Just some things that came to my attention this morning:
1. Silk Pagoda is running a sale for the Sony Reader. 10,000 books in lrf format for $9.95. This is a pretty good deal. Here is the blurb from the site:
"1 DVD containing 10,000 books in .lrf format, searchable, sorted by category, and specially configured to fit perfectly on your Sony PRS-500 (Sony Reader), device. This is the legendary Blackmask DVD, albeit without the zipped HTML backup (the .lrf files take up all the space), and of course without those other titles."
2. Over at Fictionwise I just noticed the stats counter at the bottom of their page. They have served up 485.5 billion words and have 43,195 titles available. Wow!
3. Project Gutenberg has regional sites—for example, in Canada and Australia. Here are some details.
Canada: "Welcome to Project Gutenberg Canada! The ebooks on this website are in the Canadian public domain, and are offered to you at no charge. If you live outside Canada, download an e-book only if you are certain that the book is in your country’s public domain. Copyright in Canada generally lasts until 50 years after the end of the year of the author’s death. Bienvenue à Projet Gutenberg Canada! Les éditions numériques du présent site vous sont offertes sans frais: elles font partie du domaine public canadien. Si vous ne vivez pas au Canada, vous devez vous assurer qu’un livre appartient au domaine public de votre pays avant de le télécharger. Au Canada, de façon générale, les droits d’auteur prennent fin 50 ans après le premier jour de l’année qui suit la mort de l’auteur." They start with Grant Allen (1848 – 1899), Canadian scientist, novellist and historian, and end with Eugene Alexandrovich Znosko-Brovosky (1184 – 1954), Russian chess master.
Australia: "FREE EBOOKS most are exclusive to this site. More than 1,500 to choose from! …These free ebooks or etexts may be read on a computer using a simple text editor or viewer. The books are in the ‘public domain’ in Australia and all have been prepared by volunteers." Categories include Library of Australiana, Australia’s Greatest Books, Dictionary of Australian Biography, Australian Explorers, Australian Explorer’s Journals, Australian History and The First Fleet. Please note that some Gutenberg books from the Australian project may not be legally downloaded from the U.S. and some other countries.
Has anyone bought this DVD? I’d specifically like to know if the text is unformatted or if italics and bold are used as in printed versions of these works. (Drove me mad, reading a PDB Palm ebook version of a Holmes story where “*the* woman” had “the” with no italics, as Conan Doyle intended.