Internet Archive challenges Amazon

SAN FRANCISCO--An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.

On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize countless numbers of public domain texts, showed the first public look at its BookServer project, an initiative its dubs, "The future of books."

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are available from a wide group of sources. Effectively, commercial publishers, lending libraries and even individual authors would have a way to index their work and offer easy digital distribution under BookServer, Kahle said FULL STORY

I've been digitised

I've taken the leap and gone and got myself one of those new fangled e-book readers. I was going to go for the new UK version of The Kindle but it's up in the air as of when it will actually go on sale. And so I've opted for the Elonex which is exclusive to Borders.

It's also the cheapest on the market and comes preloaded with 100 books - all for £189.99. Can't be bad. Though if you get the accessory pack with is basically a nice looking, though expensive, leather case for your reader and a 4GB SD card which allows you to store upto a 1000 e-books it pushes the price up another £29.99. In comparison to other machines on the market the reader is excellent value but the accessories are a bit much if you ask me.



First impressions - the initial set up is easy. Simply download the free Adobe Digital Editions and via USB authorise your reader to your computer. Then it's just a matter of dragging items from you computer into digital editions and from there into the reader library. To delete you simply select the file and click delete.

Reading on the thing is amazing - the electronic ink system used gives the same feeling to the eye as reading conventional text. The machine boasts no screen flicker and no glare when used in full sunlight. Living in Wales, I couldn't find any sunlight to test this but ( it works fine in the rain, though) there is no screen glare when held under a strong light.

All of the free books pre-loaded into the memory are classic already in the public domain - Sherlock Holmes is on there, Mark Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare, H G Wells and so on. You've got Dracula, Tarzan, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But the first thing I did is downloaded the free Edge continuation e-books and slapped those on it. I've never read these as I can't handle long works on the PC screen so I've now got six new Edge books. Things are looking up already.

I'll review the machine fully when I've had a couple of weeks using it but upon first impressions I'm delighted

KIndle set back and those stats

The UK version of the Kindle which was expected to launch in October has now been put back until after Christmas due to the complexity of signing up the many partners needed for Europe wide WI-FI access.


“The Kindle is based on wireless technology. If you need agreement with carriers in the US, there is one carrier. In Europe it is a minefield as there are so many operators. If you buy a Kindle in the UK and want to read it on the beach on holiday in Spain, unless we have signed deals in Spain it is not going to work on that beach,” Brian Mcbride, UK Amazon managing director said.
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The Archive will be a little quiet today given the fact that I'll be on set all day filming for the third series of the BBC's Larkrise to Candleford. However we will be our usual industrious self again tomorrow. In the meantime here are the latest Stats.


Weekly Stats Report: 3 Aug - 9 Aug 2009
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
URL: http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total	Avg
Pageloads	183	192	319	211	241	296	217	1,659	237
Unique Visitors	149	128	191	138	177	197	144	1,124	161
First Time Visitors	117	106	151	105	144	157	118	898	128
Returning Visitors	32	22	40	33	33	40	26	226	32