By Paul Biba
Neil Crab has started a Smashwords book review site called, appropriately, Smashwords Books Reviewed. Neil is a Smashwords author himself, with a book of short stories, Believable Lies, and is about ready to publish a novel and has a second novel on the way.
His first review is The Storm Killer, by Mike Jastrzebski.
The photo at the left is by “legendarypoet” and I was struck by what a beautiful b&w shot it is, of a b&w e-reader. Click on the image to see his original, or click on screen name to see his photo page.
I spent time yesterday, by request, taking more comparison photos of font and text differences between the Kindle 3 and Kindle 2, and I’ll get some up later on.
I’ll touch instead this morning on some subjects that have come up in comment-areas here and in topics being discussed on the various Kindle forums.
FULLY CHARGE A NEW KINDLE
One thing to know as you open the Kindle package is that you can read on the Kindle while it’s charging. Give it a full charge when it’s new — it usually takes about 2 hours, as it already has some battery life remaining. Mine was halfway down. The bottom LED light turns a bright, solid green when done.
Q & A
HOW WILL I MOVE KINDLE BOOKS FROM MY OTHER KINDLE TO THE NEW KINDLE 3?
Amazon’s few instructions (in an email you receive before getting your Kindle and instructions ON your Kindle) are brief but well written and cover most of what you need. On the Kindle, the guide is named “Transferring Your Kindle Content” – and since your books and subscriptions content is in your personal area/library on Amazon’s servers, you’ll need to have the Wireless turned on in order to access those servers.
For newcomers: With the Kindle, that’s done by pressing the Menu button and selecting the topmost choice, “Turn Wireless On” — and of course that slot toggles the choice, to turn it “Off” — to conserve battery power.
You can purchase books from Amazon with your computer while waiting for your new Kindle, as Amazon pre-registers your Kindle and gives it identifying info you can modify later under Menu/Settings). All books you’ve bought earlier will already be in your Library, and new ones will be added to it and also sent to the Kindle you designate as the receiving Kindle.
For more information, see Amazon’s help pages for getting files to your Kindle – “Transferring, Downloading, and Sending Files to Kindle.”
By Paul Biba
This is a part of a post from author Lynn Viehl’s Paperback Writer blog.. It deserves to be read in full, but I must point out that I can’t verify anything that it contains:
It’s been brought to my attention that Scribd.com has begun charging people to download my free e-books hosted on their site. To get around my copyright and the free distribution notice I’ve placed in each e-book, they are using an archive subscription scam to make their money (this also neatly avoids them having to pay me any royalties on the profits they make.) Evidently all the money they’ve been raking in from the Google ads they’ve posted on my e-book pages hasn’t been enough for them.
I was not made aware of this new policy by Scribd at all; a reader kindly brought it to my attention. If you have free stories or documents hosted on this site, chances are they’re doing the same to you.
I immediately contacted Scribd.com and demanded an explanation, which they provided at their leisure. Basically they washed their hands of any liability and ethics by telling me it was my problem, not theirs. In order to prevent Scribd from further profiting from my free books, I have to remove each e-book individually from their archives (for instructions on how to do this, see Scribd’s instructions here.) As I discovered this morning this is going to take a considerable amount of time for me to accomplish, and it’s not a permanent solution; they tell me I’ll have to check the documents regularly to see to it that they aren’t arbitrarily returned to the archive, where Scribd can then again start charging people to download them.
I find the situation particularly ironic, as anyone can bootleg my work on the internet with no problem, yet when I try to give it away for free, greedy people still try to make a buck off it. Writers just can’t win.
Thanks to Michael Pastore for the link.
By Paul Biba
How Bookofjoe finds this stuff I don’t know. But, it shows you why I no longer read the 3 pound bricks that are being published. Give me an ereader over this any day!
By Paul Biba
From Boing Boing. I hate serials so I won’t jump in, but I’ll probably buy the thing when it’s finished.
The Mongoliad is live! This is the collaborative, participatory shared-world project from Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and pals. It’s an epic fantasy novel about the Mongol conquest, told in installment form, with lots of supplementary material (video, stills, short fiction, etc), and a strong audience participation component in the form of a Wikipedia-style concordance, fanfic, etc. You can read the free samples without registration, but you need an account to edit the “Pedia.”
For $5.99 you get a six-month subscription to the main body of fiction; $9.99 gets you a year (you retain access to the fiction after your subscription expires, but don’t get any new material until you renew, which is a major plus in my view — much fairer than most online “subscriptions” that lock you out once you let your sub lapse).
By Paul Biba
From the press release:
ebrary®, a leading provider of digital content products and technologies, today announced that its flagship subscription e-book database, Academic Complete™, now exceeds 50,000 titles from the world’s leading publishers. Academic Complete continues to be the largest multidisciplinary e-book database licensed to libraries throughout the world, under a simultaneous, multi-user access model with continual growth. Furthermore, ebrary’s Academic Complete, Government Complete™, Public Library Complete™, and College Complete™ are the only e-book products that enables libraries to upload and integrate their own digital materials such as theses and dissertations, yearbooks, and newspapers with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast).
By Paul Biba
Audible is now available in the Android Market. It features chapter navigation, bookmarking, sleep mode and button free mode. It will support wireless transfer from My Library to your android phone.
By Paul Biba
This pressure by the US to keep the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement secret is unfathomable, especially in an Obama administration which professes more open government. Campaign contributions at work?
From EurActiv:
The United States is behind the wall of secrecy surrounding global trade talks to combat counterfeiting, say EU policy sources, who claim that American officials are refusing to let their European counterparts publish the draft agreement online.
American officials blocked European attempts to publish the latest draft of the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on an EU website after a Washington-based round of negotiations in August.
The European Commission, which has been feeling the heat from lobby groups and the European Parliament for greater transparency in the negotiations, debriefed MEPs on the August negotiations yesterday (1 September).
MEPs have been demanding to see the full negotiating text as they will be asked to give ACTA their consent in a vote later this year.
“If we want to be leaders in the EU on transparency, we really have to put more pressure on our partners to have more transparency,” an Austrian Green MEP told EurActiv.
Swedish MEP and Swedish Pirate Party member Christian Engström did not take part in yesterday’s debrief as he allegedly left a July meeting disgruntled that he could not distribute documents about the trade negotiations to fellow parliamentarians.
By Paul Biba
From the press release:
Poole Literary Festival in partnership with the Media School at Bournemouth University has established a prize for new media writing. The prize creates an exciting opportunity for writers working with new media to showcase their skills, provoke discussion and raise awareness of new media writing and the future of the written word. The competition deadline is approaching rapidly, with a cut-off point of Midday (GMT – UK time) on 15 September for entries.
There are two awards, one for Best New Media Writing and one for Best Student New Media Writing. Prizes will be awarded at a prestigious Awards Ceremony on 31 October 2010. Please ensure all entries are received by the closing date. This is very important as in the interests of fairness to all entrants exceptions cannot be made for late submissions.
Entry details:
HYPERLINK “http://www.poolelitfest.com/new-media-prize.php” http://www.poolelitfest.com/new-media-prize.php
The judges of the New Media Writing Prize have a blog at:
HYPERLINK “http://www.newmediawritingprize.co.uk/” http://www.newmediawritingprize.co.uk/
Poole Literary Festival:
HYPERLINK “http://www.poolelitfest.com/index.php” http://www.poolelitfest.com/index.php
By Paul Biba
As I mentioned below, we will be at the US release of the Tab, and now here is some great news for Kobo. From the Samsung press release:
As a new category of device, the Samsung GALAXY Tab brings a wealth of mobile experiences. Its striking 7” TFT-LCD display delivers exciting mobile experience for watching films, viewing pictures, e-reading or sharing documents. In design, its light (380g) build provides perfect portability, with its svelte dimensions making it easy to grip and use. Supporting the latest Adobe Flash Player 10.1, the Samsung GALAXY Tab fully supports swift, seamless viewing of every single page of the web.
The ‘Readers Hub,’ Samsung’s unique e-reading application, provides easy access to a vast digital library – from classical literature to the latest bestsellers and reference materials. At the same time, Samsung unveils ‘Media Hub,’ a gateway to a world of films and videos, and ‘Music Hub,’ an application giving access to a wide range of music tunes.
The Samsung GALAXY Tab has made rich communication truly mobile; it presents a level of converged technology that moves beyond mobile or PC to an entirely new category. Users have new powers to consume, create and communicate from wherever they are.
Powerful, always-on communication
With 3G HSPA connectivity, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth® 3.0, the Samsung GALAXY Tab enhances users’ mobile communication on a whole new level. Video conferencing and push email on the large 7-inch display make communication more smooth and efficient. For voice telephony, the Samsung GALAXY Tab turns out to be a perfect speakerphone on the desk, or a mobile phone on the move via Bluetooth® headset.
Powered by a Cortex A8 1.0GHz application processor, the Samsung GALAXY Tab is designed to deliver high performance whenever and wherever you are. At the same time, HD video contents are supported by a wide range of multimedia formats (DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and more), which maximizes the joy of entertainment.
From the Kobo blog:
It’s a good feeling to be first, and that’s why today is a really exciting day for readers around the world and everyone at Kobo. After much speculation, the new Samsung GALAXY Tab has just been announced by Samsung’s CEO in Berlin, and Kobo is THE eReading application powering the ‘Readers Hub’ on the new Android tablet. Samsung GALAXY TabThis partnership is an industry first for Kobo and Samsung, offering the first eReading experience on an Android Tablet to readers worldwide. … This is a HUGE WIN for Kobo! Samsung is a global leader – a world class organization that touches billions of consumers worldwide. The GALAXY Tab is an amazing device and will be a real contender in the marketplace as consumers everywhere adopt tablets. To have been selected as THE eReading application that powers the ‘Readers Hub’ on this device is simply incredible.
![applelogo[1]](http://www.teleread.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/applelogo1.jpg "applelogo[1]")
As the new iPod Touches (iPods Touch?) have been announced, are pre-ordering, and shipping in a week or so, it’s also time to look at the “shadow market” that trails the new devices—the last-gen refurbs, for those people who don’t mind going a generation or two back in search of a bargain.
While it’s true that last-gen iPod Touches won’t have the nifty new Retina Display, their screens have been “good enough” for e-reading up to now, and won’t be made any worse by something better coming out except by comparison. And looking at the Apple Store’s refurbished iPods page (which is subject to change after this is posted, due to people buying iPods or sending them back in), I see a 3rd-gen 64GB iPod Touch refurb listed at $319, which is down $30 or $40 from what it was when I checked it a few days before the Apple event.
There’s also a 32GB 2nd-gen for $249, and a 32GB 3rd-gen for $229. (Yes, that’s right. The 3rd-gen is actually cheaper than the 2nd-gen. Perhaps someone accidentally got the prices reversed?) At the top of the page in the “Featured Products” section is an 8GB 2nd-gen for $149.
Another interesting thing to me is where it says “save (some amount)” under the refurb pricing. For current-generation iPods, adding the savings to the price equals the list price of a brand new version of the item. Doing this for older-gen refurbs generates some interesting theoretical list prices that are only theoretical, because Apple doesn’t actually sell new units of anything except the current generation. So if a 3rd-gen 64GB model would cost $369 new ($319 + $50 “savings”), it doesn’t really mean anything because you can’t get the “new” version, at that price or otherwise.
Taking a few moments for a quick unscientific survey of eBay, it looks like prices are about the same to a little higher as the refurbs on the Apple store. In some cases people are bidding more than $400 for a 3rd-gen 64GB model, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but hey, auction site.
Anyway, if you’re interested in saving a little money on an older iPod Touch, there hasn’t been a better time to buy than now (and there probably won’t be for another year until the next generation comes out).
![dollar-sign[1]](http://www.teleread.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/dollarsign1.jpg "dollar-sign[1]")
Ben Kunz at Bloomberg Businessweek has an interesting post on Apple’s pricing practices. Kunz posits that Apple uses psychological pricing tricks such as reference prices and price “decoys” to boost sales of more expensive items. I can’t say I agree with all of his points, but he brings up some interesting things to consider.
Kunz first discusses price decoys, items that don’t really look like very good deals in order to make slightly better items look much better. He suggests that the rumored 7” iPad is such a price decoy, to make a 10”, more featureful version look like a bargain and defend against the impending tidal wave of lower-priced tablets from competitors.
Decoys explain why Apple often sells each gadget in a pricing series, such as the new iPod Touch’s $229, $299, and $399 price points for different storage capacities. You may gladly spend $229 to get a hot media player, thinking it’s a deal vs. the highest-priced version … and not blink that you could instead buy an iPhone 4 at the lower price of $199 with more features. The $399 "decoy" has clouded your judgment. Apple wins the best of both worlds—stoking demand for products that look like bargains and for all the decoys it sells at much higher prices. Yes, some people will spend $399 for a music player with slightly better technology—and Apple makes even fatter margins.
Here Kunz brings up a point he will hammer on a couple more times over the course of the article: that the iPod Touch is more expensive than the more-capable iPhone, therefore Apple must employ eeeevil pricing tricks to sell it. I’ll come back to that in a bit.
A couple of Kunz’s other points have to do with setting a reference price—introducing something at a high price, then discounting it quickly so that it looks like a bargain compared to its original asking price (as Apple did with the originally $599 iPhone). Of course, Apple is not alone in this; Amazon has done something similar with its Kindles, though over a bit longer period of time.
By Paul Biba
Along with the site redesign, I’ve asked our owners, NAPCO, to implement reCAPTCHA. You have undoubtedly seen this on other sites you’ve visited.
Since May we have received over 172,000 spam comments. Why is this important? It’s important because all those spam comments are held by our filter for review before being deleted. That means that Chris and I have reviewed over 172,000 spam comments to be sure that they do not contain false positives. We regularly find false positives and have to approve them. This isn’t the end, though, because an “approved” spam then becomes, in WordPress’s wisdom, a pending comment and we have to go into the pending comments area to approve the false spam for posting – a two step process.
Quite honestly, this is taking too much time. So we’re going to try to see how well reCAPTCHA works. At least it will contribute to TeleRead’s mission. Here’s the scoop on it, in case you don’t know:
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
Currently, we are helping to digitize old editions of the New York Times and books from Google Books.
So don’t be surprised when it shows up. Let’s try it for a while and see how it goes.
Steve Jobs had some interesting things to reveal today. In the iPod line, the Shuffle, Nano, and Touch get refreshes. No mention at all of the Classic line; I suppose they’ve had their day.
The Shuffle moves forward by taking a step back—the new one resembles a smaller version of the second in form factor, bringing back the buttons everybody missed from the third, but with the Voiceover and other nifty features that people did like from the third.
The Nano loses the physical controls and goes multitouch, looking like a smaller version of the iPod Touch (but without apps). Now we know what that mysterious small square touchscreen we mentioned in an Apple rumor post I don’t have time to dig up right now was for.
And the Touch is about as expected. Slimmer than ever, Retina Display, A4 chip, Facetime camera, and rear-facing HD video camera. No mention of photographic capability, so presumably it’s a video-only camera like the one from last year’s Nano. If it can’t take photos, that’s a bit disappointing (especially with the new HDR photo capacity in OS 4.1), but on the whole it’s still a considerable improvement over the previous generation. Price points remain the same $229/$299/$399; it is available for pre-order today and ships later this month.
This month’s free e-book from the University of Chicago Press is a replica of the very first, 1906 edition of the Chicago Manual of Style to commemorate the 16th edition of that work.
Of course, as with all University of Chicago Press free e-books, this book comes wrapped in Adobe Digital Editions DRM—even though, since it was originally published in 1906, this book is well within the public domain by now. (Oddly, I can’t seem to find any public domain version of it on-line, at least not in Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, or Manybooks. There is a somewhat rough scan of a 1911 edition on Wikimedia Commons, however.)
It’s a pity that this press—an academic press, yet, and thus part of an organization supposedly dedicated to advancing the spread of knowledge—should choose to impose technological restrictions upon a document that should legally be free to all.
Update: A representative of the Chicago University Press has noted in a comment that they do actually offer a DRM-free download of this book as well. While it’s good that they have it available, I do still find it annoying that they went with a DRM-locked version for their publicized free giveaway. If they’re already giving it away free without DRM, what purpose is served by publicizing a restricted version of the same exact thing?
