[gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter

Mon Dec 21 14:58:47 PST 2009

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 <j.mizzi at mizzisoft.com>
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