Long term readers of All About Symbian will know that I'm a sucker for eBooks on my mobile phone, and Steve was quick to point out that a number of titles had popped up as standalone eBooks in the Ovi store from OffScreen Technologies (a veritable factory of little utilities in the store) and would I like to take a look at them and see if this is the right way forward? Read on...
Read on in the full article.
I must say, that is a brilliant idea!
Yes, comes with books would be fantastic. +1 from me, thumbs up!
What we need is a Kindle app for S60, just like we have now a Kindle app for the iPhone.
What we don't need is Nokia entering the e-book market with another poorly-implemented service.
rvirga wrote:What we need is a Kindle app for S60, just like we have now a Kindle app for the iPhone.
What we don't need is Nokia entering the e-book market with another poorly-implemented service.
I'm sure that 3 people who use Symbian in USA will be happy about Amazon developping Symbian app for their USA only service.
I have an e-book reader, a bebook, and I think the e-ink screen is fantastic.
I have tried using my ipod touch but I think the display is a little too small for me and a backlit display is not as nice as the e-ink.
Of course you can use backlit displays in the dark.
have a look at the website they are based in Holland and it took 10 days and $500AU.
Unregistered wrote:I'm sure that 3 people who use Symbian in USA
I'd like to see support for ePub, which is the main format for books, outside Kindle (which is essentially mobipocket format), and widely supported by major publishing companies. It can come with DRM, so you'll get recent fiction, but it's also possible to create your own, or convert from other formats too.
Nigel
E-Books? How very quaint! ... Audio-Books are the thing...
Equip yourselves with a Nokia 5800 (for its' superb speaker output), the application LCG Jukebox (for its' multitude of parameter adjustments, including instant restart from where you last left-off listening) and a plethora of varied audio-books, I recommend biographies read by the author, or novels etc. retold in the dulcet tones of famous actors and raconteurs and the end result is enjoyment and relaxation of the first order.
Far from needing to peer at the written word, such a set-up enables you to drink in the timeless prose of famous authors whilst being simultaneously engaged in other activities... Cutting the budgies' toe-nails for example or even falling gently into a deep slumber whilst being read to by a friendly, disembodied voice... The aforementioned application has a cut-off timer, naturally.
E-Books are SO archaic by comparison! 😉
I find audible books ok for some things like when you are watching tennis or if the cricket commentators are a little dull.
Otherwise audible books take far too long, a copy of Atlas Shrugged comes to 96 hours.
I will not spend 40 hours reading it. I did try to buy Atlas as an audible book unfortunately the only one licensed for Australia was the Spanish version. Makes perfect sense given the GINORMOUS pool of spanish speakers in AU. 😊 nevermind I purchased the dead tree version and am happy with it.
A note to anyone else wanting Atlas, try and find a HC if you can the text is tiny in my PB and I have to use my reading glasses if I don't want to squint.
I stumbled on a freeware reader for s60 a while ago called Qreader. It very capable and configurable. Along with access to all the out of copyright books on Gutenberg.com I cannot imagine why anyone would want to fork out for these stand alone books.
Pieterjh wrote:I stumbled on a freeware reader for s60 a while ago called Qreader. It very capable and configurable. Along with access to all the out of copyright books on Gutenberg.com I cannot imagine why anyone would want to fork out for these stand alone books.
Maybe not for these particular books but a lot of different companies are making money by with a nice user interface rather than a plain text file or they are modernising the texts and thus copyrighting their version and selling it.
Pieterjh wrote:I stumbled on a freeware reader for s60 a while ago called Qreader. It very capable and configurable. Along with access to all the out of copyright books on Gutenberg.com I cannot imagine why anyone would want to fork out for these stand alone books.
Manybooks.net offers the Gutenburg books pre-formated for any ebook reader of your choice.
Although not free, Isilo makes an excellent touch screen ebook reader for S60v5 and there is a Python script that converts ereader books you have purchased to html so you can convert them to Isilo format with IsiloX.
zxreader for the 5800 is perfect for me! even though i own an original hardcover version of harry potter 7, i read it on my phone, yes the WHOLE book, and it was a better experience than the time when i read the book! so much more convenient, and with black background white text low brightness, perfect for night time reading!!!!!!! 😃
The problem with all the established E-Book platforms is the same as on all other digital media distribution - the dreaded DRM!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, as the last time I tried to buy an e-book was on my Palm. Back then, the book was tied to my individual device and by my credit card number. So when I moved to a new Palm, it was too difficult to transfer my books across, so I just gave up and lost them.
Ever since then, I've only read free e-books that I could get as PDF. Which I read with the Adobe Reader 2.5 LE upgrade on my S60 phones.
Books & Movies need to follow the example of digital music downloads, and go DRM free with a defacto standard, like PDF.