The older I get, the more comfortable I become with complaining. Not merely moaning on social media, but writing a direct email to the perpetrator of some annoyance. I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you don't know, modern ePub books are just HTML wrapped in a zip file. They have all of the accessibility advantages of the web and should be easy to…
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Way back in 2012, The Guardian reviewed an eInk reader which cost a mere £8. The txtr beagle was designed to be a stripped-down and simplified eReader. As far as I can tell, it never shipped. There were a few review units sent out but I can't find any evidence of consumers getting their hands on one. Also, that £8 price was the subsidised price when purchased with a mobile contract. Their w…
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The brilliant kobodl Python package allows you to interact with your Kobo account programmatically. You can list all the books you've purchased, download them, and - as of version 0.12.0 - view your wishlist. Here's a rough and ready Python script which will tell you when any the books on your wishlist have dropped below a certain amount. Table of ContentsPrerequisitesGet your wishlistSort the …
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As Cory Doctorow once said "Any time that someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you but won't give you the key, that lock's not there for you." But here's the thing with the LCP DRM scheme; they do give you the key! As I've written about previously, LCP mostly relies on the user entering their password (the key) when they want to read the book. Oh, there's some deep cryptographic…
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This post will show you how to programmatically get the cheapest possible price on eBooks from Kobo. Background Amazon have decided to stop letting customers download their purchased eBooks onto their computers. That means I can't strip the DRM and read on my non-Amazon eReader. So I guess I'm not spending money with Amazon any more. I'm moving to Kobo for three main reasons: They provide…
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A few years ago, I got rid of all my paper books and switched exclusively to eBooks. Whenever I tell bibliophiles this, they usually shriek in horror. What about the smell of books?!!? What about showing off your bookcases to impress people!?!? What about your signed first editions!??!?! But the other day I had someone scoff at me and say "Good luck reading when civilisation collapses! I'll…
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Before I start this blog post - here's a big fat warning. You will get no support from Boyue if things go wrong with your device. I have their previous model, the Likebook Ares. After less than a year of use, I noticed screen discolouration. The eBay reseller wasn't interested in helping me with a return. Boyue ignored my repeated complaints - and I was stuck with a defective unit. So I waited…
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Alvin Toffler's book "Future Shock" is one of the defining texts of the 20th century. In it, he correctly predicts the insanity of living in the 21st century with its constant bombardment of the shock of the new. I thoroughly recommend you read it. But there's no official eBook copy. Why? If you trawl the Dark Web™ (2nd page of Google) you're sure to find hundreds of samizdat copies. Some l…
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I like to go on holiday in order to read books. After last year's post a few people expressed surprise that I hadn't included many female authors. I felt compelled to rectify that, so I decided to read only female authors this holiday. I only had 7 days, and did quite a lot of sight-seeing, so there's only 6 entries here. Will try for a more relaxing holiday next year! First up, "Station…
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by Terence Eden, aged 35 & ⅚ths. I often wonder how much I read during the average day. A few thousand words of tweets, couple of hundred in Facebook posts, a dozen articles on blogs and news sites - and an unhealthy smattering of Reddit and other fora. All told, I am probably reading the equivalent of half a novel per day. (Now, there's an idea for a "quantified self" app - "how much have I r…
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Three years ago I promised to convert the Voynich Manuscript into an ebook. The recent news that it may have been deciphered spurred me to finish my project. So, here it is, the world famous mystery that is the Voynich Manuscript now in convenient eBook format. PDF - suitable for Kindle, nook, Kobo, Android, iOS and for most devices (60MB) CBZ - suitable for comic book readers,…
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One of the "perks" of running a moderately popular blog is that sometimes people send you stuff. I've been sent wine, phones, apps, and all sorts to review - usually by PR people who realise that engagement with bloggers is a little different that their regular way of doing business. Yesterday, I received this delightful email from the publishers Simon and Schuster. NEW book by the "Prophet of …
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