Tag Archives: ebooks

Ebooks Made of YouTube Comments Invade Amazon Kindle Store

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A pair of artist-coders have unleashed a small army of bots designed to flood the Kindle e-book store with texts comprised entirely of YouTube comments. According to the artists, even they have no idea how many books their autonomous bots are posting to the store.

via Ebooks Made of YouTube Comments Invade Amazon Kindle Store – Technology Review.

“The KINDLE’VOKE machinary is based on three major parts. (1) The “Sucker” a clever suction apparatus to gather comments from Youtube. (2) the “Ghost Writer’s Table”: the book compiler that handles generation of books content, book covers, authors at the same time. (3) The “Amazon Kindle Scatter Bots” that make the brand new digital literature available for all of us.

Ocracoke Island Journal: Nookd

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I was shocked. Almost immediately I found it hilarious…then outrageous…then both. It is definitely clever. But it raises many questions. E-books can be manipulated at will by the purveyors of the downloadable software. Here is a classic work of fiction some claim it is the greatest novel every written used for a sophomoric and/or commercial prank. What else might be changed in an e-book? Fears of manipulation for economic, political, religious, or other ideological ends come to mind. It makes one wary of the integrity of any digital version of not only War and Peace…but any e-book.

via Ocracoke Island Journal: Nookd.

The .epub format is just zipped html files.  Ebooks can be manipulated with any text editor or simple script.

Python e-book error

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Python will turn your everyday binary strings into Unicode strings when necessary. But things get trickier if you put non-ASCII characters in Byte strings.

via. http://lobstertech.com/python_unicode.html

The ebook reader in linux was written in python and chokes on a lot of abnormal characters and I think the above is the reason why.  This could be a problem with the nook and other ebook readers but I’m not sure and it’s really not a priority to find out.   I know the nook will not accept an epub with a malformed stylesheet.css even though the python linux e-reader will.

It will be interesting to find out how some of the bigger tablets handle this.

.epub eBooks Tutorial – Part 1: Format Your Source Content

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Speaking of CSS, that’s where you want to do all your styling. It’s the preferred way to stylize things in both XHTML and the ePub standard. (There are a very few reader programs out there that won’t recognize CSS. Mot of them do by now though, and if you keep the HTML to the basics, the book will still be readable if the reader program doesn’t recognize CSS.

via .epub eBooks Tutorial – Part 1: Format Your Source Content.

Amazon experimenting with front-lit display for next Kindle

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With the display and battery life being such strong selling points, you may be surprised to hear Amazon is experimenting with adding a light source. In fact, Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch has actually seen a prototype new Kindle in action using a front-lit lighting method.

The result? Apparently the E Ink display is lit very evenly and softly. So this isn’t the same type of light you get from a typical tablet LCD unit. He describes it as a “blue-white glow” which may seem a bit peculiar, but could work when just viewing text and on a display lit from the front.

via Amazon experimenting with front-lit display for next Kindle – New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices | Geek.com.

LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays

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The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024×768 and is six inches across the diagonal, which is comparable to the Kindle and Nook. Because it’s made of plastic and not glass, though, the LG display is half the weight (14g) and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing e-book readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG is promising that its display is a lot more rugged. The press release says that the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it’s flexible up to 40 degrees from the mid point.

via LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays | ExtremeTech.

According to LG, the first plastic display-toting e-readers are expected to emerge in Europe “at the beginning of next month,” with the US presumably following swiftly after.

If Barnes & Noble Wants To Take Its Nook Tablet Abroad, It Has A Lot Of Work To Do

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She noted that at the moment “over 70 percent” of buyers of the Nook are women aged between 25 and 45. They live within 15 minutes of a B&N store and often have kids. “When you go in, you can see kids running around loose in the store,” she said. “We even have nook tables in the stores for the kids to try out apps.

via If Barnes & Noble Wants To Take Its Nook Tablet Abroad, It Has A Lot Of Work To Do | TechCrunch.