- Audible.com to sell 2 DRM-FREE titles
- It appears Audible.com is going to try releasing Cory Doctorow's next two audiobooks without DRM (a first for Audible.com as far as I know).
- Skulpt
- "Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python."
- Modernizr
- Modernizr is a Javascript library that allows client side detection of CSS3 and HTML5 browser features. It allows you to write CSS with conditionals through one of my personal favorite bits of CSS magic: classes on the body tag. It also gives you the ability to do the same in our Javascript.
- epub-tools
- A collection of open source (BSD) tools for generating and managing ePub documents. Adobe's Java based EPUBGen was just added. Tools now exist for conversion to ePub from Word, RTF, DocBook, TEI, and FictionBook.
- Doozers Get "Fraggle Rock" Spin-Off
- It's animated, and aimed at ages four to seven, but I'll probably check it out with the kids.
- The Zelazny Project
- "We plan to print a complete collection of Roger Zelazny's short fiction and poetry, in (most likely) six hardcover volumes. We expect to include all published fiction and poetry we can find, however obscurely published, and a number of unpublished works retrieved from Zelazny's archived papers. We also expect to include the shorter early versions of several novels, several novel excerpts that were published independently as short works and a few of Zelazny's articles on topics of interest to him."
Links of Interest (March 5th 2009 Through August 13th 2009)
Friday, August 14th, 2009Robotic Nanny (Bedtime Stories Not Included)
Monday, February 16th, 2009
In case you missed it, Amazon announced a new version of their Oprah approved Kindle e-book reader. One of the new features announced was the ability to have the device read aloud using text-to-speech. Pretty neat, huh?
You Don’t Have the Right
The Author’s Guild released a statement claiming that Amazon was not within their rights to do any such thing, and calling for Amazon to add a feature where authors/publishers could disable such a feature. Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer posted his feelings on the subject on his blog. One of the follow-up comments prompted a follow-up post about what people can and can’t legally do with things they “own”. For example;
You can buy a car, but there are countless regulations governing what you may do with it even though it’s your property. You can’t, for instance, drive it without a license, drive it recklessly, permanently export it to another country, drive it without insurance, allow children to drive it, park your car in my driveway, and so on.
The list got me thinking.1
The majority of items on the list can easily be used to do the illegal things mentioned and there is nothing else in place to prevent it. Those illegal acts have consequences to go along with them, and for the most part it seems this is enough.
The exception is pretty much any new technology. When new technology is involved then all consumers are criminals who can’t be trusted and there needs to be functionality crippling technological restrictions added. From where I sit the text-to-speech feature is merely a tool Amazon provides to the end-user. That end-user has to decide to use the tool, and perhaps they’ll use it to do things they don’t have a license to.
If you exclude DRM based restrictions, there’s nothing the Kindle 2 does that I can’t do with an electronic text and a desktop computer.
Death of the Audiobook Industry?
There is obviously fear that this will harm audiobook sales, and the value of audiobook rights. I just don’t see it. I can’t imagine there’s any real worry this would cannibalize the audiobook market.
I’ve played around with text-to-speech, and some of it is surprisingly good, and sure to keep getting better and better. Still I doubt the majority of folks who would happily sit through a text-to-speech reading of a book, would be likely to shell out the money for a commercially produced audiobook.
It’ll be a very long time before a computer simulation can come close to a Scott Brick or a Jonathan Davies. Not as long as it’s a passive act. Until computers can feel emotions, and be moved by what they are reading it won’t come close. And at that point what makes the act so different from an adult reading aloud to a child?
Unsolicited Advice to Amazon
The Author’s Guild responded to criticisms that they weren’t taking visually impaired users into account:
Others suggest that challenging Amazon’s use of this software challenges accessibility to the visually impaired. It doesn’t: Kindle 2 isn’t designed for such use.
I see that comment, and I see a solution. Perhaps rather than cripple the device, Amazon should work towards making the remaining functionality accessible to the visually impaired. The text-to-speech engine is already there.
And just to be clear, I have no real interest in this feature. In
fact, until the Kindle does
ePub I’m not interested in it
at all. I just get antsy when I see content producers so
afraid of content consumers that the innovators in the content
delivery space are pressured to stop innovating, and start restricting
access. If this “burn the witch” mentality against innovation doesn’t
stop then one day the robotic nannies may start the uprising that destroys the
human race all because we wouldn’t let them read aloud.
- Which is the only reason I’m mentioning him specifically. I don’t agree with his take, but I’m not trying to attack Mr. Sawyer in any way. You should buy his audiobooks. [↩]
Links of Interest (July 18th 2008 Through August 21st 2008)
Thursday, August 21st, 2008- Tor’s e-book giveaway: Someone is WRONG on the Internet
- Tor books recently gave away a batch of free e-books as publicity for the new Tor.com. Many of the books were of the “first in series” variety. Some folks expected to be able to buy the sequels at Tor.com when it launched, and weren’t happy to find they could not. A representative from Tor responded, and it seems thing got a bit heated. An interesting look at an unintended side effect of “free” (be sure to read the comments).
- Zombies attack musician, everyone laughs (including musician)
- JoCo attacked by Zombies an the 2008 New Media Expo
- It’s a tasty thing
- J. Dack posits “Scalzi’s Law”. I doubt this will be disproved any time soon.
- Ballantine Books to Publish Book Inspired by the Webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield
- I enjoy the heck out of “Garfield Minus Garfield”, but I assumed it would go the way of “Dylan Hears a Who”. I applaud Jim Davis and Ballantine Books for embracing the comic strip remix rather than issuing the standard cease and desist notice.
- PDTool
- A sliderule to help determine copyright status.
- A Talk with JoCo
- Five part interview with Jonathan Coulton (both mp3s and transcripts are available).
Re: Cover to Cover #319B: Electronic Formats Revisisted
Sunday, July 27th, 2008Dragon Page: Cover to Cover has been discussing ebooks at length lately, especially since Mike Stackpole is selling his stuff in the iTunes App Store. In the latest episode they spend the opening section lampooning the idea of e-book standards. The conversation that ensued contained a good deal of misinformation1 .
So I’m posting this in response here, hoping to keep the conversation going (I could post it as a comment on the site, but it’s a bit long for that, and it’s way to long to leave as a voicemail without sounding like even more of a crank).
Stand Alone Readers in the iTunes Store
The discussion gives an impression about the stand alone readers (specifically Stanza and eReader) having access to a bunch of old public domain content nobody actually wants to read. No mention is made of putting content you purchased outside iTunes or creative commons works into these readers, which seems to be their primary purpose.
Stanza
The Stanza iPod Touch/iPhone app is an offshoot of the Stanza desktop reader (Mac Only). Any file you can read on the desktop reader2) can be transferred to the mobile Stanza app. This covers a lot of commercially available content.
Also the mobile Stanza app is pre-configured to pull ePub files from Feedbooks. Feedbooks has 2500+ titles available for free. While many works are those you avoided reading in high school, it also includes titles from authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Del Rey, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper, Robert Silverberg and E.E. “Doc” Smith. Those too old school for you? How about Steven Brust, Tobias Buckell, Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, and Charles Stross, to name a few.
eReader
Although it’s stated that the eReader can be used to download free content (I admit I don’t even know if can download free content), no mention is made that it is actually designed to download your purchases from eReader. Also, any multi-format purchase from Fictionwise is also supported.
Since I personally avoid books that come locked in one format, the vast majority of my Fictionwise purchases are instantly downloadable to my iPod touch. That’s a big win for me, because it means when I’m home I can read on my dedicated e-book reader, with it’s larger screen, but when I’m stuck in the waiting room I can keep reading the same book off my iPod Touch without buying it twice.
ePub and Tower of eBabel
There is a group of [...] e-book enthusiasts who are deaf on anything that is not the one true ring, the one true way. They want everything to be available in one universal format, which doesn’t happen to exist yet. [...] and they want it to then be cross-platform available because they’re very resentful if seven years ago they bought a book for their palm pilot and now they can’t play it on their iPod.
Yeah, those people. Me.
Mike and Mike then then proceed to talk down to “those people” as if we all just fell off the esparanto truck by giving the same arguments all the digital music players that didn’t play MP3s used to give and why music would always have DRM. Making a buck will always trump the demands of the consumer. Format wars will always go on forever and ever and there will be no standard delivery mechanism3 .
More importantly, the format does exist in the form of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)‘s ePub, and it does have vendor support. Adobe, Amazon4 , eBook Technologies, OSoft, VitalSource and LibreDigital (among others) all support ePub in their current products. Sony just added ePub support to it’s line of readers, and Bookeen is currently working on adding it to their Cybook readers. You can get any of Feedbooks 2500+ titles in .epub. Heck, even the last of the freebie releases from TOR was released in .epub rather than .mobi.
Maybe I’m Crazy
I like e-books. I prefer them to print. I like being able to increase the font to rest my eyes. I like being able to read them on multiple devices. I don’t want this to happen to my books. I feel that e-books have to be more convenient that print to really take off5 . So either I’m a nut-job, or I’m who the people trying to sell these things should be targeting. I’m the one going to go out and extolling the virtues of these things to the people I know who are hanging by the sidelines waiting to see if they want to jump in. Feel free to tell me which one you think I am in the comments6
- I honestly don’t believe this was intentional. [↩]
- Stanza supports HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, RTF, Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and EPUB (at least the DRM free variations of the above [↩]
- Yeah, that’s why we don’t have a way to deliver audio programming in mp3 files over HTTP using RSS to any number of devices. [↩]
- Amazon supports ePub in it’s Mobipocket products, but there’s no mention of the Kindle yet [↩]
- It’s very likely publishers don’t what them to take off. Record companies still want you to buy CDs too. [↩]
- If I don’t get any I’ll know I’m a crazy person talking to myself. [↩]
Links of Interest (February 21st 2008 Through April 1st 2008)
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008- INFECTED Trailer
- Amazing film-style trailer for Scott Sigler’s novel Infected (available now in hardcover).
- OverDrive to offer DRM-free audiobooks via Borders: Time to try unshackled e-books, too?
- This can only be good news. OverDrive has an interesting history with DRM. They have always claimed to be unable to work with iPods due to Apple’s proprietary DRM, while failing to make clear they were using Microsoft’s proprietary DRM.
- garfield minus garfield
- Take Garfield (the comic strip) and remove the title character, and you’re left with something darker and disturbingly funny.
- ‘Lego Universe,’ a brick MMO, is in development
- I haven’t been real interested in Massively Multi-Player Online games in a while, but the idea of a Lego based MMO might change that.
Links of Interest (November 27th 2007 Through January 3rd 2008)
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008- How to rewrite
- A detailed post on rewriting, and how to do it.
- Podiobooks.com Community
- Online community based around Podiobooks.com. A place for listeners, authors, producers, etc. to communicate and help improve Podiobooks.comTags: Podiobooks, social-networks,
- Issue #1 of Sci Phi is available
- The first issue of Sci Phi (The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy) is now available. The download version ($7) contains all stories and articles in various ebook formats as well as MP3.
- GTD: Free Bundle of GTD Articles Written By David Allen
- Lifehacker has a link to a collection of 17 articles available for free download from the David Allen Company.
- Infamous IE hasLayout is toast
- This “feature” of the IE rendering engine has caused me more headaches than I care to remember. I’m not at all sorry to see it go.
- Kindles in libraries – the importance of ebook standards
- DRM, lack of e-book standards, and related issues are even bigger issues for libraries.
- AICN: 12th Episode will air!
- SaveJourneman.net brings word that episode 12 of Journeyman will air. Journeyman is my favorite show of the new season, and I hope it comes back, but at least it will get to finish it’s run.Tags: NBC, Journeyman,
- Doug Morris, Old Person
- Jonathan Coulton posted this summary of the New York Magazine blog’s summary or Wired’s profile of Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. I’m not going to further summarize, just read and be enlightened.
Links of Interest (May 3rd 2007 Through May 7th 2007)
Monday, May 7th, 2007- Lost’s end in sight.
- “Lost” has three more seasons (but with only 16 episodes each), ending in 2010. It’s still one of my top five shows, and I’m glad they are planning a definitive ending (not because I want it to go, but because it can’t go on forever).
- DryerFox – It’s like Firefox, but inside a dryer!
- Just what it sounds like.
- IE 8: Opt-in for standards compliance
- Apparently there will be a way to tell IE8 “my site is standards compliant”. I imagine that means the default assumption is “my site works in IE”.
- MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
- Peter Cashmore’s take on the news that Microsoft is in talks to buy Yahoo! My immediate reaction is to wonder about Pipes and YUI.
- Science Fiction and Politics University Course continues
- “Professor Courtney Brown’s course at Emory University is a Political Science course entitled Science Fiction and Politics (Political Science 190).” The lectures are available free for download and as a podcast.
- Can e-books hurt your eyes?
- As someone whose vision is not at all good, this is near and dear to my eyes. Also this is one of the reasons I avoid DRM crippled e-books and PDF e-books. I want to view e-books on my preferred device, with my own font size choice.
Podiobooks and Free E-Books Harmful?
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007Flametoad seems to thinks so (found via TeleRead). He suggests that authors like Cory Doctorow, JC Hutchins and Scott Sigler are devaluing the audiobook and e-book formats, and buying the p-book is “paying for the paper because the content has no value”
I don’t see it. Perhaps these authors value readers. After all, what value does you work have if no one has read it? Cory Doctorow’s books keep showing up in the bookstore. In fact IDW recently bought the rights to do a series of comics based on his works even though the license for those works allows anyone to create such comics non-commercially. Scott Sigler recently managed to sell quite a few copies of his new print book recently. Heck, I bought two (one as a gift).
I have both an audible.com and a podiobooks.com account. Do I value one over the other? Not really. I don’t think most people equate free with no value. Not anymore, if they ever did.
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