The new Kindle 4—the one without touchscreen capability—doesn’t run the Kindle 3 screensaver hack, so even if you pay Amazon the extra $30 to disable the ads you’re stuck with some generic default images.
If this is driving you crazy, take heart. A Kindle 4 owner named kubbur has graciously begun documenting how he’s managed to hack his device to display new screensaver images. If you’re somewhat technically savvy, you might be able to follow his lead. Continue reading
Wicked with Bonus Material: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years)
Gregory Maguire’s detailed history of the Wicked Witch of the West re-imagines the classic villain as an intelligent, headstrong opponent of Oz’s establishment class. From her humble childhood, to her political awakening at college, to her growing isolation and defamation by her opponents as she rises in power, it’s an intriguing story of a woman’s coming-of-age in a complicated and unjust world. If you only know “Wicked” from the musical, you might be surprised by the sometimes adult themes in the original work.
You may want to grab this quickly, because it appears to be a promotional edition to help sell the latest title in Maguire’s Oz series. I saw it last October and kept forgetting to post it, so I don’t know how much longer it will be around. It’s also available for the same price from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo Books.
You might not think that the sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, whose brain twisting stories seem to end up as Hollywood movies every couple of years, would have anything in the public domain (he died in 1982), but Project Gutenberg has eleven short stories that are legally free to all, at least in the U.S. Head over to Open Culture’s Philip K. Dick collection to download them in multiple formats.
If you like Dick but you’re more into nonfiction, here’s a 2003 Wired article on Dick’s lasting influence on Hollywood.
(Illustration: The._.Joker)
Last week, Amazon tried to train consumers to openly treat local retail stores as showrooms for Amazon merchandise. It was a ballsy but ethically shaky move; I believe customers who participated helped Amazon steal resources and sales from competitors for very little compensation. It was, at the very least, retail dirty pool.
But then—even though Amazon’s promotion was aimed more at big box retailers—the crazy publishing industry types had to get involved.
If you want to see the collective mind of U.S. bookselling culture at its lockstep worse, first read Farhad Manjoo’s provocative article at Slate where he praises Amazon’s Kindle initiative and disparages local indie bookstores. Then take a deep breath and read the comments. No, wait, the comments are filled with stuff that’s too easy to dismiss as weird nonsensical ranting, like the commenter who claims authors don’t get royalties from Amazon sales. Go instead to the The New York Observer and follow some of the links in that summary. Continue reading
Two days ago I noticed something new in the daily email I get from eReaderIQ. Actually, I noticed a couple of new things. The first was that suddenly the books were being organized according to genre, which makes it a lot easier to skim. The second was this notice at the bottom:
I clicked through to the settings screen and was presented with this new (well, new to me) set of options.
I think it’s terrific. I’ve been a big proponent of eReaderIQ for a while now, because it’s an effortless way for the average consumer to find Kindle deals. (For a similar service for iOS, try AppShopper.) Unfortunately, eReaderIQ’s daily email has been losing its utility lately as more and more ebooks flood the Amazon store—the amount of chaff makes it harder than ever to find the occasional grain of wheat.
This morning, I opened my eReaderIQ email and smiled. It’s a lot cleaner and better organized, and a lot easier to see whether there’s anything worth grabbing.
(Photo: peterjroberts)
Lately I’ve been digging around online to find old genre short stories written in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In many cases it’s clear that the works have passed into the public domain, at least here in the U.S., but in other cases there’s a questionable copyright claim, as when a modern publisher slaps a new copyright on what appears to be public domain, and you can’t find any evidence of said registration with the Copyright Office.
Whether such cases are due to idiocy or deliberate copyfraud, they hurt the consumer. It’s prohibitively expensive for the average private citizen to have to engage the Library of Congress as well as hire a copyright attorney (which, no kidding, is what the Copyright Office recommends) just to confirm that he has the right to do what he wants with something published in 1925. Even then, if the work was first published outside the U.S. then it may be nearly impossible to determine its true copyright status.
Which leads me to the problem of locked PDF versions of century-old works. I’m now in the possession of half a dozen PDFs of old short stories that various websites offer for free, and yet those files have been password protected to prevent me from printing, copying, or otherwise gaining direct access to the text. In the most extreme cases, the person who created the PDF file has, for reasons known only to him and the functionally retarded demon who guides him, added his own copyright claim to it. Seriously, people should just be hit with sticks sometimes. Continue reading
If you’ve ever spent any time in the game Skyrim—or its predecessors Oblivion or Morrowind—you’ve probably noticed how insanely detailed the legends, histories, and religious traditions can be, and not just for a game but for any sort of fantasy entertainment. What makes this detailed world-building even more striking, from a game level, is that most of it is provided as text buried in books: books in houses, books in caverns, books in bookstores, books carried in your personal inventory.
Capaneus at Capane.us figured out where to find the text files for Skyrim’s books from his own copy of the game, and then he formatted them into a single ebook file for reading on the go.
So, I took a look at how Skyrim actually stores these nuggets of incidental storytelling. By the 9, it was in plain text! I pasted the book text into separate docs, slapped on headings, created a table of contents and a cover, and just like that, I can read my copy of The Lusty Argonian Maid on-the-go!
According to his later comments, “Just like that” actually means about eight hours of work:
All the books are in plain text in a monolithic string file under //apps/skyrim/Data/Strings…in the DL string file. [Use an app like Notepad++ to open the file.] Start by copying and pasting the text of each book into a seperate .html file. Keep the filenames consistent with the title of the book, and add a number at the end of each book in a series. This will make table of contents building way easier.
I think this ebook approach is a cool way to repurpose some of the game’s content for personal use, but if you don’t want your own ebook version, you can read these books online in the Lore section of The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages.
Capane.us [Via Sidequesting]
Here’s how a local bookseller tried to get my future business
In my recent counter-tirade against the emotional outbursts that booksellers are frequently guilty of when they should be discussing retail strategies, I mentioned that the last time I contacted a local bookstore to offer feedback on what I want as a customer, I was ignored. I thought it might be nice to publish that email publicly, so you can see that I really wasn’t a jerk when I contacted the store, and that I seriously wanted them to know that I was ready to give them my business.
I sent it to them nearly three and half months ago, so I’m fairly certain they’re not going to respond at this point. To me, it’s a perfect example of how a local bookstore can fail at building a relationship with local customers who want to shop locally but prefer ebooks over print. Continue reading →