Amazon move towards a more social networking idea for the Kindle 3 ereader:

Amazon have just announced that they will be launching some new firmware (sort of operating system update) for the Kindle 3 ereader, which will give it a much broader base for communicating with other people about the ebooks, and paper books we are reading, and will help to bring the two groups together.

This update, which glories in the romantic name of Version 3.1, is ready for manual download at their website (link below) or for those who are not happy at doing it themselves, very shortly it will be done automatically via your WiFi or 3g connection with Amazon.

Basically there are four improvements, well actually not really simply improvements, but three of them are totally new possibilities being introduced with this new software, most of which are aimed at people who want to talk about the books they are reading with others.

Specifically what Amazon are giving us are the following possibilites:-

Public Notes:

This is a rather intriguing idea, which is simply that any highlights and notes that you might make on any ebook you are reading on your Kindle 3 can be made available to others to see and share.   So if several of you are reading the same ebook, or are part of a readers group, then you can share your thoughts about that ebook with each other online, as it were.

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Sony  enter the world of ereader Apps…….   Finally.   But is it any good?

Sony have finally given in and launched an ereader App for use on any device that runs under Android 2.1 (which includes a wide range of smart phones, tablets and I believe, the iPod).

You can download this App from most App stores now, and it claims to synchronize with the PRS-650.  Though quite how that works is a bit of a mystery to me, as the 650 has no form of internet or 3G connectivity to achieve this with.

In the press release that I have received, they claim the following functions;

• Make bookmarks and highlights with the Reader Daily Edition
• Adjust font size – as you read
• Synchronize your reading position
• Purchase books available from the online Reader™ Store
• Comes with 3 classic titles and 3 Bestseller excerpts
• Edit bookmarks and highlights

Of course, like most Apps, it is free, just go to most App stores and look for an App called “Reader”, download and install it and off you go.

Not everything is beautiful in the garden, however………………..

Sony obviously are claiming it to be the best thing since sliced bread, and obviously anything that improves the rather clunky method of getting ebooks from Sony has to be good, but there seem to be rather a lot of unhappy people out there who have downloaded this App, and are experiencing rather a lot of trouble in actually using it… It seems to freeze solid for quite a few people, refuses to download ebooks and various other problems.

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Ereader Apps for owners of iPads and iPhones:

OK, you are the happy owner of one or other of Apple’s wonder devices, but you wish to buy your ebooks from sources other than Apple itself, and be able to read them on your Apple device.   Understandable, as the choice that Apple offer you is of course far from the choice available for other ereading devices.

So, you will have to lurch into the wonderful world of Apps, those small bits of software you can download here and there that increase the capabilities of your prized devices.  Happily they are mostly free, which is a blessing.

This post is aimed at beginners, obviously, any real tech freak will know all about these Apps already, but lots of you will not really understand or know much about these mysterious Apps, so if you aare one of these folk, read on, and I hope end up somewhat better informed than you currently are.

What are Apps exactly?

As I said above, an App , which is short for application, are small programs that are designed to do one thing, and one thing only (generally) and in this context, they are designed to make it possible to read ebooks from other ebook sellers than Apple’s iBook Store.  They are mostly produced by on line ebook stores.  For example, you want to be able to buy an ebook from Barnes and Noble to read on your iPad, so you would go to Barnes and Noble, download their iPad App, install it on your iPad, and voila….. you can from then on buy ebooks from Barnes and Noble, and read them happily on your iPad.  Simple really, and extremely useful too.

I shall talk about a number of such Apps here, and give you the basic info about each of them, and tell you where you can get hold of them as well, so read on…………………………………………….

Please note that all the Apps I shall describe are intended to be used on iPads or iPhones only.

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A short video to explain how you transfer ebooks from your library onto an ereader:

This video is self-explanatory, so I shall leave it to you to watch it and learn….

Given that so many people now use their local library to borrow ebooks, and the fact that most libraries all over the world use Overdrive as the software to organise this, it seemed to me that this video might be of use to you guys.

So, I hope it is a help…………….

Kalahari net introduce cross platform ereader software:

The large South African online book sellers, kalahari – have produced a software packet to enable  one to buy ebooks from them.   Whilst this software, which is free, makes use of Adobe Air, which is sort of like Amazon’s Whisper Air system, which allows you to synchronise your ereading over several devices, I am still a bit at a loss to know why they chose to go this route, rather than simply to sell ebooks on line in the more normal way.

Anyhow, they have done this, and it works with both Macs and Windows based machines – bad luck for you who use Linux, but such is life.

Basically you download and install the software on your computer, organise your Adobe ID (so you can read DRM protected ebooks) on up to three devices and off you go.

This software works with either PDF or ePub, so you are OK for most ebooks, the others you can convert with Caliber of course.

The whole process is as I describe it here:

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DRM is a real puzzle to many of you I gather…….

I get a lot of emails from people asking me to try and explain various aspects of ereaders and ebooks to them, and one query that I get rather often is “what on earth is this DRM I read all about?’.

It is understandable that you may be confused about this one, not all ereader owners are skilled computer users, in fact, I get a strong feeling that the majority of ereader owners have very little understanding of computers, and have no burning urge to know more about them either.  And it is to this group that this attempt to explain the how and what of DRM is aimed in the hope that it helps.

OK, firstly, what is DRM?

DRM, which is  short for Digital Rights Management, is an anti copy protection system placed in the ebooks, that publishers use to try and stop us making copies of the ebooks we “buy” from them.  I put the word “buy” in inverted commas, as in fact we don’t really buy our ebooks, but buy permission for one person to use them.  But this is another topic, to be discussed at another time perhaps.

No DRM on free ebooks:

Further, you will only bump into DRM with ebooks you pay for, all the copyright-free ones you see do not have DRM protection, with the possible exception of some self-published ebooks you might want.

It is in fact a total waste of time for the publishers to bother with this DRM idea, as there are literally dozens of free programs one can download from the net that will remove the DRM protection from any DRM  protected ebook, and thus enable us to do as we wish with our ebooks.   But this does not seem to have dawned on the publishers yet, curiously.

So, this explanation is aimed at those honest folk who don’t wish to go to the lengths involved in stripping the DRM protection from their ebooks, but want to know how it might effect them when they buy ebooks on line.

There are quite a few variants of DRM around, which protect things in different ways, and the publisher or distributor of the ebook is the one to decide which protection they wish to place on their product….

Specifically they are the following:

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