Electronic books have become the new technological “Beanie Baby.” Everyone has heard about them, not everyone is excited about them, but a devoted core of users has discovered a new digital promised land of literature. Last March, for example, Steven King published a short novel, Riding the Bullet, as an e-text for $2.50. Two and one-half requests per second were received initially, causing network slow-downs and crashes around the country. Specialized websites now aggressively recruit would-be authors who can have a real opportunity for self-publishing. The revolution seems to have begun.
For some of us, the idea of an electronic book is not very new. Project
Gutenberg began in 1971 with the goal of making information, books and
other textual materials available to the general public in electronic
format. Through Project Gutenberg, (http://promo.net/pg/index.html),
users of earlier palmtop computers, such as Hewlett-Packard’s 100 and
200LX Palmtop PC have been reading electronic texts for years.
Until recently, eBooks, as electronic texts have become known, have not
been very popular with publishers or gotten very much attention from the
general computing public. Because of this, the availability of eReaders,
the applications used to view eBooks, has been scarce. It’s true that
electronic texts like those from Project Gutenberg can be opened and
viewed in almost any note pad or word processing program. But word
processors are designed to edit text, not to page through it quickly and
view documents. eReaders are designed to display eBooks quickly and
efficiently.
Recently, the tide seems to be turning. Publishers and online
booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, have begun offering
eBooks. This has been fueled partly by sales of new book readers such as
Franklin’s Rocket Reader and partly by the increasing number of PDAs in
the workplace.
As rumors about the new Pocket PC began to surface, the development of
ClearType Technology underscored Microsoft’s commitment to eBooks. Many
see Microsoft Reader and “CTT” as having a significant impact on the
future of eBooks. But what about the rest of us still orbiting with
Windows CE 2.0 devices. We’re interested in exploring the world of
electronic publishing. Is the Pocket PC the only route?
eReaders and Windows CE
As an avid reader I always travel with several books, making for
a very heavy briefcase and sore shoulders. The prospect of lightweight
literature was definitely appealing to me. And since the Pocket PC
wasn’t out yet, I did a little investigating. I found several readers
for the Windows CE Handheld and Palm-size PCs, either for free or for a
minimal investment.
MobiPocket Reader (www.mobipocket.com) is a freeware reader that supports a large number of formats including HTML, TXT, PRC, and PDB (3Com format). Available for the Handheld PC, H/PC Pro and Palm-size PC, this application allows the user to line their electronic bookshelf with books from many different sources. Also available is MobiPocket Publisher, which lets you create an HTML DOC eBook from any text file downloaded from the Internet. (Note that MobiPocket was
formerly know as MobiBook.)
Screens 1 & 2: MobiPocket is a freeware reader that
supports a large number of formats including HTML, TXT, PRC, and PDB (3Com
format). It is available for the Handheld PC, H/PC Pro and Palm-size PC.
Starbuck (www.thumbsupsoft.com/maphtm/starbuck.html) is a low-cost shareware program that reads ASCII text, HTML, bReady, Pilot PRC and PDBa formats but is only available for the Palm-size PC.
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