Sony eBook Library software is running full screen on my Asus 1000HE, which is lying on its side in this photo. With the screen rotated 90 degrees, it fits nicely. The 1000HE screen resolution is 1024x600. The screen is actually much sharper than the photo. I took the handheld shot with my rather old digital camera. If Sony added an option to the software so that it adjusted to various screen sizes, instead of just simulating an e-reader screen, it would make...

Nessmuk was the pen name of George W. Sears, who wrote extensively for Forest and Stream magazine in the late 1800's. The name is supposed to mean "wood duck" in the language of a Massachusetts Indian tribe. Sears also wrote two books, Woodcraft and Forest Runes, which is a volume of poetry. The book Woodcraft was originally published in 1884 by Forest and Stream Publishing. The book was immensely popular and remained in print for decades. The last edition was published in 1920, again by Forest and Stream. In 1963, Dover Publishing did a somewhat edited reprint of the 1920...

Earlier we looked at the various files that make up an epub, as well as the structure of those files. Now let's take a look at how to read an epub. All of these methods are in the early stages of development, so I would urge patience for us standards-boosters. Adobe Digital Editions and FBReader are stand-alone programs, and the third, OpenBerg Lector, is a Firefox plug-in. I could not get a fourth program, OSoft's dotReader, to open an epub, despite claims that it supports the format—are plug-ins or native support on the way? No dedicated e-book devices can currently read epub....

Moderator's note: We welcome Joseph Gray, a super-helpful TeleBlog commenter and a standards-loving IT guy, as our latest contributor. This is Part I of a two-part series. - DR With the recent finalization by the IDPF of the three specifications that comprise an epub, I thought I would see exactly what this new ebook format was capable of. For testing purposes, I created an epub using the information in the IDPF specifications. To the best of my knowledge, the only commercial software currently available for creating an epub is Adobe InDesign. I took the low tech approach and used a...