OT: STUFF FOR THE E READER CROWD

MSW will not settle
on 8/14/11 4:33 am

I came across two interesting digital book goodies awhile back that I tried this week.

First, Calibre a desktop e book manager.

Second, GoodReads an on line e book manager/ social network.

Calibre uploads your digital reading materials to your device without using the manufacturers software. With your permission, GoodReads will populate your library from Calibre.

The juries still out as I just set up my libraries and book shelves. The biggest con with Calibre is that it does not support every feature of every e reader, my nook color included. The biggest con with GoodReads is that each tag in Calibre becomes a bookshelf leaving me with 400 tags to eliminate. If you plan to import I sugest you edit the tags toonly what is meaningful to you rather than what came attached to the digital media.

The biggest pro with Calbre is the ability to convert formats, You cn take a mobi or pdf document and convert it to epub with one click. There ae also controls you can adjust rather than use defaults. You can store a publication in multiple formats without it appearing as a duplicate. The biggest pro for GoodReads is its database of books and editions allowing you to identify the specific edition of a classic, great for students and book clubs; and, it will also give you the order of the books in a series or books with recurring characters.

Calibre has a number of plug ins, US and international including foreign language (German, Dutch, Romanian). Some are exclusive to particular e readers, others are for all readers. As I understand it, there are more on the way. Makes me wish I had kept my developer skills current (It was called programming skills back in the day.).

Calibre is available free. Check out cnet.com. Downloads from this site are guaranteed free of viruses/ infections. If you've never heard of this site it is the ultimate source for info on all types of software and includes a massive amount of high quality freeware for virtually any application and all guaranteed clean. I've been using this site for well over a decade (Perhaps close to two?) with never a problem.

Good reads is also free, just create an account. Of course their goal is to have you search and buy books from your favorite online bookstore through them. You can search bot US and some international booksellers.