e-books: Devices and Formats

A lot of us love reading. And a little less of us are eco-conscious. How good would it be, to mix these both passions? Well, if the number of e-book readers that are flooding the market are anything go by, Pretty damn good! You gotta appreciate the USP of e-book readers here. They serve a key demographic of consumers, They are eco-friendly, They make pursuing your hobbies very simple and the business value ain’t so ugly either.

Currently, the market has a lot of e-book readers. Here are some I came across: Kindle, Sony Reader, eSlick, BeBook. Amazon has even released an update to Kindle with a controversial “Text to Speech” feature that allows your reader to read a particular book out loud. Pretty nifty if you ask me, leaving the copyright infringement aside. You can even read e-books on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Which is my favourite by far.

Now, the problem with the whole thing is interoperability. There are as many e-book formats as there are e-book readers. And most of the time you can’t migrate your book collection to a new device or have multiple devices at the same time. There is one format though, ePub, which is an open format and most devices support it.

An avid reader needs to make an informed decision when he chooses a particular device and then a compatible format. If you buy books in epub format you can rest assured that 10 years from now, you won’t have to worry about how you can read the Harry Potter series again in the new generation devices. You are not locked into any proprietary format that might go extinct sometime in the future.

If you are in the United States, Buying a Kindle makes more sense as there is a lot of content available apart from books. People elsewhere might consider Sony Reader or some such depending on the availability of the device and compatible content. I, for one, use my iPod Touch for reading these days. Further, all the books I buy are readable on my computer albeit, by installing additional software.

For further info head to these links:

• ePub format
• List of devices and compatible formats
• e-book Reading on iPhone/iPod Touch

Some websites that allow you to buy e-Books:

• Amazon
• BooksOnBoard
• eReader
• FictionWise

Technorati Tags: ebooks,sony reader,kindle

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

I just finished reading the book Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less By Jeffrey Archer, and what a good read it was. This is Jeffrey Archer's first book and reminds me of those plays of Shakespeare's that I used to read, especially 'All's well that ends well' and 'Comedy of errors' (Although, I must say that you may not have the same experience as I did).
It didn't feel like one of those regular novels, and was a very welcome change. Its a short story (time frame wise), the main plot spanning a little over a couple of months unlike Archer's other books which usually span over generations. It has a lot of drama, suspense and yeah a lot of comedy, especially the last few chapters.
I can sum up the whole plot with this one sentence taken from the book "Stevie, don't get cross, get even", which prompts the creation of the whole plot. I hope you, book enthusiasts, will read it if you haven't already and I assure you, you will enjoy it.

The Alchemist And I

This post has been lying as a draft in my docs for too long now. Although I've figured out to a certain extend as to why things had gone wrong, and think that some of the conclusions drawn have become obsolete by now, but I spent too much time to write this damn thought and so am going to post it anyways. But one thing I would like to tell everyone, When things decide to go wrong, there is nothing stopping them. Its what your destiny was meant to be, maybe for your own good too.

"The Alchemist", a book which you can read infinite number of times and still crave to read one more time. Well, so I read it once again today, my third time so far. This time I read it envisioning myself as the protagonist and associating various events in the book to those in my life and I began to wonder about my achievements. I had many dreams (interpret as goals) while I was growing up (When I say dreams, I don't mean the dreams I had between Age 1 and 13 :-) ), and I had always been the kind of person, who's very optimistic and likes to take his own decisions in life. And that has helped me a great deal to get to where I am today.
I had my share of luck, burdens, choice, failures, hardships, risks and successes in life. And so I asked myself, have all my dreams been fulfilled? I wondered for some time if that was ever possible and finally declared that it is an impossible thing to happen. Why, you ask? Any guesses? No? C'mon you can do better than that...well OK, I concluded that as life goes on, so do your dreams, I mean you have new dreams everyday (or every night) right (If not you should seriously think of getting some help). So there is no way that all your dreams can ever be fulfilled. So I rephrased that question and asked myself have all my dreams, that I had a few years ago been fulfilled? It took me a while to recollect what my dreams were a couple of years ago. And finally when I tried to answer this question, only one dream kept coming back to my mind which was once my dearest, but was never fulfilled.
I tried to figure out as to what went wrong there. Why did I fail that one time? And I realized that I had not always been that "optimistic" and "taking my own decision" kind of person in my life that I had envisioned to be. There have been certain episodes in my life when I was very negative, hesitant and very afraid of loss. I was so afraid that I never even tried to turn that dream into reality. I was happy the way things were and continued to live on. But "change" is inevitable in nature and so is it when it comes to our lives. Things changed so drastically in such short time that my dream hit a hard deadline that had been set for it a long time ago which I had but ignored. It was too late to make things right then and I had to give up. The only way it could still have become a reality is if I could somehow go back in time, which is all but impossible.
So I decided today, never again to be pessimistic, 'coz the one time I had been like that, I had to pay a heavy price for it, and I don't want to feel sad for something I could've avoided, ever again. And so to all those who are reading, I say this: Dream big, never hesitate, never be afraid unless its upon your life, take calculated risks and always be positive. Never think how things went wrong when you fucked up, but think what you gained when things went wrong. And so here I am today, ready to read "The Alchemist" yet once again.

Follow your dreams...

"when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

If you've never read the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, I would recommend you to get it and read it. It doesn't matter if you are a big novel buff or have never ever read a book (I don't mean text books...Of course you would have read those for sure...atleast...). This book is meant for everyone to read. It would be a very good first read if this is the first ever novel you are reading. And for others it would be very refreshing and enlightening at the same time. Its very different from the violent, thrilling and action filled conspiracies like The Bourne series, Sum of all fears etc. or the slow, sentimental love stories like The Love Story, A Walk To Remember etc. or the innovative science fictions like Time Machine and Star Wars or the legerdemain fantasy novels like Harry Potter or Lord of The Rings.
The Alchemist deals with the experiences of a boy who decides to follow his dreams. Its his journey through the unknown land, which he had never ever dreamed of treading on before. Its about his losses and his realizations (as to how to deal with life). Its about his beliefs and trusts. And yeah of course its about The Alchemist himself and what the boy learns from him. But more than the fictional story in the book, its about what everyone who reads the book should do, is what I like the most about the book. Yes, its about believing in your dreams and trying your best to see them materialize before you. It tells you never to give up, to fight on, to always be hopeful and never to lose heart.
The core message of the book is "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" which I can't say is a 100% true. Because when you do something great or good and you're on your path the success, there are always a lot of people out there in this world, who try to see you unsuccessful and would do anything to achieve it even if they don't gain anything out of it. I would agree that there are also others who try to help you and see that you succeed, but saying "all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" is a little contradictory for me. Well I would say that even in the book, the boy does has some bad luck when he gets robbed, and when he is put up to an impossible task by the army. Did they help him in achieving what he wanted or were they a hinderance to him? I would say he would've reached his goal faster otherwise. So then how could the core message be true.
So what I learned from the book was to follow your dreams, always listen to your heart, fight the hurdles placed in your way, never lose heart, never be so content that you lose sight of your dreams and yeah never trust everyone who agrees to help you out, although sometimes it may be for your own good to fail in certain circumstances. There are other things I learned too, but still I seriously don't think that "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." Still read the book friends, maybe you can get a lot more out of it and do follow your dreams.