The joy of electronic books

by drewcrawford • 17 years ago

42 13 17 years ago

Silentio2• 17 years ago

The only problem with digital copies like this is that I can't underline. Maybe it's just the habit of underlining, but I can't read as well (academic reading) when I can't underline key points, specific words, and particularly interesting passages.

drewcrawford• 17 years ago

I've found Preview's (Mac; built in) annotate feature to be a great portable way to highlight inside PDFs.

Silentio2• 17 years ago

I agree that Preview's annotate feature works well. Still, there something about the physical process of underlining words that helps me connect ideas together as I'm reading.

jimmyjim• 17 years ago

I may be wrong, but I believe there's a feature in Kinde 2 DX that allows you to do that.

elq• 17 years ago

the DX cannot highlight or annotate pdf files, at least not currently.

fortes• 17 years ago

Not sure about underlining, but highlighting and annotating has been there since Kindle 1.

harpastum• 17 years ago

Having digital copies of my books sounds great, but as a college student I'd like to sell some of my books back at the end of the semester. I'm not sure how interested the book store would be in gorilla-glued spines.

I was recently reading a very detailed instructable [1] that describes a system to scan books without cutting the spines for ~$300. I'm planning on trying it out later this summer.

[1]http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-...

klipt• 17 years ago

Google has a multi-camera method which corrects for page curvature, making it unnecessary to despine/flatten the books. Unfortunately, it's patented...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/15/1834246

jrockway• 17 years ago

He hates DRM but uses an iPhone?

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

Maybe he loves the iPhone more than he hates DRM?

anthropocentric• 17 years ago

Is there a legal way to sell used digital books or used digital music?

Like some app where you identify the mp3's that you'd like to sell. The price is half of itunes. When a user buys it, the app "permanently destroys" (yeah, yeah, i know) your copy of the mp3 and transmits the mp3 to the buyer.

Re-selling goods is a long-standing fixture of the economy. Doesn't it apply to digital goods too?

thwarted• 17 years ago

No, it doesn't apply to digital goods in general, it only applies to digital goods which have artificial scarcity due to their method of distribution.

noonespecial• 17 years ago

Ha! The Longview/Marshall phonebook!

LeTourneau, by chance?

The joy of electronic books

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