Many more books have been added since our initial report on the start of The World eBook Fair on July 4. As expected, Internet Archive is keeping up with their goal of adding another ~25,000 titles, about 1,000 each business day, but another 25,000 comes from the general readership of the patrons. We get messages to add books that our readers have compiled totally on their own– independently of the major eBook producers.
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--July 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
41 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012
[some now saying October 11, 2011]
Leaving 3 years 5 months, 13 2/3 seasons or 41 months.
Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.
I am adding the emergency Newsletter I wrote early, to make a total copy of
the July Newsletter[s] that are easier on those who look them up in our
archives, it will be at the end.
Headline News
More eBooks To More People Via More Hardware and Software
The 39th year of Project Gutenberg has started July 4th, 2009 and we are once
again be one of largest sponsors of The World eBook Fair at
http://www.worldebookfair.org, which will reach the neighborhood of ~2.5
million eBooks from July 4 to August 4, endin in about two weeks.
One of the major developments this year is the advance in the variety of
hardware and software methods of reading eBooks in more circumstances, more
locations, and, of course, with more eBooks in wider and wider circulation.
We will be sending out a special edition of this Newsletter a few weeks from
now reporting on these events.
Our 25,000th eBook In English Will Be Coming Up Shortly
If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, etc., about how we might
commemorate this event, please let us know.
Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law will come out a month or
two after that, please advise on suggestions.
We Recently Published Our:
200th eBook in Italian
400th eBook in Chinese
500th eBook in Finnish
We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions???
iPhone Acquisition
As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test
how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options.
A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would
appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the
widest variety of readers.
Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!
FLASH RAM
I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.
The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8
megabyte USBs.
The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc.
The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed
by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their
snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles.
We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash,"
for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble
memory, as well, from down under.
Thank you, Mate!
POWERPOINT
We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.
One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.
Additional Newsletter Services
In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.
These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at
httpwww.gutenberg.cc
Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.
The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight
Time]
Various totals from the ~30,000 at
httpwww.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
This week:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Tue 2009-07-14 | 7
Wed 2009-07-15 | 8
Thu 2009-07-16 | 8
Fri 2009-07-17 | 7
Sat 2009-07-18 | 17
Sun 2009-07-19 | 9
Mon 2009-07-20 | 10
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals
for languages with 200 or more eBooks.
Grand total for today: 29368
24762 English en
1442 French fr
590 German de
509 Finnish fi
433 Dutch nl
402 Chinese zh
339 Portuguese pt
242 Spanish es
202 Italian it
Total increase +286 All Reported Languges
Last month:
Total increase +287 All Reported Languges
Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe....
Thanks to Greg Newby!
//////
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide
29,368 up 286 PG General Automated Count
1,774 up 7 PG of Australia
641 up 4 PG of Europe
2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
375 up 50 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June]
======
34,179 up 347 Grand Total
from last month's
33,832 up 320 Grand Total
Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in
circulation from Project Gutenberg.
Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian.
///
Here is how we ended 2008
27,616 PG General Automated Count
1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia
554 Project Gutenberg of Europe
225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
[202 up to December, no current report]
2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
====== ======
32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]
Here is how we ended 2007
The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.
The most number of books posted...
...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18
(week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November
We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
78 per week
11.13 per day
99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us
almost to the 2,000 mark.
Here is a small selection of project milestones;
TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in
the average U.S. public library
32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
[And presuming 3 after official count]
32,000 on Calcuating
31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
30,000 on 20081021
29,500 on 20080919
29,000 ~~ Calculating
28,500 ~~ Calculating
28,000 ~~ 20080516
27,500 on 20080405
27,000 ~~ 20080229
26,500 on 20080126
26,000 on 20071224
25,000 on 20071012
24,000 on 20070710
23,000 on 20070415
PG-AU
1,700 on 20081010
1,600 on 20080208
1,500 on 20070407
PG Canada
175 on 20080930
100 on 20080325
110 on 20080417
///
Here is the July emergency Newsletter in toto for archiving.
Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter
I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be
able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be
the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was
pretty much just luck that got me this far.
I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I
will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me
make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives.
I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now.
If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at
for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc:
gbnewby@pglaf.org
The Brief News
We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions
for what title to use are welcome.
This should take place next month.
In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages
perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in
another language to put up as #30,000.
We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg
org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3
million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so.
This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years,
just through that one site alone.
The World eBook Fair
In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair
along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library,
ebooksabouteverything.org, etc.
http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day
alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the
Internet.
Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-
file in nature.
Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000
downloads per day of our "best sellers."
In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million
eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a
200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals
somewhere in that range.
This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of
Europe, etc.
The Current PG Totals
I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly
comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now
and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc.
Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month:
I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real
Newsletter with all info as of July 21st.
Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks:
Grand total for today: 29326
24725 English en
1442 French fr
587 German de
508 Finnish fi
433 Dutch nl
402 Chinese zh
338 Portuguese pt
242 Spanish es
202 Italian it
Courtesy of Greg Newby.
Here are the weekly totals:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Fri 2009-07-10 | 9
Sat 2009-07-11 | 11
Sun 2009-07-12 | 11
Mon 2009-07-13 | 11
Tue 2009-07-14 | 7
Wed 2009-07-15 | 8
Thu 2009-07-16 | 8
Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner
We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very
good days that are much better.
If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009.
Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved,
corrected, etc.
Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year!
Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg
**********************************************_
gweekly mailing list
gweekly@lists.pglaf.org
http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gweekly
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter EXTRA, July 18, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be
able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be
the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was
pretty much just luck that got me this far.
I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I
will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me
make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives.
I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now.
If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at
for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc:
gbnewby@pglaf.org
The Brief News
We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions
for what title to use are welcome.
This should take place next month.
In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages
perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in
another language to put up as #30,000.
We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg
org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3
million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so.
This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years,
just through that one site alone.
The World eBook Fair
In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair
along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library,
ebooksabouteverything.org, etc.
http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day
alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the
Internet.
Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-
file in nature.
Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000
downloads per day of our "best sellers."
In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million
eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a
200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals
somewhere in that range.
This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of
Europe, etc.
The Current PG Totals
I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly
comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now
and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc.
Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month:
I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real
Newsletter with all info as of July 21st.
Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks:
Grand total for today: 29326
24725 English en
1442 French fr
587 German de
508 Finnish fi
433 Dutch nl
402 Chinese zh
338 Portuguese pt
242 Spanish es
202 Italian it
Courtesy of Greg Newby.
Here are the weekly totals:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Fri 2009-07-10 | 9
Sat 2009-07-11 | 11
Sun 2009-07-12 | 11
Mon 2009-07-13 | 11
Tue 2009-07-14 | 7
Wed 2009-07-15 | 8
Thu 2009-07-16 | 8
Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner
We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very
good days that are much better.
If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009.
Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved,
corrected, etc.
Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year!
Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg
**********************************************_
gmonthly mailing list
gmonthly@lists.pglaf.org
http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gmonthly
Over 3 Million Items Feted At World eBook Fair
Project Gutenberg, The World Public Library, The Internet Archive, and ebooksabouteverything are proud to sponsor the fourth edition of The World eBook Fair.
July 4 – August 4 at http://www.worldebookfair.org
eBook readers will have over 2 million to pick from:
~1.5 million from http://www.archive.org ~ .5 million from http://www.worldpubliclibrary.org ~ .13 million from http://ebooksabouteverything.com ~ .11 million from the various Gutenberg servers ~ .01 million from various other eBook sites ===== ======= ================== ~2.5 million eBooks Grand Total
Please note that archive.org and PG etc. have many audio files, movies, music files, etc. with totals of an additional ~.5 million files.
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--June 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
42 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012
[some now saying October 11, 2011]
Leaving 3 years 6 months, 14 seasons or 42 months.
Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.
Headline News
More eBooks To More People Via More Hardware and Software
The 39th year of Project Gutenberg will begin July 4th, 2009-- and we will
once again be one of larger sponsors of The World eBook Fair at
http://www.worldebookfair.org, which will reach the neighborhood of ~2.5
million eBooks from July 4 to August 4, starting in about two weeks.
One of the major developments this year is the advance in the variety of
hardware and software methods of reading eBooks in more circumstances, more
locations, and, of course, with more eBooks in wider and wider circulation.
We will be sending out a special edition of this Newsletter a few weeks from
now dedicated to these.
Our 25,000th eBook In English Will Be Coming Up Shortly
If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, etc., about how we might
commemorate this event, please let us know.
We Just Published Our:
200th eBook in Italian
400th eBook in Chinese
500th eBook in Finnish
We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions???
iPhone Acquisition
As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test
how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options.
A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would
appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the
widest variety of readers.
Some interesting notes about eBooks of various varieties:
National archives reviews purchases of paper materials in digital age Library
and Archives Canada has put a moratorium on buying paper documents and books
for its collection. Full Story:
http://links.cbc.ca/a/l.x?T=jncickgjiekjmplpgobfifjajd&M=36
...
Google Books Improves -
http://www.slaw.ca/2009/06/18/google-books-improves/
Google Books has released a number of improvements designed to make reading
and sharing their material easier. The Books blog, Inside Google Book Search
lists seven changes:
- embedding and links - From the new toolbar on a Books page you can copy a
link to the source or the html necessary to produce an iframe in your blog or
web page that will embed the source.
- improved search - There's now more context around your search terms, and you
can rank your search results by relevance as well as page order.
- thumbnail view - More useful, perhaps, where images are involved, you can
see an overview in thumbnails of the book you're examining.
- drop-down menu - The drop-down menu displays links to the various divisions
within the book.
- plain text mode - Viewers can turn off the html mode and work simply with
plain text.
- page turn animation - This feature, invoked by clicking at the bottom of
the screen, simulates a more natural progression through the book.
- improved book overview - There's more data about the book offered on the
overview page.
British Library Publishes Online Archive of 19th-Century Newspapers Maev
Kennedy The Guardian Thursday 18 June 2009
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/18/
british-library-newspaper-archive-online>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/nknweq>
Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online
today, part of the vast British Library collection.
The 49 British national and regional titles cover events including the Battle
of Waterloo in June 1815 "Vague reports have been made of the numbers slain on
both sides ... We should not quote them if our silence could prevent the
spreading of disastrous intelligence", the Morning Chronicle reported. There
was also the banks crisis of 1878, the first FA Cup final in 1872, and the
triumph of the music hall star Vesta Tilley in a talent contest.
<snip>
The site
<http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs>
holds journals including the True Crime of its day, the Illustrated Police
News which covered the Jack the Ripper murders. The British Library worked in
partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee and Gale, part of
Cengage Learning, to create the service. Searches are free, but users can pay
to download information.
["Can pay"??? I wonder if that translates into "must pay,"
unless one is a certain kind of member or the like?]
Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!
FLASH RAM
I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.
The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc.
The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed
by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their
snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles.
We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash,"
for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble
memory, as well, from down under.
Thank you, Mate!
POWERPOINT
We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.
One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.
Additional Newsletter Services
In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.
You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100 books done nearly
every single week.
These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at
httpwww.gutenberg.cc
Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.
The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight
Time]
Various totals from the ~30,000 at
httpwww.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
This week:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Sun 2009-06-14 | 6
Mon 2009-06-15 | 13
Tue 2009-06-16 | 2
Wed 2009-06-17 | 16
Thu 2009-06-18 | 6
Fri 2009-06-19 | 12
Sat 2009-06-20 | 13
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals
for languages with 200 or more eBooks.
Grand total for today: 29082
24519 English en
1434 French fr
584 German de
505 Finnish fi
423 Dutch nl
402 Chinese zh
329 Portuguese pt
241 Spanish es
200 Italian it
Not to mention PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe....
Total increase +287 All Reported Languges
and from the previous month. . . .
Thanks to Greg Newby!
//////
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide [2 months]
29,082 up 283 PG General Automated Count
1,767 up 7 PG of Australia
637 up 6 PG of Europe
2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
325 up 36 PG of Canada, End of May.
======
33,832 up 320 Grand Total
Note Without counting PrePrints, we are still over 30,000 and some of the new
.lit collection will not make it under our current rules of addition from
PrePrints, and would be deleted from PrePrints without moving to other
listings.
Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in
circulation from Project Gutenberg.
Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian.
///
Here is how we ended 2008
27,616 PG General Automated Count
1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia
554 Project Gutenberg of Europe
225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
[202 up to December, no current report]
2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
====== ======
32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]
Here is how we ended 2007
The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.
The most number of books posted...
...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18
(week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November
We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
78 per week
11.13 per day
99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to
the 2,000 mark.
Here is a small selection of project milestones;
TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in
the average U.S. public library
32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
[And presuming 3 after official count]
32,000 on Calcuating
31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
30,000 on 20081021
29,500 on 20080919
29,000 ~~ Calculating
28,500 ~~ Calculating
28,000 ~~ 20080516
27,500 on 20080405
27,000 ~~ 20080229
26,500 on 20080126
26,000 on 20071224
25,000 on 20071012
24,000 on 20070710
23,000 on 20070415
PG-AU
1,700 on 20081010
1,600 on 20080208
1,500 on 20070407
PG Canada
175 on 20080930
100 on 20080325
110 on 20080417
**********************************************_
gmonthly mailing list
gmonthly@lists.pglaf.org
http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gmonthly
Here is the news from PG Canada for May. We published a total of 18 ebooks during the month: we have now published a cumulative total of 325 ebooks. The New Releases section at the top of the PGC main page always gives the details of new releases for the most recent three months. LANGUAGES: - 15 in English - 3 in French GENRES - 7 novels - 4 history books - 2 cookbooks - 1 book of essays - 1 dictionary - 1 book of poetry - 1 personal journal - 1 children's book 8 of this month's ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada. 9 of this month's titles were fiction, and 9 were non-fiction. April saw the posting of two further titles by the famous English novelist and essayist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), courtesy of Distributed Proofreaders Europe. May was notable for the posting of our first titles by the famous missionary, explorer, historian, and linguist Adrien-Gabriel Morice (1859-1938), celebrated in the annals of British Columbia, and of the Canadian historian Ernest Alexander Cruikshank (1854-1939). Authors new to PGC this month included: Bennet, Robert Ames (1870-1954) [American novelist] Bosse, Sara [née Eaton] (1868-1940) [Canadian author] and Watanna, Onoto [Reeve, Winnifred Eaton: née Eaton, Winnifred] (1875-1954) [Canadian novelist] Boucher-Belleville, Jean- Philippe [Jean-Baptiste] (1800-1874) [Journaliste canadien] Cody, Hiram Alfred (1872-1948) [Canadian priest, novelist, and biographer] Cruikshank, Ernest Alexander (1854-1939) [Canadian historian] Dionne, Narcisse-Eutrope (1848- 1917) [Historien, lexicographe et bibliothécaire canadien] Hodgson, William Hope (1877-1918) [English novelist and poet] Isle, June (active around 1864) [American children's author] Lighthall, William Douw (1857-1954) [Canadian lawyer, politician, historian, novelist, philosopher, and poet] Monck, Frances Elizabeth Owen (d. 1919) [Irish memoirist] Morice, Adrien-Gabriel (1859-1938) [Missionnaire, explorateur, ethnologue et lexicographe canadien] O'Duffy, Eimar Ultan (1893-1935) [Irish playwright, novelist, and economist] Wallace, Edgar [Wallace, Richard Horatio Edgar] (1875-1932) [English novelist, playwright, and screenplay writer] *************** Thanks as ever for your support! Mark
Many people have argue with me for years on the subject of dedicated eBook reader devices, with any number of reasons they like them, but it is really only that they can’t read small print or they still want “the look and feel” of the dead trees pulp bound up in dead animal skins.
I won’t even address the latter issues here but to say that the world always says it will stick with the old ways until a new generation comes, and then the car or the telephone or hairstyle, or whatever, becomes ubiquitous, then the story is closed, and the argument forgotten.
However, I will address the issue of font size.
This is an issue mainly of interest to Boomers, and to others born with limited vision, rather, sadly, than just from olde age.
However, the Boomers are losing power faster in all respects than the media are willing to show because the media is still controlled by Boomer and even older groups, who will not admit their time went, of even pretending to be middle age. I won’t argue right now that people born in ‘65 were the last Boomers, how silly, those Boomers of the real kind were already having kids!!!
The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people.
With the advent of cell phone [mobile phone] access we are now setting our goal at 15% of the world population or 1 billion.
Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion cell phones now in service around the world, that means we would have to reach just over 1/5 of all cell phone users to accomplish this.
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, May. 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
43 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012
[some now saying October 11, 2011]
Leaving 3 years 8 months, 14 2/3 seasons or 43 months.
Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.
Hottest Predictions
Terabyte USB Flash Drives and Petabyte Hard Drives [by 2015 and 2020,
respectively]
Most public domain books will be eBooks by 2020.
Our apologies for no Newsletter on Apr. 21, due to some major hardware
difficulties.
However, hopefully you will find more than enough here, to make up for lost
time.
Headline News
Project Gutenberg is now referenced by TEI:
http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Samples_of_TEI_texts
PG Listed in 100 Best Websites for Free Adult Education
http://www.onlinedegreeworld.com/blog/2009/100-best-websites-for-free-adult-education/
As you may know, the world is approaching totals of 4.5 billon cell phones so
Project Gutenberg is making multiple efforts to to reach more readers via this
popular medium.
While most of those reporting in about seeing Kindles or Sonys in the wild say
they have seen none, I am sure most of us have seen people text messaging on
their phones, and that means the idea of reading quotations already exists,
and reading a whole chapter or a whole book is the very next step.
To encourage this we are working with a number of services for the preparation
of Project Gutenberg eBooks for cell phones.
Please give these a try and let me know how they work for you.
http://mobilelibrary.qioo.de
or
http://www.gioo.de
and
http://tequilacat.org/dev/br/index-en.html
and
mobilebooks.org
or
mobilebooks.net
[these should work on any Java enabled phone]
I, myself, have just purchased a "new" cell phone that should do both cell and
wifi and also includes an SD RAM slot with a larger than average screen, in
the hopes of creating a pocket eBook reader doing most of what Kindle and Sony
do but with a greater memory capacity and a much lower price and no fees if I
use the wifi rather than the cell service to get the books.
It is hopefully arriving today and you will hear more later.
We have two articles about eBooks for cell phones, etc. and a message from one
of our readers on how to read eBooks on Palm and related devices.
New Goal Set for Project Gutenberg; ONE BILLION READERS
The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated
audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people.
With the advent of cell phone [mobile phone] access we are now setting our
goal at 15% of the world population or 1 billion.
Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion cell phones now in service
around the world, that means we would have to reach just over 1/5 of all cell
phone users to accomplish this.
Possible. . .but not likely unless we make it extremely easy!
To this end we will be emphasizing eBook reader programs for a wide range of
cell phones.
Given the estimated 4.5 billion cell phones that we could make eBooks for
today, presuming they can all display plain eBooks, and the extremely slow
rise in Kindle sales as compared to the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and
all the others, we should be able to reach more readers than Kindle and Sony
combined if we just reach one cell phone user out of a thousand. This has to
include many more languages than English, of course, so our effort also has to
be multi-lingual, if we are to reach anyone beyond the number of people
comfortable enough with English to read our eBooks on their cell phones.
As many of you know, we already have well over a thousand book titles in
French, followed by lesser numbers in German and the other more popular
languages, but not nearly enough to really, sincerely, say we are offering a
library in these languages.
Once we complete a survey of our Top Ten languages we are down to under 50
books per language. . .it's a start, only a start.
Second Article
The current rage in the eBook world is mobile readers-- portable devices
carrying a hundred or a thousand books for people to read whenever and
wherever they like.
Such devices range from the smallest MP3 player screen, to the entire range of
cell phones, PDA's, etc., to the new larger Kindle 2.
The iPod has had eBook reading available since the very first week it was
introduced, not to mention the reader applications for the iPhone, for generic
MP3 players or any number of cell phones.
We are approaching, if we have not already passed, some
4.5 billion active cell phones, United Nations reported early this year [4.2
billion at that time].
If just one cell phone out of a thousand is used for an eBook reader, that is
4.5 million, far exceeding totals for all eBook readers such as Kindle, Sony,
Rocketbook, Jetbook, and all the other similar products.
Thus, the programs to provide eBook reading services on these various cell
phones represents a larger audience, by far, than even the billion plus owners
of computers.
However, we have to make it EASY for them to read!!!
This means making the books easy to get, and easy to do any required
reformatting for their screens, if we will not be offering preformatted eBooks
for various phones, PDA's, and other devices.
From: David Cantrell <david@cantrell.org.uk>
I like to use eReader to read on my PalmOS phone:
http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm
To convert Project Gutenberg texts into a suitable format, including re-
formatting the text so it flows better on the screen, I wrote some software in
Perl. You can download it here:
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=projectgutenberg
(includes a library and a command-line program 'pg2pdb' and documentation).
Or on any modern operating system you should be able
to
install it and the other libraries it depends on thus:
$ cpan Palm::ProjectGutenberg
or
$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install qw(Palm::ProjectGutenberg)'
For those stuck on older machines, I have also made the functionality
available through a webby interface here:
http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/pg2pdb/
Simply upload a plain text file through the web form, and you'll get back a
.PDB file that you can put onto your PDA or phone.
A Few Major Projects For Your Consideration
1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers.
2. Textbooks Are Becoming A More And More Highly Requested Item.
3. Request To Help Complete Our Collection Of Andrew Lang Books.
4. eBooks On Cellphones: We Have Several Formats You Can Try.
1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers.
This would include other languages, web pages designed by and for people of
various ages from the youngest to the oldest, and, even web pages designed
around favorite subjects, favorite authors, or even favorite books or
characters.
Personally, I would LOVE to see web pages designed for readers at various
grade levels and then translated into many languages.
2. Textbooks Are Becoming A More And More Highly Requested Item.
As more and more people spend more and more years homeschooling a greater
portion of modern kids, they are asking us for more books to help teach any of
the various subjects, from reading, writing, and arithmetic, to geography and
astronomy, to the dinosaurs, and an enormous number of other subjects.
If you ever wanted to pass on your knowledge, now is the time and the place,
for books here last forever and cover the world.
3. Request To Help Complete Our Collection Of Andrew Lang Books.
Many of you are familiar with the various "Color" Fairy Books, as "The Red
Fairy Book," by Andrew Lang, and a host of other colors, but few of us have
ever even seen a list of them all, including a surprising number of books
relating true events, etc.
If you find any Andrew Lang books, Fairy, Animal, True, etc., that we don't
have in our collection, please let me know, and we will help in the process of
completing this collection.
4. eBooks On Cellphones: We Have Several Formats You Can Try.
Let me know if you would like to help us set up our Cellphone pages to bring
more eBooks to more people in more of the world.
Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!
FLASH RAM
I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.
The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc.
The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed
by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their
snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles.
We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash,"
for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble
memory, as well, from down under.
Thank you, Mate!
POWERPOINT
We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.
One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.
Additional Newsletter Services
In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.
You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100 books done nearly
every single week.
These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at http://www.gutenberg.cc
Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.
The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight
Time]
Various totals from the ~30,000 at http://www.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
This week:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Thu 2009-05-14 | 10
Fri 2009-05-15 | 14
Sat 2009-05-16 | 9
Sun 2009-05-17 | 9
Mon 2009-05-18 | 14
Tue 2009-05-19 | 13
Wed 2009-05-20 | 12
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals for languages with over 25 eBooks.
Grand total for today: 28,801 [-28,029] up 772 in two months]
24300 English en
1420 French fr
578 German de
498 Finnish fi
418 Dutch nl
400 Chinese zh
322 Portuguese pt
232 Spanish es
194 Italian it
63 Latin la
58 Esperanto eo
55 Swedish sv
54 Tagalog tl
29 Greek el
From March and February. . . .
Grand total for today: 28,029 [-27,475 =] up 554
23669 English en
1374 French fr
567 German de
490 Finnish fi
402 Dutch nl
399 Chinese zh
302 Portuguese pt
225 Spanish es
178 Italian it
Compared to last month's 27,475
23468 English en
1359 French fr
560 German de
484 Finnish fi
400 Chinese zh
387 Dutch nl
294 Portuguese pt
222 Spanish es
176 Italian it
Grand total for today: 27,475 [- 27,188 ] +287
23,277 [ - 23,075 =] +202 English en
1,333 [ - 1,319 =] + 14 French fr
556 [ - 553 =] + 3 German de
480 [ - 476 =] + 4 Finnish fi
392 [ - 377 =] + 25 Chinese zh
370 [ - 361 =] + 9 Dutch nl
287 [ - 267 =] + 20 Portuguese pt
218 [ - 217 =] + 1 Spanish es
169 [ - 164 =] + 5 Italian it
Not to mention PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe....
Total increase +287 All Reported Languges
and from the previous month. . . .
Grand total for today 27,188 [ - 26,867 =] +321
23,075 [ - 22,863 =] + 212 English en
1,319 [ - 1,289 =] + 76 French fr
553 [ - 549 =] + 4 German de
476 [ - 470 =] + 6 Finnish fi
361 [ - 359 =] + 2 Dutch nl
377 [ - 359 =] + 18 Chinese zh
267 [ - 260 =] + 7 Portuguese pt
217 [ - 207 =] + 10 Spanish es
164 [ - 159 =] + 5 Italian it
etc.,etc.,etc.
Total increase + 321 All Reported Lanugages
Thanks to Greg Newby!
//////
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide [2 months]
28,801 up 772 PG General Automated Count
1,760 up 32 PG of Australia
631 up 66 PG of Europe
2,021 up 8 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
266 up 44 PG of Canada, Estimated.
======
33,479 up 922 Grand Total [461/month, two months]
From March
27,475 + 287 PG General Automated Count
1,723 + 6 PG Australia
553 + 13 PG Europe
2,494 + 33 PG PrePrints
202 + 12 PG Canada [Estimated]
======
32,447 + 349 by various automated counts and newsletters
Note Without counting PrePrints, we are still about 30K, and some of the new
.lit collection will not make it under our current rules of addition from
PrePrints, and would be deleted from PrePrints without moving to other
listings.
The 307 Chinese eBooks in PrePrints will probably go, as a team of our best
Chinese workers says they are not worth a lot more time to work on, etc.
Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in
circulation from Project Gutenberg.
Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian.
Here is how we ended 2008
27,616 PG General Automated Count
1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia
554 Project Gutenberg of Europe
225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
[202 up to December, no current report]
2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
====== ======
32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]
Here is how we ended 2007
The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.
The most number of books posted...
...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18
(week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November
We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
78 per week
11.13 per day
99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us
almost to the 2,000 mark.
Here is a small selection of project milestones;
TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in
the average U.S. public library
32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
[And presuming 3 after official count]
32,000 on Calcuating
31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
30,000 on 20081021
29,500 on 20080919
29,000 ~~ Calculating
28,500 ~~ Calculating
28,000 ~~ 20080516
27,500 on 20080405
27,000 ~~ 20080229
26,500 on 20080126
26,000 on 20071224
25,000 on 20071012
24,000 on 20070710
23,000 on 20070415
PG-AU
1,700 on 20081010
1,600 on 20080208
1,500 on 20070407
PG Canada
175 on 20080930
100 on 20080325
110 on 20080417
**********************************************_
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