything substantial.
The resolution of the 3.5-inch screen is only a ho-hum 240 by 320 pixels however,
which gives you a bearable but not great e-reader. It can display 16-bit color.
A good feature is a slot for Secure Digital (SD) cards that can also be used
for Multimedia Cards (MMC) and in addition supports SDIO, meaning it can connect
to peripherals. The h4355 has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in. It runs on
a 400 MHz processor & has 64 MB of RAM. An extra feature is a 2.85 MB ROM
"File Store", to keep files & applications that won't be erased in the event
of the dreaded "hard reset" (crash & wipeout). Battery life is quite good
in its class. Oz price is $A899 or more.
Ipaq 4355
This Vulcan is Expensive But Logical
Here's an ultra-mini notebook computer that will make a high quality small e-reader for those who can afford to really lash out. As in, think as much as $A2,500. From Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, the Vulcan's Mini-PC is smaller even than the Fujitsu LifeBook. It weighs only half a kilo and can be pocketed like any PDA, yet it will run Windows XP on 256MB of RAM, with a 20GB hard drive, and has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to boot. If you lose someone else's… you'd better beam up & out fast, Captain.
Sharp's first Tablet PC, the PC-TN1-H1W, has 256MB of memory, a 30GB hard drive, and a 12.1-inch display. Weight is 4.2 pounds and battery power up to 5 hours. Available in Japan initially, to be followed by overseas markets.
Speaking of Tablets, there's now a Linux-based Tablet PC. Desktop Evolution's De-Tablet, aka the Toshiba Portege 3500, is the critter. For a review of this newbie (priced in the US at $US1,900) see: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,112743,tk,mcx,00.asp
Palms
Palm Tungsten T3 If you like Palm devices and can afford high quality, take a look at the latest in the Tungsten series, the Tungsten T3. It has a great high-resolution screen, a 400MHZ chip making for faster overall performance & zippier Web connectivity, & the battery will last five days if you are using it just as a reader or for simple tasking. However a daily charge is needed if you are into heavy multimedia or lots of Web access. There's 64MB RAM - goodbye to puny 32s - although even more wouldn't have gone astray.
The T3 has the largest screen viewing area available on a Palm, and in landscape mode is very acceptable as a smaller e-reader. If you want to listen rather than read, the sound quality is also good even without headphones, i.e. a dandy little speaker is a feature. A drawback is that for wireless access the T3 has inbuilt Bluetooth (slooow & consequently less & less used except for home networking) rather than Wi-Fi. However my sources tell me that an SD Wi-Fi card compatible with this device has now been released (by SanDisk).
With Palm OS 6 brewing, let's hope the T3 will be upgradeable
with that improvement. Microsoft have had a nasty habit of abandoning PDA
device owners with the "buy a new one or be forever obsolete" line of thinking,
and one hopes Palm will earn a Scout badge here by going for the higher moral
ground in the way they treat consumers. Nice guys might in theory finish last,
but customers can also carry grudges for a long time.
Price? $A699.00 is a reference price, & we've seen it as low as $639 at www.ow.com.au
Palm Tungsten T3
For last minute Palm Christmas pressies
*If the glamorous T3 (above) is way too pricey, you could try the Tungsten E . Official RRP is $A399, but if you shop around carefully you may get it for $A339 or even less. It has 32MB of RAM rather than 64MB, & a less powerful Texas Instruments OMAP 311 ARM processor. Still, it's designed to support one-handed navigation & has an SD slot for expandability. As a medium range small colour e-reader, it's worth considering.
*For a slimmer budget still, there's now Palm Zire 21. It's an inexpensive PDA that's OK as a basic black & wide e-reader. The good news is that it's really the original Zire improved significantly, while the price has gone down locally due to currency improvement. Don't confuse it with the more expensive Zire 71, which has inbuilt camera & multi-media pretensions.
Details: the former, feeble, 16MHz CPU of the primal Zire has been upped to 126MHz, putting some zap into the device. And the miserly, original 2MB of RAM has been quadrupled to 8MB. This does stress the lithium-ion battery, so remember to charge it more often. Remember too that this is a basic model, & the memory cannot be expanded. But hey, reference price is only $A199. The cheapest we've seen it online locally is $A173, at: http://www.handheldsonline.com.au/catalogue/category98/category61/product340
Stop Press: A better deal yet comes from an unexpected source - Telstra shops have the Zire 21 on special at $169.
The Zire 21
*New multipurpose Tapwave Zodiac is also an e-reader Two models of a new "Zodiac" console have recently been released by Californian company Tapwave, for US$299 (with 32MB RAM) and US $399 (a whopping 128MB RAM). The high-powered device is primarily aimed at games enthusiasts, but can also be used as an e-reader. As such it is particularly suited to intensive multimedia e-books, being able to reproduce music, pictures and video inclusions without difficulty. It runs on an enhanced version of the Palm Operating System (called 5.2T). For e-reading purposes, it includes Palm Reader software and comes "bundled" with two classic titles, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz " and "The Last of the Mohicans". http://www.tapwave.com.
*BookCourier up and running The BookCourier is a new handheld audio reading device designed initially for the print disabled, but suitable also for any busy person who's happy to hear rather than read their texts. It's designed to hold around 100 Bookshare.org. audio books (available only to US citizens with a proven disability), or store a large number of MP3 audio files.
The device runs with 2 AA batteries, and uses CompactFlash storage for audio files (from 8MB to 1 GB). There's a plug-and-play USB connection for transferring files from a PC, and headphones and a pocket clip are included. As well as text-to-speech capability and a built-in MP3 player, the BookCourier includes a voice recorder and smart navigation, including bookmarks and fast forward & reverse controls. There's also reading speed adjustment plus sleep timer, clock, and calendar, and a built-in alarm. Befitting an audio device, there's also built-in talking help and a talking user guide.
The price? If not a registered Bookshare subscriber, buyers
can currently expect to pay at least US$379.00.
http://www.bookcourier.com
*Garmin iQue
Up for something a little unusual in handhelds? That could be Garmin's IQue 3600. With 32MB RAM and a Motorola Dragonball MXL processor running on the Palm 5 OS, this PDA sounds like a fair middler. The big difference is, it also has GPS.
No, NOT the telephony GPRS thingie, we mean it has a Global Positioning System receiver, integrated with the device. So if you're lost, or need to know how to get where you're going, just whip out your PDA to find out. At a tiny 5.2 ounces (about 150g) you'd hardly know you were carrying the Garmin. And if you'd rather read an e-book on it, the 320-by-480 pixel transflective TFT display makes for a fair-quality reading screen. Starting price is US$589.
Oh, and despite the French-sounding name, Garmin is based in
Olathe, Kansas.
http://www.garmin.com
*Windows Mobile 2003 software for Pocket PCs is the successor
to the Pocket PC 2002 operating system. It features some security improvements,
and adds support for Windows Media Player 9 and some Windows XP media features.
A valued point is that it makes it a lot easier to connect to wireless networks,
and also has an improved Connection Manager. Reportedly, documents and e-book
will now open significantly faster. Plus there are assorted small tweaks.
You know where the Microsoft download site is. And if you don't & you're running
a recent variety of Windows…heaven help you. And us, if you've been commandeered.
Somewhere in the vicinity of http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
* "HandStory Suite" PDA software comes in varieties for
both Palm and Pocket PC operating systems, & is well worth a look. Features
of note for those of the e-reading persuasion include: it saves plain text
files, web pages or doc. files directly to the PDA expansion card; there's
fast document loading featuring new incremental loading technology; and the
HandStory Converter "easily converts" text, images and Web content for your
device. Originators Korean-based Namo Interactive like to boast that their
software is The 'Swiss Army Knife' of media viewers. Cost is US$29.95.
http://www.handstory.com
*Could your PDA contract a virus? At present it's unlikely, but not impossible. You can be sure that as the bored & antisocial look around for something new to attack, this possibility will increase in the future.
The Norton people, Symantec, have now put out their first anti-virus software for Palm OS and Pocket PC devices. Called Symantec AntiVirus for Handhelds, at US $10 for the one device (more for multiples) it's certainly an affordable piece of insurance against viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Because I personally rely on Norton to keep me moderately sane, at least computer-wise, & because their products have saved my bacon so many times, I'm happy to draw this product to your attention. For more info, go to: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112135,tk,mcx,00.asp
There is also free software available for the same purpose.
Airscanner, for example, is offering a free antivirus product for Pocket PCs
called Mobile Antivirus Pro. To be precise, the product is free (though
unsupported) for home or personal (noncommercial) use. Corporate, educational,
government and small business/home office users must purchase an annual licence.
http://airscanner.com/downloads/av/av.html
New E-reader software for Pocket PCs
Also free is the uBook, e-reader software for the Pocket PC. This one
will allow you to read a number of other formats outside of Microsoft's own
.lit. These include Palm type formats PDB and PRC, plus the Web's own HTML
and also TXT and RTF. It can read directly from inside ZIP files, and supports
BMP, GIF and JPG images. Customisable options include portrait & landscape
display, and choice of font type, color and size.
http://www.gowerpoint.com
Tiny eBook Reader
"Tiny eBook Reader", says its maker, " is a small, quick text reader for your
device. It can read documents of any size and can quickly return to the last
page you read." Tiny reads TXT (text) and ZIP file e-book formats on your
Smartphone or Pocket PC. The registered version will allow for reading of
TXT files stored in ZIP format. Use with: P/PC, P/PC 2002, Smartphone, and
Windows Mobile 2003 Price: PPC $US10 / SP $US12.
http://www.goldencrater.com/software/phone/TinyReader.htm
Re-invent your older PDA
Okay, so you bought a Palm, Pocket PC or other PDA some time ago, & you're really gobsmacked by all the appealing features on newer models. But you don't want to shell out your hard-earned dough again, especially since the model you bought cost more than the much better ones available now. Unfair!
However all is not lost, especially if your device has an expansion slot for CompactFlash or Secure Digital cards. For an ambitious example, owners of iPAQ h38/39/54/5500/2200 series can add GPS capability to their iPAQ for about $US289 less than buying a Garmin iQue. Not that many of you will want GPS even at that much of a saving, but it makes the point.
So maybe you can upgrade what you have for a lot less expense. A site called Mobile Planet has a useful list of what you can add on. http://www.mobileplanet.com/dept.asp?cat%5Fid=109&cat%5Fname=Accessories
Move over ET, now there's PC PhoneHome
It's true! There's new software in the US of A to help trace, find, and
recover stolen PDAs & other handhelds. So why do I meanwhile waste time at
home searching for the cordless phone, when there's a button on the stand
to press that will find it for me? Alas, some of us have concluded that we
actually have a 286 brain chip with matching memory capability. Or is it just
that we're old & retrograde enough to know what a 286 was? Anyhow, what's
with this wonder application? Well, every time your device connects to the
Internet via Wi-Fi or HotSync, it sends a covert email message containing
location information to a pre-determined email address of the user's choice.
Good luck after that, if you manage to front the villain. http://www.pcphonehome.com
1. Significant news from Palm recently has been the splits and moves reflecting the different divisions and aspirations within the company. To avoid (or at worst create) more confusion, here's a refresher on the new Palm names and implications.
The hardware division, previously called the Palm Solutions Group, has become PalmOne. PalmOne has meanwhile absorbed Palm rival Handspring (their PDAs also use the Palm OS). As well, the software division that develops the Palm operating system (Palm OS) has been spun off into a new company called PalmSource.
Meanwhile there's Palm Digital Media, Inc. (once called Peanut Press), which publishes and distributes e-books formatted for Palm OS devices. " PDM" is also the parent company of the most widely used variety of e-book reading software for Palms, the Palm Reader. Palm Digital Media has been variously owned by netLibrary and then Palm Inc., but has been purchased from the latter recently by PalmGear, Inc. Once you figure out who they are you'll have the whole picture sussed. For the moment.
All right, we'll tell you. PalmGear is actually the
company behind a retail website*. They sell third-party software for the Palm
OS platform (impressively, there are over 15,000 registered Palm OS developers).
And what is the relationship of PalmGear to other Palmies? Well, PalmGear.com
uses their trademark under exclusive license from the grandpappy Palm, Palm
Inc. However Palm, Inc., we are assured, does not endorse, nor is it affiliated,
with PalmGear.com. Got it?
* http://www.palmgear.com of course.
2. Nothing without controversy. In the case of PalmGear, Inc's takeover of Palm Digital Media, the first brouhaha was the "letting go" (don't you love that phrase) or voluntary resignation of the latter's three top executives, depending on which story you believe (did they jump or were they pushed?). Whichever, it was soon clear that the new brooms at PMD were not just fresh brushes, err faces, but were out to make sweeping changes aimed at dramatically improving both the sales and significance of the company. First up was an effort to " create a better user experience" at the PDM website, and to expand its catalogue of offerings.
Beyond that, the next plan is evidently to try and move with verve into the school and library markets. PalmGear also has aspirations for a major expansion into the Chinese mainland market (see the PalmGear Chinese website , where they'll be selling e-books among other things to consumers and business customers throughout China).
Here though, the new managers came a little unstuck when their "tidying up" began to look like censorship. Complaints were made that some erotic titles have been removed from the PDM database, and others obscurely located, on purpose. The suggestion was that this was a "Disneyfication", to pre-empt criticism from influential, zealous US "moralists", and their Chinese communist Party counterparts, before the planned sales pushes.
Others suggested that people who sell software don't necessarily know how to sell books, much less be sensitive to literature, and that the new PDM supremos were on a steep learning curve. However Ryan Wuerch, PalmGear president/CEO, was soon in the position of being able to announce record sales for the first full month after the takeover. This guy evidently falls on his feet. The progress of Palm Digital Media, the most successful e-book outlet on the Net so far, will be watched with considerable interest by the electronic book world.
*Hitachi last month introduced a CompactFlash Type II microdrive of no less than 4 GB. You could fit a fair-sized text e-library on this little beauty, or even carry about quite a few memory-hungry multimedia e-books.
When you consider that it's only a very few years since 4GB was fabbo memory for a PC's hard disk, you realise how swiftly portable memory has zoomed into focus as a serious concept. This little beauty is only 2.5cm in diameter & has a faster data transfer rate than previous microdrives, & for the technically minded uses the FAT32 file system. Expect to pay an arm & a leg for it though, until it's been around a while.
*Meanwhile, if you're content with less, the good news is that portable memory prices have more than halved during the last year. Better, they look like getting cheaper still. A 128MB SD or CompactFlash card can now be had for under $A70. I suspect they'll be around only $A30 by the end of 2004, and every second kid over twelve will have one.
*Oh, & we've just learned that both Toshiba and Matsushita have been developing extra tiny (the first sub-1-inch) hard drives, which Toshiba at least will exhibit at a trade show in Las Vegas in January 2004. Such advanced miniaturisation could tailor neatly with their e-reader plans.
There are now a number of services available listing Wi-fi access
points. One we've noticed, which claims to be the largest online global Wi-Fi
directory, is iFi411. This is searchable by country, state, city, type of
establishment, or service provider.
http://www.wifi411.com
*Or you can find them yourself by trial & error (that's free).
A third method is to use special software designed to make the search easier.
Aicon's "Wifi Sensor" will scan constantly for hotspots, & gratify your wiferous
(word patent pending) longings by beeping when it finds a wireless Internet
connection. Of course that may not necessarily be a free connection, so the
old T&E still comes into play. So far only available for Pocket PC, Pocket
PC 2002, &Windows Mobile 2003 OS devices.
http://www3.aicon-america.com/en/products/aws
*Want to use your wireless device to work remotely on your regular
desktop PC, through a secure, private connection? There's provision for that
too these days, with a mob called GoToMyPC Personal. They'll even give you
one free trial demo.
http://www.gotomypc.com
****
That's all for now, folks.
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