Via The Digital Reader

“This is a generation of kids that have learned to communicate, search and purchase on very small devices, like mobile phones,” said James McQuivey, Forrester Research media analyst. “This year is a guinea pig year, next year the move will be en masse.”

In addition to being seen as non-threatening by kids, ereader prices are dropping while their capabilities continue to increase, and publishers are aggressively expanding their children’s and YA ebook catalogs.

Read the full article at Boston.com.

Via Inside Higher Ed.

(Photo: meknits)

In theory the signed “page” would be integrated into the actual book, but at this proof of concept stage it produces a one-page document that includes an image of the book’s cover, the author’s message, and an image of the author’s signature.

In the screencast, Kindlegraph’s developer says he created it as part of a DocuSign Hackathon held in April, which means of course that it relies heavily on DocuSign’s signature system to work. The author types out a personal message, which is printed in a faux-handwritten typeface, then adds his real signature that’s stored on DocuSign’s servers. The reader gets the final product as a Kindle file.

It’s a promising attempt at figuring out the problem of joining book signings with epublishing, but there are still a few kinks to work out. The generic handwritten typeface is confusing for this sort of highly personalized product, and the recycling of a single signature image makes it far too easy for the author to be impersonated—how do I know the publicist didn’t write my message? To really keep the authenticity of a book signing, I imagine readers are going to want to be able to “see” the author creating the message and autograph in real time, which is something DocuSign can’t offer with its canned library of signature files. Still, it’s cool to see developers coming up with such imaginative uses of existing technology in the ebook space.

Kindlegraph.com

For an alternative approach to digital autographs, check out “Barnes & Noble to add autograph function to Nook”.

Browsing through articles and press releases on new tablets and eReaders coming out is becoming a full-time occupation. After querying many of my business contacts, fellow writers & book reviewers only a handful knew of an off-center new tablet/eReader coming out that they were excited about, let alone knowledgeable enough about to warrant purchasing. The majority of folks replying played it safe, going for one of the big three: iPad, Kindle or Nook. Kobo’s made a bit more of a name for itself in the American market as of late, but the brand recognition wall seems to be a huge obstacle to overcome for the new devices hitting the market.

“Most consumers aren’t so tech-savvy that they will search out all minute differences between the various available eReading devices,” one of my contacts wrote to me. “Most will simply google ‘best eBook reader of 2011′ and pick one from among the top three.”

Another acquaintance of mine replied with this gem: “I don’t want an eReader at all. I’m still trying to get over what’s happened to books. They’ve become the pictures stuck into the shapeless mounds on the restaurant table in the movie Brazil…”

Even more interesting is the number of replies I received that blur the line between eReaders and tablets almost completely. The eReading device, it seems, must do more than read eBooks and the tablet likewise “must” have “good” eReading capabilities. These tandem demands-so prevalent in the comments after almost any device related article-provoke the question of “why have separate devices at all in the future?”

The dedicated eReader-to many-serves its own function, mainly keeping the idea of reading a ‘book’ somewhat separate; a nod, if you will, to the ghost of paperbacks past. Many of today’s gadget owners grew up respecting the book, thus they yet regard it as a category unto itself. The tablet, however, appeals to a broader audience including those that love reading eBooks but are unwilling to part with all the functionality of a ‘real’ computer, or to carry more than one device around with them.

Americans are not the only ones wading around in piles of devices, spending more of their hard-earned dollars on digital literature: Russian consumers are eReading away along with those in South Korea, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and Germany. It also appears that tsunamis, earthquakes and nuclear disasters can’t keep Japanese consumers from rebounding and buying more eBooks.

The choices are many-besides being simultaneously categorical-but thanks to the many folks that sort through all the new devices for us, we can look at nifty side-by-side comparisons of all the pertinent and pivotal information.

And what of all the devices that don’t make the top ten? To them we wave and warble out a warm “C’es la vie”, which might as well be French for “niche market.”

Via Greene Ink

(Photo: Cloned Milkmen)

It wasn’t the first time I’d flirted my way into a Saturday night date with a simple phrase: “I love that book.” [...] I had one good pickup line, and e-readers ruined it. I can no longer hit on a handsome man on a long commute by asking about his book — because I can’t see it. [...] I promise there is nothing flattering about me awkwardly straining my un-swanlike neck toward a cute guy’s Kindle to guess what he’s eyeing.

Although not a new observation, it’s still interesting to read Lewis’ post—which is more romantic and less crotchety than you might expect—and compare it with the more utilitarian reasons people gave for loving their ereaders in last weekend’s USAToday article.

(Photo: jacopast)

The session blurb promises answers to questions such as ‘retail price determination rights, the outlook of DRM, synergy of printed and digital books and promotion of e-books’. On the face of it these are reasonable questions for an eBook conference and they could easily take up the entire two-hour session. Dig deeper though, and it is clear that each point is either a fait accompli or unrelated to the real issues facing the publishing industry in Japan.

Like one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, fixing the retail price of books is a story that is repeated throughout the World with each country adding its own twist. Publishers, by and large, want the right to fix prices and economists want retailers to be free to discount as they see fit. In Japan, the publishers play to type and want to extend their price fixing rights from print to digital. These publishers have sufficient clout to make this purely an academic question. Independent eBook sellers in Japan have little incentive to take on the publishers and we should expect agreements that allow the publishers to determine eBook prices. A survey of the prices of bestselling books across Japanese eBookstores suggests that, whether formalized or not, that is the current practice today. A recent announcement by three publishing giants, Shinchosha, Kodansha and Gakken, gives us insight into what the actual prices will be. The three companies will set prices at around 70 to 80 percent of the print price and we should expect other large publishers to follow suit.

The battle lines over digital rights management (DRM) are similarly drawn. The publishers and suppliers of DRM solutions, who view their approach as the only true way to prevent content theft, line up against the consumer rights contingent who point out that DRM does not stop the pirates but does hurt the customer. The recent announcement that the Pottermore site will sell the Harry Potter eBooks sans DRM is a fillip for the consumer side but the publishers can respond that four leading Japanese companies are already investigating interoperability of Japanese eBookstores to ease the consumer experience. Again, debate is somewhat academic. DRM is a fact of the current eBook market in Japan and this will not change, if at all, for many years.

Interestingly, Sony is both the technology partner for Pottermore and one of the four companies investigating eBookstore interoperability in Japan. One of the speakers at the e-Book International Session, Fujio Noguchi, is from Sony and may be able to provide some clarity as to Sony’s position on DRM for eBooks.

The synergy between printed and digital books and the promotion of eBooks are worthy topics but run the risk of framing publishing as an industry in isolation. Far from being isolated, the publishing industry is just one of many players in a zero sum game that takes place every single day for the attention and budget of Japanese consumers. The key issue facing the industry is how to out-innovate the other players in this zero sum game.

Who will innovate in the Japanese eBook market and what will impede them?

The key impediment to the innovators will be a tendency to view the eBook market merely as an extension of the print publishing market. Such a tendency will impose a particular mindset on how the market should develop at a time when even the very notion of what is a book should be challenged. Books as we know them will never go away but not every book needs to be written with the expectation that it will be consumed linearly in a single or small number of sittings. During my wait at a checkout line I’ll not launch the reader app on my smartphone because books are not written to be consumed in one-minute chunks. Instead, I’ll play a game or read a newsfeed. Now, if my Sony Reader were to send one minute’s reading worth of backstory to my phone based on what I had last read, an author in my reading list would be able to vie for my slots of micro-downtime. These snippets may be tangential to my core reading experience but, later, when I actually have more time will influence whether I pick up an eReader or the remote control.

The major publishers look set to control eBook pricing as they do that of printed material. Given that, will we see innovation along the lines of the Amazon 99c promotion of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way or the Barnes & Nobles Angry Birds promotion which is driving people to physical stores? A few publishers will be willing to experiment with daily changes to eBook prices but will hit the practical problems associated with propagating price changes to the disparate systems of ten or more major eBook sellers (Kodansha had to put in place arrangements with 14 eBookstores for its Summer ‘natsuden’ eBook campaign). Some smart publishers will work through these problems but the smartest ones will also study the pricing experiments in the music and games industry. At a recent games industry seminar, a Bandai executive described the model of a single download fee for a game app as a sure way to lose money. The ‘freemium’ alternative, though, of free download plus in-app purchase provides a huge range of ARP (average revenue per person) from zero to megabucks. The result is an appropriate price point for every potential player and higher takings overall for the game publisher. eBook publishers must similarly understand and develop new pricing models. Making the first 10% of an eBook available as a free sample does not constitute a new pricing model.

In the eBook market who will be the innovators and what will they do? In the print world, the mainstream publishers are the de facto gatekeepers and will remain so but in the eBook market nobody needs permission to participate. There are five types of innovator that are either already present or soon to be present in the Japanese eBook market.

The most obvious type of innovator is the self-publisher. To date most self-publishers are authors that have not succeeded with the traditional route and have turned to self-publishing as a last resort. Increasingly we’ll see new authors choose to bypass agents and use the time saved in pursuing a publishing deal to market directly through social networks. Agents and publishers still offer immense value to these authors and once successful, most will sign with an agent and become part of the mainstream publishing world.

The second type of innovator is the solo superstar. J.K. Rowling, with her Pottermore site, is the only example we can expect to see of this for a long time. The impact of Pottermore on Japan will be limited to any lessons that emerge from the release of the Harry Potter books without DRM.

The least welcome innovators will be the eBook spammers. The spammers will generate huge numbers of low quality books often using what is known as Private Label Rights, or PLR, content. The sheer volume of these books in an eBookstore can reduce the credibility of the store and make it hard for a consumer to find worthwhile content. This will lead to an arms race between spammers and eBookstores but will also create the need for the fourth type of innovator, the discovery specialist. The discovery specialists will plug into a person’s Internet activity, buying history and stated interests to come up with recommendations that are relevant and spam-free. Their services will be the automated equivalent of asking for recommendations on today’s message boards and getting a prompt answer. (The message boards of tomorrow will be less valuable since they will be overrun by self-publishers promoting their own works).

The fifth and potentially most disruptive type of innovator will develop offerings that were previously impractical due to the high cost of entering the print market and the lack of integration between print and digital media. Here the eBook will be viewed as part of a broader digital offering. These ‘cross digital’ publishers will experiment aggressively with content combinations and pricing models and use tools that are commonplace in the Internet industry to determine what approach works best. The cross digital publishers will view other industries, not printed books, as their natural competitors and will form some unholy alliances with these competitors along the way to developing new offerings. Consider by way of example the Jack Reacher books. Written by Lee Child, this series of fifteen books has been immensely popular in print and digital and, as a consequence, Lee Child is one of only seven authors to have sold over a million books on the Kindle. In Japan, the success of the series has been somewhat muted with translation rights to only four of the series being sold. Of the translated books, none is available as an eBook and the first, Killing Floor, is now out of print. Would a company be interested in reinvigorating this franchise in Japan in a purely eBook form? When the Japanese translation of Killing Floor was published, the only bonus material that came with it was a small bookmark printed with descriptions of each character. The cross digital publisher would certainly develop a complementary micro-site and plan a viral marketing campaign. The eBooks themselves would be enhanced in a number of ways, the most of obvious of which would be Japanese explanations of some of the English used in the original text. This innovator may look to tie up with one of the national chains of English language schools but would probably give priority to talks with Paramount Pictures. Paramount have bought the movie rights to all of the Reacher books and would presumably see value in the Reacher franchise booming in Japan prior to any movies being released here. Real life innovations will differ in detail but the principle will remain the same; the only constraint will be the imagination of the innovator.

At this year’s e-Book Expo in Tokyo many of us will be keenly watching the large, traditional print publishers. These publishers have, to date, focused on working with all participants in the broader publishing industry to ensure the eBook market simply functions at all. Most innovations, though, are not industry-wide and must be driven by individual companies or even single departments within a company. The major publishers in Japan are well resourced, incredibly well connected and have very capable staff. They have done the groundwork to allow new works to be made available and sold in a digital format. It is their time to move beyond the procedural aspects of eBook publishing and truly innovate. Will they?

Robin Birtle is the CEO of Sakkam KK, a Tokyo based technology company. Contact Robin at robin dot birtle at sakkam dot com or through Twitter ID @birtle.

Previously: “Waiting for a Push: the Japanese eBook market in 2011 by Robin Birtle”

(Photo: MIKI Yoshihito)

Ectaco Inc., the world’s leader in portable language learning and the manufacturer of the jetBook eBook Reader announced today that it has teamed up with Hanvon, a leading global eBook Reader manufacturer and character recognition technology provider to create the first ever eBook Reader oriented towards education and implementation into standard classroom usage for teachers and students worldwide. These two brand new Educational eBook Readers will be showcased at the 2011 Book Expo of America in New York.

The first educational device is the jetBook K-12 for the US market features one-of-a-kind interactive technology to aid students in honing their skills in all subjects. The jetBook K-12 has specific programs students need like Speaking Oxford English Dictionaries, Speaking Oxford English-Spanish (or one of the soon available 38 languages) Dictionaries, the most comprehensive electronic SAT preparation course with endless lessons, Speed Reading courses to aid students in learning to read faster, English-Spanish (or one of 12 available language pairs) Text Translation System that can translate any text in full, English, Spanish and other language grammar courses, Interactive Phonetic Language Teacher® program to teach virtually any language step by step, Linguistic crosswords, Graphing, Scientific and Accounting Calculators, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science reference books, interactive course of US History and Facts, interactive Periodic Table of Elements, Text and Voice Note storage, Audiobooks Player and much more.

The second educational eBook Reader, named jetBook Color, will be implemented to schools across the US, China and Eastern Europe for the 2011-2012 school year. It will utilize the newest 9.8 inch Color E-Ink screen with an easy to use interface directed toward students and teachers. It will feature most of the programs from the jetBook K-12 with extra components based on each regions educational system.

APNIC, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, is the registry that issues Internet addresses for the booming Asia-Pacific region, and is expected to be the first to run out. Registries in other regions may last just a few months longer.

The article’s writers describe the new address system, IPv6, and its 340 billion billion billion addresses, as the system that will save the Internet from the end of capacity.  It recommends that companies start developing their IPv6 systems before it’s too late to add to IPv4.  It does, however, caution that the IPv6 system will be incompatible with the IPv4 system, creating–what else?–two IP systems running concurrently, and forcing businesses and consumers to straddle the worlds of both IP systems, new and old, at least for a good while.  You thought the Browser wars were a pain.

Actually, browser users probably won’t have to worry: Most ISPs are either planning on rolling out IPv6, or have already experimented with it.  ISP customers may see no difference whatsoever with their web access.  But if you produce a web site, you might want to see what your ISP or IT staff is doing about IPv6, and whether you’ll need to take any steps on your site to accommodate it.

And how does this affect ebooks, you ask?  Well, since every item that connects to the Internet needs its own IP address–including your ebook reading device or cellphone–the switch to the IPv6 system is supposed to allow for unprecedented communications between your many devices and the Internet, including some connections you may not have thought of… but clearly somebody did.

In Japan, for instance, some of the taxis have IPv6 addresses in their windscreen wipers. When taxies turn on their wipers, the cab company knows and can send lots of cabs to the area because it’s raining. “There are so many opportunities for other sorts of business and what you can do in terms of communication,” says (executive director of the Internet Society of Australia, Holly) Raiche.

The suggestion here is that ebook reading devices and cellphones, for example, may be able to contact a book outlet when it knows you’ve finished a book, or looked up an author or phrase, in order to sell you a new book.  Doesn’t sound too bad.  But it also suggests that device might be able to contact the outlet (or… bum bum bummm… someone else) if you copy that ebook and give it to someone else, or post it online.  Hey, at least that would solve the DRM problem…

Of course, these same organizations are talking about using those 340 billion billion billion IP addresses and giving them to every item on a store shelf, every electronic device in your home (even light bulbs and cables), every public piece of infrastructure, adding them to every device on your desk (“Attention: You are out of staples.  I have ordered a box for you.”), etc, etc.  If they do that, how long before we need an IPv8 system and another few billion billion billion billion billion billion addresses?

Bottom line, we should expect ground-breaking changes in our electronic devices… at some point.  Maybe soon.  Maybe not.  Bookmark this spot.

So what does a library do?  Remember, the choices they make will ultimtely affect you, the eBook buyer, reader and enthusiast!

Ultimately, I think libraries should focus for now on the free repositories available for use.  Given the advances in Google Books, Hathi Trust, the Open Library and others, this course of action will help them stabilize their budgets, offer more choices to their patrons (YOU!) and not  be locked into a vendor’s approach to the eBook world.

Is that realistic?  In some cases yes, in others no….here’s why.  The massive repositories now online or going online are promising to multiply a library’s local collection by 10, 20, even a 100 times more than what they could get from a vendor–all in a multiplicity of formats.  Almost any subject under the sun is now available for library patrons.

Looking for classic American and English literature?  Check–got that here.  How about common non-fiction subjects such as gardening, pirates, and even science fairs?  Yep-all of those are available!  These sample subjects are just the tip of the iceberg as to what is out available.

However, this free approach can be unrealistic if the patron demand is for the best sellers, the hot new fiction that only the vendor can offer.  Would this demand be better served by a real paper version?  There’s really no right or wrong at this point, as libraries alone know what their patrons really want.

I guess the upshot here is that given the uncertainties of the current eBook situation, I feel it would be better for libraries to minimize their eBook purchasing until some sort of standard can be worked out–but still use the (sometimes, often) free resources to enhance and stabilize their local collections.

This way, eBook enthusiasts like you and me can still find lots of goodies for our ebook readers.  Colllection integration of various free resources seems to be a better approach than a one shot only approach from any particular vendor.  Given the public API’s and integration with library standards such as OCLC and others, this doesn’t seem to be too arduous to implement.

So what do you think?  Realistic or just “pie-in-the sky”?  My thoughts?  I think it’s workable, but secretly, I’m holding out for the Digital Public Library myself!

Moran looks at the old Barnes & Noble e-book reader application, based on Fictionwise’s eReader. All in all, he writes, it was a very good application, and did everything he wanted it to. Then B&N essentially abandoned it in favor of their much-less-functional Nook application, which wastes screen space, lacks the in-app Wikipedia access of the old one, and won’t allow side-loading existing eReader-format books.

He has some harsh words for interface decisions in iBooks, too, such as the way the bookshelf format makes books a bit hard to find.

What’s the solution? Frankly, I want one app that lets me read all my books, no matter what the app. I am sick to death of trying to guess which app is going to be the best one to stick with, and even sicker of trying to remember which app I have a particular book in. I mean, I have 15 readers loaded onto my iPhone right now. 15. That’s ridiculous. I’ve tried to keep the number I actually use down to 3 or 4, but it’s hard. And how do you count them? Does Instapaper count? How about the New York Times iPhone app? The Elements app? Various comic book readers? Zinio? The various “Vooks”? It’s a nightmare.

Of course, he understands the source of the problem: the competing DRM formats that the different e-book stores use to promote customer lock-in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely that this problem will be solved any time soon (until and unless it becomes legal to strip DRM and convert your e-books into a single format you can use with just one reader, at least).

It’s such a ridiculous problem, and while it may not be crippling the sales of any particular e-book store, I can’t help feeling that it’s holding the market back, myself. Imagine how it would have affected the print publishing world if you could only put any given publisher’s books in a specific kind of bookshelf.

Hey, publishers, you don’t want Amazon’s Kindle taking over the world? How about concentrating a little less on cross-vendor price parity and a little more on cross-vendor book compatibility? Amazon would lose a lot less of its competitive advantage if you could buy an e-book once and read it anywhere.

And you know what the easiest way to do that would be? Stop using DRM. The DRM that keeps your books from being “stolen” also lets Amazon remain on top of the market, by making sure that readers can’t take Amazon books elsewhere, and can’t bring books from elsewhere to their Kindle.

Of course, that’s probably never going to happen, in the current climate. And so the Tower of E-Babel continues to climb.

For those adventurous people who have messed about with their Nook Color and now need to return it to normal, Android Central has a forum post that tells you how to do this.  The post tells you how to:

- restore to Stock 1.0.1 via ROM
– restore again to Stock 1.0.1 via B&N Factory reset (which actually works)
– Update to 1.1.0 (which will now work w/sideload file)
– Root 1.1.0 via Auto-Nooter 3.0

Detailed instructions on each step are given.

Yes, I had to be reminded of this one, myself… but it was in 1971 that Michael S. Hart created the first ebook, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer.  And Rita has other great material on the site, such as:

• An article by the selfsame Michael S. Hart;
• Comments by Warren Adler and Nicholas Hirst;
• Promotional ideas for enthusiasts, libraries, webmasters and newspapers;
• Info on the advantages of ebooks, by Sara Rosso, ready for you to memorize and recite back to your friends;
• Specials by authors and booksellers;
• And a list of supporters and promoters that grows longer every year.  (In fact, I wish I could name-drop a few of this year’s big players, but I’d probably get someone in trouble.)

As e-books become more popular Rita anticipates a time when everyone is reading electronically and Read an E-Book Week is no longer needed to promote e-books.  “On a recent vacation I saw as many e-book readers around the pool as paper books,” Rita says.  “What struck me, is that these were not just young people reading with the devices.  A book, no matter what form it is delivered, is enjoyable to young and old alike.

If you are an author, publisher or reader, I encourage you to find someone to steer towards Rita’s site and spread the good word of ebooks!

NOTION INK’S ADAM, WITH PIXEL QI, VS KINDLE AND PANDIGITAL NOVEL IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT

The long awaited Adam Tablet by Notion Ink has a combo display of LCD switchable with an E-Paper display, with backlighting Off.

Good E-Reader Blog has a report and VIDEO and I’ve linked you to the larger YouTube one.

Here’s an image-link to another, separate video, by Charbax, that also shows the e-paper display with backlight off. When the backlight is On, the display is a sort of light blue-gray in the videos. Nevertheless, both videos show reflections from the glass from the lighting above.

The first video gives you an idea of how the Adam looks in direct sunlight and how it compares with the e-ink and LCD displays.

They were disappointed to see that the dual layer of glass that it uses was “highly reflective in the sun, and even the matted screen protector is pretty useless.”

‘ Our first comparison is with the Amazon Kindle and the Notion Ink Adam in Pixel QI mode. We give you a great visual example of how the Adam ranks against one of the premier e-ink based electronic readers. We have to give the advantage in this test to the Amazon Kindle.

The next comparison we show is how the Notion Ink Adam ranks with the Pandigital Novel 9 inch edition. This test is mainly … to show how Pixel QI in the Adam compares to the standard LCD based tablet and e-reader combination found in most competing devices. We have to decide this contest in favor of the Adam, as the LCD was unreadable in direct sunlight. ‘

AMAZON ANNOUNCES KINDLE FOR PALM’s webOS IS COMING
This is in connection with HP’s Palm webOS press conference today.
Of special interest was the last part of the following statement:

‘ “We’re working with Amazon to bring HP customers the free Kindle app and, along with it, the largest selection of the most popular books,” said Jon Oakes, director, TouchPad Product Marketing, HP. “TouchPad’s beautiful, fully featured Kindle app supports the Kindle features users already know and love, and it’s one of the first Kindle applications to support the latest Kindle features like Collections.” ‘

Collections. That last is key and I hope it shows up soon in the Kindle for PC and for Mac etc.

Via Andrys Basten’s A Kindle World blog

There’s an interesting dip between ebook device use: 7% of younger boomers, 3% of older boomers (57-65), and 6% of the Silent Generation (66-74), a higher percentage than the Gen X and Millennials.  A possible reason may come from the option of font size and selection, and the ease of buying online, that might attract the more sedate 66-74 crowd, while the older boomers are still comfortable enough with traditional book habits not to need these benefits (or uncomfortable enough with technology to not want to pursue them).  It’s possible the numbers are lower with the younger ages because many of them are using other devices, such as laptops, iPads, cellphones, etc, to read ebooks, and are therefore passing on dedicated reading devices.

But the Pew research, which took place in late 2010 but before Christmas, might have missed an important segment: The under-18 kids who received ebook reading devices over the holidays.  A New York Times article discusses this segment, pointing out the rise of social groups that read on their devices in groups, sharing content and recommendations between them.  And parents, recognizing the value of a device that gets their kids to read–in some stated cases, in lieu of regular TV watching–are all for it.

There’s no mention in the NYT article whether those parents are looking forward to textbooks on those devices, and the possibility of lightening students’ textbook load.  But it does mention that teachers in schools are allowing students to read from their devices during reading periods and breaks, so the devices are becoming more common in school settings.

It would be interesting to see the numbers in the Pew research include the 10-18 crowd, to see if there might be an interesting twist to the numbers at the lower age register.