Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010) Part 4

January 2001 > Adobe launched the Acrobat eBook Reader

In January 2001, Adobe launched the Acrobat eBook Reader (for free) and the Adobe Content Server (for a fee). The Acrobat eBook Reader was meant to read PDF files of copyrighted books, while adding notes and bookmarks, getting the book covers in a personal library, and browsing a dictionary. The Adobe Content Server was intended for publishers and distributors for the packaging, protection, distribution, and sale of copyrighted books in PDF format, while managing their access with DRM (Digital Rights Management), according to instructions given by the copyright holder, for example allowing or not the printing and loan of ebooks. In May 2003, the Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) merged with the Acrobat Reader (5th version) to become the Adobe Reader (beginning with the 6th version).

February 2001 > A quote by Russon Wooldridge, founder of NEF (Net of French Studies)

Russon Wooldridge is a professor at the Department of French Studies in the University of Toronto, Canada, and the founder of the NEF (Net des Etudes Francaises / Net of French Studies) in May 2000. He wrote in February 2001: "My research, conducted once in an ivory tower, is now almost exclusively done through local or remote collaborations. (...) All my teaching makes the most of internet resources (web and email): the two common places for a course are the cla.s.sroom and the website of the course, where I put all course materials. I have published all my research data of the last 20 years on the web (re-edition of books, articles, texts of old dictionaries as interactive databases, treaties from the 16th century, etc.). I publish proceedings of symposiums, I publish a journal, I collaborate with French colleagues by publishing online in Toronto what they can't publish online at home." (NEF Interview)

March 2001 > IBM launched the WebSphere Translation Server

In March 2001, IBM embarked on a growing translation market with a high-end professional product, the WebSphere Translation Server. The software could instantly translate webpages, emails, and chats in several languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, j.a.panese, Korean, Spanish). It could process 500 words per second and add specific terminology to the software.

March 2001 > Palm launched the Palm Reader

In March 2001, Palm bought Peanutpress.com, a publisher and distributor of digital books for PDAs, from the netLibrary company. The Peanut Reader merged with (or became) the Palm Reader, that could be used on Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs, and the 2,000 t.i.tles from Peanutpress.com were transferred to the digital bookstore Palm Digital Media. In July 2002, the Palm Reader was also available for computers. Palm Digital Media distributed 5,500 ebooks in several languages in July 2002, and 10,000 ebooks in 2003.

April 2001 > PDAs and ebook readers: a few numbers

In April 2001, there were 17 million PDAs and only 100,000 ebook readers worldwide, according to a Seybold Report. 13,2 million PDAs were sold in 2001. Palm was the leader, despite fierce compet.i.tion, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. In 2002, 36.8% of all PDAs were Palm Pilots. The Palm Pilot's main compet.i.tor was Microsoft's Pocket PC. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7% PDAs). In 2004, prices began to drop. The leaders were the PDAs of Palm, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard, followed by Handspring, Toshiba, and Casio. Smartphones became more and more popular then, and the sales of PDAs began to drop. Sony stopped selling PDAs in February 2005.

October 2001 > The Wayback Machine, launched by the Internet Archive

In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for users to be able to surf the archive of the web by date. In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion webpages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion webpages in 2008, and 150 billion webpages in March 2010. Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that has built an "internet library" to offer permanent access to historical collections in digital format for researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. Since then, an archive of the web has been stored every two months or so.

2001 > Creative Commons, to adapt copyright to the web

Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence "Larry" Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained on its website in 2009: "Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof." There were one million Creative Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7 million in 2004, 20 million in 2005, 50 million in 2006, 90 million in 2007, 130 million in 2008, and 350 million in April 2010.

2001 > Nokia 9210 was the first smartphone

The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001. It was followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Smartphones quickly became popular while sales dropped for PDAs. In February 2005, Sony stopped selling PDAs.

Smartphones represented 3,7% of all cellphones sold in 2004, and 9% in 2006, with 90 million smartphones sold for one billion cellphones.

January 2003 > The Public Library of Science, a publisher of free high- quality online journals

In early 2003, the Public Library of Science (PloS) -- founded in October 2000 - created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture to provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile online journals in which to publish their work. The journals were PloS Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine (2004), PLoS Genetics (2005), PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical Trials (2006), and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2007), the first scientific journal on this topic. All PloS articles are freely available online, on the websites of PLoS and of PubMed Central, the public archive run by the National Library of Medicine (United States). The articles can be freely redistributed and reused under a Creative Commons license, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.

February 2003 > A quote by Nicolas Pewny, consultant in electronic publishing

A bookseller, publisher -- he founded the small publishing house Le Choucas in 1992 -, and consultant in electronic publishing, Nicolas Pewny wrote in February 2003: "I see the future digital book as a 'total work' putting together text, sound, images, video, and interactivity: a new way to design, and write, and read, perhaps on a single book, constantly renewed, which would contain everything we have read, a single and multiple companion. Utopian? Improbable? Maybe not that much!" (NEF Interview)

February 2003 > Handicapzero, a portal for visually impaired users

In February 2003, the a.s.sociation Handicapzero launched a general portal for visually impaired French-speaking internet users, offering free access to national and international news, sports news, TV programs, the weather forecast, and access to a full range of services for health, employment, consumer goods, leisure time, sports, and telephony. Handicapzero -- founded in 1987 - has aimed to improve the autonomy of visually impaired people in the French-speaking world, that is to say around 10% of the population. Launched in September 2000, the first website of the a.s.sociation quickly became the most visited "adapted" website in the French-speaking community, with 10,000 queries per month. Since October 2006, a revamped portal (based on the one launched in February 2003) has offered more tools for blind people, for visually impaired people, and for people who want to communicate with them. The portal was used by 2 million people in 2006.

March 2003 > Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, made a digital experiment

In March 2003, Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, and the author of The Alchimist, decided to distribute several novels for free in PDF format, in various languages, with the consent of his publishers. In early 2003, his books, translated into 56 languages, were sold in 53 million copies in 155 countries.

May 2003 > Adobe Reader was launched to replace Acrobat Reader

In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader (starting with version 6), which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books. In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with t.i.tles in PDF format from major publishers (HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, etc.), as well as electronic versions of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Popular Science, etc. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell, and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.

September 2003 > The MIT OpenCourseWare: course materials of MIT online for free

The MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) was officially launched in September 2003 by MIT (Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) to put its course materials for free on the web, as a way to promote open dissemination of knowledge. In September 2002, a pilot version was available online with 32 course materials. 500 course materials were available in March 2004. In May 2006, 1,400 course materials were offered by 34 departments belonging to the five schools of MIT. In November 2007, all 1,800 course materials were available, and regularly updated. MIT also launched the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) in November 2005, as a collaboration of educational inst.i.tutions that were willing to offer free online course materials. One year later, the OCW Consortium included the course materials of 100 universities worldwide.

February 2004 > Facebook, a social network

Facebook is a social network founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students. Originally created for the students of Harvard University, it was made available to students from any university in the U.S. In September 2006, it was open to anyone in the world, to connect with relatives, friends, and strangers. It was become the second most visited website in the world, after Google, with 500 million users in June 2010, while sparking debates on privacy issues.

April 2004 > The Librie, an ebook reader launched by Sony

Sony launched its first ebook reader, Librie 1000-EP, in j.a.pan in April 2004, in partnership with Philips and E Ink. Librie was the first ebook reader to use the E Ink technology, with a 6-inch screen, a 10 M memory, and a 500-ebook capacity. eBooks were downloaded from a computer through a USB port. The Librie was the ancestor of the Sony Reader, launched in October 2006 in the U.S., with various new models launched worldwide then.

2004 > The web 2.0, based on the notions of community and sharing

The web 2.0 -- a concept launched in 2004 - has been based on the notions of community and sharing, with a wealth of websites whose content is supplied by users, such as blogs, wikis, social networks or collaborative encyclopedias. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter, of course, but also tens of thousands of others. The term "web 2.0" was invented in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, and a major publisher of computer books, as the t.i.tle for conferences he was organizing. The web 2.0 concept may begin to fulfill the dream of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web in 1990, as "the web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize." (excerpt from his short essay "The World Wide Web: A very short personal history", 1998)

2005 > Smartphones or ebook readers?

Can ebook readers like Sony Reader and Kindle really compete with cellphones and smartphones? Will people prefer reading on mobile handsets like the iPhone 3G (with its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1 (with Google's platform Android and its reader), or will they prefer using ebook readers to enjoy a larger screen? Or is there a market for both smartphones and ebook readers? These were some fascinating questions in a still emerging market.

April 2005 > The ePub format, a standard for ebooks

In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and the OeB format was replaced with the ePub format (ePub standing for "electronic publication") as a global standard for ebooks. More and more digital books are in ePub format, widely used by publishers to distribute their ebooks, because it is designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for the particular display device used by the reader: computer with a large screen, ebook reader with a medium screen, and smartphone with a small screen. The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. The PDF files created with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat are compatible with the ePub format.

May 2005 > Google Print, before Google Books

The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005, after two earlier steps. In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see excerpts from their books and order them online. In December 2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a digital library of 15 million books by digitizing the collections of main partner libraries, beginning with the universities of Michigan (7 million books), Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, and the New York Public Library. The planned cost in 2004 was an average of US $10 per book, and a total budget of $150 to $200 million for ten years. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by a.s.sociations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement.

August 2006 > Google Books, the worldwide Google program for books

The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books.

Google Books has provided the full text of public domain books, and has offered excerpts for copyrighted books. As of December 2008, Google had 24 library partners, including a Swiss one (University Library of Lausanne), a French one (Lyon Munic.i.p.al Library), a Belgian one (Ghent University Library), a German one (Bavarian State Library), two Spanish ones (National Library of Catalonia and University Complutense of Madrid), and a j.a.panese one (Keio University Library). The U.S. partner libraries were, by alphabetical order: Columbia University, Committee on Inst.i.tutional Cooperation (CIC), Cornell University Library, Harvard University, New York Public Library, Oxford University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

August 2006 > The Open Content Alliance, a universal public digital library

The Open Content Alliance (OCA) was launched in August 2006 to build a world public permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. The project started in October 2005 as a group of cultural, technology, non profit, and governmental organizations gathering around the Internet Archive to digitize public domain books around the world. The first 100,000 ebooks were available in December 2006 in the Text Archive of the Internet Archive, with 12,000 new ebooks posted per month. Unlike Google Books, the Open Content Alliance (OCA) has made them searchable through any web search engine, and has not scanned copyrighted books, except when the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The first contributors to OCA were the University of California, the University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives in United Kingdom, O'Reilly Media, and the Prelinger Archives. One million ebooks in December 2008 and two million ebooks in March 2010 were available under OCA principles in the Internet Archive.

August 2006 > A version of the union catalog WorldCat for free on the web

In August 2006, WorldCat, the union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), began migrating to the web through the beta version of its new website worldcat.org. OCLC was created as early as 1971 as a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information while reducing information costs. In 2005, WorldCat had 61 million bibliographic records in 400 languages, provided by 9,000 member libraries in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records were linking to one billion doc.u.ments available in these libraries. Through the current WorldCat, member libraries have now provided free access to their catalogs, and free or paid access to their electronic resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text articles, photos, music CDs, and videos. In April 2010, WorldCat provided records linking to 1,5 billion doc.u.ments.

2006 > Twitter, or information in 140 characters

Founded in 2006 in California by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool for users to send free short messages of 140 characters maximum, called tweets, via the internet, IM (Instant Messaging), or SMS (Short Message Service). Sometimes described as the SMS of the internet, Twitter has since gained worldwide popularity, with 106 million users in April 2010, and 300,000 new users per day. As for tweets, there were 5,000 per day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008, 2.5 million in 2009, 50 million in January 2010, and 55 million in April 2010, with the archiving of tweets by the Library of Congress as a reflection of the trends of our time, and their inclusion by Google in the results of its search engine.

October 2006 > The Sony Reader, a new ebook reader