Omnivorous Surfer

First, why elecronic books (eBooks)? This is just one more way to give people access to books. Many younger people are more used to looking at a computer screen, or certainly to an iPod or iPhone screen than at the pages of a book. While I happen to enjoy the feel of a book in my hand, reading from printed text, there are times when I find myself in a “waiting” situation without a book. I always, though, have my PDA, and I enjoy having a book waiting for me there. There are many reasons an individual might be interested in eBooks and eBook readers.

Amazon has its Kindle, and there are other devices available which I have not researched, but I am always interested in FREE options. Mobipocket Reader is a flexible FREE program available for the desktop and a number of mobile devices* which lets you “build, organize, read and annotate your entire eBook library” and  The reader is not a simple text reader, but can display graphics as well. Some books, such as Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum I’m reading, include the illustrations from the original edition. Others, like Thornton W. Burgess’s Adventures of Reddy Fox are text only. In addition to eBooks, Mobipocket also can manage RSS feeds.

Downloading and installing the desktop version is all that is needed. The first time you connect your compatible mobile device, the application will be installed on it.

You can drag and drop .pdf, .txt, .rtf, html, and Microsoft Office files onto the desktop application to convert them.This gives the flexibility of choosing to read some lengthy documents, such as .pdf manuals, in a more comfortable environment or on a mobile device. The .pdf I opened in Mobipocket Reader was much easier to read than the original document, as the text was larger and it was broken into more manageable pages. If you desire, you can also create your own documents using the FREE Mobipocket Creator, inserting images and graphics along with text.

I love that when you select a word or larger piece of text, a menu box appears which will let you add a note, highlight it, copy it, modify it, or add a link to another location in the book. This makes it so easy to annotate and to create bookmarks for text you want to remember or come back to, as any of these actions creates a link at the right of the reading to its particular text. Here's what The Murders in the Rue Morgue looked like when I had finished the first half:

While you can purchase books, some sources make FREE eBooks available. These books, perhaps not so obviously, are those which are free from copyright restrictions. Simply download your selection, choosing to “open” rather than “save,” and the book will open in Mobipocket Reader ready to read, and the file will be saved in your My Documents eBook folder. Sources I’ve found and downloaded from include:

• Diesel eBook Store (more than a million free eBooks sorted by category; also eBooks for purchase)
• Project Gutenberg (over 30,000 free electronic books)
• Manybooks (over 16,000 titles, sorted by title, genre, and author, wide variety of formats)

Wickpedia indicates that the text or personal additions cannot be printed or exported other than by copying and pasting into another application. ABC Palm Converter will convert some .prc files to Word, .txt, .rtf, or other formats. Annotations will not be included in the converted file, and the converter software will work only on REAdTEXt files; It will not convert files that have been converted to .prc files by Mobipocket using the drag and drop method.

This could be useful in classrooms and for students who have a mobile device other than an iPod/iPhone. It would also be useful for students who need larger text.

*”PalmOs, Windows Mobile, Symbian (Series 60, Series 80, 90, UIQ), Blackberry, iLiad (by iRex), Cybook, ... And if you have a Symbian smartphone, an iLiad, or a Cybook, there is a good chance that Mobipocket Reader is already preinstalled!” Source: Mobipocket (I note the list does not include the iPod)