In praise of eBooks (for phones and PDAs)

[editor]

If you've got a PDA or smartphone, there's a wealth of totally *free* books and reference works you can download to your device.

There's tons of great books available from sites like:

http://www.memoware.com/
http://manybooks.net/
http://www.gutenberg.org/

On my Palm Treo, I've currently got some Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, the fact-packed CIA World Fact Book, HTML and CSS references, a book of Welsh poems, an account of a 1908 tour of Britain and a surprisingly informative and well written US Army survival guide.

Of course, it's not ideal reading books on a small screen, but they can come in way handy if you're on a long train journey or stuck in a waiting room somewhere.

Anyone else using them?

 

[mack]

a surprisingly informative and well written US Army survival guide.

I actually used to own a copy of this book, I can't remember why I bought it, maybe I thought the apocolypse was around the corner?

 

[Crispy]

ebooks are great. as well as the legal sources ed mentions, there are also plenty of book pirate groups who do OCR scanning of books and compile .txt or .htm files. Of course, I couldn't possibly condone piracy and only download copies of books that I have already bought - Note that the selection is rather limited to bestsellers, sci-fi, fantasy and programming manuals, due to the geek nature of those doing the scanning.

I have the complete Arthur C Clarke, Asimov, Iain Banks (and M Banks), Terry Pratchett, Tolkein, plus loads more. Or rather I would have if it weren't illegal

 

[editor]

Dunno if it's the same one, but the Army survival guide I've got is really well written and dead interesting. I guess it was part-written by psychologists because it contains loads of "it's alright to be shitting your pants but here's how to deal with it" stuff.

 

[RaverDrew]

Has David Icke released any of his fine publications in e-form yet

 

[ivebeenhigh]

Dunno if it's the same one, but the Army survival guide I've got is really well written and dead interesting. I guess it was part-written by psychologists because it contains loads of "it's alright to be shitting your pants but here's how to deal with it" stuff.

Have you got a link for that please?

 

[editor]

Have you got a link for that please?

It's available in different formats from different sites, but here's the one I'm using:
http://www.memoware.com/?screen=doc_detail&doc_id=11164&back=main

 

[bmd]

Anyone know if there's an eBook reader been released for the Nintendo DS yet? Seriously. Its dual screens make it perfect for using it as a reader, the brain training game uses it like that, you turn it on its side.

 

[Jambooboo]

Anyone know if there's an eBook reader been released for the Nintendo DS yet? Seriously. Its dual screens make it perfect for using it as a reader, the brain training game uses it like that, you turn it on its side.

I'm sure there will have been. Know that there are homebrew PDF viewers etc for the (far superior ) PSP.