Derek's Blog

I've been playing around some more with the XO computer that Jim has loaned me (having trouble getting it away from my son who likes to explore the e-Toys application!). One aspect that I'm intrigued by is the fact that it converts to an e-Book reader (see video from YouTube above in which Steve Cisler, a veteran librarian, interviews the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle about the e-book potential of the OLPC XO laptop. What doesn't come through in the video is the quality of the screen resolution of the XO which means the e-Book content is very readable.

In thinking about the potential of e-Books I've also been looking at what is available - and the list seems to have grown considerably since I last had a look around (around the time I blogged about the Kindle). Here are just a few...

• A Australian list of free e-books, that includes some New Zealand collections
  
• Books-Online - a collection of over 32,000 completely free online books - searchable by title, author etc
  
• The Open Directory Project - with a large list of links to further e-book collections
  
• Project Gutenberg - reputedly the Internet's oldest producer of FREE electronic books (eBooks or eTexts).
  
• Great books index - An Index to Online Great Books in English Translation
  
• UK Directory of free online books

And on the topic of e-books - I was given a link to Rockfords Rock Opera via Twitter a couple of days ago. Rockford's Rock Opera is actually an audiobook for children and adults - great to listen to on computer, ipod or burnt onto CD. The website has links to a teaching resources about the story. Certainly worth a browse!