Taking that eBook plunge

Want to see what all the fuss is about without spending big bucks for a dedicated reader which may be out of date next month? Well eBooks can be sampled on even the most basic mobile/cell phone.

FROM POCKET-LINT.COM -

Probably the easiest way to do your mobile reading is by finding sites that have free books sitting open on their online pages. Better still is when these sites have a dedicated mobile version that'll reprint the page so it's most easily read from a phone browser without you having to scroll across the page all the time.

A good place to start is the Google Books project. Those in the US can get free access to over 1.5 million fully scanned books that are available to read and in the public domain. Outside the States, the number drops to something like half a million volumes depending upon rights agreements. However you look at it, though, that's still quite a few to get through. All you need to do is open your phone's browser and navigate to books.google.com/m

Another option is the site tx2ph.com. It's a little more on the rough and ready side, but it works, and will deliver all sorts of free titles direct to your phone's screen. You need to create an account but that's free as well, so don't worry. The site will try to recognise your mobile make and model and match page width accordingly but, if it doesn't have yours on file, then you can fine tune and manually give it the right pixel ratio. Also, if you're looking for a particular title that the site doesn't have, send them the link, if you can find it on Project Gutenberg, and they might just add it to the tx2ph.com pages for you.

Authorama is another good place to find books in HTML. Sadly, as with a lot of HTML books, there's no actual mobile version of this site as yet. However, unlike other good free book sites such as Bibliomania and Bookrix, the design is such that it's quite user-friendly and simple enough to view on a decent sized smartphone, so well worth a visit. The same is true for the website of contemporary American author, Johnathan Lethem, where you can find a good collection of short reads that are just about easy enough to make out on a big mobile browser.

Ebook downloads

Until all the good open ebook sites of the world get themselves mobile versions, the majority of the e-literature out there is going to have to be downloaded as actual files to put on your handset. These will come in formats like EPUB, Mobipocket, PDF, eReader and HTML and plain text files you can download too.

Some of this stuff you can download directly over the air to your handset and some of it you'll need to sideload onto your computer first and then put it onto your phone, and in most cases, you'll need to have an application of sorts on your mobile to be able to read them. Naturally, this is going to be easier if you have an app-type phone (Android, iPhone, WinMob etc) but there are some good sites and software out there that will work for everyone.

JAR file sites for feature phones (Nokias, Samsungs, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc)

Both The Mobile Library and the Project Gutenberg offer the proprietary files called QiOO Mobile among others. Any Java-based device can read these downloads which pretty much covers all standard handsets out there to quite basic feature phone levels. Choose JAR files or JAD files to get them direct to your phone.