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.
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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
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