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Ebook reader + Mises.org = perfect combination

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Seph:

 

While the Kindle Intl looks like it will work....the lack of .PDF support is really off putting, as the vast majpority of my time would be spent reading Mises PDFs! 

Edit: Amazon just told me that Kindle isnt supported in China....I guess that means a nook for me. 

Their international doesn't work in China? ooo probably because china restricts the internet. Well yea I would go Nook and a 8-10 gig flash drive for the whole library. That way you can just transfer them over one you're done reading the other books.

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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Lilburne replied on Mon, Oct 26 2009 12:32 AM

This thread motivated me to try out Stanza on my iPhone.  It may not be E Ink, but it's much better than reading Rothard and Mises in HTML on my iPhone!  Just the fact that Stanza remembers exactly which page you left off at makes all the difference.

There are other ways than the following to transfer epub files into your iPhone.  But I had trouble until I tried the following way...

 

  • Search "Stanza" in the App Store on your iPhone.
  • Download and then launch Stanza (it's free)
  • Tap on "Online Catalog"
  • Tap Plus Sign
  • Tap "Add Web Page"
  • Type "Mises" under "Name" and the following url under "URL": http://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=MediaType&Id=9 (You'll just have to type it out once.  It'll be worth it!)
  • Tap "Save"
  • Then, back in "Online Catalog", tap "Mises" and the Mises ePub page will appear.  Click on whichever ebook you want (currently Human Action; Man, Economy, and State; America's Great Depression; and The Case Against the Fed are available), and wait for it to download.

 

EVERYONE here with an iPhone should have Human Action and MES on it.  Even if it's slow going, or if you don't understand all of it... just make those two treatises your long-term companions, and whenever you find yourself waiting in line or waiting for your girlfriend to finish shopping, just fire up whichever treatise you feel most like reading, and make some progress!

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Le Master replied on Mon, Oct 26 2009 12:50 AM

Very cool, Lilburne. I followed your tutorial and had the program and all four books downloaded in under five minutes.

The only step I did differently was the first. I searched Stanza in the App Store and downloaded it that way. So I didn't even have to connect my phone to the computer at all.

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Lilburne replied on Mon, Oct 26 2009 1:06 AM

Le Master:

Very cool, Lilburne. I followed your tutorial and had the program and all four books downloaded in under five minutes.

Great!

Le Master:
The only step I did differently was the first. I searched Stanza in the App Store and downloaded it that way. So I didn't even have to connect my phone to the computer at all.

Oh, you mean the App Store on the iPhone?  Ah, yes, that would be even more direct.  Good idea!  I'll edit my post accordingly.

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Le Master replied on Mon, Nov 2 2009 11:06 PM

For those of you looking forward to the Nook, let's hope that this doesn't get anywhere.

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I've been following the development of a new eReader that will be introduced next year (January 7th at the CES in Las Vegas).  The QUE eReader from Plastic Logic.  The QUE will be available through Barnes and Noble, and will marketed toward business users.  They haven't announced the price yet, but it will be sold as an alternative to the Nook.

Sneak Peak Demo

Media Demo

All Things D Demo

 

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solos replied on Tue, Nov 3 2009 12:36 PM

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is in a very good position for the growing e-reader market, but it's going to be hell on their servers. I hope the media section gets a facelift to fit the screens of e-readers.

 

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I just ordered a Cybook Opus.

Hope it works out......

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

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This site is worth bookmarking for all the pdfs on mises.org

http://epub2go.com/

Just give it the pdf location (online or on your harddrive) and your email address then you will get a link on your iphone email account that will download the converted epub file for stanza.  Never as pretty a professional designed epub but pretty useful.

 

Also, any chance of getting mises.org audiobooks on http://librivox.org/ so that they can be listened to through the Audiobooks iphone app?

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Although ebook reading is highly subjective, especially depending on vision ability to read small text, my two  cents might be useful to someone.

Like many others, I waited for the Kindle DX and its pdf capability to handle Mises pdf's. Unfortunately,  merely having a pdf capability is not the same as having a useful pdf capability. I would guess that a third of Mises pdfs work very well on the DX, another third work marginally acceptably, and a final third are unusable. Most of the problems relate to not being able to make the text large enough while still displaying the full width of the text. Extremely slow operation also kills some pdfs. In all cases the abysmal keyboard of the DX makes any form of navigation other than linear reading next to impossible.

I love the DX for buying and reading best seller fiction,  but I no longer even try to load a pdf file onto it. It is highly likely that virtually all dedicated ereaders share the problems of the DX to one degree or another.

As far as I can tell, the only practical solution for me for pdf files is to have have a real handheld touchscreen PC running eiher XP or Windows 7, with a 7 to 10 inch screen. This allows you to run a good pdf reader program like Foxit 3 for Windows. Since this program allows color configuration changes, a beautiful yellow text on a black background configuration should solve any LCD eyestrain problems.  Fortunately, such units have started to become available over the last year, with much lower prices and longer battery life. I currently have a Viliv X70, available through Dynamism (see google).

Regards, Don

 

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Which files did you find unusable on the DX? So far I have yet to run into anything that is in tiny text or is unrecognizable.

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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Don Lloyd replied on Sun, Nov 8 2009 11:29 AM

LM,

Try The American Story by Garrett for speed problems. Try the Last Knight for excessive white space.

Note that my starting point was that variations in vision make for a high degree of subjectivity. Landscape mode often helps.

For reference, for an Amazon file, my comfortable reading font size is the second biggest available. The question is not unrecognizable text.

Regards, Don

 

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I shall give them a try. I guess you can say I am slightly shocked because I have about 50 pdfs on my DX from both the Mises institute and the Liberty Fund online library and so far everything has been golden. Though it is true about the keyboard, but I hardly use it. If I want a book from amazon then I just jump on the internet and have it sent through there.

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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I've been following the development of the Que for about a year, and while it certainly looks like the best ereader for pdf's at the moment, a company called Pixel Qi may have made epaper totally obsolete.  There new reflective LCD technology looks almost exactly like epaper, is not backlit (no eyestrain), and can already do basic color and is capable of full HD video.  Several companies are already developing dedicated readers with these screens, and others are incoroporating them into netbooks.  The screens should be showing up in consumer products by Christmas this year(they are in mass production already), and if I had the choice between a $400 reader, and a $400 netbook with an epaper screen, I will definitely go with the netbook. 

Demos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XCJdD_gR8M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawX3wenxNc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ZErQ5Kl6w

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Lilburne:
There are other ways than the following to transfer epub files into your iPhone.  But I had trouble until I tried the following way...

With a jail broken iPhone or iPod Touch, the ways of transferring files back and forth are endless. You can use the SSH File Transfer Protocol. You can set it up to allow sharing files over the network to the ebook directory on the iPhone/iPod Touch. With a Mac or Linux machine, you can have it rsync every so often to get all of your new books.

I had to employ these methods to recover my music off an iPod Touch after my hard drive failed. 

 

 

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