3 ms·

Funny how much I'm reading about this problem right after reading Siracusa's piece: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars h

Funny how much I'm reading about this problem right after reading Siracusa's piece: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-fut... I, for one, can say that I was inspired to download "Stanza" after reading that, and have already finished H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" thanks to it! "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

unalone 18y ago
Stanza is icky. I use it on my Mac to convert stuff for the Kindle, and it does the job but it does it poorly. It's especially bad on the iPod touch. Reading on something that small is possible, but it's a dread.
- Zev 18y ago
  I cant stand Stanza. Unless the file is too big to email to Amazon to be converted, I do everything possible to avoid opening it up.
- nickd 18y ago
  I disagree. I was pretty impressed at how readable it was on the iPhone. The biggest problem with copyright free e-books is that they are 100 years old, and mostly boring. Not all, but most.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Wow, you need to find the right 100-year-old books. Literature was if anything better then than it is now. On the iPhone you get blurbs. I have the same problem with Classics on the iPhone. It makes reading feel cramped. Stanza is even worse: it has awful margins, and it has no support for making paragraphs feel good. It's functional but unpleasant.
    - nickd 18y ago
      I guess we can disagree on the quality of old books. There are a lot of great classics. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't argue that only new books are worth reading, but if there are 500,000 100+ year old books available, I would still argue that 499,100 wouldn't be interesting to almost anyone outside of maybe research purposes. But hey, that's 100 free interesting books, right?
      - unalone 18y ago
        To be fair, if we publish 500,000 books a year now, less than 100 will be interesting. ;-)

unalone 18y ago

Stanza is icky. I use it on my Mac to convert stuff for the Kindle, and it does the job but it does it poorly. It's especially bad on the iPod touch. Reading on something that small is possible, but it's a dread.

Zev 18y ago
I cant stand Stanza. Unless the file is too big to email to Amazon to be converted, I do everything possible to avoid opening it up.
nickd 18y ago
I disagree. I was pretty impressed at how readable it was on the iPhone. The biggest problem with copyright free e-books is that they are 100 years old, and mostly boring. Not all, but most.
- unalone 18y ago
  Wow, you need to find the right 100-year-old books. Literature was if anything better then than it is now. On the iPhone you get blurbs. I have the same problem with Classics on the iPhone. It makes reading feel cramped. Stanza is even worse: it has awful margins, and it has no support for making paragraphs feel good. It's functional but unpleasant.
  - nickd 18y ago
    I guess we can disagree on the quality of old books. There are a lot of great classics. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't argue that only new books are worth reading, but if there are 500,000 100+ year old books available, I would still argue that 499,100 wouldn't be interesting to almost anyone outside of maybe research purposes. But hey, that's 100 free interesting books, right?
    - unalone 18y ago
      To be fair, if we publish 500,000 books a year now, less than 100 will be interesting. ;-)