Posted 03/20/10
So I got my Sony Reader. I love it. And I was frankly staggered at what I found when I went looking for books to load onto it.
I’m not going to review it here in detail, but suffice it to say, it’s a terrific e-book reader.
I chose it carefully. My wife’s Kindle is da bomb, but my needs differ. The Sony Reader has native support for two things the Kindle doesn’t: PDFs and epub files, the two major standards in the e-book world. (The Kindle’s native format is proprietary, but it also supports some not-quite-as-popular formats.)
The one thing I hate about the Kindle is that you can’t share your books. There’s not even a copy-protected method to prevent limit piracy. You buy a Kindle book, it’s yours and no one else’s.
So I like the Sony because it’s non-proprietary format means I can share my e-books with others, at least in theory. (Assuming I know others who have e-book readers!)
All right, I have the Reader. Time to go looking for content.
Free, as in beer
Sony has a store, just like Amazon. Lots of books you can buy.
But, schmuy. That comes later. What’s free?
Or, to be search-engine friendly:
Where can I get a lot of free e-books for my Sony Reader?
Answer: Lots of places.
Some are obvious, like Google Books, which has lots of free content. Downsides: Much of it is old (New Yorker, July 12, 1976), much of it is only excerpts, and very little is downloadable; you have to read it on screen.
There is a section of downloadable books, however. Most are classics: Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and so on. So it’s a start.
Sony makes a point of telling you that you can also download e-books from your local library — there’s even a link to a library finder on the Sony Reader site.
So there I went.
Lending library: a great idea, not fully realized
My ZIP code turned up a long list of libraries in Virginia and D.C., and I began to browse. Lots of stuff! Free! Recent!
But not at my local library. Here in Henrico county, which has a deal of some sort with NetLibrary, the selection is somewhat limited. I think.
(more…)
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Posted 03/20/10
I finally got my own e-book — no longer will I steal my wife’s Kindle. And thus I entered the still-amazing-me world of electronic books.
Quickie background
Back around 1996, when I would give talks and be on technology panels, one of the discussions was on the future of books. I predicted that “one day, we’ll all own just one book.” We would then take that book to the library or the bookstore and get it loaded with whatever we wanted to read.
I talked about the then-emerging electronic ink technology, and how that would make reading on a screen actually enjoyable
Well, it took long enough, but it’s here. A bunch of companies launched e-books, notably Sony (notably because it’s one of the few brands everyone recognizes).
Then, of course, came the Kindle. The game changer.
Kindle, for starters
My wife wanted one. Dutiful husband that I am, I complied. And it’s wonderful. Buy from Amazon and it’s loaded in seconds. Hook to your computer and you can load content from your hard drive.
She bought some books, I bought some books, and we found lots of free content on Amazon. (Just browse Kindle bestsellers — many of the top 100 are free, usually because the authors have a new book out. That’s how I was introduced to Lee Child’s “Reacher” books. Anyway.)
The Kindle has its quirks, but it’s a beautiful machine. Overpriced, to be sure — Amazon makes it so easy to buy books with it that they ought to give the things away.
So I would steal the Kindle, “buy” free books from Amazon, and experiment with converting other content for it — notably PDFs, because there’s so much stuff out there in that format.
This annoyed The Wife.
My turn
Then I needed some minor surgery. I’d be laid up for a few days. I played the sympathy card and won: She got me the reader I wanted.
I wanted the Sony Reader Daily Edition. It just came out. It’s a bit larger than the Kindle (and Kindle 2), but I wanted it for some specific reasons: It supports PDF files (which Kindle doesn’t), and it supports standard e-book formats (which Kindle sort of does).
It’s also got a touch screen, which is nice — turn pages by flicking the corner like you would a real book, look up a word in the built-in dictionary by double-tapping it, etc.
It arrived the day I got home from surgery. Still groggy, I forced myself to unbox and charge it. And then it was time to see what there was to read out there.
Answer: Holy moly! Not quite what I expected!
But that’s the subject of the next piece.
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Posted 03/17/10
I’m almost tempted to buy sphincterectomy.com (yes, it’s available), simply to put up a logo.
[ducking]
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Posted 03/16/10
I read the following in a morning news brief, and I thought, “Doesn’t the writer see the glaring error in his logic?” (Edit: Original source here.)
Facebook was the most visited Web site in the U.S. during the week ending March 13, surpassing Google for an entire week for the first time, online metrics firm Hitwise said.
Facebook had previously been able to attract more visitors than Google on Christmas and New Year’s Day, as well as the weekend of March 6, said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise, in a blog post.
What’s wrong with this? Simple: It assumes that you have to go to Google to use Google. And that’s simply 
not true. All the major Web browsers — Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera — have an integrated search bar.
To use Facebook, on the other hand, you have to go to Facebook.com. So 100% of Facebook users are on its site, while significantly fewer Google users ever need to go to Google.com.
But it makes good press, doesn’t it?
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Posted 03/2/10
If you thought it was impossible to take the perfect food and make it better, you were wrong.
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