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 <david(a)cantrell.org.uk>
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
My apologies, but due to a massive crash and an
oversight in the programming of our backups, we
lost the mailing lists we carefully maintained:
it seems as if they were listed as SYSTEM FILES
and thus were NOT BACKED UP!!!
We have now fixed this oversight, and recommend
you check your own backups for similar errors--
as this was a professionally done program.
As a result, we need to update our lists and it
is my sad duty to once again ask you to delete,
if you like, yourself from THE MONTHLY LISTING,
as listed below.
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