E booked for Ireland and beyond

Although I’ve continued to manage  the TeleRead backend over the years, I’ve taken a little (involuntary) hiatus from posting on TeleRead for practically the whole summer due to an avalanche of work at my job. So I’m back….to announce that as of September 4…. I’ll be taking a three week vacation from TeleRead!

I’ll be mainly to Germany, Ireland, Kosovo and Albania. I have dual Irish citizenship even though I’ve never actually been there. I’ll be visiting friends in Germany and Kosovo, and I’ll be spending a week in Albania (where I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer).

Although this trip is for pleasure, e-books will be an important part of my trip.  Lots of time will be spent waiting around airports and bus stations. I want to make sure that I have e-books ready to fill the gaps.  This trip will give me a good sense of  how comfortable I am using e-books. Along the way I’ll be interested in hearing from TeleBloggers in the countries I visit—I’m at idiotprogrammer at fastmailbox.net. Within the limits of my time, maybe we can get together. Meanwhile here are my notes.

Which device(s) to bring? To bring or not to bring, that is the question (every geek will say). I am consciously trying to downsize my gadget pack, although to nongeeks, it must seem excessive. Sony Reader 505 or Cybook? I love both devices to death, but ultimately, the fact that Sony Reader 505 offers a 2 year service plan with Accidental Damage from Handling for $54.99 proved to be the deciding factor. If you remember, a few months ago David and I conducted a straw poll of e-book owners and found that for all e-ink devices, having the display break (a very expensive repair) occurred for about 10-15% of the owners. That is a startlingly high rate, and you definitely need to consider that when making a purchasing decision.  The next question was: should I bring my Nokia 770 or my Dell Axim x51v or OLPC? I don’t use my Nokia 770 often anymore for various reasons, but its wifi receptivity is outstanding, and having fbreader is great too.  Dell x51v ultimately won the contest. I use the outstanding Ilium Newsbreak RSS reader for Windows mobile (and also eWallet password storage software). Also, I was able to find a cheap 220v recharger. The Dell Axim’s wifi is less reliable, but still functional. I have a Thinkpad bluetooth keyboard, but its reliability has always underwhelmed me. Gosh, it would be so nice to have the ability to type a brief essay on my Pocket Microsoft Word. I will try again and see if a new supply of batteries will make a difference.

The big purchase was a compact camera with video capabilities. My other camera bled batteries (which is why I’ve taken hardly any photos in the last two years). So I upgraded to a Panasonic TZ5. It’s a $275 camera with the ability to record video in HD (that’s right, HD!) plus several advanced functions. Despite the appearance of $100 flip cameras everywhere, many medium and low-end cameras possess decent video capabilities. On a 16 GB SDHC with this camera, you can take up to 1 hour of HD video (maximum 8 minutes at a time). If you shoot in plain-old SD 30fpsVGA, you can shoot 3 hours (maximum 22 minutes at a time). Transcend 16 gig SDHC sell for 45$ these days. Sound on point-and-shoots is barely adequate, but video quality is not bad. The fun Gorillapod tripods are light enough to fit in my bag and will allow me to take photos and videos of yours truly.

The Art of Losing  Things. It is really easy to misplace equipment through sheer stupidity during these trips. Every time I travel to SXSW conference in Austin, I always lose something (I euphemistically call it “leaving a part of me behind”). I have a light green Velcro bag to loosely hold my batteries,  chords, instruction manuals, adapters. Wow, now that I wrote this, I frantically searched around my apartment for it.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave it in the back seat of my 1998 Toyota Corolla which was stolen Wednesday. Whew, I found it.

Travel E-Books…will they ever exist? Finally, I thought. Now that e-book standards are congealing around ePub and the market has had time to mature, surely it would be easy to purchase a decent Ireland travel book.  Listen publishing world, I want to buy a travel e-book! So I searched around the Sony Store, Mobipocket and Fictionwise for Ireland travel books and found practically nothing of value, except outdated editions and crappy pocket guides. I don’t think this ebook on doing Ireland (click the link!) or this e-book titled Map of Ireland is likely to help me. I ended up visiting my local Barnes and Nobles and flipping through 10 different travel books on Ireland. Gripe about print publishing all you want, but  travel books are some of the best-designed books in the business.  There simply is no comparison between a print travel book and an e-book version. Better maps, better indices, color,  more info, The Eyewitness Guide series are always a delight to read (though they don’t help a lot). Several travel books offer suggested tours. (FYI, I ended up buying the visually interesting National Geographic Ireland travel book).  I think the problem is that precise layout of images on e-book formats  still isn’t easy, and the typical travel book is still  more durable than an e-ink device (for the moment anyway).

Loading up with Calibre. Although the most recent release of Calibre feed parser still has  bugs, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it includes lots of presets (See image).

Not a great selection, but something for everyone. Amazingly, Kovid Goyal has written RSS recipes to create decent Table of contents for these feeds. The only complaint is that it doesn’t seem to handle simple RSS feeds well (fortunately, my Newsbreak RSS reader on my PDA makes that a nonissue). Also, the recipes don’t seem to be reliable (Because Calibre is trying to create customized table of contents for each publication, a lot of things cause errors.  As cool as this feature is, I would prefer something more reliable that just converts simple RSS feeds.

Using the presets, I was able to create editions of Newsweek, Economist, Outlook India, NYROB and New Yorker. Oh, heck, the New Yorker recipe doesn’t seem to work anymore. Oh, well.

To mp3 or not to mp3? I have a good mp3 collection, but frankly having a player to listen to would not enhance my listening experience too much (although it would block out TV commercials; maybe I need earplugs instead?) I will have limited access to laptops or PCs over time, so charging things would be a bother. If I really needed to, I could put mp3s on my ebook reader or PDA. But reallly, do I need to?

Photo Display? One part of visiting old friends is showing photos to them. I probably could load them onto my pda, but the Sony Reader 505 has a quick responsive screen for images. I would be comfortable using either device.

To blog or not to blog? Taking a long trip offers ample time for reflection. In other words, it’s a great time to blog. But the idea of carrying something around in my backpack all the time just for the occasional blogpost seems wasteful (other things, like mountain boots, might be a better use of space). I read about people who go on vacation, and literally minutes after they arrive, are showing off new photos on their flickr stream or youtube account. Not me, I’m going swimming!

Fun Fact. Curiously, when I google Robert Europe trip, my travel itinerary shows up as #1 or #2. Surely, I am not the only person named Robert who has ever traveled to Europe?

Update 2:30 PM Wow, Call me disappointed. I bought my Sony Reader PRS 505 from Walmart on July 29 and received it on August 5. I had called Sony Style twice about getting this Accident policy (which cost $5 more), and they assured me I would be able to buy it even though I bought it from Walmart. Now I’ve had a busy month –at work and my personal life, and I just got around to trying to purchase the extended coverage. Apparently they refused me, saying that it was past 30 days from the day of the purchase (which they would consider July 29). I understand that they can’t offer this policy forever and that i did take a while to make a purchase. But 1)the website doesn’t contain ANY information about how the coverage works or how to register it (do you do it completely online; do you need to receive a piece of paper; do you do it over the phone? How many days do you have to sign up?). 2)Both times I called the operator they never mentioned anything about a deadline to purchase this extended warranty. Gosh, if someone is asking you a question about whether to buy an extended warranty, don’t you think that information might be…kind of helpful? Our recent survey on PRS 505 owners show that  almost 20% of owners  of Sony PRS-505 have had this kind of damage. (Note that this occurrence is not limited only to Sony e-ink devices, but also Cybook and Kindle, but the Sony PRS-505 has recorded the highest rate of damage.  So now my ebook plans are totally thrown to the wind. Should I still bring my Sony PRS505 on my grueling European trip (accidents be damned!). Should I bring my Cybook? Should I return my Sony Reader PRS505 to Walmart (and pay a 15% restocking fee) Stay tuned!