e-books in the news (part 2)

Apple vs. Amazon: The Great Ebook War Has Already Begun
(Jan. 30, 2010 Mashable.com)

Combine this with incompatibility. It's no big deal to buy some physical books from one bookstore and others from another. But to have to buy two or more multi-hundred-dollar machines just to be able to choose books from all the major publishers is unacceptable.

Update:
Amazon shares slip; Macmillan titles still missing
(Feb. 1, 2010 KTUL)

e-books in the news

Here's another reason to be less than enthusiatic about e-books.

Apple's own approach to iPad e-books could confuse

(Feb. 1, 2010 The Independent)

Maybe the multiple inconveniences that these companies are imposing on readers will cause the whole e-book concept to fail before it gets a good chance to begin. Or maybe the industry will succeed in changing the way people think of a "book" from something that one reads anywhere over and over throughout one's lifetime, to something that's tied to one special device and becomes unavailable after it's read once or a few times.

e-books (part 2)

There does seem to be one use where an e-book (on a small device with a backlit screen) is handier than a paper book -- reading in bed. It's small, it glows, and it keeps your place if you fall asleep holding it.

And because it can lie flat and you can scroll through the pages with one finger, it's good for reading at the table, too. (Just avoid greasy finger foods if you don't want to smear the screen.)

e-books

I've been trying to give e-books a try, really I have. I can't justify paying the price of a dozen or so hardbacks for a machine to do what can be done for free with a lamp or a sunny window, but the library has e-books that can be read on a home computer and now there's a free Kindle reader for the iPhone.

Actually, I've been reading e-books since the early days of CD-ROMs. One of the earliest apps for the new (and at that time still very slow) format was a CD full of plain-text public domain works. And as any follower of this blog knows, I'm a big fan of Project Gutenberg. The difference with the new systems is that they include new books. And they scroll from side to side instead of up and down.

Supposedly, e-books are cheap, around ten bucks a pop. But that's not truly cheap to someone who remembers 65-cent paperbacks. For that matter, I strongly resist paying anything to read any book just once. I pay money for books I want to keep -- for the rest of my life, and be able to pass down to any great-grandkids I might have in the future. So for e-books I need to find modern books I'll want to read over and over, but only in the next few years. Or things I'd like to have a second, portable copy of. The problem is, every time I think of such a title, it turns out not to have an e-book version. Or it's one of the over-ten-dollars books.

The public library subscribes to netLibrary, which allows patrons to check out books to read on their home computers for a limited time. Sounds like a good deal, except that they have next to nothing I want to read even once -- except for public domain titles I can read at Gutenberg without the hassle of signing in, and download to keep for more than two weeks. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but browsing for books less than a year old brought up nothing at all, and I couldn't find any fiction, either.

So for now I'll go back to reading Poe's "The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal" for free online.

brevity is the soul of ...

... broadband being down.
(sent from a cell phone, which is awkward to type on)

more cautions about cloud computing

All Tech Considered: The imeem Lesson: Your 'Cloud' Data Can Disappear From View

see also paragraphs 5 and 6 of
All Tech Considered: A Step Closer to Getting Your Music Anywhere

honestly free

Honestly free is completely free, available to those literally without a penny. "Free" (small print: with shipping and handling and/or sales tax) is a LIE; it is not free.

Honestly free doesn't require setting up an account (even a free one), logging in, or using a password.

Honestly free does not ask you to do anything special. There are no ads, no surveys, no competition, no need for luck, no roundabout routes to get to what you want. It is not "free if you buy ...." It is not "you can win ...." It does not have to be earned or won in any way.

Honestly free has no subscription fees, entrance fees, or parking fees.

Honestly free is not a trick to get people to want more. It is not a preview and certainly not a teaser. It provides enough to be truly useful or entertaining. It is not artificially cut short; it is not snatched away after a certain date or a certain number of uses.

Honestly free leaves you alone afterwards. It does not ask for your gratitude, opinion, or recommendation. It does not follow you with ads or requests of any kind.

Honestly free is completely anonymous. It doesn't ask for an i.d., or proof of age or residence. It doesn't ask for your zip code.

Ideally, in an honestly free situation, the most despised, totally penniless, physically repulsive, foreign person with political, religious, and sexual views which are anathema to the community will be treated the same as the most beloved home-town-golden-boy movie star.

Let me head off an obvious argument here: I'm talking about free to the individual using the object or service. Yes, these things are usually paid for by taxes or philanthropy. This type of pre-payment is inherently different from individual pre-payment for specific goods or services. You must pay taxes for the town library and park whether you use them or not. And people who have paid no taxes -- the homeless, visitors from other cities, even scofflaws who don't pay their taxes (till they get caught and put in jail) can use them, too.

The typical public library provides some honestly free services. Many (most?) have a free parking lot and are within walking distance of many of their patrons. A homeless person with completely empty pockets can come in, take a book or magazine or newspaper from the shelf, and sit there and read it, undisturbed.