From hart at pglaf.org Tue Apr 21 21:04:14 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:04:14 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] !@! Project Gutenberg Newsletter Message-ID: We've had some terribly major crashes. The Newsletter list were DESTROYED!!! We are using ANCIENT GREEK BACKUPS!!! This is going out the MONTHLY Newsletter list. If you want to stay on it, you are fine. If not, here are instructions for all our lists, including how to unsubscribe. You asked about subcribing or unsubscribing from one of the Project Gutenberg Newsletters. Please save for reference: This is the information from: www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto Please check this site once in a while for updates: Mailing Lists Various mailing lists for Project Gutenberg exist. A brief description of each follows, along with a link to visit or subscribe (or unsubscribe). 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Traffic consists mostly of one monthly newsletter. * Notification as new eBooks are posted: + posted: receive book postings as they happen, along with other PG related internally-focused discussion (high traffic, over 10 postings per day) * Discussion for active volunteers: + gutvol-d: general unmoderated volunteer discussion (moderate traffic) + gutvol-p: programming volunteers, for software development (light traffic) + gutvol-w: website volunteers, for website development (new list) + glibrary: library help, for physically tracking down books and copyright research. Low traffic, with occasional requests. * Other lists: + gutvol-l: moderated volunteer announcements (light traffic) If you would like to subscribe to a mailing list simply select a mailing list name above. All lists require a password and email confirmation to subscribe as part of the Lyris anti-spam measures. Copyright ? 1971-2004 Project Gutenberg -- All Rights Reserved. Most recently updated: 2004-08-07 16:33:32. From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 21 10:28:39 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 09:28:39 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, May. 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 43 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 8 months, 14 2/3 seasons or 43 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions. Hottest Predictions Terabyte USB Flash Drives and Petabyte Hard Drives [by 2015 and 2020, respectively] Most public domain books will be eBooks by 2020. Our apologies for no Newsletter on Apr. 21, due to some major hardware difficulties. However, hopefully you will find more than enough here, to make up for lost time. Headline News Project Gutenberg is now referenced by TEI: http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Samples_of_TEI_texts PG Listed in 100 Best Websites for Free Adult Education http://www.onlinedegreeworld.com/blog/2009/ 100-best-websites-for-free-adult-education/ As you may know, the world is approaching totals of 4.5 billon cell phones so Project Gutenberg is making multiple efforts to to reach more readers via this popular medium. While most of those reporting in about seeing Kindles or Sonys in the wild say they have seen none, I am sure most of us have seen people text messaging on their phones, and that means the idea of reading quotations already exists, and reading a whole chapter or a whole book is the very next step. To encourage this we are working with a number of services for the preparation of Project Gutenberg eBooks for cell phones. Please give these a try and let me know how they work for you. http://mobilelibrary.qioo.de or http://www.gioo.de and http://tequilacat.org/dev/br/index-en.html and mobilebooks.org or mobilebooks.net [these should work on any Java enabled phone] I, myself, have just purchased a "new" cell phone that should do both cell and wifi and also includes an SD RAM slot with a larger than average screen, in the hopes of creating a pocket eBook reader doing most of what Kindle and Sony do but with a greater memory capacity and a much lower price and no fees if I use the wifi rather than the cell service to get the books. It is hopefully arriving today and you will hear more later. We have two articles about eBooks for cell phones, etc. and a message from one of our readers on how to read eBooks on Palm and related devices. New Goal Set for Project Gutenberg; ONE BILLION READERS The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people. With the advent of cell phone [mobile phone] access we are now setting our goal at 15% of the world population or 1 billion. Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion cell phones now in service around the world, that means we would have to reach just over 1/5 of all cell phone users to accomplish this. Possible. . .but not likely unless we make it extremely easy! To this end we will be emphasizing eBook reader programs for a wide range of cell phones. Given the estimated 4.5 billion cell phones that we could make eBooks for today, presuming they can all display plain eBooks, and the extremely slow rise in Kindle sales as compared to the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and all the others, we should be able to reach more readers than Kindle and Sony combined if we just reach one cell phone user out of a thousand. This has to include many more languages than English, of course, so our effort also has to be multi-lingual, if we are to reach anyone beyond the number of people comfortable enough with English to read our eBooks on their cell phones. As many of you know, we already have well over a thousand book titles in French, followed by lesser numbers in German and the other more popular languages, but not nearly enough to really, sincerely, say we are offering a library in these languages. Once we complete a survey of our Top Ten languages we are down to under 50 books per language. . .it's a start, only a start. Second Article The current rage in the eBook world is mobile readers-- portable devices carrying a hundred or a thousand books for people to read whenever and wherever they like. Such devices range from the smallest MP3 player screen, to the entire range of cell phones, PDA's, etc., to the new larger Kindle 2. The iPod has had eBook reading available since the very first week it was introduced, not to mention the reader applications for the iPhone, for generic MP3 players or any number of cell phones. We are approaching, if we have not already passed, some 4.5 billion active cell phones, United Nations reported early this year [4.2 billion at that time]. If just one cell phone out of a thousand is used for an eBook reader, that is 4.5 million, far exceeding totals for all eBook readers such as Kindle, Sony, Rocketbook, Jetbook, and all the other similar products. Thus, the programs to provide eBook reading services on these various cell phones represents a larger audience, by far, than even the billion plus owners of computers. However, we have to make it EASY for them to read!!! This means making the books easy to get, and easy to do any required reformatting for their screens, if we will not be offering preformatted eBooks for various phones, PDA's, and other devices. From: David Cantrell I like to use eReader to read on my PalmOS phone: http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm To convert Project Gutenberg texts into a suitable format, including re-formatting the text so it flows better on the screen, I wrote some software in Perl. You can download it here: http://search.cpan.org/search?query=projectgutenberg (includes a library and a command-line program 'pg2pdb' and documentation). Or on any modern operating system you should be able to install it and the other libraries it depends on thus: $ cpan Palm::ProjectGutenberg or $ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install qw(Palm::ProjectGutenberg)' For those stuck on older machines, I have also made the functionality available through a webby interface here: http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/pg2pdb/ Simply upload a plain text file through the web form, and you'll get back a .PDB file that you can put onto your PDA or phone. A Few Major Projects For Your Consideration 1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers. 2. Textbooks Are Becoming A More And More Highly Requested Item. 3. Request To Help Complete Our Collection Of Andrew Lang Books. 4. eBooks On Cellphones: We Have Several Formats You Can Try. 1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers. This would include other languages, web pages designed by and for people of various ages from the youngest to the oldest, and, even web pages designed around favorite subjects, favorite authors, or even favorite books or characters. Personally, I would LOVE to see web pages designed for readers at various grade levels and then translated into many languages. 2. Textbooks Are Becoming A More And More Highly Requested Item. As more and more people spend more and more years homeschooling a greater portion of modern kids, they are asking us for more books to help teach any of the various subjects, from reading, writing, and arithmetic, to geography and astronomy, to the dinosaurs, and an enormous number of other subjects. If you ever wanted to pass on your knowledge, now is the time and the place, for books here last forever and cover the world. 3. Request To Help Complete Our Collection Of Andrew Lang Books. Many of you are familiar with the various "Color" Fairy Books, as "The Red Fairy Book," by Andrew Lang, and a host of other colors, but few of us have ever even seen a list of them all, including a surprising number of books relating true events, etc. If you find any Andrew Lang books, Fairy, Animal, True, etc., that we don't have in our collection, please let me know, and we will help in the process of completing this collection. 4. eBooks On Cellphones: We Have Several Formats You Can Try. Let me know if you would like to help us set up our Cellphone pages to bring more eBooks to more people in more of the world. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100 books done nearly every single week. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites This week: day | cnt ----------------+----- Thu 2009-05-14 | 10 Fri 2009-05-15 | 14 Sat 2009-05-16 | 9 Sun 2009-05-17 | 9 Mon 2009-05-18 | 14 Tue 2009-05-19 | 13 Wed 2009-05-20 | 12 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with over 25 eBooks. Grand total for today: 28,801 [-28,029] up 772 in two months] 24300 English en 1420 French fr 578 German de 498 Finnish fi 418 Dutch nl 400 Chinese zh 322 Portuguese pt 232 Spanish es 194 Italian it 63 Latin la 58 Esperanto eo 55 Swedish sv 54 Tagalog tl 29 Greek el >From March and February. . . . Grand total for today: 28,029 [-27,475 =] up 554 23669 English en 1374 French fr 567 German de 490 Finnish fi 402 Dutch nl 399 Chinese zh 302 Portuguese pt 225 Spanish es 178 Italian it Compared to last month's 27,475 23468 English en 1359 French fr 560 German de 484 Finnish fi 400 Chinese zh 387 Dutch nl 294 Portuguese pt 222 Spanish es 176 Italian it Grand total for today: 27,475 [- 27,188 ] +287 23,277 [ - 23,075 =] +202 English en 1,333 [ - 1,319 =] + 14 French fr 556 [ - 553 =] + 3 German de 480 [ - 476 =] + 4 Finnish fi 392 [ - 377 =] + 25 Chinese zh 370 [ - 361 =] + 9 Dutch nl 287 [ - 267 =] + 20 Portuguese pt 218 [ - 217 =] + 1 Spanish es 169 [ - 164 =] + 5 Italian it Not to mention PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe.... Total increase +287 All Reported Languges and from the previous month. . . . Grand total for today 27,188 [ - 26,867 =] +321 23,075 [ - 22,863 =] + 212 English en 1,319 [ - 1,289 =] + 76 French fr 553 [ - 549 =] + 4 German de 476 [ - 470 =] + 6 Finnish fi 361 [ - 359 =] + 2 Dutch nl 377 [ - 359 =] + 18 Chinese zh 267 [ - 260 =] + 7 Portuguese pt 217 [ - 207 =] + 10 Spanish es 164 [ - 159 =] + 5 Italian it etc.,etc.,etc. Total increase + 321 All Reported Lanugages Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide [2 months] 28,801 up 772 PG General Automated Count 1,760 up 32 PG of Australia 631 up 66 PG of Europe 2,021 up 8 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. 266 up 44 PG of Canada, Estimated. ====== 33,479 up 922 Grand Total [461/month, two months] >From March 27,475 + 287 PG General Automated Count 1,723 + 6 PG Australia 553 + 13 PG Europe 2,494 + 33 PG PrePrints 202 + 12 PG Canada [Estimated] ====== 32,447 + 349 by various automated counts and newsletters Note Without counting PrePrints, we are still about 30K, and some of the new .lit collection will not make it under our current rules of addition from PrePrints, and would be deleted from PrePrints without moving to other listings. The 307 Chinese eBooks in PrePrints will probably go, as a team of our best Chinese workers says they are not worth a lot more time to work on, etc. Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 31 19:41:24 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 18:41:24 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] PG Canada - *April* news summary Message-ID: Here is the (delayed) news from PG Canada for April. We published a total of 18 ebooks during the month: we have now published a cumulative total of 307 ebooks. The New Releases section at the top of the PGC main page always gives the details of new releases for the most recent three months. LANGUAGES: - 16 in English - 2 in French GENRES - 9 novels - 2 books of short stories - 1 anthology with introductory essay - 1 autobiography - 1 children's book - 1 biography - 1 history book - 1 dictionary - 1 scientific manual 6 of this month's ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada. 12 of this month's titles were fiction, 5 were non-fiction, and one was an anthology of fiction with a lengthy introductory essay. April saw the posting of two further titles by the famous English novelist and essayist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), courtesy of Distributed Proofreaders Europe. Authors new to PGC this month included: Abbott-Smith, George (1864-1947) [Canadian theologian and philologist] Bridges, Thomas Charles (1868-1944) [English boys' novelist] Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn (1810-1865) [English novelist and biographer] Lawler, James (1868-1945) [Canadian silviculturist] McArthur, Peter Gilchrist (1866-1924) [Canadian journalist] Niven, Frederick John (1878-1944) [Canadian novelist] Thorpe, James (1876-1949) [English cartoonist] *************** Thanks as ever for your support! Mark From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 31 20:41:48 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 19:41:48 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] PG Canada - *May* news summary (fwd) Message-ID: Here is the news from PG Canada for May. We published a total of 18 ebooks during the month: we have now published a cumulative total of 325 ebooks. The New Releases section at the top of the PGC main page always gives the details of new releases for the most recent three months. LANGUAGES: - 15 in English - 3 in French GENRES - 7 novels - 4 history books - 2 cookbooks - 1 book of essays - 1 dictionary - 1 book of poetry - 1 personal journal - 1 children's book 8 of this month's ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada. 9 of this month's titles were fiction, and 9 were non-fiction. April saw the posting of two further titles by the famous English novelist and essayist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), courtesy of Distributed Proofreaders Europe. May was notable for the posting of our first titles by the famous missionary, explorer, historian, and linguist Adrien-Gabriel Morice (1859-1938), celebrated in the annals of British Columbia, and of the Canadian historian Ernest Alexander Cruikshank (1854-1939). Authors new to PGC this month included: Bennet, Robert Ames (1870-1954) [American novelist] Bosse, Sara [n?e Eaton] (1868-1940) [Canadian author] and Watanna, Onoto [Reeve, Winnifred Eaton: n?e Eaton, Winnifred] (1875-1954) [Canadian novelist] Boucher-Belleville, Jean-Philippe [Jean-Baptiste] (1800-1874) [Journaliste canadien] Cody, Hiram Alfred (1872-1948) [Canadian priest, novelist, and biographer] Cruikshank, Ernest Alexander (1854-1939) [Canadian historian] Dionne, Narcisse-Eutrope (1848-1917) [Historien, lexicographe et biblioth?caire canadien] Hodgson, William Hope (1877-1918) [English novelist and poet] Isle, June (active around 1864) [American children's author] Lighthall, William Douw (1857-1954) [Canadian lawyer, politician, historian, novelist, philosopher, and poet] Monck, Frances Elizabeth Owen (d. 1919) [Irish memoirist] Morice, Adrien-Gabriel (1859-1938) [Missionnaire, explorateur, ethnologue et lexicographe canadien] O'Duffy, Eimar Ultan (1893-1935) [Irish playwright, novelist, and economist] Wallace, Edgar [Wallace, Richard Horatio Edgar] (1875-1932) [English novelist, playwright, and screenplay writer] *************** Thanks as ever for your support! Mark From hart at pglaf.org Sun Jun 21 07:41:56 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:41:56 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--June 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 42 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 6 months, 14 seasons or 42 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions. Headline News More eBooks To More People Via More Hardware and Software The 39th year of Project Gutenberg will begin July 4th, 2009-- and we will once again be one of larger sponsors of The World eBook Fair at http://www.worldebookfair.org, which will reach the neighborhood of ~2.5 million eBooks from July 4 to August 4, starting in about two weeks. One of the major developments this year is the advance in the variety of hardware and software methods of reading eBooks in more circumstances, more locations, and, of course, with more eBooks in wider and wider circulation. We will be sending out a special edition of this Newsletter a few weeks from now dedicated to these. Our 25,000th eBook In English Will Be Coming Up Shortly If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, etc., about how we might commemorate this event, please let us know. We Just Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions??? iPhone Acquisition As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options. A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the widest variety of readers. Some interesting notes about eBooks of various varieties: National archives reviews purchases of paper materials in digital age Library and Archives Canada has put a moratorium on buying paper documents and books for its collection. Full Story: http://links.cbc.ca/a/l.x?T=jncickgjiekjmplpgobfifjajd&M=36 ... Google Books Improves - http://www.slaw.ca/2009/06/18/google-books-improves/ Google Books has released a number of improvements designed to make reading and sharing their material easier. The Books blog, Inside Google Book Search lists seven changes: - embedding and links - From the new toolbar on a Books page you can copy a link to the source or the html necessary to produce an iframe in your blog or web page that will embed the source. - improved search - There's now more context around your search terms, and you can rank your search results by relevance as well as page order. - thumbnail view - More useful, perhaps, where images are involved, you can see an overview in thumbnails of the book you're examining. - drop-down menu - The drop-down menu displays links to the various divisions within the book. - plain text mode - Viewers can turn off the html mode and work simply with plain text. - page turn animation - This feature, invoked by clicking at the bottom of the screen, simulates a more natural progression through the book. - improved book overview - There's more data about the book offered on the overview page. British Library Publishes Online Archive of 19th-Century Newspapers Maev Kennedy The Guardian Thursday 18 June 2009 A shorter URL for the above link: Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online today, part of the vast British Library collection. The 49 British national and regional titles cover events including the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 "Vague reports have been made of the numbers slain on both sides ... We should not quote them if our silence could prevent the spreading of disastrous intelligence", the Morning Chronicle reported. There was also the banks crisis of 1878, the first FA Cup final in 1872, and the triumph of the music hall star Vesta Tilley in a talent contest. The site holds journals including the True Crime of its day, the Illustrated Police News which covered the Jack the Ripper murders. The British Library worked in partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, to create the service. Searches are free, but users can pay to download information. ["Can pay"??? I wonder if that translates into "must pay," unless one is a certain kind of member or the like?] Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100 books done nearly every single week. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites This week: day | cnt ----------------+----- Sun 2009-06-14 | 6 Mon 2009-06-15 | 13 Tue 2009-06-16 | 2 Wed 2009-06-17 | 16 Thu 2009-06-18 | 6 Fri 2009-06-19 | 12 Sat 2009-06-20 | 13 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. Grand total for today: 29082 24519 English en 1434 French fr 584 German de 505 Finnish fi 423 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 329 Portuguese pt 241 Spanish es 200 Italian it Not to mention PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe.... Total increase +287 All Reported Languges and from the previous month. . . . Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide [2 months] 29,082 up 283 PG General Automated Count 1,767 up 7 PG of Australia 637 up 6 PG of Europe 2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. 325 up 36 PG of Canada, End of May. ====== 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note Without counting PrePrints, we are still over 30,000 and some of the new .lit collection will not make it under our current rules of addition from PrePrints, and would be deleted from PrePrints without moving to other listings. Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 From hart at pobox.com Fri Jul 17 17:58:11 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:58:11 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby at pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pobox.com Sun Jul 26 21:02:00 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:02:00 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] PG Canada - *June* news summary Message-ID: Here is the news from PG Canada for June. We published a total of 15 ebooks during the month: we have now published a cumulative total of 340 ebooks. The New Releases section at the top of the PGC main page always gives the details of new releases for the most recent three months. LANGUAGES: - 13 in English - 2 in French CANADIAN CONTENT - 7 of this month's 15 ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada. FICTION/NONFICTION - 8 fiction - 7 nonfiction GENRES - 3 novels - 3 books of essays - 2 biographies (one of them an autobiography) - 2 children's books - 2 manuals - 1 book of short stories - 1 book of poetry - 1 book of geography To complement our recent edition of the later volumes of Proust's cycle of novels ? la recherche du temps perdu, we published a 1927 set of reviews and articles on Proust by his contemporary Paul Souday (1869-1929). We also published "Sister Teresa" (1909 version) by Irish novelist and art critic George August Moore (1852-1933), and the 1925 edition of his monumental three-part autobiography "Hail and Farewell". Authors new to PGC this month included: Auzias-Turenne, Raymond (1861-1940) [?crivain et diplomate fran?ais] Chase, Alvin Wood (1817-1885) [American physician and entrepreneur] Dunham, Bertha Mabel (1881-1957) [Canadian librarian and novelist] Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) [American novelist] Johnson, Clifton (1865-1940) [American author and photographer] Lindsey, Charles (1820-1908) [Canadian journalist] Moore, George Augustus (1852-1933) [Irish novelist and art critic] Souday, Paul (1869-1929) [Critique litt?raire fran?ais] Sterrett, Virginia Frances (1900-1931) [American illustrator] Verga, Giovanni (1840-1922) [Italian novelist] *************** Thanks as ever for your support! Mark __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From hart at pobox.com Sun Aug 9 07:19:39 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 06:19:39 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gmonthly] !@! Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook Message-ID: As of today: 24902 English We are asking for suggestions for #25,000!!! We probably have just over 10 days. . . . Thanks!!! Michael From hart at pobox.com Mon Aug 24 07:18:21 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:18:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Aug. 24, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 40 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 4 months, 13 1/3 seasons or 40 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions. Headline News We just released our 25,000th English Project Gutenberg eBook as "Merriam-Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 1913" For those of you unfamiliar with Merriam-Websters, this was the dictionary started by Noah Webster and model of all dictionaries bearing his name, though I should warn you that no official connection is required under law-- as he did not trademark his name. I am having a little trouble writing up press releases, and would appreciate any possible assistance as below: /// Massive Dictionary Is Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook The 1913 Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary marks a watershed in both the eBook world and paper publication. This is one of the finest dictionaries of all time, with as much history in its previous editions as those from a later period that now includes nearly a whole century. This dictionary, one of the world's greatest, is free of all charges, new and improved, and in the public domain, just waiting for you to download and own your own copy. In paper, this is one of the massive dictionaries movies use when they want to impress people, weighing so much a stand is usually provided at libaries, etc. Literally a potential murder weapon beyond the mythical blunt object usually associated with movie whodunits. However, for those who understand this dictionary, it is a source of a major portion of their educaction enabling a reader to follow links from one definition to another, until one understands why the same symbol is used for an element: copper, a planet: Venus, and the symbol for a human female. . .and education in itself, from the later 1950 edition edition, but not from current editions that have been pared down to a more businesslike performance. All of these are available at: http://www.gutenberg.org The Details: This weekend Project Gutenberg posted its 25,000th home- grown eBook: home-grown means not including eBooks given by the various Project Gutenbergs that are springing up, including Australia [approaching 2,000], PG of Europe is approaching 650, PG of Canda is approching 500, and many more around the world. All in all, adding up all the Project Gutenberg sites in toto, not discount duplications, there are 100,000+ book titles, along with music, movies, audiobooks, etc. All in all the original Project Gutenberg has produced a total of 29,660 at the time of this release, meaning the their total in all 50+ languages they have produced will be turning 30,000 in about a month. This larger total includes nearly 1,500 books in French, about 600 in German, 500 in Finnish, over 400 in Dutch & Chinese, about 350 in Portuguese, and 250 in Spanish and the list goes on and on. If it is languages other than English that interest you: http://www.gutenberg.cc where there are over 100 languages represented in a wide variety of languages and subjects, with about 75,000 all total, approximately half of which are non-English. /// Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law will come out a month or so from now, suggestions welcome for items in any language or medium. Thanks!!! Michael /// We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions??? We are coming up on our 600th in German. . .suggestions??? iPhone Acquisition As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options. A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the widest variety of readers. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites This week: day | cnt ----------------+----- Mon 2009-08-17 | 12 Tue 2009-08-18 | 3 Wed 2009-08-19 | 13 Thu 2009-08-20 | 4 Fri 2009-08-21 | 8 Sat 2009-08-22 | 15 Sun 2009-08-23 | 10 ( Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. [Warning: this did not change overnight, so I am doubtful it is totally accurate.] Grand total for today: 29662 25002 English en 1454 French fr 597 German de 513 Finnish fi 441 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 344 Portuguese pt 253 Spanish es 203 Italian it Total increase +294 Last month +286 All Reported Languges Previous month +287 Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 29,662 up 294 PG General Automated Count 1,786 up 12 PG of Australia 644 up 3 PG of Europe 2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. [PrePrints was down when I checked, sorry] 425 up 50 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June] [No additional news from PG of Canada] ====== 34,528 up 359 Grand Total Up from last month's 34,179 up 347 Grand Total Up from previous month's 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Here is the July emergency Newsletter in toto for archiving. Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby at pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pobox.com Mon Aug 24 19:30:53 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:30:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Rosetta Stone as eBook Message-ID: We are exploring doing something on the order of public domain translations of the various Ancient Greek, Coptic, Hieroglyphs et al from The Rosetta Stone. Please advise if you would be interested in helping. We put this in Preprints: http://preprints.readingroo.ms/rosetta/ Including a README.TXT Original source: http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5Ow9Ub_BIgC&oe=UTF-8 it's also at archive.org, with raw OCR Many thanks!!! -- Greg and Michael From hart at pobox.com Sun Sep 6 07:37:31 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 07:37:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] !@! An urgent appeal to all Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg Message-ID: Please forward as you feel appropriate. Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 01:03:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Akrigg To: Michael Hart Cc: hart at pglaf.org Subject: An urgent appeal to all Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg Dear friends: I am the founder of Project Gutenberg Canada, and would like to make a special appeal to Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg. Our government is sponsoring a Copyright Consultation on future changes to the Copyright Act. This is an unprecedented request from the government for the people of Canada to express their views on copyright law. Please consider making your personal submission. In the submission which I made on behalf of Project Gutenberg Canada, I made the following five recommendations: 1. A "Safe Harbour" provision for works more than 75 years old where the life dates of the authors are not known 2. No extensions of copyright durations 3. Explicit assignment to the Public Domain of those photographs that were in the Public Domain in 1997 4. 75 year copyright for works with more than 15 authors 5. Enhanced protection of the Public Domain You can read the full PG Canada submission at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/008.nsf/eng/01390.html Your own submission should be in your own words, and can be quite short. We don't want to bury the government in spam, and truly individual submissions will have the greatest effect. There is no need to precisely mirror the recommendations I made. You will find the main Copyright Consultations page here: http://copyright.econsultation.ca/ You will find information on how to email your submission here: http://copyright.econsultation.ca/topics-sujets/show-montrer/18 You might also wish to send a copy of your submission to your Member of Parliament: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Menu=HOC The main Copyright Consultation page has information on how you can participate in the forums being conducted by the government on copyright issues, which naturally cover many issues which do not affect PG Canada, but do affect your life in other respects. The main thing is to make your submission sooner rather than later: the Copyright Consultation ends on September 13th. It appears possible that there will be a federal election in Canada this fall. Don't forget to tell your candidates that they are answerable to you when it comes to copyright law, and that you expect any future government to protect and promote the Public Domain. Thank you in advance for your help. And don't forget to make your submission! Dr. Mark Akrigg Founder, Project Gutenberg Canada _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d From hart at pobox.com Tue Sep 8 14:23:19 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 14:23:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Old Firewire Cable Needed Message-ID: What I am looking for is a device (probably a camcorder or tape deck) that will play a Mini DV tape and has a 4 pin Firewire (IEEE 1394 output) (Sony calls it i.Link and DV out, Canon calls it a Firewire port, JVC call it a DV (Firewire) port, Panasonic calls it DV port, Samsung calls it a DV port, others may call it something else) that I can borrow for a very short period to get some material off of Mini DV tapes into my computer. I have the 4 pin to 4 pin cable I need to make the connection to my computer. If there is another type of device I can play a Mini DV tape and there is cabling that will present a 4 pin Firewire to my computer I could use that also, I just don't have the cabling. From hart at pobox.com Wed Jul 29 18:56:16 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:56:16 -0000 Subject: [gmonthly] How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones Message-ID: How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones This is a request for anyone to submit ideas for little "How To's" for their particular brands and models of cell phones. Nothing fancy to start off with, just the bare bones of how to get the eBook into the phones and how to read them in comfortable ways in terms of setting font size, zoom, or the like. Eventually we hope to create "How To" files for each model, and in ways that will encourage a greater usage of the nearly 4.5 billion cell phones now in use, and to give some worthwhile uses to phones that are no longer in service, but still work well as eReaders. If your phone has WiFi built in, so much the better. If nothing more, please just send the barest outline, and we would hope to get others to fill it in to make it more user friendly. Many Many Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks If you ever do not get a prompt response, please resend, then keep resending, I won't mind getting several copies per week. From hart at pobox.com Thu Jul 30 05:16:05 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:16:05 -0000 Subject: [gmonthly] How To Read eBooks In The Most Comfortable Manner Message-ID: How To Read eBooks In The Most Comfortable Manner This is a request for anyone to submit ideas for little "How To's" for their favorite computers and programs. Nothing fancy to start off with, just the bare bones of how to get the eBooks into computers and how to read them in comfortable ways in terms of setting foreground and background colors or size, zoom and the like. Eventually we hope to create "How To" files for each of the majors in terms of both operating systems and programs. Many thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pobox.com Sun Aug 9 07:15:02 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:15:02 -0000 Subject: [gmonthly] !@! Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook Message-ID: As of today: 24902 English We are asking for suggestions for #25,000!!! We probably have just over 10 days. . . . Thanks!!! Michael From hart at pobox.com Mon Sep 21 12:17:32 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Sep. 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 39 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 3 months, 13 1/4 seasons or 39 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions, such as that there will be affordable petabytes [2021], and enough eBooks to fill an entire petabyte around the same time. Headline News New Book About eBooks Out This Week! [Quotations from the press release] "50 Benefits of Ebooks" is a lively introduction to the brave new worlds of ebooks and electronic publishing. This revised September, 2009 edition (now 50,000 words) is 25% larger than the March edition, with new chapters, and features an inspiring Afterword by Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg. A PDF version is available for sale right now. An EPUB version will be available on September 28; a paperback will be released on October 14. The price is $ 2 -- one-tenth of the paperback price. There is a special discount for senior citizens and for buyers of the March edition: $ 1. More information on how and Where to Find Free Ebooks, essay: The Google Book Search Settlement Demystified" just a couple of the new and expanded areas. For more information please visit the book's blog-site http://www.EpublishersWeekly.net To buy the book http://www.lulu.com/content/multimedia/7657277 eBook Milestones We just released our 25,000th English Project Gutenberg eBook as "Merriam-Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 1913" about a month ago, and we are now coming up on 30,000th in all languages, under U.S. Copyright Law and 35,000th created by all Project Gutenberg sites worldwide. This is not counting any of the ~75,000 eBooks available via http://www.gutenberg.cc which have been donated by many eLibraries outside the Project Gutenberg systems. In addition, Project Gutenberg of Australia is about to post its 1800th eBook, and we are coming up on #1500 of our eBooks in French. Last month: Project Gutenberg posted its 25,000th home- grown eBook: home-grown means not including eBooks given by the various Project Gutenbergs that are springing up, including Australia [approaching 2,000], PG of Europe is approaching 650, PG of Canda is approching 500, and many more around the world. All in all, adding up all the Project Gutenberg sites in toto, not discount duplications, there are 100,000+ book titles, along with music, movies, audiobooks, etc. All in all the original Project Gutenberg has produced a total of 29,660 at the time of this release, meaning the their total in all 50+ languages they have produced will be turning 30,000 in about a month. This larger total includes nearly 1,500 books in French, about 600 in German, 500 in Finnish, over 400 in Dutch & Chinese, about 350 in Portuguese, and 250 in Spanish and the list goes on and on. If it is languages other than English that interest you: http://www.gutenberg.cc where there are over 100 languages represented in a wide variety of languages and subjects, with about 75,000 all total, approximately half of which are non-English. /// Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law is a beautiful volume on birds, lavishly illustrated. Thanks!!! Michael /// We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish 600th eBook in German 1799th eBook from Project Gutenberg of Australia We are coming up on our 1500th in French. . .suggestions??? de Toqueville's Democracy? Voltaire? Others? We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions??? Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites day | cnt ----------------+----- Mon 2009-09-14 | 12 Tue 2009-09-15 | 8 Wed 2009-09-16 | 5 Thu 2009-09-17 | 10 Fri 2009-09-18 | 9 Sat 2009-09-19 | 12 Sun 2009-09-20 | 11 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. Grand total for today: 29943 25197 English en 1486 French fr 606 German de 515 Finnish fi 447 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 354 Portuguese pt 260 Spanish es 216 Italian it Total increase +281 Last month: Grand total: 29662 25002 English en 1454 French fr 597 German de 513 Finnish fi 441 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 344 Portuguese pt 253 Spanish es 203 Italian it Total increase +294 Previous month +287 All Reported Languges Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 29,943 up 281 PG General Automated Count 1,799 up 13 PG of Australia 647 up 3 PG of Europe 2,009 dn 12 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. [PrePrints was down when I checked, sorry] 450 up 25 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June] [No additional news from PG of Canada] ====== 34,848 up 310 Grand Total Last Month 34,528 up 359 Grand Total Previous month 34,179 up 347 Grand Total Up from previous month's 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Here is the July emergency Newsletter in toto for archiving. Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby at pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pobox.com Mon Sep 28 12:37:57 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:37:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Cellphone eBooks Message-ID: Does anyone have any epxerience readin ebooks on a Samsung SCH-u540 Thanks So Much!!! Michael From hart at pobox.com Wed Oct 21 09:40:32 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:40:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Oct. 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 38 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 2 months, 12 2/3 seasons or 38 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions, such as that there will be affordable petabytes [2021], and enough eBooks to fill an entire petabyte around the same time. Headline News [and lots of it!] Cell Phone Figures for Q3 of 2009 are out 1.2 Billion Cell Phones Sold in Last Year 20 Million iPhones versus 1.3 Million Macs We are going to need a new site for cellphones!!!!!!! WE NEED VOLUNTEERS TO CREATE http://www.gutenberg.org/mobile [Footnote: If we presume 4.8 billion total cellphones accounts in operation in the last year. that means 1/4 of all cellphone users got new phones last year. This constant upgrading is something I predict will keep us on a rapid increase in cellphone functions, including, but not limited to, books, calculators, browsers, etc. I heard on NPR this week that more persons read eBooks on cellphones than on computers or anything else.] 1800th eBook From Project Gutenberg of Australia 400th eBook From Project Gutenberg of Canada 35,000th Project Gutenberg eBook From All Of Our Sites As you know, two Newsletters ago we announced 25,000th in our collection of eBooks in English then last month we announced our 30,000th in all languages": counting those created or distributed under U.S. Copyright Law. This month we are are announcing the 35,000th eBook of all the various Project Gutenberg sites worldwide, and this includes Australia, Europe, Canada, etc., and the PrePrints section, which still has ~2,000. In addition we are announcing our 1,500th French eBook which is coming out at any moment, and de Toqueville's major work on "Democracy" is the one we have chosen. [At the moment of this writing the last polishing work is being done on all four volumes, and we have 1493 in our French collection already, so any moment now.] Previous details on these are included below. eBook Milestones Redux We just released our 25,000th English Project Gutenberg eBook as "Merriam-Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 1913" about a month ago, and we are now coming up on 30,000th in all languages, under U.S. Copyright Law and 35,000th created by all Project Gutenberg sites worldwide. This is not counting any of the ~75,000 eBooks available via http://www.gutenberg.cc which have been donated by many eLibraries outside the Project Gutenberg systems. In addition, Project Gutenberg of Australia is about to post its 1800th eBook, and we are coming up on #1500 of our eBooks in French. Last month: Project Gutenberg posted its 25,000th home- grown eBook: home-grown means not including eBooks given by the various Project Gutenbergs that are springing up, including Australia [approaching 2,000], PG of Europe is approaching 650, PG of Canada's approaching 500 and many more such events are taking place around the world. All in all, adding up all the Project Gutenberg sites in toto, not discount duplications, there are 100,000+ book titles, along with music, movies, audiobooks, etc. All in all the original Project Gutenberg has produced a total of 29,660 at the time of this release, meaning the their total in all 50+ languages they have produced will be turning 30,000 in about a month. This larger total includes nearly 1,500 books in French, about 600 in German, 500 in Finnish, over 400 in Dutch & Chinese, about 350 in Portuguese, and 250 in Spanish and the list goes on and on. If it is languages other than English that interest you: http://www.gutenberg.cc where there are over 100 languages represented in a wide variety of languages and subjects, with about 75,000 all total, approximately half of which are non-English. /// Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law is a beautiful volume on birds, lavishly illustrated. Thanks!!! Michael /// We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 250th eBook in Spanish 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish 600th eBook in German and our 400th eBook on PG of Canada and 1800th eBook from Project Gutenberg of Australia Our 1500th in French is expected next week. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites day | cnt ----------------+----- Wed 2009-10-14 | 6 Thu 2009-10-15 | 8 Fri 2009-10-16 | 8 Sat 2009-10-17 | 6 Sun 2009-10-18 | 2 Mon 2009-10-19 | 10 Tue 2009-10-20 | 14 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. Grand total for today: 30194 25408 English en 1493 French fr 613 German de 515 Finnish fi 449 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 361 Portuguese pt 267 Spanish es 217 Italian it Total increase: +251 Grand total for last month: 29943 25197 English en 1486 French fr 606 German de 515 Finnish fi 447 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 354 Portuguese pt 260 Spanish es 216 Italian it Total increase +281 Previous month: Grand total: 29662 25002 English en 1454 French fr 597 German de 513 Finnish fi 441 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 344 Portuguese pt 253 Spanish es 203 Italian it Total increase +294 and Previous month +287 All Reported Languges Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 30,194 up 251 PG General Automated Count 1,808 up 9 PG of Australia 656 up 9 PG of Europe 2,008 dn 1 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42] 410 dn 40 Posted #400 on October 10 [No additional news from PG of Canada] [Note previous estimate was 50 too high] ====== 35,076 up 278 [Including correcting above estimate] Last Month 29,943 up 281 PG General Automated Count 1,799 up 13 PG of Australia 647 up 3 PG of Europe 2,009 dn 12 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. [PrePrints was down when I checked, sorry] 450 up 25 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June] [This estimate was at least 50 too high] ====== 34,848 up 310 Grand Total Last Month Before That 34,528 up 359 Grand Total Previous month 34,179 up 347 Grand Total Up from previous month's 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calculating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pobox.com Thu Nov 5 10:04:09 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 10:04:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gmonthly] New Project Gutenberg Newsletter Format Message-ID: New Project Gutenberg Newsletter Format Project Gutenberg Prose Newsletter November 5th, 2009 Please allow me to introduce our new Newsletter Editor, Andrea Kobeszko: Andrea Crisp and also to introduce our new Newsletter format, which, as requested is going to be shorter due to being bi-weekly, the 5th and 21st of months. The 5th will be dedicated mostly to articles, the 21st to statistics. Please send replies directly to both Andrea and hart at pglaf.org. Now for the new Newsletter. "Through literacy you can begin to see the universe." Grace Slick In this Issue: -An interview with Michael Hart -Libraries check out the eBook - by Andrea Kobeszko -The Net has gone mobile - Guest writer Michael Hart shares his thoughts -What does the future hold? - by Andrea Kobeszko -Zoe Blade's new Gutenberg site needs volunteers -More calls for volunteers -eBook News Bytes -What's new at PG? AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL HART -Andrea Kobeskzo & Michael Hart ? I recently had the privilege of interviewing Michael Hart, former editor and founder of Project Gutenberg. In our interview, Michael discusses the future of PG, and looks back on how it has evolved through changing times. -So why are you passing the editor torch? This isn't the first time. It's mostly to get PG used to not depending on me so much. I have tried as hard as I dare, not to be a central figure by voicing my own opinions other than to balance others. I don't really mind doing the Newsletter, but I like to see more other points of view, styles, perspectives, interest, etc. -Project Gutenberg has had a long and tumultuous road. How do you feel the face of PG has changed or evolved through the years? Believe it or not, I never thought of it as tumultuous. Yes, there were a few years of hard times, but that's my life's story, but since I never let us get addicted to money it never made a difference when there wasn't any. How has PG evolved? Well, from 1971 to 1988-89 no one paid any attention so it was just me with tilting at windmills, but I knew eBooks and eLibraries should be two of the great wonders of an entirely new world, so I was never tempted to give up-- never. I just had to wait for the world to catch up. Believe it or not people were still saying eBooks were never going to make it just a few years ago. Look for a quote in the Wall St. Journal: "Ebooks are never going to make it." Before that the NY Times: look for: "twitchy" screen. However now that it's obvious they are moving eBooks on their own, but I can't tell how serious they are. They may just be following the rule of simple reporting: "Follow The Money." If eBooks fall flat will they all just move on and pretend there was never any interest? The first goal of PG was just to prove eBooks feasible. My own estimations were that it would take about 10,000, and that seems to have proved correct as Google called me in to advise them ASAP after we hit 10,000, and we went to do just that on December 14, 2003: and they announced they had invented eBooks and eLibraries December 14, 2004. However, they did the opposite, or rather exact opposite of what I said they should do and look what happened. Most of the big legal fray is because they were more money oriented, and as such may have intentionally played the copyright cards that got them in the big legal hassles. If they had started out by emphasizing the public domain it probably would have worked out a lot better for them in the press as the good will they would have built up would have gone a long way. Personally, I am OK with nearly any eBook format that is compact and search quote friendly. -You've achieved a lot toward the cause of digitizing public works. Do you feel that one achievement stands out above the rest? One thing was just keeping such a vastly different bunch of diverse persons working more or less together for so long. . . . This was pretty much that first example of what is now so popular, international virtual cooperation. One of my personal favorites was doing our 100th eBook: The Complete Works of Shakespeare. . . . I will probably always remember that all nighter, as we finished up months of very intense work to do it on time. Another favorite was doing our own translation of Siddhartha, then fighting off Hermann Hesse's copyright lawyers!!! -Where do you see Project Gutenberg in ten years? In twenty? By 2020 we will be buying petabyte drives, not terabytes. We'll have enough space to hold a billion eBooks of a million characters. Yes, they will pass more laws against it. In fact we are working on publicizing the next one already. The biggest tragedy was Larry Lessig at The Supreme Court. Look that one up, find out who he represented before Eldred. By 2030 a billion eBooks. . . .here is how it would/could/should happen: 10 million public domain eBooks free on the Net. . .that's 40% of them. [Just ask any information professional. . .there are ~25 million] 100 languages. . .that's 40% of those with over a million speakers. [Just ask any languages professional] 10 million eBooks translated into 100 different languages equals: ONE BILLION eBOOKS. Common people will be able to buy a petabyte drive to put it on in 2020, just as we now buy terabyte drives that hold a million eBooks. The laws will be tested as it becomes more and more obvious that there is no longer any copyright expiration. . .ever. . .permanent copyright! It will cost more than Iraq, more than Wall St. Each 20 years of copyright extension removes a million public domain books, not to mention newspapers, magazines, music, movies, etc., etc., etc. If you count a lifetime of access to one of those million books worth $.01, then think how much it costs 300 million people to lose a million books each, as public domain, for their entire lifetimes. The powers that be don't want a very literate well educated public. Did you ever watch Roots? Remember the slave who went to Harvard Law School?? I'm afraid that the following catch phrase will take on ever more meaning: "The Information Age:? For Whom?? Only Those Who Can Pay For It?" The goal of Project Gutenberg has always been to create "An Information Age" not as something on the order of "The Digital Divide," but something greater in terms of bringing literacy and education to the masses free of all charge and in a way the vast majority can access instantly. To this end my current goals are ever increasing cellphone accessibility and translation into more languages. WARNING: Get a phone with Wi-Fi or else the cost factor will enter into the equation, and use free Wi-Fi, of course. There are already ~4.5 billion active cellphones, with about 1.2 billion new ones being sold every year. Soon nearly everyone who wants one will have it and more and more of them will be suitable for eBooks. . .just go to bottoms of the pages when you locate books at http://www.gutenber.org and you should see the last sections is all eBook formats. The last is the newest and it's quite a hit: try QiOO and let me know how you like it. Don't forget to try the white on black reading feature, easy on the eyes. ? LIBRARIES CHECK OUT THE EBOOK By: Andrea Kobeszko Across the U.S., thousands of libraries are embracing eBooks. No longer the familiar home of tomes and periodicals only, these foundations are now using new technology for more than just computerizing their catalogues. Libraries, like so many other businesses of the book, are eager to attract the digitally savvy new generation. This downloadable wave has been a gradual transition for the library, and the books of yesterday are not yet extinct. The New York Public library currently offers over 17,000 eBook titles, just a fraction of their 800,000 circulating print titles. Comparing these numbers, it's obvious that eBook acquisitions still represent a small percentage of their budget. [But this budgetary expense will never need another copy. mh] ? Why the seeming reticence to stock up on eBooks? It's not only because the library still clings to the spine (pardon the pun) of its institution, which lies in the not so modern, good old fashioned pages of yester-year. The road to eBook downloads, as history has proven (i.e. Google) is often a bumpy one. One obstacle libraries face is the inability to keep up with new devices now dominating the industry. Although most libraries offer eBooks that are compatible with computers, Sony Reader and a handful of other digital devices, many of their downloadable offerings cannot be read on Amazon's Kindle or the Apple's iphone, both very popular e-readers. Another issue slowing down eBook acquisitions for libraries is the publishers themselves. Many publishers are thus far loath to permit eBook versions of their print copies to be allowed in libraries, due to concerns it will decrease sales of their print editions. This decision comes despite the fact that checking out a downloadable eBook greatly mirrors a checkout of a print copy. Instead of physically walking out of a library with book copy in hand, all is done at home, or anywhere else, with a digital device. The differences, in the instance of library patronage, seem more academic than financial. Yet even in the wake of these problems, eBook circulation is expanding at an amazing rate. eBook checkouts have increased to more than one million in 2009, up from 600,000 in 2007, according to OverDrive. eBooks are quickly proving an unstoppable force, and opening the floodgates have given libraries the chance to increase readership and cater to a new age of information seekers. Downloading a book in the comfort of home is no longer just a concept for most. It's a daily reality. For libraries, it is still a relatively new venture, riddled with many obstacles, but even more opportunities. THE NET HAS GONE MOBILE by Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg, Inventor of eBooks Those on the leading edge witnessed a watershed breakthrough milestone this week as the first reports came in indicating that the greater new mobile access to the Internet. . .great. . .greater. . .greatest. The most obvious bell they heard ringing was the sound of iPhone apps, with a first time ever report that there are now more eBooks apps than game apps for the iPhone and related hardware. This only a half year after Steve Jobs, one of my heroes, said that it was not in Apple's interest to support eBooks because no one reads. "The Time's They Are A'Changin'." With ~4.5 billion active cell/mobile phones in the world plus the fact that laptop computer sales surpassed desktop computer sales years ago, it should have been obvious that the majority of Internet access would be from mobile devices. . .right? The pundits seem to have missed this one.? Sometimes even Steve Jobs. People are reading eBooks, and doing everything else on the Net from a majority of devices that are now mobile. If you have a web site and haven't yet figured out that you need to do a mobile version of that website, you are probably losing traffic. 1.2 billion cell/mobile phones were sold in the last four quarters and that was even in the middle of this huge recession. Netbooks have taken off as the next big thing. University library employees tell me that every other student there is on a laptop computer. . .50%, in a building filled with books and that so much traffic is going through that it slows the huge bandwidth of a major university location down to slower that what you get at home. The research center where our weekly Geek Lunches take place recently, very recently, upgrade their wifi so I got 2 megabytes per second, and it took only a couple weeks before everyone else realized this and set up their wifi connections to the point where it is a quarter as fast. Let's face it. . .mobile computing has taken over the world while most of us weren't paying enough attention to notice. What Are The Results? The first result is that the major sites have had to address a devices rush that makes The Gold Rush and rush hour look like a standstill. Believe it or not there are already sites that are prepared to receive people connecting from over ONE THOUSAND DIFFERENT MOBILE DEVICES! Why? Because these people want the traffic. As many of you know, I have been pushing cellphone/mobile eBooks for a number of years and I test more phones on http://www.gutenberg.org, at every opportunity. Why? Because it is obvious that we are going to get more eBook readers from cell/mobile phones than from computers. If we do not present a site that looks and acts decent to their phone, such people will simply head off to the next eBook site, lost forever, or close enough to forever, in a world moving so quickly. Therefore, I am asking YOU to test how YOUR PHONE works on our site in the near future and to write me about how it works, how it will better work in YOUR OPINION if we make certain adjustments, etc.? This is BIG in terms of the fact that the site may look and act differently to the device YOU use than any other, and even acts totally differently via a different piece of browsing software on the very same hardware.? Thus, I suggest/ask that you try various browsers, as well. In the last 24 hours I tried two different browsers on the same phone, and the one that came with the phone made Project Gutenberg Home Pages look totally empty until you scrolled down countless times, while that one we downloaded and installed ourselves worked just dandy. Go figure. Why? Because each device sends a line to the web site called a "User Agent" to tell the site what kind of device it is and how to talk to it, only some send such a poor set of instructions that we have to rewrite some or all of the page just for that one single device. That's the project I have set out for Project Gutenberg right now. Given that there are over ONE THOUSAND such devices, we need help. WILL YOU PLEASE HELP US GIVE YOU EBOOKS IN A BETTER WAY??? Thank You!!! Michael S. Hart WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? A commentary by: Andrea Kobeszko Never was it so apparent to me how drastically our culture has changed then on one early afternoon at my local hair salon. I had arrived early, sat and immediately scanned the table for the most topical magazine. I found one, opened it and glanced fleetingly at my seatmates. There were four. One talked on her cell-phone, one text-messaged on her cell-phone, one stared off into space and the last well-kept lady tapped furiously on her blackberry, then stared at it as if she had discovered a long lost Rosetta stone. It dawned on me then how much had changed. I flashed back to another era, little more than a decade prior, when I would sit at the salon and sift through magazines. The women around me did likewise, back then. We had flipped pages in solidarity, making the most of our time in limbo by perusing whatever was available, be it recent news or even, for some, simple entertaining gossip. But that was last decade, and the years leading up to this one had brought a steady decline in my witness of people casually perusing at the salon, in my physician's waiting room, at the line in the market, or even in the bookstores I frequented. My generation, hedging insidiously over middle-age, had witnessed perhaps most closely the dawning of the digital takeover. We had found ourselves immersed in new technologies we could enjoy and grasp for the most part, although our children probably understood it better. So much speed and convenience and entertainment, but what of the aftermath?? Reading and writing skills continue to decline in he United States. Could this new era come at the cost of literacy? Books may not be dead. They're just gathering dust on library shelves. Alarmists would claim that our society is crumbling. Perhaps this is not the case, but what does the future hold when leading universities begin clearing out books to make room for computer workstations? Times have changed, irrevocably, inevitably. The cold, hard truth is that the future lies less in the written page, and more on the screens of computer monitors and handheld digital devices. I will play the role of the idealist, and say that this evolution of technology has paved the way for an evolution of literacy, or in simpler terms, an evolution of the genre of literature. Can a conduit designed to bring the printed page to a computer screen, or even a cell phone, become literature's saving grace? Our children can still learn of Shakespeare, and still be enriched by Jules Verne, if in a way vastly different then we as children discovered them. In light of this, the future looks bright indeed. Literacy will not go the way of the dinosaur. Classic works of literature can, and have, taken a contemporary form, in an era of technology capable of delivering the wonderful stuff of books to nearly anyone on the globe in the blink of an eye, or the push of a button. ZOE BLADE'S PROJECT NEEDS VOLUNTEERS Hi! My name is Zoe Blade and I'm working on a project to format Gutenberg's eBooks. By taking Gutenberg's e-books, applying Wikipedia-style formatting to them, then saving them on this new website, we'll make it possible for computers to automatically convert these eBooks into a variety of other formats. This should make them much easier for the general public to find and read. I'd be very grateful if anyone would join me in copying existing Gutenberg eBooks into this new site. The site's address is: http://pg.writerpilot.com/ There's step-by-step documentation on the site. All you will need is an account, which I'll be happy to set up for you. Please let me know if you'd like to help out with this new project, and I'll set up your account right away. You can e-mail me at: zoe at bytenoise.co.uk Thank you very much, Zoe Blade CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS In addition to Zoe Blade's project, PG is looking for volunteers in a number of fields. If you're interested in submitting an article for our newsletter, or would like to donate your time in some other way, please contact editor at pg-news.org. EBOOK NEWS BYTES: The latest eBook news tidbits. Click the links to find out more! The Google Books saga continues: Judge requests Google, authors and publishers to submit a negotiated settlement by November 9th. Read the article for more details: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/6177558/google-authors-to-submit-revised-book-deal-nov-9/ Barnes & Noble launches eReader: The Nook. [Well, almost. I go every week to see it, but they've never had one yet.] It's a lot like the Kindle, but with a touchscreen. Read the article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/barnes_and_noble_nook_launch_details_specs.php iphone makes its presence known: See how it's stacking up against tough competitors like Kindle, and how it's impacted Nintendo DS! http://gigaom.com/2009/11/01/iphone-e-book-reader/ PG NEWS Looking for the latest news and stats from Project Gutenberg? You;ll find them in our next newsletter, scheduled for publication on November 21st. From hart at pglaf.org Sat Nov 21 15:11:56 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:11:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Nov. 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 37 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 1 months, 12 1/3 seasons or 37 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions, such as that there will be affordable petabytes [2021], and enough eBooks to fill an entire petabyte around the same time. 40 Years Ago The Following Just Got Started The Lunar Landings The Internet Sesame Street Wendy's Hamburgers Only about 1/3 of Project Gutenberg readers are U.S. We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 250th eBook in Spanish 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish 600th eBook in German and our 400th eBook on PG of Canada and 1800th eBook from Project Gutenberg of Australia Our 1500th in French is expected right about now. It is the four volume set of de Toqueville's "Democracy." Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites day | cnt ----------------+----- Sat 2009-11-14 | 6 Sun 2009-11-15 | 4 Mon 2009-11-16 | 6 Tue 2009-11-17 | 9 Wed 2009-11-18 | 3 Thu 2009-11-19 | 6 Fri 2009-11-20 | 5 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. Grand total for today: 30399 25587 English en 1498 French fr 614 German de 515 Finnish fi 451 Dutch nl 404 Chinese zh 371 Portuguese pt 268 Spanish es 218 Italian it Compared to Last Month's Grand total for today: 30194 25408 English en 1493 French fr 613 German de 515 Finnish fi 449 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 361 Portuguese pt 267 Spanish es 217 Italian it Total increase: +205 Previous increase: +254 Earlier increase +281 and Total increase +294 and Previous month +287 All Reported Languges Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! /// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide Grand total for today: 30399 25587 English en 1498 French fr 614 German de 515 Finnish fi 451 Dutch nl 404 Chinese zh 371 Portuguese pt 268 Spanish es 218 Italian it 30,399 up 205 PG General Automated Count 1,823 up 15 PG of Australia 662 up 6 PG of Europe 2,008 -- 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42] 417 9 Posted #400 on October 10 [No additional news from PG of Canada] [Note previous estimates were 50 too high] [We now have numbers for July thru August] July: 14 (Title 349 to 362) August: 16 (Titles 363 to 378) September: 17 (Titles 379 to 395) October: 13 (Titles 396 to 408) November: 9 [up to November 21] ====== 35,311 up 235 [Including correcting above estimate by 2] Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calculating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg From hart at pglaf.org Sat Nov 21 15:27:50 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:27:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gmonthly] About Wattpad eBooks Message-ID: Rather than including this with the monthly statistics, we are preenting this as a separate email to make this easy to save and reference. From: http://www.wattpad.com/about In 2006, we set out to revolutionize the way people publish and read written material. Today, Wattpad is the most popular ebook community for readers and writers to discover, share and connect. With over 4 million downloads, Wattpad is also the world's most widely used mobile ebook application. Using your web browser or mobile phone, you have instant access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, poetry, essays and more. With just a few clicks, you can share your own written work with people around the world. With the growing demand for ebooks and mobile reading, this represents a great opportunity for writers everywhere. Your work is just waiting to be discovered! The Wattpad Team Ivan is one of the co-founders of Wattpad. He is the technical guru behind the scenes. The cool features you see on here are most likely done by him. On the rare occasion that he is not working on a new feature, he loves to read fantasy, mystery and science fiction stories (on Wattpad of course). He is also pretty good writer. Check out his stories on his profile. Allen is one of the co-founders of Wattpad. He handles the business side of things. Like most Wattpaders, he loves to read. He is working on his first story in his spare time. Check out his profile and see if it's ready yet. Eva is responsible for our international and community efforts. When she is not chatting with Wattpaders scattered across 24 time zones, she enjoys reading romance stories on her Wattpad iPhone app. Check out what she's reading on her profile. /// Here are some notes forwarded from Allen: > Founded in 2006, Wattpad's vision is to revolutionize the way people publish > and read written works. The material on Wattpad is created by the community > of users. Anyone can publish what they have written - a romantic story, a > fan fiction, poetry or a novel - and read by anyone. All the content can be > easily accessed on Wattpad's website (www.wattpad.com), mobile site > (m.wattpad.com) or through the Wattpad application that supports over 1,000 > phone models including Nokia, BlackBerry, Apple iPhone, Google Android, > Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo and more. > > Wattpad has experienced explosive growth since its inception. Wattpad is > now the world's most popular ebook community where readers and writers > discover, share and connect, delivering billions of pages from its library > of over 200,000 ebooks created by the community. Wattpad generates more than > 3.5M visits and 30M page views per month from its websites. With over 4 > million downloads, Wattpad is also the most widely used mobile ebook > application in the world. > > == > > In more lament terms - we are "YouTube for ebooks" and "MySpace for > writers". We want to provide a friction-free way for writers to publish > their content without any intermediary. Writers can retain copyright of > their works, although they can also specify that their works are public > domain or CC. We DO NOT welcome copyright infringing material. On average > we have 20K uploads per month. Due to the high volume it is impossible for > us to investigate each upload and verify that it is not copyright > infringing. As such, we work with large trade publishers to implement > filters to ensure that copyright infringing uploads are blocked. Today, we > have over 150K "signatures" in our filter. Our community of writers and > users also report inappropriate uploads to us. This "wiki-like" model has > been very effective. > > We also invest a lot in our international and mobile effort. We support > over 20 languages. Also, since the beginning we recognize that majority of > the world's population cannot speak English or don't have a desktop > computer. That's why we want to support all the major languages as well as > virtually all phone models. Today, half our traffic is from mobile. Our > traffic is also equally split between developing and developed countries. > > Unlike project Gutenberg, we are a for-profit organization. That said, I > don't see there is any problem in helping the world to eliminate illiteracy > while making a profit at the same time. From hart at pglaf.org Mon Dec 21 14:58:47 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:58:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Message-ID: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Dec. 21, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 36 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 0 months, 12 0/3 seasons or 36 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions, such as that there will be affordable petabytes [2021], and enough eBooks to fill an entire petabyte around the same time. Welcome To Our Newest PG Mirror. . .In Africa!!! Continent: Africa Nation: Namibia Location: Windhoek Provider: Polytechnic of Namibia Url: http://gutenberg.polytechnic.edu.na Url: http://ftp.polytechnic.edu.na/pub/gutenberg The mirror is updated thrice daily. PROJECT GUTENBERG TAG CLOUD We invite interested persons to visit a tag cloud visualization and search system at www.bookdownloadlibrary.com This is updated weekly, from the Project Gutenberg catalog. IPHONE SOUGHT Project Gutenberg is seeking donation of an iPhone, and perhaps other modern cell phones and eBook readers. We are working on some new versions of content at www.gutenberg.org These need to work, including in Europe , but without having a paid cell phone plan. In other words, they need to be unlocked or unlockable. We are particularly interested in devices that have built-in WiFi, so they can access content at www.gutenberg.org without using the cellular network at all. Project Gutenberg is a charitable 501(c)(3) organization in the US. From: John M Mizzi Subject: Gutenberg Books on Facebook I did a facebook application called Book Gift which is of course for free. It works by someone from Facebook choosing a book and if he/she likes it she can send her/his facebook friends the book as a gift. You can also bookmark the book so you can go straight to it afterwards. If you want to see the facebook application search for Book Gift in facebook or you can go directly via: http://apps.facebook.com/book-gift/ Saved By The Bell!!! As some of you already know, I was already preparing my public apology for missing on one of my prediction that we would have terabyte "pocket drives" this year. When the noon finally came out a couple weeks after the prime time of "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday," I must admit that I was pretty sure we were NOT going to quite see the terabyte pocket drives this year. Pocket drives are the 2.5" USB drives literally of size requirements that would fit in all but small pockets, a lack of external power requirements is also a plus, but there were some that had problems in that area, though, if we are lucky, that won't be a problem now. You should be able to order online for $200 from a very wide number of locations. Speaking Of The nook I finally got to play with one but it was uncooperative in the extreme, finally taking several employees totals of perhaps 10 minutes to take their cover off, take out the battery for long enough, and put it all back. It's apparently NOT got a RESET button. . .duh. Presuming you don't have that kind of hassle, let us go to the actual reading of a book. For some reason I see no actual reason for, the books don't come preformatted for the default settings of the nook. Huh? Sorry, but when you open a book the whole thing will be totally bogged down with formatting the book for what I guess was close to a minute with one of their test book titles, "Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen. I would like to presume it only needs to do all that when first time readers open the book, but I have feeling it might need it every time you restart the nook. It might have lost all the formatting, bookmarks, etc., there was the next person in line to see it, so I didn't have all the time I would have liked to test things out. As usual with eInk, turning pages is totally a fiasco! Not to mention that "Pride and Prejudice" required page turns number about 40 to get to the start of the book-- as Barnes and Noble felt obligated to stick in all sort of title pages, copyright pages, and prefatory material to justify charging for a public domain book they quite literally might have gotten from us. OK, so, not counting the reboot it has taken a hyper me at least two minutes to get to page one of a test book, and I have to admit I was impressed with the look-feel, and the contrast was somehow better than any other eInk product, though I am not sure technically how. Perhaps the letter were larger than one might think, as I noted there really weren't all that many of them on the page, so I presume there were a LOT of pages to click. In the end, however, I could have turned on my netbook, downloaded the entire book from scratch, and been there on page one with far less hassle and clicking. Yes, they were exactly the same price. Yes, the nook is smaller. No, it doesn't do "real" WiFi in the sense that it ONLY apparently connects you to Barnes & Noble, no matter if you are using your own router's WiFi. Nothing else. I heard that you can put in books from other sources from the USB cable, but, given the other overestimation from the sales force at B&N, I would like to see it first. Even then, I am presuming there will likely be a format issue of even larger proportions than the stalling with their own demonstration books. However, I should think that if it actually worked, then a learning curve would make it somewhat easier after a while, or that you will simply learn to have something else to do for a minute, or whatever, while the nook formats each book. If your designs are like mine, to have thousand of books, which they did emphasize, that's thousands of minutes. Quite literally, you could have thousands of books with small SD Micro chips up to 16G that snap in the back, but one should be warned, they don't snap in the usual manner. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites day | cnt ----------------+----- Mon 2009-12-14 | 11 Tue 2009-12-15 | 4 Wed 2009-12-16 | 4 Thu 2009-12-17 | 10 Fri 2009-12-18 | 7 Sat 2009-12-19 | 7 Sun 2009-12-20 | 9 Last month: day | cnt ----------------+----- Sat 2009-11-14 | 6 Sun 2009-11-15 | 4 Mon 2009-11-16 | 6 Tue 2009-11-17 | 9 Wed 2009-11-18 | 3 Thu 2009-11-19 | 6 Fri 2009-11-20 | 5 Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. Grand total for today: 30613 25757 English en 1520 French fr 618 German de 515 Finnish fi 453 Dutch nl 405 Chinese zh 376 Portuguese pt 270 Spanish es 220 Italian it Compared to last month's: Grand total for today: 30399 25587 English en 1498 French fr 614 German de 515 Finnish fi 451 Dutch nl 404 Chinese zh 371 Portuguese pt 268 Spanish es 218 Italian it Total increase: +214 Previous increase: +205 Previous increases: +254 +281 +294 +287 All Reported Languges Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! /// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 30,613 up 214 PG General Automated Count 1,830 up 7 PG of Australia 664 up 2 PG of Europe 2,008 -- 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42] 436 19 Posted #400 on October 10 [No additional news from PG of Canada] [Note previous estimates were 50 too high] [We now have numbers for July thru August] July: 14 (Title 349 to 362) August: 16 (Titles 363 to 378) September: 17 (Titles 379 to 395) October: 13 (Titles 396 to 408) November: 9 [up to November 21] ====== 35,551 242 [Not counting Canada's re-illustration] Last month: 35,311 up 235 [Including correcting above estimate by 2] Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calculating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg