Comments on: You Can Now Download Books From Google

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:39:22 +0000

Thanks Chad. I bookmarked that site because they do have a ton of books on there. They even have Web versions of the books in case you don’t want to download the eBook.

By: Chad-)

Chad-) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:00:42 +0000

Univ of Virginia’s [etext.lib.virginia.edu] has a nice collection of ebooks for MS Reader and Palm Reader. There are web versions too many of which are illustrated
Someone over at Techcrunch suggests using Google’s translation service as a proxy. Preety cool uh.

By: Radu Capan

Radu Capan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 18:16:40 +0000

I used the links from Official Google Blog. And I can (yeee) download L’Inferno, but I can’t download Hamlet! It seems that Dante is more open to Europe, than (non-US) Shakespeare.

By: OldManDeath

OldManDeath — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 17:40:21 +0000

Ryan wrote:

OldManDeath: Sounds like you are talking about something like this.

That is exactly what I am talking about. I have seen this article in the past. The only things I do not like are the fact that it is made by Sony. Sony has a history of having proprietary things in their devices that make them fail (formats, etc.) Look the the failure of the UMD movies for the PSP. I would also want a color screen. Having used black & white versus color screen rugged PDA's for work, the color ones are much easier to read, even for plain B&W text. I am curious if you can plug a flash drive into the USB slot and it will recognize it? I could not find if it uses Sony's Memory Stick format for storagfe.

By: Inferno_str1ke

Inferno_str1ke — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 17:23:35 +0000

I agree to the point about not wanting to read at the screen – my eyes are already damaged enough. The readers that are soon to be released do well to avoid backlit screens and find different ways of displaying information – though what I would love to see is one that is the size and shape of a nice paperback, so you wouldn’t feel you were missing out on the entire book experience. I guess giving them touch screens so that English students could add notes would also increase the appeal amongst academics.

By: Alfredo

Alfredo — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:38:09 +0000

From someone outside US: No download button here…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:31:42 +0000

Radu Capan wrote:

So, if you, in the link from the article, have the text and download button, it's clear that they limit by IP.

Yep, they must be limiting your IP then but you could try to get around that by going through a proxy. There's a Firefox extension that makes it a little easier.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:25:10 +0000

OldManDeath: Sounds like you are talking about something like this.

By: Radu Capan

Radu Capan — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:24:36 +0000

“Related information”, “Bibliographic information” and “Buy this book”.

That’s all… At the link you indicate in your article I have nothing more to read. But searching “Aesop Fables” I get a list and some have “Limited preview”. Your above link is as “No Preview Available”, as can be see [books.google.com]

So, if you, in the link from the article, have the text and download button, it’s clear that they limit by IP.

Other non-US readers of this articole? Their experience?

PS: It’s not the first time when us, people outside US, have limited or no access to good stuff… It’s a way of calling us in US?

By: OldManDeath

OldManDeath — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:22:40 +0000

I have a lot of books in electronic format. However, I hardly ever read them because I do not want to sit at my computer desk reading them. Also I have yet to purchase a notebook computer and PDA’s have too small of a screen.

We need a universal ebook reader that has a screen about the same size as an american paperback book.