Barnes & Noble Formatting

For christmas i receieved 50 or so dollars of Barnes & Noble gift cards, so naturally, my first impulse was to check out their ebooks section online.

After a little bit of research, it seems (according to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/help-faqs.asp) that Barnes & Noble is releasing their e-book in .pdb format. I'm downloading this free program: http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html to try and convert these books to something that i can use on my kindle.

I'll be back to let you know if it worked or not.

Also, i'm sure i mentioned it before, but the MobiPocket Creator software was invaluable for getting things onto my kindle 2. And i'm sure i'll eventually be using it again in this process to get B&N books on my kindle2. Get it here: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/DownloadCreator.asp

Regarding Tunes

So, after putting the final mixes of the music on the readers. I've found that the Kindle has support for changing between mp3s on the fly. (pressing alt + f switches tracks, alt + spacebar pauses the song) However, the support for music beyond that is actually quite pathetic. There is no way to see what mp3s are on the kindle without plugging it into the computer, and putting the songs in the order you wish them to be listened to is quite a pain.

The Sony Reader (i'm working with a PRS-505) , while not allowing for a key-stroke to control the music, does give a display of what you are listening to, what other songs are in the storage, and allows you to switch at will. If you want to listen to music on the sony while reading, you have to start the mp3, then hurry back to the file that you are wanting to read. This causes a slight offset the audio in reference to the text, but all in all, an easier interface to work with.

something that was helpful to me as i tried to navigate the kindle 2: http://www.geektonic.com/2009/03/kindletips-ultimate-kindle-2-shortcuts.html

Moment of Truth

Well, its done.

I have it formatted and working in both a Sony Reader and an Amazon Kindle 2.

...epic win.

For those with e-readers

If you are like me and are looking for a way to manage the PDF's you have downloaded, check out: http://www.a-pdf.com/infochanger/download.htm

it allows you to change the author, title, subject, and keywords in the PDF file. Though it won't let you do it to encrypted files.

To un-encrypte files, i used: http://www.sybrex.com/products/gui/protectionmanager/download.php

it is a trial version, but i was able to take care of a large number of encrypted files with it.

A recent article i came across that i found interesting:

Top 10 Myths About E-books

More formatting stuff

I've been going back through and trying to find out which formats are the most used and which formats are easiest to create and use, and i thought i would share some of my resources here.

While both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle both have specific formats that operate best, both will render PDF's and sometimes quite effectively.

(this first one was especially helpful, i had to use internet explorer to open it though, maybe a current issue with google chrome?)

A guide to formatting PDF's for the Sony E-Reader

Some html formatting stuff for the Digital Text Platform used by the kindle:

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=29&categoryID=11

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=30&categoryID=11

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry!default.jspa?categoryID=9&externalID=21&fromSearchPage=true

DTP Help:

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/forumindex.jspa?categoryID=1