12:21 PM by NatCh in E-Book Devices | Sony Portable Reader PRS-500/505

It's a few hours ahead of their 9AM PST launch schedule, but I noticed that the new eBook Store is already live, both on the web and via Sony's eBook Library software.

It's too quick for anything much more than shallow first impressions, of course, but here are the ones I've got so far.

On the web site the new layout seems much snappier and easier to deal with -- most notably, the sliders within sliders appear to have met the quiet end they so thoroughly deserved (think "not with a bang" here). I can't say for certain that they're totally gone, but they didn't rear their ugly heads in a few minutes of clicking around. There's still no way to buy via a browser, but that's not something we were expecting, really, just hoped.

Now turning to the look via Sony's eBook Library software. The look there is ... pretty much identical to the browser look. The drawback to that is that the Library navigator pane shows up on the left, which shoves the Book Store part off my standard ratio screen, requiring a scroll bar to see the whole thing. I imagine that it'd be fine on one of the newer, wide-format screens however -- I'll have to wait 'till I'm on the other computer to check that.

Display of lists of books is pretty similar (minus the scroll within scroll approach) and I noticed that when clicking on an author's name to see all of their books, it displays it in the same way as a regular list of books, rather than on the former "about the author" page arrangement. I count that as an improvement, because it shows more books per page and more information about them the new way, however, I would still like to have access to the "About the Author" info, it was a nice plus over what you find in a "regular" bookstore.

I haven't bought a book in the new system yet, but I did look at my list of things I've bought before. Lo and behold! I saw beside each of my previously purchased books a lovely checkbox, and down at the bottom, a "Download All Checked Items" button. This is a massive improvement! Not earth-shattering of course, but it's nice to see the idea catch on.

Navigation is still a bit underwhelming in some respects, for example, getting to your purchased books requires going through the "My Account" page, but overall ease of movement around the actual pages has massively improved, so I'm going to put that down in the plus column.

Well, that's what I see on a first pass, but I know there are many other differences and improvements. What changes do you see, and what do you think of them?

12:09 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News and Commentary

This is a bit old, and it's somewhat off topic as far as e-Reading goes, but we have a few pilots among us, so I think it will be of some interest.

Some may recall from the early days of the iRex iLiad that the eFlyBook was the first B2B application of that device. iRex originally had such applications in mind when it developed the iLiad: to sell the devices to other companies who would then load their own applications on them and resell them to end customers. They now seem to be seeing some moderate movement in the area of newspapers.

eFlyBook was conceived as a documentation management aid to pilots, and came (still does) loaded with "all of the U.S. digitized terminal procedures, IFR high and low altitude enroute charts, U.S. airport facility directory, [and] the FAR/AIM" (from the eFlyBook main page), all of which updates for a subscription fee.

Now another company, called Reader Plates, has released something similar for the Sony PRS line of Readers. It's less comprehensive, containing only the Terminal Approach information, but it seems to be the same deal where the content is updated by subscription. To read their descriptions, it is, naturally, the bee's knees when it comes to small craft navigation.

For those like me who might wonder how you'd get around what must be a rather large set of documents (13,000 of them, as it happens), they say they have the procedures "organized in a hierarchial [sic] menu by state, city, airport, then procedure type."

There is a more in depth review located here, for those who would like the reactions of actual pilots to the system, and more details of the product itself on their company page.

10:12 AM by MarciaCat in E-Book Devices | Sony Portable Reader PRS-500/505

Looks like the new, improved Sony eBook Store will be opening Friday at 9:00 a.m.! I got the following announcement in my email today:

05:14 PM by Adam B. in E-Book Devices | iRex Digital Reader

I've ported a Sudoku application for the DR1000.

This is definitely a cool application if you do Sudoku. You can generate new puzzles, or use some that have already been created. It has buttons to check if you have any errors, and also to solve the puzzle for you.

I can create regular 9x9 puzzles, and also the crazy large 16x16. It does take a little while to generate the 16x16 board and puzzle, so have patience the first time you select that.

To install: Unzip Sudoku.zip to the root of your SD card. For example, if your SD card shows up as the E:\ drive on your computer, you should have an E:\Programs folder after you unzip it.

After installing, you'll be able to select the Sudoku icon from the Documents/Programs folder on your device. From there you can press new for a new puzzle, or open to open an existing.

Note: the keyboard is off in the screenshot because it's running in the emulator. On the DR, the full keyboard is visible.

I did modify the sources a bit from the original program, so I've attached those as well.

11:12 PM by DaleDe in Portable Devices | Other Devices

A new feature for Blackberry users is Over the Air purchase of Mobipocket eBooks directly from the device. See:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/Downloa...ice=Blackberry

Move over Kindle and iPhones, Blackberry has joined the group.

Dale

08:35 PM by jharker in E-Book General | News and Commentary

In 2005, Google was sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for their ambitious program to scan millions of books from university libraries and make them available for viewing online.

Today they have announced a settlement, and it's excellent: Google will make all books available in full online (some for a fee) and authors will get a share of the revenue! (Authors are also allowed to opt out.) Public libraries will all get a free view-only license, while universities will be able to buy subscriptions allowing free access from campus.

From what I can see, the agreement so far only involves being able to VIEW the books in their entirety, but the agreement specifically anticipates further deals being made in the future. So it may be only a matter of time until we can download any of this vast array of digital e-books from Google for a fee!

You can find coverage of the settlement on PC World and from the New York Times. The Authors Guild also has an official announcement page with substantially more details. The deal has yet to be approved by the U.S. District Court.

02:12 PM by Adam B. in E-Book Devices | iRex Digital Reader

This is the first installer for FBReader running on the DR1000S.

For those who aren't familiar with FBReader, it's an ebook reading software with a built in library and support for many formats.

Supported formats are:

To read a book, you'll have to add it to the library. You can do this by clicking the icon that looks like a book with a "+" sign.

You'll also need to close out of the program by clicking the exit button in the upper right. I plan to support the menu eventually, but I have to dig into that further.

To install: Unzip the file to the root of your SD card. For example, if your SD card shows up as the E:\ drive on your computer, you should have an E:\Programs folder after you unzip it.

After installing, you'll be able to select the FBReader icon from the Documents/Programs folder on your device.

You can toggle full screen mode with the select button (between up and down).

You can find more information about FBReader at their website.

It was actually *very* easy to port, since the DR1000 has a lot of libraries already built for it. Screen refreshes are *fast*. The internal refreshes are amazingly accurate. It only refreshes what's changed on the screen. I didn't have to build in any refreshes into FBReader itself. All of the built in menus and library functions work perfectly.

It's hard to describe how amazingly easy this was in comparison to iLiad ports.

Thank you iRex for making a device that *very* easy to hack on (and for providing the device for my "review")!