Archived entries for books

Further IA e-book news

I attended a meeting of the newly reformed METRO Smartphone & Mobile Computing SIG this week, and at one point I mentioned that Biodiversity Heritage Library books were available in ePub format through the Internet Archive. Someone answered that ePub couldn’t be read on the Kindle. When I answered that they could if converted using Calibre, they said that conversion was too complicated a process for the average library patron. A point which I’m not sure I’m ready to concede. In any case, it’s a moot point, as IA just began offering Mobipocket format as well, the basis for the Kindle’s native format. I’ll post what I find out when I get the Apples of New York in .mobi from the site.

Update: I’ve downloaded Apples of New York, and it appears to be identical to the ePub version, save the introductory cover images. The OCR is broken in exactly the same places.

SubPrime

Dan Benjamin – Fake Amazon:

As Amazon is my online store of choice, I checked there first, and found one for the same price. As an Amazon prime member, I’m always looking for the ‘Prime’ availability image which lets me know the item I’m about to buy is available for free 2-day or $3.99 overnight shipping. When I don’t see this image, I know that the item might be sold by a third-party using Amazon’s services (although some Fake Amazon items are eligible for Prime, too).

I do the same thing. I signed up for Prime almost as soon as it became available, because we buy enough stuff from Amazon that I immediately knew that it’d save us money in the long run. I’d sort of like my Amazon search to automatically sort by Prime availability first and then whatever it it defaults to now (relevance, I think.) Nothing more disappointing than looking for something and finding that it’s Fake Amazon.

Update: Here’s an example.

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More books

Three Percent: Best Translated Book of 2008: The Fiction Longlist

Just marking it for reference, but a lot of interesting looking books here.

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