How To Build An ePub eBook Library For Your iPad

As everyone’s anticipation to own an iPad increases, I’ve discovered that some Mac owners have never dipped into the ePub eBook pool.

This post is a brief guide to building a library of DRM-free and legally-free ePub eBooks.

No, Really, iPad Critics: Just STFU!

*whining keen* Oh it’s not open! Oh it has no webcam! Oh it lacks USB ports! Oh it can’t run Flash! *whine whine whine*

I was around when the Mac was released. Back in 1984.

All of the gripes today have an irritating similarity to back then.

*condescending sneer* A mouse? I can use a keyboard! Who need icons? I can type my commands! Who wants to paint on a computer? *sneer sneer sneer*

Really, just STFU. You were annoying back then and you’re triply so today, over twenty-five years later.

99% of those Mac haters are now sitting in front of a box using a mouse and icons and windows. The 1% are the hardcore wanking at the CLI of Linux.

You people don’t matter. You’re techies. You’re plumbers. Your notion of what constitutes useful tech is the same as that of a custom car tinkerer who sneers at a Prius.

I sit here using a graphical web page interface to the WordPress blogging system. You would have me using something like vi to compose the text and then have me dick around with FTP for upload.

You’re simply irrelevant to the real world of people who look to tech to accomplish things.

You want openness and USB and even Flash? Go buy the Notion Ink Adam. Have you heard of it? It runs that “open” Android OS.

All the billions of electrons wasted on cranking about the iPad — where were all of you to wank over the Notion Ink? None of you posted about it. Because if you had, you would have referenced it to contrast it to the iPad in your whiny posts.

So just STFU.

The rest of us want the iPad because we can get excited and do things.

We want to have fun too.

And we want to do those things without wasting time trying to contort our products as a cheap exercise in ego-gratification.

You’re dismissed. Go away.

iPad: The Portable Personal Social Computer

This is my reaction to seeing the Stevenote. I will save the bit about iPad and books til tomorrow.

This is the bit where some people got it:

Click = big

That’s Stephen Fry there. Entirely coincidental. I didn’t highlight the guy next to him even though he has the same expression of delight because I suspect that’s Jon Ive himself. Look at that woman. And the guy. They’re kvelling!

All Writers Should Sign The Anti-Google Books Settlement Petition!

Petition Letter to the Judge of the Google Book Settlement

The following petition will be sent directly to Judge Chin by January 28th, 2010, and will also be attached as an exhibit to the brief to be submitted to the court by the NWU, ASJA, and SFWA. After that it may be used in publicity for our side of the issue.

Everyone who has joined my list of authors opposing the Settlement will be a signatory of the letter — except those who don’t want to be.

Signing the letter does not involve you in a legal action of any kind; we are simply submitting an opinion to the court. But if you don’t want your signature on the letter, just write me at googleputsch@bookviewcafe.com or at the Book View Cafe blog and say: Take my name off the letter, please.

You must do so by January 25th, 2010. After that the letter and signatures may be out of my hands.

The list is still open — people may continue signing on until January 25th. I invite you to join us in defense of authors’ rights!

And my heartfelt thanks to all of you who are speaking out with me this way.

— UKL

Writer Ursula K. Le Guin is not shutting up about this.

Add your name and help her give some back!

Previously at Mike Cane 2008:

The Google Book Robbery: I’m Not Alone
The Great Book Bank Robbery
Is Another Suit Against Google Book Search Coming?

Previously here:

The Authors Guild Leadership: 21st Century Chamberlains
Writer Ursula K. Le Guin Nails Authors Guild
And You Will Trust Google With All Of Our Books?
This Is Print Publishing’s Final Warning
Mark The Words Of Dave Winer
Sergey Brin: Also Absolutely Inexcusably Clueless
Google Thinks It Owns Our Books!
The First Step Towards A Google Book Search Solution
Google Always Had POD Planned
God Bless Marybeth Peters Of The Copyright Office!
Google Books Settlement Notes #2
Tomorrow: Google Books Settlement Deadline For Writers
Cooler Adds Google’s One Million ePubs Of Crap!
Google Books Settlement Notes #1
Google’s Great Writer Rip-Off
Google’s One Million eBooks Of Crap!
The Capitulation Of Print Publishing
Reject The Google Book Search Settlement!

The Apple TV That Isn’t But Will Be

I stated earlier that Apple is going to need a YouTube-like service to snatch away all of those videos being fed into Google’s advertising wallet by iPhones (and soon probably the next-gen iPod Touch too).

Apple TV would be a natural name for it. But that domain is taken.

Apple watchers, keep your eye on that. At some point, Apple will have them evicted.

Ahem.

Here, December 12th, 2009: The Ugliest Fight Ever: Apple Versus Google

BusinessWeek, January 14, 2010: Apple vs. Google

The New York Times, January 21, 2010: The War Between Apple and Google Has Just Begun

Who is the Me-Too Media now, you bitches?

Apple’s iSlate Gives Book Publishers False Hope

Disney bought Marvel for over four billion dollars.

Four billion dollars!

In my lifetime I have seen a comic book company aimed at children go from being printed on rotten paper with the worst four-color printing and a rotten distribution system to something that became worth four billion dollars.

Marvel. Comic books. Adults were ashamed to work in comic books!

Marvel! Home of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, Man-Thing, Ant-Man, X-Men.

Think about those characters.

Boy Genius Report Misses Entire Point Of Android

Google Android Personal Thoughts

Some choice quotes:

There are so many fundamental issues with Android’s OS that still haven’t been addressed and it really makes my head spin.

And:

Android doesn’t make sense as a whole.

And:

For a company that’s so smart, and makes so much sense, it’s unbelievable how little sense Android makes in most places.

And:

Seriously Google, you take no responsibility for the actual “experience” of this phone, yet you tout it as your tag line.

I turn your attention to two key lines from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand:

But there’s always a purpose in nonsense. Don’t bother to examine a folly–ask yourself only what it accomplishes.

I’ve asked that question. I’ve answered that question.

What none of you are getting is this: every single thing BGR points out about Android is deliberate.

Everyone is Google’s testbed. The biggest in all of recorded history.

There’s no real Android until the test is over and Google reins it all back under their own roof, their own hardware, their own sales outlet.

Google doesn’t want Android to be excellent. Because they’d lose future billions of dollars by having to share with partners.

There is no real Android today. Only the Android folly.

Period.

Previously here:

In Two Years, Only Google Will Use Android
Google, The Vampire
Now Google Can’t Be Trusted To Be Google!
I Don’t Like The Future Apple And Google Are Creating
The Authors Guild Leadership: 21st Century Chamberlains
Writer Ursula K. Le Guin Nails Authors Guild
And You Will Trust Google With All Of Our Books?
This Is Print Publishing’s Final Warning
Mark The Words Of Dave Winer
Sergey Brin: Also Absolutely Inexcusably Clueless
Google Thinks It Owns Our Books!
The First Step Towards A Google Book Search Solution
Google Always Had POD Planned
God Bless Marybeth Peters Of The Copyright Office!
Google Books Settlement Notes #2
Tomorrow: Google Books Settlement Deadline For Writers
Cooler Adds Google’s One Million ePubs Of Crap!
Google Books Settlement Notes #1
Google’s Great Writer Rip-Off
Google’s One Million eBooks Of Crap!
The Capitulation Of Print Publishing
Reject The Google Book Search Settlement!

In Two Years, Only Google Will Use Android

Yesterday, I posted Google, The Vampire in which this revelation appeared:

This is going to sound really cynical, but the only thing that really matters is how many of these we ship – how many Android phones.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

The more I thought about that in the time since, the more it bothered me. What’s basically being said there is this:

1) This is a numbers racket we’re running
2) We don’t give a damn about the end user, they’re suckers

Google, The Vampire

Ah, the true colors are emerging. And they are not the happy hues of their logo!

Google open-source boss comes clean on Android

This is going to sound really cynical, but the only thing that really matters is how many of these we ship – how many Android phones.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

And:

Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’

Today, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, who thought they were Google’s closest partners, will begin to understand how, say, copyright holders have felt for some time now. For the first time, I suspect, they’ll be enjoying that recurring tingle of amazement and disbelief that (as Chris Castle explained here), Google would even try and pull off such a stunt. It took EMI Publishing six months to realise that Google had claimed digital rights to its songs, for example. But even if the decision to shaft its closest Android partners and biggest customers is an aberration, a one-off, a fling that Google will later regret – then the size of the parties involved means it’s going to have lasting repercussions.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

If you’re scratching your head wondering what the big deal is, then I suggest you do a quick news search on the number of stories containing the phrase ‘Google superphone’. Imagine how this looks to a punter. There are over a dozen Google phones. Only one is a real Google phone. Only one is a Google superphone. And you can only get that from Google. Won’t Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Acer and Samsung be feeling pleased today? Sony Ericsson’s X10 has a fairly identical spec (plus Sony branding) or better – but it’s not a ‘superphone’. And not the ‘real thing’.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Thanks to Scoble, I saw the Google Nexus One launch via UStream.

That “superphone” appellation was calculated for maximum PR and positioning effect.

It wasn’t a shot against Apple — it was a shot to the head of all of Google’s sucker partners.

And you still want to trust Google with all of our books?

This company is quickly making the greed and hubris of Microsoft in its heyday look like cheap hucksterism.

Google has been very, very clever not to have one person — a Gates, a Jobs — as a face, as a single and recurring public spokesman. By not having one point of evil to focus our wrath on, we can’t get a handle on who is doing any of this. In that respect, they have learned well from every human bureaucracy in history. Anonymity disperses accountability.

Perhaps this is why there hasn’t been the expected flood of Android mini-tablets at CES. Word has been spreading around the alleyways of tech that partnering with Google is not a contract — it’s a suicide pact.

Previously here:

Now Google Can’t Be Trusted To Be Google!
I Don’t Like The Future Apple And Google Are Creating
The Authors Guild Leadership: 21st Century Chamberlains
Writer Ursula K. Le Guin Nails Authors Guild
And You Will Trust Google With All Of Our Books?
This Is Print Publishing’s Final Warning
Mark The Words Of Dave Winer
Sergey Brin: Also Absolutely Inexcusably Clueless
Google Thinks It Owns Our Books!
The First Step Towards A Google Book Search Solution
Google Always Had POD Planned
God Bless Marybeth Peters Of The Copyright Office!
Google Books Settlement Notes #2
Tomorrow: Google Books Settlement Deadline For Writers
Cooler Adds Google’s One Million ePubs Of Crap!
Google Books Settlement Notes #1
Google’s Great Writer Rip-Off
Google’s One Million eBooks Of Crap!
The Capitulation Of Print Publishing
Reject The Google Book Search Settlement!