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@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 http://www.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 http://www.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
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