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Handhelds Hardware

Gemstar Ebook Crashes, Burns 187

Posted by simoniker from the charred-digital-characters-pooling-together dept.
Robotech_Master writes "In a lengthy announcement on its ebook catalog page, Gemstar, owner of TV Guide and the Rocket/Gemstar eBook, has announced it is going out of the ebook business. Gemstar will not be selling any new devices or ebook content after July 16th. Of particular interest to those who purchased the newer Gemstar eBook models that eliminated the ability to install free content directly on the devices: 'We will also continue to provide the newly released Personal Content feature available through the web bookstore at least through July 16, 2006.' It's too bad, really; I've heard that the Gemstar has one of the most legible displays of any of the ebook alternatives available. They could have done quite well as general-purpose reading devices, if Gemstar had not locked them directly to its own overpriced content in a stunning demonstration of self-proctology."
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Gemstar Ebook Crashes, Burns More

Gemstar Ebook Crashes, Burns

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  • What does this mean for GuildePlus+? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:15AM (#6240395)
    Gemstar provides the TV Guide-like listings for my ATI AIW video card. Will this still be operational?
    • Is your ATI card an ebook reader?
    • Honestly, TV Guide is probably read more these days than the bible. But how on earth the same people that have staked their fortune on people _not_ reading (see: TV) decided to get into selling books in the first place...well its beyond me. I guess that constituted playing both sides of the fence and it makes sense in the fact that they certainly have their fingers on the pulse of the majority of americans. But something about the publishers of TV guide trying to carve out a niche in ebooks is just dirty.

      U

  • Term of the week (Score:5, Funny)

    by r84x ( 650348 ) <r84x@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:17AM (#6240410) Homepage Journal
    I would have to say that I have not heard a better term for stupidity in a while. "...a stunning demonstration of self-proctology." is a wonder of the english language. I applaud the author.
    • I too was impressed, and it seems that the company understands it at some level as well. When you go the page referenced in the author's blurb and click on the "price" link, the resulting page has a picture of one of the devices. It has the cover page of a book titled "Enough Rope."
    • Those who wish to find out more about self-proctology [amazon.com] are advised to check the linked book. Lots of helpful diagrams too.

      It would be made available as a Gemstar e-book, of course!

    • Cranio-Rectal Inversion.

      Not only can you describe someone as having his head up his bum, you do it such a way that it sounds like a random medical condition. As a bonus, you don't sound like an insensitive clod for *saying* he has his head up his bum. :-)

    • Thanks. I was rather proud of that one myself. I'm moderately disappointed that they changed the subject line as I submitted it, though. "Rocket eBook Crashes, Burns" reads much better. ("rocket...crashes, burns").

  • What's the point.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:17AM (#6240412)
    ... of ebooks when you've got handhelds?

  • eBooks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:21AM (#6240429) Homepage
    In theory it could be a marvelous idea, especially for technical publications. For novels they somewhat lack the sexyness of the good ol' paper book (this goes especially for hardcovers and imo of course).

    The publishers themselves seem to kill the goldeneggslayinggoose themselves due to absurd copy restrictions and non-compatible standards. Hell: Do you really want to buy three e-book readers at 500Euros a pop for the really meager catalogue out there.

    I don't get their paranoia, though. What stops anybody of scanning a book in plain, good ol' ascii text and releasing it on the internet (else that this is illegal, of course)?

    • Re:eBooks (Score:4, Funny)

      by The_dev0 ( 520916 ) <[hookerbot5000] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:27AM (#6240461) Homepage Journal
      What stops anybody of scanning a book in plain, good ol' ascii text and releasing it on the internet

      Not much at all, I suspect. Even if you just enter the term ebook (not even author or title information) on your favourite P2P software you'll see literally hundreds of titles out there already in plain text. Unfortunately I downloaded the Metallica autobiography and ended up with Battlefield:Earth instead. Bastards.

      • > Not much at all, I suspect. Even if you just enter the term ebook (not even author or title information) on your favourite P2P software you'll see literally hundreds of titles out there already in plain text. Unfortunately I downloaded the Metallica autobiography and ended up with Battlefield:Earth instead. Bastards.

        And if you thought Lars Ulrich was a badass copyright dude, wait'll you see what L. Ron Hubbard [xenu.net]'s landsharks are like! Sonny Bono of DMCA fame was a member. It gets worse from there.

    • Re:eBooks (Score:3, Informative)

      by Oscar_Wilde ( 170568 )
      What stops anybody of scanning a book in plain, good ol' ascii text and releasing it on the internet.

      Nothing at all [gutenberg.net] (assuming the book is out of copyright).
    • What stops anybody of scanning a book in plain, good ol' ascii text and releasing it on the internet (else that this is illegal, of course)?

      Gee I don't know....

      - Having to separately scan (pages/2) times and keep all of those images in order (assuming the book is a small paperback, for a large format book you'd have to scan (pages) times with a normal size scanner)
      - Run an OCR app on these pages (if you want to distribute in ASCII text)
      - Proofread the OCR results to make sure they aren't all messed up (I
      • To respond to your problems, point by point:
        • I'd imagine that a bandsaw and a sheetfeed scanner would take care of problem number one. Just take off the binding with the saw, put the pages into an industrial scanner with a duplexing unit (to scan both sides) and wait a few hours.
        • As for running OCR, given the images output from the scanning batch job, I'd imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to write a script to automate OCRing a few hundred images. It might even be possible to automate removal of the sup


    • > In theory it could be a marvelous idea, especially for technical publications.

      Better than plain ol' PDF?

      • Yes. PDF on any small device sucks. Not enough horsepower in dedicated devices and on PDA's, the readers are VERY bad. PDF also is setup for showing in one format (8.5 by 11 inch paper usually). To put this on a small device makes you have to scroll all over the place. Ebook software usually reformats the book to fit the screen. Sure, you have to scroll or press a button to turn "pages" but everythign is readable versus having to scroll this way and that to read a whole paragraph.
    • ...seem to kill the goldeneggslayinggoose...

      Has anybody read that as the golden egg slaying goose or it was just me.

    • Re:eBooks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by without ( 518674 )
      Ebooks have their good and bad points, but I've found that I've gotten hooked on them. The bad points are that they don't feel as good in your hand as paper, they have small screens, and their batteries can run out. But I've found that the same things that make me love reading make me love reading ebooks. I read ebook novels on my PDA. Some points in their favor:

      1. I can read ebooks while I eat a sandwich. Sounds minor, but really, I like to read while I eat lunch, and a PDA stays open and flat and

  • Ebooks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:25AM (#6240447) Homepage
    I've always had trouble finding a nice way of reading books on LCD screen. If outside the sun destoryed the contrast or if inside you had to be just right so there was enough light. Nightmare. This is why I just went back to normal books. If the sun is to bright, put on some sunglasses. If to dark, turn on the light or use a torch.

    Now I understand the size concept but somehow it just feels better. Similar story with me and PDA's. Best PDA I found was a diary + pen

    Rus

    • I've always had trouble finding a nice way of reading books on LCD screen. If outside the sun destoryed (I assume this is a typo for destroyed, and the sun didn't actually remove the story that you were reading) the contrast or if inside you had to be just right so there was enough light. Nightmare.

      Hmmm... That's why you have a backlight. Thouhg frankly, my Rocket E-Book has good enough contrast that I can read it with the backlight off in decent lighting and only need to turn the backlight on (usual

      • Who only ever reads free content on his Rocket E-Book

        I highly recommend checking out www.baen.com. They have a bunch of free content in rb format, plus a whole bunch more for sale, but unencrypted and available in various formats so you can share. Baen even gives you permission to share their books with your friends.

  • awkward evolutionary spur in the handheld world (Score:5, Informative)

    by marcsiry ( 38594 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:31AM (#6240480) Homepage
    To me, dedicated e-book readers seem to come from the same place as those portable DVD players that cost as much as a laptop with a DVD drive.

    Why buy a one-purpose piece of hardware when there are solutions that perform that purpose well, and do other useful stuff?

    To compound the problem, they release the content on a closed, proprietary platform that only runs on their hardware. It's the Vectrex of our time! (Not to slag Vectrex, I loved mine).

    IMO a better path would have been to build a multi-purpose handheld optimized for e-book reading- license the Palm OS so that people could do all that other stuff too, but use a big, clear screen with dedicated nav buttons so it was the best darn e-book reading Palm money can buy. Or the best darn e-book reading Linux pad, I'm not picky.

    It seems the downfall of this company (and many others) is they assume they are operating in a standalone universe. With that assumption, creating a closed system of readers and content makes sense (how else could someone have possibly thought DivX was a good idea?). Out in the wilds of the real world, they're murdered by their less annoying competition.

    • IMO a better path would have been to build a multi-purpose handheld optimized for e-book reading- license the Palm OS so that people could do all that other stuff too, but use a big, clear screen with dedicated nav buttons so it was the best darn e-book reading Palm money can buy. Or the best darn e-book reading Linux pad, I'm not picky.

      The color Rocket(Gemstar) is a very nice looking, nice weight and comfortable. I've always thought it would be a great PDA. It wouldn't fit in your pocket, but you could

    • Re:awkward evolutionary spur in the handheld world (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Vengeance_au ( 318990 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:47AM (#6240550) Journal
      I'm not a fan of the DVD players you refer to, however the primary reason they are successful is due to battery life. A slimline standalone DVD player has enough juice for 8+ hrs of watching, compared to a laptops 3 hrs tops. For international flights I have a few colleagues who use and swear by portable DVD players, and carry them in in their laptop bags on all international trips.

      An analogy is a screwdriver vs a swiss army knife - dedicated tools tend to do their job better, but lack flexibility.
      • I've not seen one with that kind of battery life, but I'd be interested to know which one does. My Toshiba gets 3.5 hours on the stock battery, 5 hours on the larger replacement, and is pretty much par for the course.

        Where it does come in ahead of a laptop is weight (2 lbs vs. 6+ lbs), price (~$600 new instead of ~$1K+ new), and picture/sound quality. Find me a 2lb $600 laptop that can output a progressive scan picture to an HDTV and output Dolby 5.1 and DTS, and we might be in business.
    • Palms are not as comfortable or easy to read - as addressed earlier, they have larger screens and higher resolution, and are more comfortable to hold. I have a Rocket eBook (the model before RCA got their filthy hands on it and destroyed it). Not only is it far superior to a Palm for reading everything from short stories and essays to full length books, but I even prefer it to paper books. I don't have to move my reading light, I can read in the dark, especially handy for travel, camping, boating, etc. wher

    • IMO a better path would have been to build a multi-purpose handheld optimized for e-book reading- license the Palm OS so that people could do all that other stuff too, but use a big, clear screen with dedicated nav buttons so it was the best darn e-book reading Palm money can buy. Or the best darn e-book reading Linux pad, I'm not picky.

      You might want to check out the hiebook [hiebook.com]... It allows you to put your own content on it, it is multi-purpose and you can download the SDK for it... It's supposed to be v

    • Why buy a one-purpose piece of hardware when there are solutions that perform that purpose well, and do other useful stuff?

      Because, in the case of the Gemstar/Rocket eBook reader at least, there are no other solutions that perform nearly as well for that purpose. I read huge amounts of material on my Rocket eBook, without eyestrain or discomfort of any type; I can't say the same about reading on my laptop or my PDA.

    • For a while they were pretty close but price wars have made those sandalone DVD players more economical. DVD laptops are down to ~$700 and those players are below $300. Just depends what you want--big screen + general purpose or small size + battery life. Lot sof DVD laptops barely have the battery to play one medium-long movie, and a year or two of average battery (ab)use can really shorten their life.

  • When bad ideas attack (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:32AM (#6240483) Journal
    The thing that strikes me most about this article is not the fact that ebooks have gone no-where, but the reason why. As the one linked article states they were trying to lock everyone into their content only. Anyone with a clue could ahve told you this wasnt going to end well, unless you had the sun and the moon and the stars to offer.

    However, I'm trying to look at the bigger picture here. In our recent memory there seem to be a bunch of really bad business ideas that some how make it thru the tedious corporate 'bad idea expeller'. Please recall 'divx' (caps not withstanding) the time limited psuedo-rental dvd scheme from Circuit City and a law firm. And now we have its successor, self-destructing media.

    I have to ask myself have any of these clowns done any market research? How do they manage to ram thru these dumbass get rick quick schemes with no one noticing? I have to wonder what the pie charts look like at these meetings. 20% wont care what we do, 20% will be alienated, 30% arent customers anyway .. and so on. It feels like decisions made on the least negative instead of most positive.

    • Re:When bad ideas attack (Score:5, Funny)

      by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:50AM (#6240558) Homepage Journal
      These people probably read the Daily Dilbert as they would their horoscope and regard the PHB as a shining beacon of good management practice. There should be a big, red, blinking warning sign saying "WARNING: SATIRE - DO NOT TRY THIS AT WORK".
    • Maybe this would be a good time to promote a publisher that releases stuff in open formats: Fictionwise [fictionwise.com]. Some of their stuff is only available in DRMed M$ or Adobe formats, but much of it is a range of formats including Palm 'Doc', which is freely convertible to/from plain text. Yes, they're selling them - though the prices are quite reasonable. I've bought quite a few books and stories from them. (For one thing, the typography is far better than some of the file-shared stuff: proof-
      • Maybe this would be a good time to promote a publisher that releases stuff in open formats

        This is really, really simple. The MOST open format by a long shot is paper. Always will be. Anybody on the planet who can read can use a real book. Even ASCII requires a several hundred dollar outlay for a computer. Books aren't broken. If it ain't broke... you know the rest.
    • In my experience, this has been due to one thing: someone who thinks he or she is a visionary. At my former company, we had a marketing director who came up with a bizarro-world business model for our product. Everyone in the trenches knew it was a bad idea. Everyone above the low-level managers, however, thought this guy crapped gold (oddly, despite the fact that his former companies all tanked). Supposedly, they did do market research, mostly by asking clueless industry analysts (i.e. the Gartners of the

  • Too bad for Ebooks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:34AM (#6240492)
    They had a really nice reader, but they kept it so locked down and there was so little content.

    I've been using my Franklin EBookMan for 3 years now. I love the backlight, I can read in bed at night and not bother my wife. It's also facing the same problems as the Gemstar.

    I was really excited and taken in by all the hype several years ago. I like to read books. I also thought there was unlocked potential in the Rocket(Gemstar) or something similar for technical manuals. I frequently use Many different technologies(HPUX, AIX, WinNT, Oracle, SQL, Shell, ASP, Cold Fusion etc. etc.) in my consulting business. I always thought these devices would be great for carrying multiple reference manuals instead of those 10 pound books.

    • Yes, but chances are that if you're using any of these you're at a computer.
      You could probably have done almost as well with some version of these on CD-ROM. HTML would be ok, or perhaps something with a database for quick searches. The only disadvantage is not having a screen and then reference material, but perhaps a peripheral to handle this would still be a more affordable solution (USB/LCD maybe?)

      Come to think of it, I haven't seen many really innovative USB2 (that's real USB2, not 1.1) devices yet
      • I really prefer to have my reference seperate. I have dual monitors on my main workstation just so that I don't have to switch back and forth. I spend a lot of time 'on site' at various locations where I don't have the luxury of dual monitors.

        The USB LCD sounds nice, but then you have a Very limited device that's tied to a desktop. I'd like to be able to read my ebooks while on a plane or in bed at night.

    • Re:Too bad for Ebooks (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:21AM (#6241195) Homepage
      The funny thing is that if you downloaded the OLD version of their pc software, you could "make" your own ebooks for the devices. then after making the books you used the new software to import them.

      Why they removed the make feature I dont know, but I have over 1000 guttenburg textx as eb files for the rocketbooks, as well as most all of the HOWTO's for linux, and the entire manual to mysql.

      It's kind of nice to carry around on one sd card over 400 books or manuals.

      and yes, I have NEVER bought one ebook, nothing they sell even remotely interests me.
  • Burn? Wouldn't they melt really? I mean I can see Books burning, but ebooks? Hmm
  • This was the best article summary I have yet read on slashdot. The stunning self-proctology of their ebook business model is classic. Now time for some sleep.

  • Ebooks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slux ( 632202 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:42AM (#6240528)
    As long as the current copy protection mechanisms (of which Lawrence Lessig talks about in his excellent free_culture [randomfoo.net] are in place, ebooks will not become common. Or I should say I hope people can see how useless they are and opt to not use them.

    When you think of what the technology could do... You could have access to the digital version of any book, there would never be problems with acquiring a copy of a book. You could always get the book you wanted instantly from your local library, even through the net. Right now, the only thing they have is "gee-it's-new-technology"-effect, and they're really just severely restricted versions of real books.

    But it's all inevitable. Even if every library in the world will decide to buy these pathetic excuses of a book, the unrestricted versions will come. They just won't be in the library. They'll be in p2p. Because we all know the ebook protection is fundamentally flawed.

  • maybe they can open it up (Score:5, Interesting)

    by io333 ( 574963 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:47AM (#6240546)
    It would be nice if they put out the specs on everything so some enterprising and bored guru could find a way to stick a teeny version of linux on it and make it a reader again. Why waste a good display?
    • find the old version of the PC software for it. there's a utility to make .eb files (ebooks) from html or txt files.

      create your ebooks, install the new software, import the ebboks....

      still useful to me, and works great. even with the USB version I have sitting here.(RCA)
    • You don't NEED the specs for it. It runs on a relatively common Cirrus Logic EP7212 system-on-a-chip processor, which has full documentation. It should be relatively easy to load Linux on it. However, you don't really need that. With RBMake you can make your own ebooks for the device (or just use their old Rocket software) and Librarian for windows or REBComm for Linux work pretty well for making ebooks. I own two of their devices, and I like them (both RCA REB1100).
  • To refer to this sort of behavior as self-proctology is a common mistake.

    This was really about Gemstar having their head up their ass.

    Eulogies and post mortems should strive to be accurate.
  • Too bad about Rocket's demise. You could also go with a PDA or a tablet pc for reading. Both are good alternatives w/ their own pros and cons of course.

    PDA: small, lightweight, but small screen, larger files may be a problem.

    Tablet PC: great when reading in portrait mode. can also double as a regular laptop but heavier (around 3lbs), more expensive.

    Personally, I think the tablet pc is great. i have an acer. portrait mode is great for reading not just ebooks but web pages as well. It can get a

  • HTML and PDF display are the only things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:55AM (#6240581) Homepage
    If I ever decide to buy an eBook, I will need it to do two things: (1) cache and display any HTML I choose, and (2) cache and display any PDF I choose. Without these two features, no amount of other features is sufficient; with these two features, no other features are necessary.
    • I've done both with my Rocket eBook by converting the PDF to HTML. Gemstar screwed it up - I had my money in hand waiting for their newest model after they took over Rocket... once I saw the capabilities they removed, I spent my money elsewhere.
    • I would add the obvious (0) cache and display any PLAIN TEXT FILE I choose. I don't want to be bothered with marking up something that's already perfectly readable but not in some fancy 1990s layout crap. I have plenty of very large text sources thank you. The only additional feature for usability might be a word-wrap toggle due to the width constraints of the small display.

  • Proprietary Content (Score:4, Informative)

    by zipcube ( 22314 ) <courtney@courtneymalone.com> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @02:57AM (#6240586) Homepage
    Actually, I've had the 1100 for a few years now, and I just use the old Rocket Librarian software to convert html and text files to its own .rb format. Works fairly well, the device has quite possibly the best indoor/outdoor lcd I've seen to date, and usually has 35 hour plus battery life. I also have a pda, and one just cannot compare the two, reading for any length of time on any current pda is a pain due to limited amount of screen real estate. The only pda with a screen large enough to be a comfortable ebook reader would have been the Newton or the Vadem Clio.

  • Product need... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @03:01AM (#6240596)
    It seems to me that a PDA would fill the same need. I have a Palm IIIxe and have no problem reading eBooks with it. Not to mention that I can also read PDFs with it...something dedicated readers can't.

    The low-end model is/was? ~$79...

    Palm sells a refurbished IIIxe for ~$89...

    And acording to this [iebaf.org] link, the Gemstar has 8MB of memory...the same as the IIIxe...less if you count the extra memory available from the Flash ROM through an app like JackFlash...

    Keeping in mind that the screen on the IIIxe is very legible and features many functions not available through the Gemstar and that battery life can be increased on the palm by underclocking the CPU with one of the apps available for hackmaster...why would anyone want to buy a single function handheld over a PDA???

    Not to mention that the PDA market itself has weakened signifigantly in recent years...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Product need... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      I think the PDA market may be in for a choke too. For the price of the newest shiniest PDA, I can get a used notebook laptop which - while being not that great compared to newer laptops - is still more useful than a PDA. Granted, a bit bigger, but some of those notebook laptops are pretty small. I had an Acer TravelMate 312T (233Mhz) that fit into my cargo-pants pocket before it got power-surged. I've also seen a Sony which is similar in dimensions.
      Check out ebay sometime, you might find a deal.

      I know it

    • Legible? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      >...the screen on the IIIxe is very legible...

      It isn't, you know. I'm not going to compare it to other electronic devices, I'm going to compare it to its competitor - a piece of paper.

      Paper has resolutions the IIIxe, or my PDF-based Powerbook for that matter, can't dream of. Paper's anti-aliased fonts are superb, unless you include my handwriting of course. Paper doesn't dim the screen to save batteries. Text on paper can be read in bright light. Paper is faster to boot as well, though admittedly the

  • Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @03:33AM (#6240697)
    Pay $300-$700 for a locked and proprietary ebook device or for 30-100 books. Decisions, decisions...
  • in a stunning demonstration of self-proctology ,

    Microsoft discontinued nearly all of their products ... it seems that most of them used some sort of "proprietary device" that regulated the usefulness of the product ...
  • It's a shame that Gemstar is going down in flames, but eventually ebooks will go mainstream. How much longer can we keep producing books out of paper? Some type of handheld, non-paper, book will eventually have to replace the paper book.

    I heard something a while back about electric "paper" that could change it's own print. I think it would be really nifty to have a book where you could pop in a flash card and have all the pages change their text. Anyone else heard anything else about this technology? (Othe
  • Thought they both work very well, I believe 'auto-proctology' would be more correct... :)
  • (self-)proctology

    n : the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the colon or rectum or anus

    And you can do this yourself?

  • non-proprietary content (Score:3, Informative)

    by alexmagni ( 190839 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @04:30AM (#6240869) Homepage
    I chose the Rocket ebook in the past for just that reason: it allowed via its software to upload .txt/.htm/... to the device.

    Concerning a question made above, the format specs and a Linux software both exist here [clari.net].

    Now I'm pretty happy with another device, i.e. the Hiebook (site [hiebook.com]; groups [yahoo.com]), that provides the same, important capability: you can upload to it any .txt/.htm content.

    Not as as good a display as the rocket, though...

  • As an alternative, try Plucker (Score:4, Informative)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @04:43AM (#6240895) Homepage Journal
    As an alternative, if you already have a Palm, try Plucker at http://www.plkr.org [plkr.org]. It's an offline HTML reader for Palm PDAs, and it's Free Software (GPL license). If you can get it in HTML or ASCII text, you can read it.

    General-purpose PDAs (like Palm PDAs) may not have quite the resolution of the specialized readers, but single-purpose units are a bad idea when you have to carry them around (who's going to carry 50 devices around?). Even sillier is the locked format; do they really expect us to buy 12 ebook readers, and pay again to download freely-available content on it? I routinely download documents and websites, and read them at my leisure.

    • As an alternative, if you already have a Palm, try Plucker at http://www.plkr.org [plkr.org]. It's an offline HTML reader for Palm PDAs, and it's Free Software (GPL license). If you can get it in HTML or ASCII text, you can read it.

      OT I admit, but once you've installed Plucker, head on over to here [fourteenminutes.com] and either download and install Avantslash or point it to the one already set up on the site (you'll have to put up with my settings though).

      Then you can read Slashdot on the go.

  • This will make people think twice about DRM (Score:3, Informative)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @05:15AM (#6240998)
    Now people with a library that can not completely fit on the device will lose content they paid for. And people with expensive rocket eBooks in perfect working condition will not be able to buy new content for their device because it will come with its own, incompatible DRM. Now can you see legitimate uses for Dimitry's "advanced e-book processor"?

    The only good news is that this particular group of screwed customers is rich. Just maybe they can really get on the case of fair use and make their voices heard by the government.

  • Decency (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @05:32AM (#6241070) Journal
    Sounds like the *decent* thing to do is for them to release a txt/html/pdf converter to the general public for their soon-to-be-abandoned product.

    Odds are they won't though. Bastards.

  • programmability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by garote ( 682822 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:55AM (#6241285) Homepage
    Regarding proprietary formats, etc -- there's a simple rule to remember here, I think.

    The more programmable your portable device is, the less likely you are to be screwed. Programmable as in, the end-user can write and load code into it that will alter it's behavior. If a consumer wants to find a device that's a good investment, this is practically all the information he needs.

    That, and perhaps access to a few local geeks who will hack the device, in the event of a corporate meltdown.

    Now here's the question: How can we keep each other informed of the real programmability of a shiny new device we may see in Circuit City? Is there a yardstick, or a website, or a consortium, or a forum out there -- that measures the hack-ability of new gear?

    (Or should we all just chuck everything out and buy really good laptops instead? I've had one for a year now and it's replaced my desktop PC, my PDA, my television, my DVD player, my stereo, my Playstation, my Nintendo 64, my bookshelf, and my mixer... and obsoleted my CD burner, monitor, keyboard, remote controls, maps, slide projector, darkroom, modem, zipdrive, tape deck, cookbooks, and alarm clock. Mostly due to it's immense programmability.)

  • speech synthesis for listening to ebooks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by throwaway18 ( 521472 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @07:31AM (#6241419) Journal
    I'm experimenting with using a speech synthersizer to read out ebooks to listen to in the bath or while traveling. They can be compressed to really low bitrate mp3's. You can listen to an audio book while walking down the street unlike a handheld device. Less chance of missing your stop on the bus if you can stare out of the window instead of at a handheld.

    Any reccomendations for good freeware text to speech programs? I'm trying out freetts [sourceforge.net] at the moment.

  • The Rocket eBook (Score:3)

    by DavidLeblond ( 267211 ) <me&davidleblond,com> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @08:10AM (#6241562) Homepage
    I have a Rocket eBook, the precursor to the Gemstar eBook (before Gemstar bought Nuvomedia) and I've seen this coming for a long time. For me, ever since Gemstar bought out Nuvomedia its been downhill. They immediately closed down the "Rocket Library" which was a place full of public domain books you could get for free. Then they canceled their deal with Barnes and Noble. Powells is great, but come on... Barnes and Noble is Barnes and Noble!! I stopped seeing books being published for my eBook so I haven't used it in a very long time. I guess I shoulda sold it on eBay earlier, now it won't get as much!

  • At least they're EUTHANIZING the product... (Score:3)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @08:46AM (#6241771) Homepage
    ...As an angry, disillusioned Rocket eBook owner, I'm very disappointed that they could have gotten so many of the basic technical aspects of the device RIGHT, yet screwed up the marketing so badly as to discredit the entire eBook concept. The Rocket eBook is pleasant to use and I can and do read long novels on it. Alas, Gemstar's business model was irretrievably customer-hostile, and both price and availability of content were poor.

    I want to acknowledge that Gemstar is treating their customer base reasonably well under the circumstances and far better than might have been expected.

    What they're NOT doing, of course, is to provide a Gemstar-format-to-something-else conversion tool. Or replacements for the Gemstar-format eBook titles we "own" with some other format.

    There won't be any new content available after July 16th, but they say they will keep the servers up for at least three years--so the people whose eBooks can ONLY download directly from the server will be able to use their purchased content for that long. They also have a sort of warranty policy under which, for as long as supplies last, they say that if your eBook fails, even if you didn't buy it from them, they will replace it with another Gemstar eBook device (but possibly not the same model) for $30.

    And, having designed OUT personal content (the ability to download arbitrary .txt and .html files--like Project Gutenberg texts) from the later devices themselves, they have now put it back IN as a Web-based service. Not a problem for owners of the original Rocket eBook, which can convert and download from a PC or Mac, but later buyers can ONLY download over a phoneline from Gemstar's servers. But now they can UPLOAD personal content to those servers and have it converted.

    I'm not happy, but at least the Gemstar eBook is being gently euthanized, not shot at dawn.
  • ...eBooks want to be locked up. Apparently. At any rate, with regard to fonts, Cynthia Hollandsworth, a VP at Simon and Schuster, in this article [seyboldreports.com], is quoted as saying

    âoeWhat is absolutely clear to me (working for the largest e-book publisher in the industry) is that there is not any business left for font makers who want to play in this e-world. We use fonts in our e-books, of course, but the font companies have a very skewed view about what these products are worth in this environment. It i
  • About three years ago I got to check out the Nuvomedia and their "Rocket eBook" (as it was known then) at the BookExpo America. Sure the screen had above-average resolution, but the device itself was about the weight (and size/shape) of a brick.

    Also, about the same time I was getting into AvantGo [avantgo.com] on my Visor (which I still use btw) so I asked the eBook rep what the Rocket eBook had that my Palm didn't. She couldn't give me a solid answer, besides "the screen is bigger" and "you can download books to it o
  • Another story about ebooks, another chance for a long protracted argument about the pros and cons of ebooks. "Lower costs!"
    "But I can't read them on the toilet!"
  • It wasn't just pricing that killed this unit. I attempted contact with Gemstar repeatedly over a two year period when we were trying to decide on a portable unit for all our internal documentation, whitepapers, etc, for our Network Operations Centre.

    I really wanted to go with the REB units for this, but I could never get commitment from them on the ability to produce/convert our own content for both the 1100 and 1200 series. If we had ever received useful feedback from them it could have resulted in seve
  • In possibly related news the SEC has charged officers of Gemstar with fraud [excite.com] for inflating revenues by some $223 Million.

    thad
  • They failed to realize the golden rule: you can't strong-arm your customer base until it's reached a critical mass.

    So long, see ya.

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