January 2006 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

dave said: > If they work on my projects ... > When I get tools which work half way OK, and can > get the submission process sorted to my satisfaction. actually, dave, my post was directed at project gutenberg. :+) but i'm glad you're thinking along similar lines... -bowerbird

1 0

Yorkshire Dialect
by Darren Burnhill 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

Hi, > There never was and never will be grammar or dictionaries for Yorkshire > dialect, Forgive me for pointing you toward things you already know; There are a few others (A grammar of the dialect of Windhill by Joseph Wright, etc.), but Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire by Richard Blakeborough is probably right up your street as it contains a substantial glossary. I do have a (reprint) copy that I will get round to OCRing, but i'm working my way through the 'Old Yorkshire' series first. Meanwhile there are a few copies in the Bradford system; http://www.biskit.yorks.com/ This may also be of interest: http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/ IME the dialectical variants still exist to this day. >From sunny Shipley ;)

2 1

PG Website Report for 2005
by Marcello Perathoner 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

User base and server load The PG website is ranked at position 3,842 by Alexa (Dec 31, 2005). Note that Alexa is an Amazon company and thus bookish people are overrepresented in the Alexa user base. While the absolute Alexa rank value is skewed in our favor, the trend Alexa gives is quite objective. Since Jan 1, 2005: - 2.5 times as many people are using PG and - PG is serving 2 times as many web pages. To accomodate the increased load at better response times the site was redesigned for more static pages and better caching. Rarely used features like skins were dropped in favor of better performance. Where do new users come from? Most visitors find us thru search engines. But 10% come from wikipedia. The catalog team has been active in editing appropriate wikipedia articles to point to our ebooks. If you want more people to come to PG, help us editing more wikipedia articles. Dec 2005 Visitors % Referrer URL 236011 24.20% www.google.com/ 97795 10.03% en.wikipedia.org/ 78527 8.05% search.yahoo.com/ 34796 3.57% www.promo.net/ 28997 2.97% www.google.co.uk/ 24810 2.54% www.stumbleupon.com/ 20355 2.09% www.google.ca/ 16598 1.70% search.msn.com/ 15289 1.57% www.google.de/ 13714 1.41% www.google.co.in/ Search Terms Visitors found us searching for these terms: Dec 2005 Visitors Search Term 24923 project gutenberg 18297 gutenberg 9391 gutenberg project 9176 free ebooks 6964 ebooks 4303 e books 4059 free e books 3807 free books 3489 online books 3348 project gutenburg While most of these people knew beforehand what they were looking for, some of them found us by searching for "free ebooks" or similar generic terms. I have rewritten our main page to push our ranking for the "free ebooks" search term. We are also well positioned in google for following generic search terms: Dec 2005 Pos. Search Term 2 free ebooks 2 free books 5 ebooks 15 books Some other sites rank better than PG because they have "ebook" in the domain name. This way all links to those sites must contain the target word "ebook". If you want to help pushing our rank, set links in your web pages pointing to the PG main page with the link text "free ebooks" like this: My favorite <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">free ebooks</a> site. Pretty Pictures Snapshots of Alexa statistics on Dec 31, 2005: Pageviews: http://www.gutenberg.org/internal/reports/2005/alexa.6yp.png Reach: http://www.gutenberg.org/internal/reports/2005/alexa.6yr.png Rank: http://www.gutenberg.org/internal/reports/2005/alexa.6yt.png User: internal Pass: books -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

3 3

re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

michael said: > Where can I look up things like that? i think it was in the recent report on reading out of the n.e.a. which was a hatchet job, so i'm not sure how trustworthy it is, so... but i think it's no longer a major secret that americans don't really read a lot... -bowerbird

1 0

re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

ian said: > hmm iRex is a spin off of Phillips - thats fairly deep pockets. oh, right. why do you think they didn't put the big name on it? ian said: > And besides - an ipod is $300 and it only plays music ... "only"? i'd guess people are willing to pay a lot more for music than for books. i don't have figures on music, but the number of books read annually by the average american is _one_. -bowerbird

2 1

re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

ian said: > Have you seen the just announced ebook reader > from Sony using a high res e-ink display ? i might pay $350 for a handheld with web access. but for a machine that's isolated from cyberspace? um, no thanks. next? -bowerbird

2 1

Re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Joshua Hutchinson 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Anyone heard if the BBeB format is open/documented? And even better, if anyone has created an open source converter? If these things take off, it would be nice to have the ability to generate files for them from our collection. If there is an open source converter, there is a chance we could do such a thing right on the server. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian MacLean" <imaclean(a)gmail.com> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:54:27 +0900 > > Have you seen the just announced ebook reader from Sony using a high > res e-ink display ?: > > http://blogs.reuters.com/2006/01/04/glimpse-at-new-sony-reader/ > http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/prs/reader_features.html > > They claim to have done away with the ridculous restrictions built > into their previous reader ( the libre ) and it *should* be able to > ready txt and pdf, html although these will need to be converted into > Sony's proprietry BBeB format before being transferred to the device. > > Another product out soon that will use the same e-ink technology is > the irex ER0100 : > http://www.epaper.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemi… > > which apparently will be able to display PDF, XHTML, or TXT without conversion. > > Both these devices will probably be as expensive as the Cybook but > with much higher readability of e-ink displays. > > Ian > > > On 1/13/06, Robert Sutherland <robsuth(a)robsuth.plus.com> wrote: > > Just to bring my enquiry of 8 June 05 uptodate, I continued my > > email/online enquiries as far as I could, but found no product among the DVD > > portable readers that would deal with text, nor was any of the manufacturers > > interested in producing one. Apart from the French reader Cybook (which I > > think is too expensive for the task and market although otherwise for the > > most part ideal) there seems still to be no special ebook reading device > > available in UK or the EU generally: laptops are still too big and heavy, > > and PDAs still have far too small a screen My enquiries confirmed my strong > > impression that there are protectionist interests holding this back, > > presumably in the interests of proprietary issues of ebooks. That is really > > rather to bury the head in the sand, especially now that Google are to set > > up their Library - if PG and Google are going to be fully useful a new > > device is inevitable. Can PG and Google not take a hand themselves to enable > > production of something they undoubtedly will need? > > > > Robert Sutherland > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

2 1

Ebook reading devices
by Robert Sutherland 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Just to bring my enquiry of 8 June 05 uptodate, I continued my email/online enquiries as far as I could, but found no product among the DVD portable readers that would deal with text, nor was any of the manufacturers interested in producing one. Apart from the French reader Cybook (which I think is too expensive for the task and market although otherwise for the most part ideal) there seems still to be no special ebook reading device available in UK or the EU generally: laptops are still too big and heavy, and PDAs still have far too small a screen My enquiries confirmed my strong impression that there are protectionist interests holding this back, presumably in the interests of proprietary issues of ebooks. That is really rather to bury the head in the sand, especially now that Google are to set up their Library - if PG and Google are going to be fully useful a new device is inevitable. Can PG and Google not take a hand themselves to enable production of something they undoubtedly will need? Robert Sutherland ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3 2

Re: [gutvol-d] Early ebook history info wanted
by Dick Adicks 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

When I was teaching at Georgia Tech from 1965 to 1968, Professor William Mullen in the English department there was transferring the Episcopal psalter to IBM cards, using ALGOL. Bill inspired me to take an introductory course in that computer language so that I could initiate a similar project, but I went no further with it. I don't know what become of his work, but he had accumulated many boxes of cards, with one line to every card. Dick Adicks A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.--Margaret Mead . . . if vicious people are united and form a power, honest people must do the same. --Leo Tolstoy

3 2

re: [gutvol-d] Early ebook history info wanted; "Alice"; Brown Corpus; Vannevar Bush; Asimov
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

andrew said: > a few other early PG texts, from the Walnut Creek CD ROM. > Any chance of finding one of those still floating around somewhere? i did some searching for a walnut-creek c.d. a long time back, but got nowhere. but maybe an ebay expert could help you... however, mr. noring already has solid evidence that predates that cd-rom. what he's looking for is even _earlier_ evidence... -bowerbird

3 2