Two companies make e-book reading easier

This week two companies released products to make it easier for people to read electronic books. BCL Computers, the Santa Clara, California-based maker of PDF and HTML conversion tools, says it has developed a new program for converting HTML, PDF, and other documents for display on eBook reading devices such as the Rocket eBook® and Palm Pilots®.

SimplEBook® recreates content so that documents can be displayed on smaller screens with "flow" intact. It uses the tagging capabilities and technology of HTML 3.2 to convert PDF, as well as Word Perfect, Word and Power Point (and in the near future, Excel, Quark, and PageMaker) for display on HTML 3.2-compliant ebooks such as the RocketBook® or SoftBook®, and hand-held devices such as the Palm®.

The new conversion tool, SimplEBook® allows users to read web content on even the smallest handheld devices. Until now, most web content had been designed to work well on desktop displays. SimpleBook® is capable of converting documents at a rate of about one page per second. SimplEBook® takes complex documents - those with multiple columns, tables, graphics or even a change of format in the middle of a page (i.e., a shift from two columns to three) and separates their structures into zones. Each zone consists of a single element; a simple picture, piece of text, list or table.

netLibrary is a leading provider of eBooks and Internet-based content/collection management services. netLibrary "rents" books to libraries for use by their patrons on an as needed basis. The patron orders the book through their library and netLibrary gives them access to it via the web. Previously, the patron could only read the book on-line.

The new netLibrary eBook Reader allows members to read, search, bookmark and annotate netLibrary eBooks without being on-line. Patrons of libraries that purchase netLibrary eBooks can now download the software to their home PCs, check out eBooks, and read them off-line. The application is free and should make netLibrary more attractive to both public and academic libraries. With netLibrary, readers can do things with their electronic editions that they can't do with printed library books, such as highlighting text and attaching notes.

eBook Reader is one part of a planned suite of services that will let book borrowers read eBooks on multiple platforms, including the PC-based Glassbook Reader and handheld Palm and Windows CE devices. This will allow patrons to download books to any portable device and take it with them for reading at anytime instead of having to remain on the web in order to read the book.

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