it is a nice site. i like this site is so useful for every man.
CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
Here, you can learn and edit everything about companies like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Tagged, products like Droid and Google Wave, and people like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs.
so visit this site
How do I download and read an ebook?
What is ebook?
Ebooks, which is short for "electronic books", are books that you download and read on your computer. The "download" part is fairly straightforward, but it's difficult to give one set of instructions that works for all users. And, to be fair, sometimes publishers make it harder than they need to as well.
Let's see if we can't cut through some of the confusion.
First Things First
In order to be able to read a PDF file, you must have Adobe Reader installed on your PC. Adobe Reader is free, and available here. Follow the instructions on the Adobe site to download and install the Adobe Reader onto your machine.
Now, as to your PDF document, the publisher may have given it to you either of three ways: as a download on a web page, as an attachment in email, or as a direct link in email. Let's look at each of those.
Web Page Downloads
In this scenario, the publisher has directed you to a web page that has a link to a PDF. They may have sent you an email, but in this scenario, the information in that email is simply a link to a web page. More commonly, after you've purchased your ebook, they publisher's shopping cart will simply take you to a page with something that says "click here to download".
Here's an example from an ebook I recently purchased at Ask The Builder. After I completed my purchase I was taken to a page that summarized my order and included this:
Now, depending on where you're purchasing your ebook, your link may look different - it may look like a normal text link that says "click here", or it may look like a full URL (for example http://media.ask-leo.com/ebooks/safeontheinternet.pdf - more on this in a minute). In this case, the site has a graphic button that indicates where you should click to get your ebook.
Don't Click - I know it sounds backwards, but rather than just clicking on that button or link, you should right-click - that is, click with the right mouse button instead of the normal left button. (Mac users shift+click instead). This will bring up a popup menu:
(If you did a normal or left-click by mistake, don't worry. It will download your ebook and open it within your browser. We can still get things to work properly. Go down to the "Email Links" instructions below and continue there.)
Don't worry if your menu looks a little different - it varies depending on the internet browser you're using, and possibly on other software you have installed.
Click on Save Target As..., which may also be Save Link As..., or something similar, again depending on your browser. This will allow you to specify where on your computer to save the ebook you're about to download.
That will bring up a dialog much like this:
If you know what directory you want to store your ebook in, then simply navigate there and press Save. If you're not sure where to put the ebook, I recommend your My Documents folder. If the Save in: item doesn't already say "My Documents", you can see a list of places by clicking the down-arrow to its right. In the resulting list you should "My Documents". Click on that, and press Save.
Once you press Save, you often see a progress dialog that, when complete, looks like this:
At this point, you can click on Open, and Adobe Reader will open and display your ebook on screen.
Try it! Download a FREE copy of the ebook version of my Ask Leo! article "How do I keep my computer safe on the internet?". You've seen the instructions above, so (right) click here to download the ebook.
•
Email Attachments
Sometimes ebook sellers will send you your ebook in email, as an attachment. There are several problems with this approach - most notably that spam filters will often prevent the mail from ever getting to you at all. If you don't get the email that you were promised, check your filtered spam - it may be there. If the email didn't even make it that far, your only recourse is to contact the publisher.
Assuming you do get the email, you should see your ebook present as an attachment:
That example is using Outlook 2003 as my mail client. Exactly what you see will vary depending on what email program you are using.
In most email programs, there's an option to "save attachments". In Outlook 2003 one place to find it is on the Filemenu, Save Attachments... option:
Click that and you'll get something very much like the "Save As" dialog we discussed above:
As I said, this is my example using Outlook 2003, so what you see may be slightly different.
If you know what directory you want to store your ebook in, then simply navigate there and press Save. If you're not sure where to put the ebook, I recommend your My Documents folder. If the Save in: item doesn't already say "My Documents", you can see a list of places by clicking the down-arrow to its right. In the resulting list you should "My Documents". Click on that, and press Save.
Web-based mail note: if you are using a web-based email program, such as Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail or similar, it's likely that the attachment will be presented as a link. In that case you should treat it according to the instructions for Web Page Downloads, above.
•
This is perhaps the most confusing scenario. This is the case where the publisher sends you a simple link to the ebook somewhere on the web:
The problem is that most mail programs do not provide a "Save Target As..." function on links in messages. The only thing you can do is what I said not to do earlier:
Click the link.
This will in most cases:
If u wanted to more how to download ebook plz visit –
Now, you can read the ebook this way, but problem is that concept of a "temporary location" that the document was downloaded to. We need to save the document to a permanent location.
Just above the top of the ebook is a button labeled Save a Copy:
Push that, and you'll get a "Save A Copy..." dialog:
If you know what directory you want to store your ebook in, then simply navigate there and press Save. If you're not sure where to put the ebook, I recommend your My Documents folder. If the Save in: item doesn't already say "My Documents", you can see a list of places by clicking the down-arrow to its right. In the resulting list you should "My Documents". Click on that, and press Save.
Try it! Download a FREE copy of the ebook version of my Ask Leo! article "How do I keep my computer safe on the internet?". You've seen the instructions above, so click here: http://media.ask-leo.com/ebooks/safeontheinternet.pdf to download the ebook. It should open up a new browser window, and display the book. Remember to "Save a Copy".
Web-based mail note: if you are using a web-based email program, such as Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail or similar, it's likely that the link will allow you to right click, and "Save Target As...". In that case you should treat it according to the instructions for Web Page Downloads, at the beginning of this article.
•
Now What?
Unless you already knew where you wanted the book, the scenarios above simply downloaded your new ebook into your "My Documents" folder. To read your ebook, do the following:
That's it! Adobe Reader should start and display your ebook.
Happy Reading!
•
Among the earliest general e-books were those in the Gutenberg Project, started by Michael S. Hart in 1971. An early e-book implementation were the desktop prototypes for a proposed notebook computer, the Dynabook, in the 1970s at PARC, which would be a general-purpose portable personal computer, including reading books.[2] Similar ideas were expressed at the same time by Paul Drucker.
Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.
Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe's PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books. E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.
As of 2009, new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have yet to achieve global distribution. Only three e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500 and Bookeen with Cybook Gen3 and Cybook Opus[3]. On January 27, 2010 Apple, Inc. launched a multi-function device called the iPad[4] and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers that would allow Apple to distribute e-books.[5] However, not all authors have endorsed the concept of electronic publishing. J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has stated that there will be no e-versions of her books.[6][7]
Several events in the past few weeks suddenly converged in my mind, causing me to realize that in the discourse about e-books, especially about what constitutes fair e-book pricing, the unbridgeable divide is between believe and know.
The first events were discussions about e-books and what constitutes fair pricing for an e-book. Three types of people participated in those discussions: those who admittedly had no direct knowledge of the costs involved in publishing an e-book, those who did have direct knowledge, and those who believed they knew. As is typical of such discussions, those who admitted not knowing were open to learning and the other two types were trying to teach. But between the teachers there was no room to compromise; those who believed they knew — the believers — simply would not consider or accept that believe and know are not synonymous, that there is a chasm between the two words. Then came the New York Times Magazine article, “How Christian Were the Founders?”, which discussed the efforts by pressure groups in
The article and the e-book fair-pricing discussions brought to mind this war between two words: belief and knowledge. The core problem in the discussions about both pricing and textbook content is the chasm between believe and know.
Believe, although having some slim foundation in evidence, signifies something improvable (or perhaps less provable), and thus less firmly based in evidence, than know, whose foundation is firmly based on the provable and demonstrable. For example, we may believe there is minimal cost to creating an e-book of a book, but we do not know what that cost is — we can’t prove it or demonstrate it. The same concept holds true for any belief, whether economic, cultural, religious, scientific, or something else.
Unlike know, believe covers a wide range of credulity. Know is more constrained; its verity must be demonstrable. Believe needs no more than the statement “I believe” something to be true, leaving it to the listener to supply the factual base — no matter how slim or wobbly — for where to place the belief on the continuum that ranges from pure speculation to pure fact.
Believe denotes the acceptance of the truth or actuality of something, that it is real, even if it may not be real. For example, the belief that because an e-book is a digital file of the book, there is no cost to creating the e-book. Know, on the other hand, has its basis in experience rather than acceptance, such as the experience of smelling a rose. Having never smelled a rose, I could say that I believe the rose’s fragrance is similar to that of a skunk; but having smelled both a rose and a skunk, I could say I know that the rose’s fragrance is dissimilar to the that of the skunk.
A belief statement might ultimately prove correct, but then believe would transform itself to know. The know statement, however, cannot be transformed from know to believe. Once I have smelled both the rose and the skunk, that I know doesn’t change. What I know might change, but not that I know.
Believe embraces the possibility of doubt: No matter how firmly one believes something, by describing that conviction as a belief, one ascribes some doubt, albeit infinitesimally small, as to the verity of that belief. In contrast, know doesn’t permit that possibility of doubt; it doesn’t permit any doubt: I believe the rose smells like a skunk, but I know it doesn’t.
It is the improper use of these two words that leads to the ongoing cultural wars that are reflected in the battles over what should and should not be taught in school and what is or is not a fair price for an e-book. Too many people equate believe with know. They are neither the same nor does each include the other. It is when believe transforms to know that fact is possible, but until that transformation occurs there is always some doubt.
Interestingly, know not only cannot transform to believe, but it cannot embrace believe as a component of itself. To do so would be to weaken know and impose that element of doubt that distinguishes it from believe. In this instance, know must stand aloof and by itself.
Would proper use and understanding of these words deflect any of the passionate discourse that surrounds “I believe” statements in the cultural and rebook pricing wars? I doubt it would matter. There are some things that we grasp and cannot let go, that are beyond believe and know in the sense of a willingness to transform from the former to the latter; after all, we invented these words as a method of describing those immutable beliefs and distinguishing between possibility and fact. But proper use and understanding might shine a different light on the divide and permit a coming closer together. Unlike conflicting knowledge, it is impossible to reconcile conflicting belief, which is why we can expect the question of what is fair e-book pricing to remain irresolvable.
by
tusin ahmed
Part of the problem is right there in the name: e-book. In the print world, the word "book" is used to refer to both the content and the medium. In the digital realm, "e-book" refers to the content only—or rather, that's the intention. Unfortunately, the conflation of these two concepts in the nomenclature of print naturally carries over to the digital terminology, much to the confusion of all.
This is not the case with music, for example, where the medium and the content are separate. The medium changes—vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3—but music is still music. Music is the product. Music is what you're buying. The medium is just a vessel, and that vessel changes ruthlessly. When a better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient medium appears, the music follows—with or without the content owners.
But books…there's a lot of baggage attached to that name. Giant tomes, portable paperbacks, or standard hardcovers, they're all recognizable as books. In the modern era, there have been no discontinuities of form on par with the those in the music industry to emphasize the separation of content and medium for the written word.
The popular objections to e-books are legion. Perhaps surprisingly, technology enthusiasts are among the worst offenders.
Certain genres in particular have clung stubbornly to the word and the medium of books: novels, biography, history. "I'm writing a book." "Bring a book with you on your trip." "I work in a bookstore." Though much of the content at Ars Technica could conceivably appear in a book, that's probably not the kind of thing you are thinking of when you read the the word "book" in the three previous sentences. Like I said, a lot of baggage.
Lest you think I'm belaboring the nomenclature point, you'll see its ugly little face peeking out from behind some of the most common complaints about e-books.
The popular objections to e-books are legion. Perhaps surprisingly, technology enthusiasts (i.e., most of the people reading this) are among the worst offenders. Here are some of the greatest hits.
"I can't read an entire novel off a screen!" "I'll stick to paper with its vastly superior contrast ratio." "Eye strain! Eye strain!" "Yawn. Wake me up when we have 1200dpi displays."
With very few exceptions, all the unfavorable comparisons of bitmapped displays to print on paper are technically accurate. I'm here to tell you that they don't matter.
The amount of time people in the industrialized world spend reading text off a screen has long since nullified this complaint. Literally billions of people have proven that they're willing and able to read huge volumes of text off absolutely horrible screens. Think of text messaging on pagers and early cell phones, for example. Text messages are short, you say? I'm willing to bet that the average American will read substantially more text off his or her cell phone screen this year than from a book.
But cell phones are only the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg called "the web." How many words of text on web pages do you think will be read this year in the
People are clearly willing to read text off screens. Plain, old, often awful screens with tiny, ugly text and large pixels. Vast amounts of text, read over extended periods of time. Up to 40 hours a week at work alone, in the case of most office workers who sit in front of a computer all day. And more at home for pleasure. Hell, you're likely doing it right now (unless you printed the PDF version of this article or are being paid to read it).
I'll say it again: people will read text off screens. The optical superiority of paper is still very real, but alsoirrelevant. The minimum quality threshold for extended reading was passed a long, long time ago.
Now then, does that mean people are inclined to read novels and other traditional "books" off screens? Not necessarily. My sole point in this section is to get the screen technology argument off the table once and for all.
I'm not going to tell you that you really do want to read a novel off a screen. I am going to tell you that your reluctance to do so has absolutely nothing to do with the state of screen technology, despite your fervent protestations to the contrary. (…where "you" is a statistically average fuzz of an individual, obviously. Some people have legitimate physical issues with prolonged reading from emissive screens—and paper, for that matter. They are in the statistical noise, however.)
I think people understand this, intellectually. Yet the unwillingness to even consider reading a "book" on something that's not a book is very real. The mind cries out for a logical explanation, particularly the geek mind, thus the bogus rationalizations about screen technology, the limitations of which technology enthusiasts know all too well.
Part of the problem is right there in the name: e-book. In the print world, the word "book" is used to refer to both the content and the medium. In the digital realm, "e-book" refers to the content only—or rather, that's the intention. Unfortunately, the conflation of these two concepts in the nomenclature of print naturally carries over to the digital terminology, much to the confusion of all.
This is not the case with music, for example, where the medium and the content are separate. The medium changes—vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3—but music is still music. Music is the product. Music is what you're buying. The medium is just a vessel, and that vessel changes ruthlessly. When a better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient medium appears, the music follows—with or without the content owners.
But books…there's a lot of baggage attached to that name. Giant tomes, portable paperbacks, or standard hardcovers, they're all recognizable as books. In the modern era, there have been no discontinuities of form on par with the those in the music industry to emphasize the separation of content and medium for the written word.
The popular objections to e-books are legion. Perhaps surprisingly, technology enthusiasts are among the worst offenders.
Certain genres in particular have clung stubbornly to the word and the medium of books: novels, biography, history. "I'm writing a book." "Bring a book with you on your trip." "I work in a bookstore." Though much of the content at Ars Technica could conceivably appear in a book, that's probably not the kind of thing you are thinking of when you read the the word "book" in the three previous sentences. Like I said, a lot of baggage.
Lest you think I'm belaboring the nomenclature point, you'll see its ugly little face peeking out from behind some of the most common complaints about e-books.
The popular objections to e-books are legion. Perhaps surprisingly, technology enthusiasts (i.e., most of the people reading this) are among the worst offenders. Here are some of the greatest hits.
"I can't read an entire novel off a screen!" "I'll stick to paper with its vastly superior contrast ratio." "Eye strain! Eye strain!" "Yawn. Wake me up when we have 1200dpi displays."
With very few exceptions, all the unfavorable comparisons of bitmapped displays to print on paper are technically accurate. I'm here to tell you that they don't matter.
The amount of time people in the industrialized world spend reading text off a screen has long since nullified this complaint. Literally billions of people have proven that they're willing and able to read huge volumes of text off absolutely horrible screens. Think of text messaging on pagers and early cell phones, for example. Text messages are short, you say? I'm willing to bet that the average American will read substantially more text off his or her cell phone screen this year than from a book.
But cell phones are only the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg called "the web." How many words of text on web pages do you think will be read this year in the
People are clearly willing to read text off screens. Plain, old, often awful screens with tiny, ugly text and large pixels. Vast amounts of text, read over extended periods of time. Up to 40 hours a week at work alone, in the case of most office workers who sit in front of a computer all day. And more at home for pleasure. Hell, you're likely doing it right now (unless you printed the PDF version of this article or are being paid to read it).
I'll say it again: people will read text off screens. The optical superiority of paper is still very real, but alsoirrelevant. The minimum quality threshold for extended reading was passed a long, long time ago.
Now then, does that mean people are inclined to read novels and other traditional "books" off screens? Not necessarily. My sole point in this section is to get the screen technology argument off the table once and for all.
I'm not going to tell you that you really do want to read a novel off a screen. I am going to tell you that your reluctance to do so has absolutely nothing to do with the state of screen technology, despite your fervent protestations to the contrary. (…where "you" is a statistically average fuzz of an individual, obviously. Some people have legitimate physical issues with prolonged reading from emissive screens—and paper, for that matter. They are in the statistical noise, however.)
I think people understand this, intellectually. Yet the unwillingness to even consider reading a "book" on something that's not a book is very real. The mind cries out for a logical explanation, particularly the geek mind, thus the bogus rationalizations about screen technology, the limitations of which technology enthusiasts know all too well.
