January 2001 > UNL (Universal Networking Language), a digital metalanguage project
The UNDL Foundation (UNDL: Universal Networking Digital Language) was founded in January 2001 to develop and promote the UNL (Universal Networking Language) project. The UNL project was launched in mid-1990s as a main digital metalanguage project by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) of the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, Japan. As explained on the bilingual (English, Japanese) website in 1998: "UNL is a language that - with its companion 'enconverter' and 'deconverter' software - enables communication among peoples of differing native languages. It will reside, as a plug-in for popular web browsers, on the internet, and will be compatible with standard network servers." In 2000, 120 researchers worldwide were working on a multilingual project in 16 languages (Arabic, Brazilian, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindu, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Mongolian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Thai).
January 2001 > The Cybook was launched as the first European ebook reader
Developed by Cytale, a French company created by Olivier Pujol, the Cybook (21 x 16 cm, 1 kilo) was available in January 2001 as the first European ebook reading device. Its memory - 32 M of SDRAM and 16 M of flash memory - could store 15.000 pages, or 30 books of 500 pages. But sales were far below expectations, and Cytale ended its activities in July 2002. The Cybook project was taken over by Bookeen, a company created in 2003 by Michael Dahan and Laurent Picard, two former engineers from Cytale. The Cybook second generation was available in June 2004. Bookeen launched the Cybook Gen3 in July 2007, with a screen using the E Ink technology.
January 2001 > Adobe launched the Acrobat eBook Reader
In January 2001, Adobe launched the Acrobat eBook Reader (for free) and the Adobe Content Server (for a fee). The Acrobat eBook Reader was meant to read PDF files of copyrighted books, while adding notes and bookmarks, getting the book covers in a personal library, and browsing a dictionary. The Adobe Content Server was intended for publishers and distributors for the packaging, protection, distribution, and sale of copyrighted books in PDF format, while managing their access with DRM (Digital Rights Management), according to instructions given by the copyright holder, for example allowing or not the printing and loan of ebooks. In May 2003, the Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) merged with the Acrobat Reader (5th version) to become the Adobe Reader (beginning with the 6th version).
February 2001 > A quote by Russon Wooldridge, founder of NEF (Net ofFrench Studies)
Russon Wooldridge is a professor at the Department of French Studies in the University of Toronto, Canada, and the founder of the NEF (Net des Etudes Françaises / Net of French Studies) in May 2000. He wrote in February 2001: "My research, conducted once in an ivory tower, is now almost exclusively done through local or remote collaborations. (…) All my teaching makes the most of internet resources (web and email): the two common places for a course are the classroom and the website of the course, where I put all course materials. I have published all my research data of the last 20 years on the web (re-edition of books, articles, texts of old dictionaries as interactive databases, treaties from the 16th century, etc.). I publish proceedings of symposiums, I publish a journal, I collaborate with French colleagues by publishing online in Toronto what they can't publish online at home." (NEF Interview)
March 2001 > IBM launched the WebSphere Translation Server
In March 2001, IBM embarked on a growing translation market with a high-end professional product, the WebSphere Translation Server. The software could instantly translate webpages, emails, and chats in several languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish). It could process 500 words per second and add specific terminology to the software.
March 2001 > Palm launched the Palm Reader
In March 2001, Palm bought Peanutpress.com, a publisher and distributor of digital books for PDAs, from the netLibrary company. The Peanut Reader merged with (or became) the Palm Reader, that could be used on Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs, and the 2,000 titles from Peanutpress.com were transferred to the digital bookstore Palm Digital Media. In July 2002, the Palm Reader was also available for computers. Palm Digital Media distributed 5,500 ebooks in several languages in July 2002, and 10,000 ebooks in 2003.
April 2001 > PDAs and ebook readers: a few numbers
In April 2001, there were 17 million PDAs and only 100,000 ebook readers worldwide, according to a Seybold Report. 13,2 million PDAs were sold in 2001. Palm was the leader, despite fierce competition, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. In 2002, 36.8% of all PDAs were Palm Pilots. The Palm Pilot's main competitor was Microsoft's Pocket PC. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7% PDAs). In 2004, prices began to drop. The leaders were the PDAs of Palm, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard, followed by Handspring, Toshiba, and Casio. Smartphones became more and more popular then, and the sales of PDAs began to drop. Sony stopped selling PDAs in February 2005.
October 2001 > The Wayback Machine, launched by the Internet Archive
In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for users to be able to surf the archive of the web by date. In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion webpages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion webpages in 2008, and 150 billion webpages in March 2010. Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that has built an "internet library" to offer permanent access to historical collections in digital format for researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. Since then, an archive of the web has been stored every two months or so.
2001 > Creative Commons, to adapt copyright to the web
Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence "Larry" Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained on its website in 2009: "Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof." There were one million Creative Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7 million in 2004, 20 million in 2005, 50 million in 2006, 90 million in 2007, 130 million in 2008, and 350 million in April 2010.
2001 > Nokia 9210 was the first smartphone
The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001. It was followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Smartphones quickly became popular while sales dropped for PDAs. In February 2005, Sony stopped selling PDAs. Smartphones represented 3,7% of all cellphones sold in 2004, and 9% in 2006, with 90 million smartphones sold for one billion cellphones.
January 2003 > The Public Library of Science, a publisher of free high- quality online journals
In early 2003, the Public Library of Science (PloS) — founded in October 2000 - created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture to provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile online journals in which to publish their work. The journals were PloS Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine (2004), PLoS Genetics (2005), PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical Trials (2006), and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2007), the first scientific journal on this topic. All PloS articles are freely available online, on the websites of PLoS and of PubMed Central, the public archive run by the National Library of Medicine (United States). The articles can be freely redistributed and reused under a Creative Commons license, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
February 2003 > A quote by Nicolas Pewny, consultant in electronic publishing
A bookseller, publisher — he founded the small publishing house Le Choucas in 1992 -, and consultant in electronic publishing, Nicolas Pewny wrote in February 2003: "I see the future digital book as a 'total work' putting together text, sound, images, video, and interactivity: a new way to design, and write, and read, perhaps on a single book, constantly renewed, which would contain everything we have read, a single and multiple companion. Utopian? Improbable? Maybe not that much!" (NEF Interview)
February 2003 > Handicapzéro, a portal for visually impaired users
In February 2003, the association Handicapzéro launched a general portal for visually impaired French-speaking internet users, offering free access to national and international news, sports news, TV programs, the weather forecast, and access to a full range of services for health, employment, consumer goods, leisure time, sports, and telephony. Handicapzéro — founded in 1987 - has aimed to improve the autonomy of visually impaired people in the French-speaking world, that is to say around 10% of the population. Launched in September 2000, the first website of the association quickly became the most visited "adapted" website in the French-speaking community, with 10,000 queries per month. Since October 2006, a revamped portal (based on the one launched in February 2003) has offered more tools for blind people, for visually impaired people, and for people who want to communicate with them. The portal was used by 2 million people in 2006.
March 2003 > Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, made a digital experiment
In March 2003, Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, and the author of The Alchimist, decided to distribute several novels for free in PDF format, in various languages, with the consent of his publishers. In early 2003, his books, translated into 56 languages, were sold in 53 million copies in 155 countries.
May 2003 > Adobe Reader was launched to replace Acrobat Reader
In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader (starting with version 6), which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books. In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with titles in PDF format from major publishers (HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, etc.), as well as electronic versions of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Popular Science, etc. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell, and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.
September 2003 > The MIT OpenCourseWare: course materials of MIT online for free
The MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) was officially launched in September 2003 by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to put its course materials for free on the web, as a way to promote open dissemination of knowledge. In September 2002, a pilot version was available online with 32 course materials. 500 course materials were available in March 2004. In May 2006, 1,400 course materials were offered by 34 departments belonging to the five schools of MIT. In November 2007, all 1,800 course materials were available, and regularly updated. MIT also launched the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) in November 2005, as a collaboration of educational institutions that were willing to offer free online course materials. One year later, the OCW Consortium included the course materials of 100 universities worldwide.
February 2004 > Facebook, a social network
Facebook is a social network founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students. Originally created for the students of Harvard University, it was made available to students from any university in the U.S. In September 2006, it was open to anyone in the world, to connect with relatives, friends, and strangers. It was become the second most visited website in the world, after Google, with 500 million users in June 2010, while sparking debates on privacy issues.
April 2004 > The Librié, an ebook reader launched by Sony
Sony launched its first ebook reader, Librié 1000-EP, in Japan in April 2004, in partnership with Philips and E Ink. Librié was the first ebook reader to use the E Ink technology, with a 6-inch screen, a 10 M memory, and a 500-ebook capacity. eBooks were downloaded from a computer through a USB port. The Librié was the ancestor of the Sony Reader, launched in October 2006 in the U.S., with various new models launched worldwide then.
2004 > The web 2.0, based on the notions of community and sharing
The web 2.0 — a concept launched in 2004 - has been based on the notions of community and sharing, with a wealth of websites whose content is supplied by users, such as blogs, wikis, social networks or collaborative encyclopedias. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter, of course, but also tens of thousands of others. The term "web 2.0" was invented in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, and a major publisher of computer books, as the title for conferences he was organizing. The web 2.0 concept may begin to fulfill the dream of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web in 1990, as "the web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize." (excerpt from his short essay "The World Wide Web: A very short personal history", 1998)
2005 > Smartphones or ebook readers?
Can ebook readers like Sony Reader and Kindle really compete with cellphones and smartphones? Will people prefer reading on mobile handsets like the iPhone 3G (with its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1 (with Google's platform Android and its reader), or will they prefer using ebook readers to enjoy a larger screen? Or is there a market for both smartphones and ebook readers? These were some fascinating questions in a still emerging market.
April 2005 > The ePub format, a standard for ebooks
In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and the OeB format was replaced with the ePub format (ePub standing for "electronic publication") as a global standard for ebooks. More and more digital books are in ePub format, widely used by publishers to distribute their ebooks, because it is designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for the particular display device used by the reader: computer with a large screen, ebook reader with a medium screen, and smartphone with a small screen. The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. The PDF files created with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat are compatible with the ePub format.
May 2005 > Google Print, before Google Books
The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005, after two earlier steps. In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see excerpts from their books and order them online. In December 2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a digital library of 15 million books by digitizing the collections of main partner libraries, beginning with the universities of Michigan (7 million books), Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, and the New York Public Library. The planned cost in 2004 was an average of US $10 per book, and a total budget of $150 to $200 million for ten years. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement.
August 2006 > Google Books, the worldwide Google program for books
The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books. Google Books has provided the full text of public domain books, and has offered excerpts for copyrighted books. As of December 2008, Google had 24 library partners, including a Swiss one (University Library of Lausanne), a French one (Lyon Municipal Library), a Belgian one (Ghent University Library), a German one (Bavarian State Library), two Spanish ones (National Library of Catalonia and University Complutense of Madrid), and a Japanese one (Keio University Library). The U.S. partner libraries were, by alphabetical order: Columbia University, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), Cornell University Library, Harvard University, New York Public Library, Oxford University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
August 2006 > The Open Content Alliance, a universal public digital library
The Open Content Alliance (OCA) was launched in August 2006 to build a world public permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. The project started in October 2005 as a group of cultural, technology, non profit, and governmental organizations gathering around the Internet Archive to digitize public domain books around the world. The first 100,000 ebooks were available in December 2006 in the Text Archive of the Internet Archive, with 12,000 new ebooks posted per month. Unlike Google Books, the Open Content Alliance (OCA) has made them searchable through any web search engine, and has not scanned copyrighted books, except when the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The first contributors to OCA were the University of California, the University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives in United Kingdom, O'Reilly Media, and the Prelinger Archives. One million ebooks in December 2008 and two million ebooks in March 2010 were available under OCA principles in the Internet Archive.
August 2006 > A version of the union catalog WorldCat for free on the web
In August 2006, WorldCat, the union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), began migrating to the web through the beta version of its new website worldcat.org. OCLC was created as early as 1971 as a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information while reducing information costs. In 2005, WorldCat had 61 million bibliographic records in 400 languages, provided by 9,000 member libraries in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records were linking to one billion documents available in these libraries. Through the current WorldCat, member libraries have now provided free access to their catalogs, and free or paid access to their electronic resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text articles, photos, music CDs, and videos. In April 2010, WorldCat provided records linking to 1,5 billion documents.
2006 > Twitter, or information in 140 characters
Founded in 2006 in California by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool for users to send free short messages of 140 characters maximum, called tweets, via the internet, IM (Instant Messaging), or SMS (Short Message Service). Sometimes described as the SMS of the internet, Twitter has since gained worldwide popularity, with 106 million users in April 2010, and 300,000 new users per day. As for tweets, there were 5,000 per day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008, 2.5 million in 2009, 50 million in January 2010, and 55 million in April 2010, with the archiving of tweets by the Library of Congress as a reflection of the trends of our time, and their inclusion by Google in the results of its search engine.
October 2006 > The Sony Reader, a new ebook reader
The Sony Reader was launched in October 2006 in the U.S. for US $350. The Sony Reader was the first ebook reader to use the new advanced E Ink screen technology, "a screen that gives an excellent reading experience very close to that of real paper, making it very easy going on the eyes" (Mike Cook, editor of epubBooks.com). Another major feature of the reader over most other electronic devices is its battery life, with over 7,000 pages turns - or up to two weeks of power - on just one battery charge. It was the first ebook reader to use Adobe's Digital Editions. The Sony Reader is presently available in the U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, and France, with cheaper and revamped models.
December 2006 > Live Search Books, the digital library of Microsoft
The beta version of Live Search Books was released in December 2006, with a search possible by keyword for non-copyrighted books digitized by Microsoft in partner libraries. The British Library and the libraries of the Universities of California and Toronto were the first ones to join in, followed in January 2007 by the New York Public Library and the Cornell University Library. Books offered full text views and could be downloaded in PDF files. In May 2007, Microsoft announced agreements with several publishers, including Cambridge University Press and McGraw Hill, for their books to be available in Live Search Books. After digitizing 750,000 books and indexing 80 million journal articles, Microsoft ended the Live Search Books program in May 2008. These books are available in the OCA collections of the Internet Archive.
December 2006 > A quote by Marc Autret, a journalist and graphic designer
Marc Autret, a journalist and graphic designer, wrote in December 2006: "I imagine the ebook of the future as a kind of wiki crystallized and packaged in a format. How valuable will it be? Its value will be the value of a book: the unity and quality of editorial work!" (NEF Interview)
December 2006 > A quote by Pierre Schweitzer, inventor of the @folio project
Peter Schweitzer, inventor of the @folio project, a reading device project, wrote in December 2006: "The luck we all have is to live here and now this fantastic change. When I was born in 1963, computers didn't have much memory. Today, my music player could hold billions of pages, a true local library. Tomorrow, by the combined effects of the Moore Law and the ubiquity of networks, we will have instant access to works and knowledge. We won't be much interested any more on which device to store information. We will be interested in handy functions and beautiful objects." (NEF Interview)
March 2007 > Citizendium, a collaborative free online encyclopedia
Citizendium — which stands for "The Citizen's Compendium" - was launched in March 2007 as a pilot project to build a new encyclopedia, at the initiative of Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in January 2001, but resigned later on over policy and content quality issues, as well as the use of anonymous pseudonyms. Citizendium is a wiki project open to public collaboration, but combining "public participation with gentle expert guidance". The project is experts-led, not experts-only. Contributors use their own names, and they are guided by expert editors. There are also constables who make sure the rules are respected. There were 1,100 high-quality articles, 820 authors, and 180 editors in March 2007, 11,800 articles in August 2009, and 15,000 articles in September 2010. Citizendium also wants to act as a prototype for upcoming large scale knowledge-building projects that would deliver reliable reference, scholarly and educational content.
May 2007 > The Encyclopedia of Life, to document all species of animals and plants
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) was launched in May 2007 as a global scientific effort to document all known species of animals and plants (1.8 million), including endangered species, and expedite the millions of species yet to be discovered and cataloged (about 8 million). The encyclopedia's honorary chair is Edward Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University who, in an essay dated 2002, was the first to express the wish for such an encyclopedia. The multimedia encyclopedia has gathered texts, photos, maps, sound, and videos, with a webpage for each species, to provide a single portal for millions of documents scattered online and offline. The first pages were available in mid- 2008. The encyclopedia should be completed with all known species in 2017. The English version will be translated in several languages by partner organizations.
June 2007 > InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE) in 24 languages
IATE (InterActive Terminology for Europe) was launched in March 2007 as an eagerly awaited free public service on the web, with 1.4 million entries in 24 languages, after being launched in summer 2004 on the intranet of the European institutions. IATE is available in 24 languages, and has replaced Eurodicautom, the former terminology database available in 12 languages. The European Union went from 15 country members to 25 country members in May 2004, and 27 country members in January 2007, after its enlargement to include some Eastern European countries. IATE has been maintained by the Translation Center of the European Union institutions in Luxembourg. IATE was offering 8,4 million words in 2009, including 540,000 abbreviations and 130.000 expressions.
June 2007 > The iPhone, a smartphone launched by Apple
Launched by Apple in January 2007 in the United States, the iPhone is a smartphone including an iPod (the iPod was launched in October 2001), a camera, and a web browser, with the following specifications: large tactile screen (3,5 inches), synchronization with the iTunes platform to download music and videos, camera of 2 megapixels, Safari browser, Mac OS X operating system, access to GSM (Global System for Mobile Telecommunications) and EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), WiFi, and Bluetooth. The first iPhone was available for US$499 for the 4 G version and $599 for the 8 G version in the U.S., and launched in Europe in late 2007 and in Asia in 2008. Other models followed, the latest one being the iPhone 4, launched in June 2010.
August 2007 > A quote by Denis Zwirn, president of the digital bookstore Numilog
Denis Zwirn is the president of Numilog, the main French-language digital bookstore. He wrote in August 2007: "The digital book is not any more a topic for symposiums, conceptual definitions, or divination by some 'experts'. It is a commercial product and a tool for reading. There is no need to wait for some new hypermodern and hypertextual tool carefully orchestrating its specificity from the print book. We need to offer books that can be easily read on any ebook reader used by customers, sooner or later with an electronic ink display. And to offer them as an industry. The digital book is not - and will never be — a niche product (dictionaries, travel guides, books for the blind); it is becoming a mass market product, with multiple forms, like the traditional book." (NEF Interview)
November 2007 > The Kindle, an ebook reader launched by Amazon
In November 2007, Amazon.com launched its own ebook reader, the Kindle, with a catalog of 80,000 ebooks - and new releases for US $9,99 each. The built-in memory and 2G SD card gave plenty of book storage (1.4 G), with a screen using the E Ink technology, and page-turning buttons. Books were directly bought and downloaded via the device's 3G wireless connection, with no need for a computer, unlike the Sony Reader. 580.000 Kindles were sold in 2008. A thinner and revamped Kindle 2 was launched in February 2009, with a storage capacity of 1,500 ebooks, a new text-to-speech feature, and a catalog of 230,000 ebooks on Amazon.com's website, including the catalog of Mobipocket, a company bought by Amazon in April 2005 and the catalog of Audible.com (audio books and magazines), another company bought by Amazon in January 2009. The Kindle DX was launched in May 2009 with a larger screen, more suitable to read newspapers and magazines.
October 2008 > Google Books versus the associations of authors and publishers
After three years of conflict, Google reached a settlement with the associations of authors and publishers in October 2008, with an agreement to be signed during the next years. The inclusion of copyrighted works in Google Books — launched in April 2005 as Google Print - had been widely criticized by authors and publishers worldwide. In the U.S., lawsuits were filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for alleged copyright infringement. The assumption was that the full scanning and digitizing of copyrighted books infringed copyright laws, even if only snippets were made freely available. Google had replied this was "fair use", referring to short excerpts from copyrighted books that could be lawfully quoted in another book or website, as long as the source (author, title, publisher) was mentioned.
November 2008 > Europeana, the European digital library
This European digital library — named Europeana - opened its "virtual" doors in November 2008, with two million documents. As a first step, the European Library was a common portal for 43 national libraries, launched in January 2004 by the CENL (Conference of European National Librarians) and hosted on the website of the National Library in the Netherlands. In March 2006, the European Commission launched the project of a European digital library, after a "call for ideas" during three months, from September to December 2005. Europeana was offering 6 million documents in March 2010, and 10 million documents on a revamped website in September 2010.
November 2009 > The Nook, an ebook reader launched by Barnes & Noble
In November 2009, Barnes & Noble launched the Nook, its own ebook reader, for US $259, after announcing it in October 2009. Based on the Android platform, the original device included a 6-inch E Ink display, with WiFi and 3G connectivity. In June 2010, the price of the original Nook was reduced to $199, and a new WiFi-only model was launched for $159. The Nook Color was announced in October 2010, for the full-color viewing of magazines and picture books. In November 2010, the website of Barnes & Noble offered 2 million ebooks for the Nook.
April 2010 > The iPad, a multifunctional tablet launched by Apple
In April 2010, Apple launched the iPad, its multifunctional tablet, in the U.S. for US$499, with an iBookstore of 60,000 ebooks, and many more to come from partnerships with publishers. The iPad was available in a few European countries in June 2010. After the iPod (launched in October 2001) and the iPhone (launched in January 2007), two cult devices for a whole generation, Apple has also become a key player for digital books.
April 2010 > A quote by Catherine Domain, bookseller and publisher of travel books
Catherine Domain, founder in 1971 of the Ulysses bookstore, the oldest travel bookstore in the world, has become a publisher of travel books in April 2010. She wrote in an email: "The internet has taken more and more space in my life! On April 1st, I started being a publisher after some painful training in Photoshop, InDesign, and others. This is also great to see that the political will to keep people in front of their computers - for them not to start a revolution - can be defeated by giant and spontaneous happy hours [in Europe, through Facebook] with thousands of people who want to see - and speak with - each other in person. There will always be unexpected developments to new inventions. When I started using the internet [in 1999, to create the bookstore's website], I really didn't expect to become a publisher."
November 2010 > End of the Booknology
Many thanks to Marc Autret for the term "Booknology" used in a previous common project, and to all those who are quoted in this Booknology.
Copyright © 2010 Marie Lebert. All rights reserved.
End of Project Gutenberg's Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010), by Marie Lebert