Monday, October 30, 2006

E-Books for Mobile Phones and PDAs

Mobipocket sells e-Books for mobile devices (mobile phones, smart phones and PDAs).

There are more than ten thousand free e-books listed, mostly out of copyright "classics" in English.

The books are not in the usual PDF or web format, but ".PRC". This requires a free reader, available for smartphones and PDAs: PalmOS Windows Mobile [PocketPC, Smartphone], SymbianOs [Series60, UIQ, Series80, Series 90] and Blackberry; as well as Apple Mac, Linux and Microsoft Widnows laptops and desktop PCs.
The Mobipocket e-book format based on the Open eBook standard using XHTML can include JavaScript and frames. It also supports native SQL queries to be used with embedded databases.

From: E-book, Wikipedia, 2006
There is also a free "creator" program to convert HTML Micrsoft Word and PDF files into the format (but only for Windows 2000/XP with Internet Explorer).

Most of the books seem to be around 1Mbyte in size. This may be a bit large for downloading direct to a mobile phone using the average account, but you can download to a PC and then transfer the book on a memory card.

Does anyone have any experience of producing any of these books?

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