I have long been a fan (and subscriber) of O’Reilly’s Safari service. This web site gives you access to a vast library of books (currently 4000), mostly tech-related. Rather than purchase each book, you can sign them out to your “bookshelf” and read them in a browser. The books include recent titles from major publishers, with more added every day.
I love this idea because:
a) if you read a lot of books, it is a lot cheaper than purchasing them individually
b) it allows you to copy and paste text, which for me is a much better way of taking notes than a highlighter
c) no dead trees need to be toted around or placed on a real bookshelf
The one drawback to this concept is that you need a browser. As geeky as I am, I don’t want to spend all evening in front of a PC after working all day in front of a PC. I want to read in an easy chair, or on the balcony, or in bed, without having to perch a notebook on my knee or on my wife.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could access Safari on a Pocket PC or Smartphone? I’ve been pursuing this dream for a few years on a succession of Windows Mobile devices, but none could make it any further than Safari’s login screen before stumbling over some AJAX trickery. So, I eventually gave up and began picking through the relatively meagre assortment of non-Acrobat ebooks available at sites like Diesel eBooks. (Don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan of Diesel, too, since both their prices and selection are generally better than other eBook sellers that I’m aware of. But it’s not a geek-in-a-candy-store paradise like Safari).
I recently gave the Opera 8.65 for Windows Mobile a try and, to my astonishment, it has finally passed the Safari acid test. It’s slow and it’s cramped, but it works! The speed can be greatly improved by turning off images (which, of course, limits the types of books you can read), and the small screen is only a slight hindrance since Opera does a good job of reformatting the text so that you don’t have to scroll horizontally. Copy and paste work fine.
Having more or less reached paradise I have, of course, turned my attention to where the next gadget could take me. Wouldn’t it be great if you could read graphics-rich books on Safari on a mobile device? And about those Acrobat documents: even without Adobe’s newfangled DRM most Acrobat ebooks are cumbersome on a Pocket PC because the available readers are all underpowered. My acid test for PDF files is the digital version of Popular Science.
I just bought a Nokia N800, and I’m quite impressed with it as an ebook reader so far. It has passed the Safari acid test, and it has passed (somewhat sluggishly) the Popular Science acid test. But these are still early days for my new best squeeze, and our relationship has had its ups and downs. More on that in a future post.