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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The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter, Apr. 22, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
We've had some terribly major crashes.
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The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Apr. 22, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
We've had some terribly major crashes.
The Newsletter list were DESTROYED!!!
We are using ANCIENT GREEK BACKUPS!!!
This is going out the MONTHLY Newsletter list.
If you want to stay on it, you are fine.
If not, here are instructions for all our lists, including how to unsubscribe.
You asked about subcribing or unsubscribing from one of the Project Gutenberg
Newsletters. Please save for reference:
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Please check this site once in a while for updates:
Mailing Lists
Various mailing lists for Project Gutenberg exist. A brief description
of each follows, along with a link to visit or subscribe (or
unsubscribe). All lists live at http://lists.pglaf.org, and are
moderated except for the discussion lists:
* Newsletters, with new eBook listings, calls for assistance,
general information, and announcements:
+ gweekly: Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter. Traffic
consists mostly of one weekly newsletter.
+ gmonthly: Project Gutenberg Monthly newsletter. Traffic
consists mostly of one monthly newsletter.
* Notification as new eBooks are posted:
+ posted: receive book postings as they happen, along with
other PG related internally-focused discussion (high traffic,
over 10 postings per day)
* Discussion for active volunteers:
+ gutvol-d: general unmoderated volunteer discussion (moderate
traffic)
+ gutvol-p: programming volunteers, for software development
(light traffic)
+ gutvol-w: website volunteers, for website development (new
list)
+ glibrary: library help, for physically tracking down books
and copyright research. Low traffic, with occasional
requests.
* Other lists:
+ gutvol-l: moderated volunteer announcements (light traffic)
If you would like to subscribe to a mailing list simply select a
mailing list name above. All lists require a password and email
confirmation to subscribe as part of the Lyris anti-spam measures.
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In this months newsletter, Michael Hart announces some major projects from Project Gutenberg for this year.
Web Pages designed by and for our Project Gutenberg readers
Michael wants to make a push for web pages to be designed by, and for, people from various age groups and in any language. This can include the youngest through to the oldest with pages designed around favorite subjects, favorite authors, or even favorite books or characters.
Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Mar. 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
45 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring
on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011]
Leaving 3 years 9 months, 15 seasons or 44 months.
Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.
Erratum: Last month I reversed the labels on the month
before and the month before that in the statistics part
and I have two possible totals for the past month which
are indicated in the current statistical review.
It would be nice to have some do spreadsheets of these,
hint, hint. . . .
My apologies, it was a tough month.
Headlines
PG Listed in 100 Best Websites for Free Adult Education
http://www.onlinedegreeworld.com/blog/2009/
100-best-websites-for-free-adult-education/
In line with our major projects for the year listed below, here
is a cute little awk [mawk] script that you can use to convert
eBooks to formats for smaller screens. The default is 15 lines
but you can work your own preferences into the script.
Next month we should be announcing that pglaf.org will have the
tools online for you to convert eBooks to be read on cellphones.
If you can contribute any ideas, scripts, programs, etc., to the
effort to make eBooks available on more devices just let me know
and will write your contribution up a future Newsletter.
Script begins:
#!/usr/bin/mawk -f
# Written by Jon-Egil Korsvold on friday the 13th of March 2009.
Mare is short for Mawk Reformatter. The program can
# reformat text files to increase readability on small devices
with dumb ebook readers. My mp3 player has a 14 characters
# wide display, and the ebook reader breaks the words in
inappropriate places. This program doesn't split long words,
# but the line is broken after each long word, so they won't
mess up the display for more than a few lines.
#
# This program can be freely distributed. You may give away
copies of it, but you may not sell it or remove my name from it.
# Use at your own risk!! Run the program without arguments to get
the manual _before_ you attempt anything else! You may
# need too edit the path to mawk above and md some of the
commands below. No warranty, have fun! This program has not been
# extensively tested. It should be considered beta software.
#
#
# Jon-Egil Korsvold 15th of March 2009
#
#
[Warning from Michael Hart: I am not sure my cut and paste did
everything exactly, so if you have trouble running this, email
me at hart at pglaf.org and I will forward you my original copy.]
BEGIN {
tempfile="/tmp/mare.txt"
fc1="find -L "
fc2=" -noleaf|egrep txt$|htm$|html$ >> "tempfile
rm="rm "tempfile
md="mkdir -p " #for directories
rm="rm "tempfile
md="mkdir -p " #for directories
sep="/"
x=0 #Holds the current line position in
characters
y=0 #Holds the length of the current word
val=0 #Holds the return value, if greater than 0,
the help text is
printed
os="err" #Dos or *nix
#Exit if less than four arguments were used (width of display in
characters, -d/-u,
output dir and source
dir)
if (ARGC > 3)
{
# Get and set width in characters, exit with error message
unless the value
is a number
count=ARGV[1]
ARGV[1]=""
if (count !~ /[0-9]+/)
{
val=1
exit
}
#The os value is initially "err". Set it to dos or nix if
the appropriate
switch was used. Define
line endings
#accordingly. Exit with error message if os=err (No switch
was used)
if (ARGV[2] ~ /^-d$/)
{
os="dos"
nl="
"
os="dos"
nl="
"
}
else
{
if (ARGV[2] ~ /^-u$/)
{
os="nix"
nl="
"
}
}
if (os ~ /^err$/)
{
print ("You have to use -d or -u as the second
argument!")
val=1
exit
}
ARGV[2]=""
#Get and set output directory. Add a trailing slash if
necessary.
odir=ARGV[3]
ARGV[3]=""
if (odir ~ /./)
{
print ("The third argument has to be a directory. A
file won't do!")
val=1
exit
}
if (odir !~ sep"$")
{
odir=odir""sep
}
#Loop through the rest of the command line arguments. Call
find and grep to
get the files in
directories,
#but write files to tempfile directly. Skip unsopported file
types with a
warning.
fctr=4
while (fctr < ARGC)
{
idir=ARGV[fctr]
ARGV[fctr]=""
if (idir ~ /./)
{
if (idir ~
/.txt|.htm|.phtml|.shtml|.htm/)
{
system ("echo " idir " >> "
tempfile)
}
else
{
print ("The file type of " idir "
isn't supported!")
}
}
}
}
else
{
system(fc1 idir fc2)
}
fctr++
}
FS=sep
fctr=0
#Exit with error message if tempfile is empty or doesn't
exist.
if (getline < tempfile < 1)
{
print ("No files found!")
val=1
exit
}
close (tempfile)
#Traverse tempfile line by line and use slash as field
separator. The whole
line is stored in pa
(path array)
#which holds the input files. The last field holds the file
name without the
path, and it is stored i
fa
#(file array). The field before the last field holds
directory information.
It is stored in da
(directory array).
#Directories are created as needed below.
while (getline < tempfile > 0)
{
x=NF
fa[fctr]=$x #file array
if (x > 1)
{
x--
da[fctr]=$x #directory
array
(odir/da[actr]/)
if (da[fctr] !~ sep"$")
{
da[fctr]=da[fctr]""sep
}
}
else
{
da[fctr]=""
}
system (md odir""da[fctr])
pa[fctr]=$0 #path array (for
input files)
fctr++
}
#Reduce by one to get the last element of the arrays. Reset
field separator
to get words. Remove
tempfile.
fctr--
FS=" "
system (rm)
#Loop through the arrays from the last to the first element
(0). Try to open
the elements in pa as
files
#and print a warning on errors.
while (fctr >= 0)
{
if (getline < pa[fctr] < 1)
{
print ("Error processing "pa[fctr])
}
close(pa[fctr])
#Loop through the words in each line.
while (getline < pa[fctr] > 0)
{
gsub ("
", "") #Remove dos endings
ctr=1 #Used to reference fields in
the current
record
#Set output file, i.e. edit the path, add
format information
and change the
#file type to txt.
ofile=fa[fctr]
gsub(/..*/,"",ofile)
ofile=odir""da[fctr]"fmt-"count"-"ofile".txt"
#Keep track of the length of current word
(y) and the
position on the line (x), break
lines
#accordingly with the content of nl (dos or
nix endings)
#Skip lines starting and ending with css or
html commands
while (ctr <= NF && $0 !~ /^<.*>$/ && $0
!~ /^{.*}$/)
{
y=length($ctr)
x=x+y
if (x < count) #Increment x to
account for trailing
space
{
x++
}
else
{
printf("%s",nl) > ofile
x=y+1
}
#Remove some embedded html and css
commands and
superfluous spaces
gsub (/<.*>/, "")
gsub (/{.*}/, "")
gsub (/[ ][ ]+/, " ")
printf("%s ",$ctr) > ofile
ctr++
#Increment to
reference next field (word) and
loop
}
if (NF == 0 && $0 !~ /^<.*>$/ && $0 !~
/^{.*}$/)
#Print a double newline to make a
paragraph if the
record was empty
{
printf("%s%s", nl, nl) > ofile
x=0
}
}
printf("%s%s", nl, nl) > ofile
print("Writing to "ofile)
close(ofile)
fctr--
#Next file in array
}
exit
}
else
{
#exit with error message if less than four arguments were
used
val=1
exit
}
}
#Exit with the help text in case of errors
END{
if (val == 1)
{
print ("
Mare (mawk reformatter) reformats ebooks for
viewing on small
displays.
")
print ("Width in characters, option, output directory, input
directories or
files")
print ("Example: mare 20 -d ebooks /mnt/sda2/gutenberg
/mnt/sda2/freeread")
print ("Reformat all text and html files in the last two
directories.")
print ("Use 20 characters per line and dos style line
endings.")
print ("Reformat all text and html files in the last two
directories.")
print ("Use 20 characters per line and dos style line
endings.")
print ("The resulting files are written to the last level of
the original")
print ("directory tree in the directory ebooks in the
current directory.")
print ("Run the program without arguments to get this
help!
")
print ("Valid options:")
print ("-d Use dos style line endings")
print ("-u Use *nix style line endings
")
print ("Requirements:")
print ("- mawk")
print ("- a *nix version of find")
print ("- a *nix version of mkdir")
print ("- echo")
print ("- egrep")
print ("- rm
")
print ("The target os can be dos/win or *nix.")
print ("The host os probably has to be *nix.
")
print ("Written in March 2009 by Jon-Egil Korsvold.")
print ("Use at your own risk, no warranty!")
print ("The program can be freely distributed with author
information,")
print ("but not sold. Happy reading!")
}
}
A Few Major Projects To Start Out the New Year. . . .
1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers.
Including kids. If you know of any kids or schools interested
in making eBooks, eBook pages, etc., please let me know.
In fact, I would LOVE to see kids write up their own versions of
our classics such as Alice In Wonderland, Looking Glass or Peter
Pan, Robin Hood, AEsop's Fables, etc., in their own words!!!
THAT would be a VERY interesting collection to read!!!
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.
And a new one coming next month!
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, HP 95, etc.
The earliest USB flash drives were Disgo/Dizgo, 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.
The PCMCIA cards were labeled series TWO, need series ONE.
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]
These are the various totals from the ~30,000 at
httpwww.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Sat 2009-03-14 | 2
Sun 2009-03-15 | 11
Mon 2009-03-16 | 8
Tue 2009-03-17 | 4
Wed 2009-03-18 | 6
Thu 2009-03-19 | 7
Fri 2009-03-20 | 13
Total 51
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals
for languages with over 100 eBooks.
28272
23852 English en
1392 French fr
572 German de
493 Finnish fi
408 Dutch nl
399 Chinese zh
312 Portuguese pt
227 Spanish es
188 Italian it
Grand total for today: 28,272 [+ 243]
Compared to last month's 28,029
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
Thanks to Greg Newby!
//////
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide
28,272 up 243 PG General Automated Count
1,749 up 21 PG of Australia
602 up 37 PG of Europe
2,020 up 2 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
242 up 20 PG of Canada, Estimated.
======
32,814 up 367 or 323 Sorry, I reversed last months totals
as below, my apologies, and can't find all
of the details to check between these two.
This was reported as last month but was really the month before.
27,755 up 280 PG General Automated Count
1,728 up 5 PG of Australia
565 up 12 PG of Europe
2,013 DOWN 481 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
222 up 20 PG of Canada, Estimated.
======
32,283 DOWN 164 due to PrePrints and Reserved fixes
Reversed from what was reported as the month before below
Switch the months and it will make much more sense, sorry.
27,475 up 287 PG General Automated Count
1,723 up 6 PG Australia
553 up 13 PG Europe
2,494 up 33 PG PrePrints
202 up 12 PG Canada [Estimated]
======
32,447 up 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
It was only a few months ago that Project Gutenberg announced an effort to make mobile all editions of their titles available. This was big news, however, in my eyes the latest eBook format to be released by PG is even bigger news.
Project Gutenberg has now made almost all their titles available in the industry ebook standard EPUB and all are DRM free (Digital Rights Management)!
Here is the news from PG Canada for January.
We published a total of 23 ebooks during the month: we have now published a
cumulative total of 251 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:
- 17 in English
- 5 in French
- 1 in German
GENRES
- 9 novels
- 2 biographies
- 2 instructional manuals
- 2 books for children
- 2 books of drawings
- 1 book of music criticism
- 1 history book
- 1 technical monograph
- 1 personal journal
- 1 collections of essays
- 1 play
8 of this month's ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada.
14 of this month's titles were fiction, and 9 were non-fiction.
The month featured a very wide variety of ebooks. We published our first play,
Tieck's translation into German of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". We also
published the first of the two volumes of O. D. Skelton's massive biography of
Canadian prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of Canada's most celebrated
political biographies.
Authors new to PGC this month included:
Brazil, Angela (1868-1947) [English novelist]
Féval, Paul (1816-1887) [Romancier français]
Foster, Robert Frederick (1853-1945) [Scottish authority on card games]
Lambert, Leonard Constant (1905-1951) [English composer and conductor]
Legendre, Napoléon (1841-1907) [Journaliste canadien]
Lyall, Edna [Bayly, Ada Ellen] (1857-1903) [English novelist]
McIlwraith, Jean Newton (1859-1938) [Canadian author and editor]
Melville, Frederick John (1882-1940) [British philatelist]
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) [English playwright and poet]
Tieck, Johann Ludwig (1773-1853) [German novelist and poet / romancier et poète
allemand]
***************
Thanks as ever for your support!
Mark
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Feb. 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
45 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring
on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011]
Leaving 3 years 10 months, 15 1/3 seasons or 45 months.
Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.
First Prediction: Computers Will Look And Sound Different
When you look at a wall of computers, in use, in five years,
you will notice something different. . .you might notice the
difference even now in some places. . .sleeker, quieter, and
WHAT? NO HUMMING???
More and more computers, including heavy duty severs, should
be coming your way with NO MOVING PARTS, except probably DVD
drives, as some people will still demand horse drawn items.
I have one friend who got one of these new servers running a
week or two ago as is amazed at how much more it can do with
so much less storage space. . .it is FAST!!! The new SSD is
able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. . . .
I told another friend a week ago and he has installed two of
these new SSDs [Solid State Drives] and is equally impressed
by programs loading without any hourglass waiting, etc.
However, when it comes to storing your terabytes, it's still
the normal old fashioned hard drive.
A Few Major Projects To Start Out the New Year. . . .
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.
Don't forget to look at the iPhone stores, etc. Gutenberg eBooks a
seller there.
and now the rest of
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Feb. 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
Give The World eBooks in 2009!!!
New Project Gutenberg Landmarks and Headlines
300+ eBooks in Portutuese
400+ eBooks in Dutch
Just about to pass 500 eBooks in Finnish.
Please note that PrePrints now has dropped nearly 500 eBooks!!!
Of course they are still there, just "retired,"
So let us know if you want to try finishing any of those.
Well worth looking into:
http:www.preprints.readingroo.ms
We could use someone to write a piece about PrePrints.
We also need more help with the Chinese eBooks there.
The News In More Detail
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!
I have received two "Flash Series 2" PCMCIA cards and can
only hope to find a "series 1" some day for our demos.
Doesn't have to work, just for "show and tell."
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.
These are the various totals from the ~30,000 at
httpwww.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
Last week:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Wed 2009-01-14 | 10
Thu 2009-01-15 | 5
Fri 2009-01-16 | 3
Sat 2009-01-17 | 5
Sun 2009-01-18 | 9
Mon 2009-01-19 | 11
Tue 2009-01-20 | 12
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
For some reason, Marcello's program chose the one day it
really matters and refused to send me anything but blank
lines today, so here is yesterday's:
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Fri 2009-02-13 | 7
Sat 2009-02-14 | 17
Sun 2009-02-15 | 9
Mon 2009-02-16 | 7
Tue 2009-02-17 | 7
Wed 2009-02-18 | 11
Thu 2009-02-19 | 8
Here are the current language totals
for languages with over 100 eBooks.
Thanks to Greg Newby!
Grand total for today: 28029
Total for today: 28,029 [-27,475 =] 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 previous 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
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide
28,029 up 554 PG General Automated Count
1,737 up 7 PG of Australia
582 up 18 PG of Europe
2,020 up 7 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
242 up 20 PG of Canada, Estimated.
======
32,620 up 606 All 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]
Statistics watchers will note this is the second time we
have passed a Grand Total of 32,500. This is as per the
major shuffle of Chinese and other books out of PrePrint
status on January 1, 2009, but which we are still hoping
someone will be able to make use of.
We still them all in the archives, just ask for them.
That was how we ended 2008.
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
As I’m sure everyone is aware, Obama was inaugurated as the new U.S. President this last week and we now have the Official Transcript of the Inaugural Presidential Address. This can be found in the Gutenberg archives at; www.gutenberg.org/etext/28001
This is now the 44th US Presidential Inaugural Speech and Project Gutenberg has all these compiled into one eText (Obama’s will be added shortly) which is available at; www.gutenberg.org/etext/4938