[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed May 17 10:11:07 PDT 2006
pt1a2.506
pt1b2.506
Weekly_May_17.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, May 17, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
5,000 eBooks Converted For Cell Phone Use [see article after introduction]
[search "*Cell Phone eBooks"]
Please note: While the PrePrints site is down at the moment, earlier this
week we added 6 eBooks in Turkish, bringing our language count to 50 or to
51 if you count CAD instructions as a language for 3D printing.
*
Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart at pobox.com or gbnewby at pglaf.org
Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart at pobox.com
*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
5 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
4 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70]
6 New This Week From PG PrePrints
51 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
61 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints]
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
Project Gutenberg of Europe Passes the 300 eBook Mark!!!
19,414 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites
586 to go to 20,000!!!
18,944 at www.gutenberg.org[+51]
580 Australian eBooks [+5] [Included in above line]
308 Gutenberg Europe [+4]
162 PG PrePrint Site [+6]
61 Total New Books This Week
19,414 Grand Total of all four sites [Corrected +1]
19,418 [via my automated program, using lower est.]
~97% of the Way to 20,000
***555 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
16,288 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~257 eBooks per Month for ~63.25 Months
1,269 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites
27 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,450 total from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
[Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005
[Including PG Australia]
We Are Averaging ~284 eBooks Per Month This Year
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 67 eBooks Per Week In 2006
61 This Week
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~32 months, from 2003 to 2006 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.5 years from Oct. 2003 to Mar. 2006 from 10,000 to 19,000
[The above changes due to the opening of Project Gutenberg
sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org]
[Now including totals from Australia, Europe and PrePrints]
[Apologies, it will take a while to integrate everything
not all statistics may be totally equalized yet]
[PGEu Statistics Are Counted Monthly Not Weekly]
[Daily PGEu stats at http://dp.rastko.net/default.php]
[Daily DP stats at http://www.pgdp.net]
BTW, we just started a new "PrePrints" site at PG,
so if you come across eBooks that aren't ready for
primetime, but that should be saved for upgrading,
we have a place to put them.
http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ new site
*
~75,000 eBooks at the PG Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
*
***Introduction
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene
that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B.
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart at pobox.com and gbnewby at pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
*Cell Phone eBooks
John Michael Mizzi has always been obsessed about gadgets.
Early last year he bought a cheap java enabled cell phone
mainly to experiment and see the java capabilities of cell
phones since most modern cell phones are java enabled.
Initially his main objective was to do games on these cell
phones mainly as a hobby. After a few weeks playing on his
new toy John landed on the Guterberg site. His jaw fell in
amazement when he saw the big catalogue of eBooks that can
be downloaded and read on a PC, and he immediately got The
White Knight, by George Alfred Henty, as his first choice.
After the few hours reading the eBook on his computer John
realized there must be a better way to read eBooks without
wasting huge amounts of printer ink and paper, or breaking
his back in front of a computer.
Within a few weeks John developed his earliest prototyping
efforts to the point of being able to read these eBooks on
his cheap cell phone. He also began experimenting on ways
to deliver these eBooks to the cheap cell phones in a very
simple way without having to be a computer hacker.
Once that was developed, John began converting more of his
Gutenberg eBooks to work on the cheap java enabled phones.
To date he has already converted over 5,000 of the Project
Gutenberg eBooks from some 1,000 authors. These eBooks can
be delivered to your cheap cell phone by typing
http://wap.mobilebooks.org
in your phone's wap browser.
The WAP cost do download an ebook to your cell phone is an
unusually low price of just a few cents, as the eBooks are
compressed to further reduce the download costs.
Once downloaded there is no more cost you click on a phone
listing of your eBook and away you go.
John says it usually takes around 15 minutes for people to
to get used to the idea of reading from your cell phone.
Even though the screens seem small, it is amazing how much
text you can fit on them. You can change the font size and
background color and uses the phone numeric pad for simple
navigation through the ebooks. You can leave bookmarks for
future reference for yourself or for friends. You can also
search for text in the eBooks and all this on cheap phones
that are available all over the world. No need to buy very
expensive PDAs so you can read eBooks. A cheap java phone,
price varies greatly, will do the job. So when waiting for
nearly anything, travelling, attending boring conferences,
and even during the darkest pitch black nights, John reads
these eBooks at a level of great convenience.
John has contributed a number of these "cell phone eBooks"
to project Gutenberg and is planning to contribute more.
The main website is at http://www.mobilebooks.org
FREE INTERNET REFERENCE SITE
LivingInternet.com provides a 700-odd page reference about the Internet
"to provide living context and perspective to this most technological
of human inventions", and has received input from many people that helped
build the Internet. It currently receives about 3 thousand visitors a day,
many from educational institutions. Now in its 7th year of operation.
http://www.livinginternet.com/
TEXT TO SPEECH
Dolphin Producer is a new software package which will convert a text
document into a fully synchronized text and audio DTB at the push of a
single button. The DTB can then be played back using Dolphin's
EaseReader software player - which is included in Dolphin Producer.
The DTB can also be played back on any other DAISY DTB software or
hardware player, as well as any MP3 player - The choice is yours.
http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk or http://www.dolphinusa.com
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
MTV ENTERS ONLINE MUSIC MARKET
In what some see as a conspicuously late entry into the online music
market, MTV is set to launch URGE, an online service both for music and
videos. URGE will reportedly have more than two million tracks
available when it debuts, and, similar to competing services from
companies such as Apple and RealNetworks, consumers will be able to buy
a subscription for unlimited downloads or pay for individuals tracks.
Analysts noted that MTV's brand recognition should boost the appeal of
the URGE service. URGE will be the featured music source for
Microsoft's media player, and URGE songs are compatible with a wide
range of portable devices. The exception, however, is the hugely
popular iPod, of which Apple has sold more than 50 million since 2001.
Steve Gordon, entertainment attorney, said, "Whether the consumer
really wants a service that's only compatible with non-iPod players is
going to be the big issue." Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks
Music Group, pointed out that the online music industry remains new and
said that URGE is not "about selling a million singles."
San Jose Mercury News, 15 May 2006
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/14581158.htm
STATE SCHOOLS SEE BENEFITS OF ONLINE EDUCATION
Online higher education programs are booming, and many state colleges
and universities are seeing significant benefits from the online
programs they offer. At the University of Massachusetts, for example,
enrollment in online programs has quadrupled since 2001, and enrollment
in Pennsylvania State University's online program rose 18 percent last
year. A greater number of public schools offer online programs than do
private, nonprofit colleges, which have had mixed success online. An
online initiative of Oxford University, Stanford University, and Yale
University recently closed its doors, and a number of other elite
schools have stayed away from online education, fearing it would
tarnish their reputations. Although many state schools charge more per
credit for online courses than on-campus learning, the costs are often
still lower than, for example, tuition at the University of Phoenix,
the leading for-profit online institution. Applicants to most online
programs are held to similar, if not identical, standards as on-campus
students, and most agree that the quality of online education in many
cases approaches that of on-campus learning.
Wall Street Journal, 9 May 2006
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114713782174047386.html
CHINESE STUDENTS POLICE INTERNET
In China, a government initiative known as "Let the Winds of a
Civilized Internet Blow" aims to ensure that online content conforms
to government expectations. Students at some Chinese universities are a
key part of the effort. At Shanghai Normal University, 500 students
serve as Internet monitors, participating in online discussions and
trying to steer conversations away from topics considered
objectionable. Unknown to most of the other students on campus, the
monitors also report some content to campus officials, who delete it.
One student monitor said, "Our job consists of guidance, not control."
Critics argue that the practice amounts to nothing more than the
censorship common to other areas of Chinese life. Chinese officials
acknowledged that more than two million images and 600 online forums
have been deleted for being "unhealthy." Some students dismissed the
efforts, saying that with the Internet, you can always go elsewhere
to share your opinions. "It's easy to bypass the firewalls," said one
student, "and anybody who spends a little time researching it can
figure it out." New York Times, 9 May 2006 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09internet.html
BITTORRENT AND WARNER BROS. PARTNER ON DELIVERY
A new deal between BitTorrent and Warner Bros. represents a convergence
of content providers and online distribution tools. Under terms of
the deal, Warner Bros. will sell movies and TV programs to BitTorrent,
which will sell them to consumers for download. Until last November,
BitTorrent was seen by many as part of the peer-to-peer wave that
entertainment companies blame for rampant piracy, which movie studios
value at $6.1 billion. At that time, BitTorrent said it would cooperate
with the Motion Picture Association of America in trying to limit the
trade of protected content. Now, according to Ashwin Navin, cofounder
of BitTorrent, "We have just been embraced by the largest movie
studio." The deal also represents another step by a major studio toward
online distribution of its content, a step most studios have been
hesitant to take. Pricing for the content on BitTorrent has not been
announced, and Navin said he is in talks with other providers to
offer more content.
Wired News, 9 May 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70852-0.html
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*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
[As requested adding sources, etc., when possible.
Remember, the subject is not the article's subject,
the subject is the manipulation of the world news.]
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Everything the NSA does is within the law.
*QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Senator David Vitter of Louisana reported that of all the millions
of dollars spent on roof repairs from hurricane damages, that only
2% of this money was actually paid to the people doing the repairs
and the other 98% went to the 8 layers of contractors through sub-
contract after subcontract, with each layer taking an average of a
1/3 of the money they received for themselves before passing on an
emaciated remaing 2/3 on to the next sub-contractor in the line to
leave only 2% for the final contractor actually doing the work.
Charlie Rose, PBS, May 16, 2006
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
People will react negatively when their old television won't work.
*STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
15 million videos have already been downloaded from iTunes in
addition to the over 1 billion music tracks.
iPod sales were up 61% over 1st quarter of 2005.
*
By the way, for those interested, the official U.S. population
estimates just passed 298 million, though many say estimations
of this nature leave out as much as 5% of the population, with
the obvious exclusion of the 11-12 million immigrant workers
now being mentioned so much in the news.
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
[This one is getting a little out of date, as the US population
is obviously no longer 6% of the world. In fact, rounding to the
nearest percent, the US will soon fall from 5% to 4%.]
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater]
1 would be 79 years old or more.
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
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