With the introduction of the Stanza eBook reading application the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch have become major platforms on which to read eBooks. Since Stanza was released there have been several other eBook readers released for the iPod Touch allowing eBooks in many different file formats (including the ePub eBook standard) to be downloaded from any one of the many sources that have both free (public domain) and commercial eBook titles.
The goal of my own personal project is to provide Project Gutenberg eBooks formatted in the ePub eBook standard and make freely available from epubBooks.com. Because of this I knew I would need to test how my conversions look on an iPhone or iPod Touch, therefore I decided to purchase an iPod Touch.
I’m not a fanatic of Apple so as you can imagine, I wasn’t really expecting much from the iPod Touch other to test my ePub formatted books and listening to music.
I won’t go into too many details in this review about the different Apple apps available on the iPhone/Touch (there are already plenty of other reviews like that) as I want to keep this focused on the eBook aspects, specifically targeting Project Gutenberg fans.
During the review I will only be focussing on the iPod Touch but it must be noted that the Touch is exactly the same as the iPhone, just without the cellular phone abilities or persistent internet access. So anything that can be done with the iPod Touch should also be available on the iPhone.
pgmonthly_2008_09_16.txt
The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Sep. 21, 2008
****eBooks Readable by Both Humans and Computers since July 4, 1971****
http://www.gutenberg.org
NOTE: Best viewed with a fixed-width font, e.g. Courier New.
Windows Notepad is a good a program to use for viewing.
You may not have received this on time, due to problems with the mailer
program, and/or you might receive extra copies, as I am trying alternative
routes and CEO Newby may also try to send this out. My apologies. mh
50 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012
[some now saying October 11, 2011]
This leaves 4 1/4 years, 17 seasons, or 50 months.
Not to worry. I will still make predictions further on.
New Project Gutenberg Landmarks
We just passed 200 books in Spanish at:
http://www.gutenberg.org
and there are more at:
http://www.gutenberg.cc
Grand Total of About 30,000 Books made by Project Gutenberg
30,000 eBooks: About The Same As Average Public Libraries!
We are rapidly approaching 30,000 eBooks in the originating Project Gutenberg
collections, as differentiated from those eBooks originating with other eBook
producers located at an alternate site to the original
http://www.gutenberg.org, at http://www.gutenberg.cc which has over 75,000
eBooks.
We should pass 30,000 before the end of the year, as below.
Please note that PrePrints now has over 2,000 eBooks!!!
Chinese Moves Into The Project Gutenberg "Top 5"
As you will notice in the language list below, Chinese will apparently be
moving up to our 4th place language, counting non-English eBooks.
We still need more help in cataloging these eBooks, but the latest 300 or so
Chinese eBooks are now in PrePrints.
Anyone who can work in Chinese is encouraged to look into a directory called
/china in PrePrints, or get the .zip file, from one directory above to get all
the files downloaded in one single command.
http://preprints.readingroo.ms
first one on the list:
/china
.zip of whole bunch is one directory up, get china.zip
The current list, NOT counting the new 307 PrePrints:
Grand total for today: 26867 [Yesterday, mail problems]
22863 English en
1289 French fr
549 German de
470 Finnish fi
359 Dutch nl
344 Chinese zh
260 Portuguese pt
207 Spanish es
159 Italian it
When we get all 307 possible titles online, that will bring Chinese up to a
total of 666, which will place it second of our non-English languages
collection which is approximately where it should go, given Internet language
dispersal.
Please note that even without counting these 307, a Chinese eBook total is
already approaching that of Dutch, which has been in our Top 5 for years.
The times are changing, and we can either lead or follow.
Believe it or not, Spanish is listed as the third language, with regard to its
use on the entire Internet so that's the
next goal, to bring Spanish to out Top 5.
In reference to that goal, I am giving a presentation for a new combination of
Internet efforts called "Both Americas,"
in Buenos Aires early next Spring, followed by what I would hope will be a
similar conference in France. India has had one or more problems with getting
an actual invitation sent to me, and since their current conference will be
over less than a month from now, I will not be able to attend even if such an
invitation is issue at the last moment unless it is of such an unusual nature
that I can't turn it down and may have to interrupt another trip I have now
scheduled during, and including the same period, the coming month.
This is the second time a conference hosted by people I had contact with in
India has not worked out due to inabilities to get things organized in a
manner that does not cost me a great deal of time and money, neither of which
I have great amounts of to invest in any but the wisest of manners.
I fear the conference in France may be headed the direction it was headed in
last year, much as did the other one I had mentioned above, but right now I
can't say for sure that it is either going to actually happen, or that I may
speak.
Something I should mention about possible conferences:
If all the plans are not made, tickets purchased, arranged, etc., so that I
can at least expect to break even on trips, at least one month in advance, the
odds of my attending the conference fall very rapidly to zero. So far the
only ones keeping up their end of the bargain are the "Both Americas"
hosting the conference in Buenos Aires, so that appears the only conference I
am certain to attend in six months.
Greg Newby and I have made an attempt to set up one of few, very few,
conference appearances with a joint presentation, but we haven't heard a word
back from that one either, so I won't even mention it at the moment.
Project Gutenberg just doesn't have the money for us to get to conferences
where we would lose money in the process.
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 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.
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.
These are the various totals from the ~30,000 at:
http://www.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
[Yesterday's message, no mail coming in right now, but if I send this two
different ways, I think ONE of them will get to you.]
day | cnt
----------------+-----
Mon 2008-10-13 | 8
Tue 2008-10-14 | 12
Wed 2008-10-15 | 4
Thu 2008-10-16 | 9
Fri 2008-10-17 | 5
Sat 2008-10-18 | 16
Sun 2008-10-19 | 10
Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!
Here are the current language totals
for languages with over 100 eBooks.
[Again, from yesterday]
Grand total for today: 26,867 [ - 26570 =] +297
22,863 [ - 22,670 =] + 193 English en
1,289 [ - 1,243 =] + 46 French fr
549 [ - 542 =] + 7 German de
470 [ - 464 =] + 6 Finnish fi
359 [ - 357 =] + 2 Dutch nl
359 [ - 320 =] + 39 Chinese zh [+307 PP]
260 [ - 253 =] + 7 Portuguese pt
207 [ - 202 =] + 5 Spanish es
159 [ - 155 =] + 4 Italian it
etc.,etc.,etc.
Total increase + 297 All Reported Lanugages
Thanks to Greg Newby!
And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide
26,867 + 297 10/20/08 PG General Automated Count
1,706 + 14 10/20/08 PG Australia
530 + 7 10/20/08 PG Europe
2,461 + 1,777 10/20/08 PG PrePrints
177 + 13 09/30/08 PG Canada
======
31,741 + 2,108 by various automated counts and newsletters
Note: Without counting PrePrints, we are still under 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.
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 [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
* 31,500 on 2008/10/21 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
* 30,000 on 2008/10/21
* 29,500 on 2008/09/19
* 29,000 ~~ Calculating
* 28,500 ~~ Calculating
* 28,000 ~~ 2008/05/16
* 27,500 on 2008/04/05
* 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
PG-AU
* 1,700 on 2008/10/10
* 1,600 on 2008/02/08
* 1,500 on 2007/04/07
PG Canada
* 175 on 2008/09/30
* 100 on 2008/03/25
* 110 on 2008/04/17
**********************************************_
gweekly mailing list
gweekly@lists.pglaf.org
http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gweekly
Here's the news from PG Canada for September.
We published a total of 13 ebooks during the month: we have now published a
cumulative total of 177 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:
- 5 titles were in English
- 8 were in French
GENRES
- 7 of the books were novels (the 7 ebooks represented 5 novels, since we
published Henry Gréville's "Les Koumiassine" in two parts, and followed
the same course with "Le moulin Frappier").
- 1 was a children's book
- 1 was a collection of poems
- 1 was an issue of a literary magazine
- 3 were non-fiction: a collection of essays, a book of history, and a biography
One of PG Canada's objectives is to have a strong collection of ebooks in
French. We were delighted that this month an actual majority of the new
titles we offered are in French!
Five of this month's ebooks were by Canadians.
One of the highlights of the month was the completion of our collection of
major works by the eminent novelist, poet, dramatist, and translator
Pamphile Le May (1837-1918): we now offer no fewer than 18 of his works.
We published four novels in our continuing series of novels by
Henry Gréville (1842-1902).
Authors and illustrators new to PGC this month included:
Charlesworth, Hector Willoughby (1872-1945) [Canadian journalist and essayist]
Garneau, François-Xavier (1809-1866) [Historien et poète canadien] Graham,
George Rex (1813-1894) [Publisher]
***************
Thanks as ever for your support!
Mark
I had been reading some very interesting things about the BeBook eBook Reader, so when it arrived in the mail, I was not disappointed. On the surface this reader from Endless Ideas BV is pretty much the same as any other. However, once you start to get a little more involved you soon realise that this is a pretty cool device with some great features that make it stand out from the rest.
As with most E-Ink readers the BeBook also uses the newer Vizplex screen technology, which gives a much brighter and faster screen. To help in displaying your books it comes bundled with its own font which gives a very solid text.
There are the normal three sizes of fonts available, although this device implements them in a slightly different way to others. At the maximum zoom setting the display switches to landscape view – this actually makes sense. If you really need the maximum font size then viewing in landscape mode will actually give a more satisfying reading experience, very clever – and particularly useful for those technical PDF documents.
One of the most common issues people have when buying a dedicated reader is regarding eBook formats and whether they will still be able to read their purchases if they change devices in the future. Well, to help relieve these concerns Endless Ideas BV have not only enabled the BeBook to view MobiPocket [DRM protected] eBooks, but also EPUB, PDF, Microsoft LIT, CHM, HTML and a plethora of other formats. Giving you more choice in where you buy your books from.
With the introduction of the Stanza eBook reading application the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch have become major platforms on which to read eBooks. Since Stanza was released there have been several other eBook readers released for the iPod Touch allowing eBooks in many different file formats (including the ePub eBook standard) to be downloaded from any one of the many sources that have both free (public domain) and commercial eBook titles.