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December 2009

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Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter
by Michael S. Hart 21 Dec '09

21 Dec '09

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(a)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

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