So here we are, just over a week until Waterstones start shipping out those lovely new Sony Reader PRS-505’s to all us UK residents!
This is going to be the first E-Ink reader from one of the big boys to enter the UK market . The Sony Reader has been getting substantial coverage in mainstream media of late, so it will be interesting to see what the take up will be. If forums such as MobileRead are anything to go by then there will be quite a demand.
Don’t know what the Sony Reader Digital Book (PRS-505) is?
The Sony Reader is an electronic book reader that uses an E-Ink screen to give a paper like reading experience. The Reader can hold around 160 books in its 250MB internal memory, but by using the two memory slots (10GB) you could potentially hold 10,000 books. If you don’t think you could fill this then remember that the Gutenberg.org archives have over 20,000 English language books to download for free!!
Michael Hart has sent out his monthly newsletter for August 2008 and during this last month there have been a few nice milestones from the various PG projects.
First up, Greg Newby has provided us with an update on the top languages found at gutenberg.org. Currently there are over 100 languages available in the archives making a total of 26,272 eBook titles!
The top languages being;
22,432 - English (EN)
1,217 - French (FR)
540 - German (DE)
456 - Finnish (FI)
349 - Dutch (NL)
320 - Chinese (ZH)
250 - Portuguese (PT)
197 - Spanish (ES)
153 - Italian (IT)
Here's the news from PG Canada for July.
We published a total of 14 ebooks during the month: we have now published a
cumulative total of 152 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:
- 8 titles were in English,
- 6 were in French,
GENRES
- 5 of the books were novels, including a French translation by Pamphile Le
May of William Kirby's "The Golden Dog"
- 1 was a book of short stories
- 5 were poetry, including a French translation by Pamphile Le May of
Longfellow's "Evangeline"
- 1 was a book of drawings
- 2 of the books were non-fiction
Ten of the books were by Canadians, or had a significant link to Canada.
The month was notable for the addition of six books by Pamphile Le May
(1837-1918): four original works, and two translations.
We published two new titles in progress in our series of novels by English
novelist Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887-1956).
We were very proud of this year's choice for Canada Day (July 1st). It was a
1926 edition of "Le Chien d'Or", a translation of "The Golden Dog". The
author, William Kirby (1817-1906), and the translator, Pamphile Le May (1837-
1918), are both celebrated names in Canadian literature, while the annotator,
Benjamin Sulte
(1841-1923) is a famous Canadian historian.
Authors and illustrators new to PGC this month included:
- Lord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth Baron Dunsany]
(1878-1957) [Irish author and playwright]
- Kirby, William (1817-1906) [Canadian novelist]
- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882)[American poet]
- Macmillan, Cyrus John (1880-1953) [Canadian academic and politician]
- May, Phil [May, Philip William] (1864-1903) [English caricaturist]
- Munro, William Bennett (1875-1957) [Canadian historian]
- Sheringham, George (1884-1937) [English artist]
- Sulte, Benjamin (1841-1923) [Historien canadien]
***************
Thanks as ever for your support!
Mark
**********************************************_
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/The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Aug. 21, 2008/
e-Books Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
52 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring!
This leaves 4 1/4 years, 17 1/3 seasons, or 52 months.
Not to worry. I will still make predictions further on.
Requesting A Second Time
I need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.
One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.
In addition, I will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.
These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at:
http://www.gutenberg.cc
Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.
These are the various totals from the ~29,000 at:
http://www.gutenberg.org
Here is the output for the current week:
Subject: Yet Another Progress Report
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Thu 2008-08-14 | 10
Fri 2008-08-15 | 8
Sat 2008-08-16 | 10
Sun 2008-08-17 | 6
Mon 2008-08-18 | 15
Tue 2008-08-19 | 10
Wed 2008-08-20 | 14
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals
for languages with over 100 eBooks.
Grand total for today: 26272
22432 English en
1217 French fr
540 German de
456 Finnish fi
349 Dutch nl
320 Chinese zh
250 Portuguese pt
197 Spanish es
153 Italian it
Thanks to Greg Newby!
Current Totals
26,272 Project Gutenberg Under US Copyright Law
1,672 Project Gutenberg Of Australia +22
515 Project Gutenberg of Europe +7
152 *Project Gutenberg of Canada +14 [for July]
377 Project Gutenberg PrePrints +00
Note: Books move up out of PrePrints ====== 28,988Grand Total ///
[About as many as the average public library]
eustats
preprints
PG Europe just posted their eBook #500!!!
PG Australia posted their eBook #1674 on Aug. 21, 2008 PG Canada posted their
eBook #152 in July, 2008 PG US posted their eBook #25,000 on April 20, 2008 PG
US just posted their 1200th eBook in French.
This is more than double any other language.
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 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
78 per week
11.13 per day
99 titles had been 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"
* 28,000 ~~ 2008/05/16 About the number of books in
* 27,500 on 2008/04/05 the average US public library
* 27,000 ~~ 2008/02/29*
* 26,500 on 2008/01/26
* 26,000 on 2007/12/24
* 25,000 on 2007/10/12
* 24,000 on 2007/07/10
* 23,000 on 2007/04/15
Under US Copyright Law
* 25,500 ~~ 2008/05/27
* 25,000 on 2008/03/20
* 24,000 on 2007/12/27
* 22,500 on 2007/09/09
PG-AU
* 1,600 on 2008/02/08
* 1,500 on 2007/04/07
PG Canada
* 100 on 2008/03/25
* 110 on 2008/04/17
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En juillet 1971, Michael Hart crée le Projet Gutenberg pour diffuser gratuitement sous forme électronique les oeuvres littéraires du domaine public. Un projet longtemps considéré par ses détracteurs comme impossible à grande échelle. Site pionnier à tous égards, le Projet Gutenberg est à la fois le premier site d’information sur un réseau encore embryonnaire et la première bibliothèque numérique. Les livres sont numérisés en mode texte (TXT) en utilisant le code ASCII (American standard code for information interchange). Lorsque l’utilisation du web se généralise, au milieu des années 1990, le projet trouve un second souffle et un rayonnement international. Les collections atteignent 1.000 livres en août 1997, 2.000 livres en mai 1999, 3.000 livres en décembre 2000, 4.000 livres en octobre 2001, 5.000 livres en avril 2002, 10.000 livres en octobre 2003, 15.000 livres en janvier 2005, 20.000 livres en décembre 2006 et 25.000 livres en avril 2008, dans 55 langues, avec 340 nouveaux livres par mois, 340 sites miroirs dans de nombreux pays, plusieurs dizaines de milliers de téléchargements par jour et des milliers de volontaires de par le monde. En octobre 2001, la principale source des livres devient Distributed Proofreaders, mis sur pied par Charles Franks pour gérer la correction partagée entre volontaires. D’abord essentiellement anglophones, le Projet Gutenberg s’internationalise et les collections deviennent multilingues. Le Projet Gutenberg Europe est lancé en janvier 2004 par le Projet Rastko, basé à Belgrade, en Serbie. Suivent le Project Gutenberg Canada et bien d’autres.
ECTACO are probably better know for their electronic hand held translators, but now they gone and released their very own reader; the jetBook eBook Reader.
The jetBook does not use an E-Ink screen, however, this does give it an advantage over all the other eBook readers that are currently out there; a crisp and very white screen! One of the issues people have with the current E-Ink (and VixPlex) standard is that the page contrast is not high enough – usually with E-Ink screens you have a light gray background displaying dark gray text, making low light reading a challenge.
Well, if you think this will be an issue then perhaps you would be better suited to a jetBook. These use a reflective monochrome LCD screen so that the background is nice and white, allowing the text to be read much easier.
[The jetBook has] an easy to scan high-resolution 5-inch display and a viewing angle close to 180°, it is fully customizable. Even readers who have difficulty seeing print books will benefit from its adjustable text size and font face. And weighing in at only 7.5 ounces, this handy device fits perfectly into the palm of your hand.
They go on to say that this “revolutionary display reflects light without the need for backlighting”, which according to reviews gives a similar reading experience to an E-Ink screen.
For me however, the most impressive feature of the jetBook is its ability to search and cross-reference the text using bookmarks making it a great choice for dictionaries – I’m not sure if this means you can do a word lookup from within a book. I’ll try to find out and post an update.
In Australia it is now 1st August 2008 and Project Gutenberg Australia is celebrating its seventh birthday!
In August 2001 Project Gutenberg Australia posted their first book online, “Animal Farm” by George Orwell – they now have over 1600 titles available for download. Project Gutenbereg (U.S.) only posted their 1,600th title in June 1998 – that’s 20 years longer that it has taken PGA!
Introducción
Cronología
1968: ASCII
1971: Proyecto Gutenberg
1974: Internet
1990: Web
1991: Unicode
1993: Online Books Page
1993: PDF
1994: Consorcio W3C
1995: Amazon.com
1996: Internet Archive
1996: Palm Pilot
1997: Open eBook
1999: Bibliotecarios digitales
1999: Web multilingüe
2000: Mobipocket
2000: Public Library of Science
2000: Distributed Proofreaders
2000: Biblia de Gutenberg
2001: Wikipedia
2003: MIT OpenCourseWare
2004: Proyecto Gutenberg Europa
2005: Google Print / Book Search
2005: Open Content Alliance
2006: Microsoft Live Search Books
2006: WorldCat
2007: Citizendium
2007: Encyclopedia of Life
INTRODUCCIÓN
Somos muchos los que soñamos con una biblioteca digital universal de libre acceso – es decir accesible desde cualquier navegadora y en cualquier momento. Gracias al Proyecto Gutenberg, al Internet Archive y a otros proyectos, el sueño empieza a hacerse realidad, al menos para los libros del dominio público.
Este proceso empezó hace tiempo gracias a los esfuerzos de algunos precursores. El “libro para todos” nació con el Proyecto Gutenberg, creado por Michael Hart en julio de 1971. El objetivo era utilizar las “nuevas tecnologías” para difundir gratuitamente bajo forma electrónica las obras literarias que pertenecían al dominio público.
Great news for all us UK based eBook lovers. Sony are finally releasing their Reader Digital Book (PRS-505) to the UK market!
Sony have partnered with the UK book store Waterstones, who will start selling the Reader from 3rd September 2008 for £199 – available for Pre-Order (see below). This costs a little more than the U.S. version, which sells for $299 (approx. £150). Now we are seeing eBook readers entering the high street let’s hope the prices will start tumbling.
UPDATE: Stanza is no longer maintained so I’d recommend you try out Bluefire Reader. Checkout my iPhone review or iPad review over on epubBooks for some more information on reading EPUB books on the iPhone with Blurefire and other apps.
If you are looking for a free eBook reader for your Apple iPhone or iPod Touch then you might want to try the new Stanza reader from Lexcycle.
ECTACO are probably better know for their electronic hand held translators, but now they gone and released their very own reader; 
Great news for all us UK based eBook lovers. Sony are finally releasing their Reader Digital Book (PRS-505) to the UK market!