Mobipocket
Company type | Public |
---|---|
Industry | Software |
Founded | 2000 |
Headquarters | Paris |
Key people | Thierry Brethes, Founder ; Nathalie Ting, Founder ; Martin Görner , CEO |
Products | Mobipocket Reader |
Mobipocket.com SA is a French company incorporated in March 2000 which produces the Mobipocket Reader, a universal reader for PDAs. The Mobipocket software package is currently free to download from the official web site and consists of various publishing and reading tools. Reading tools are available for PDA, Smartphones, Cellphones and e-book devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, J2ME, BlackBerry, Psion, Kindle and iLiad). An alpha release of the java-based version of the mobipocket reader was made available for cellphones on June 30, 2008[[1]].
Mobipocket.com was bought by Amazon.com in 2005. [1]. Amazon's acquisition was believed to be a result of Adobe's announcement that it would no longer sell its eBook packaging and serving software. [2]
The company went offline for nine days, from 15 August 2007 until 24 August 2007, after a DRM server failure took longer to repair than was anticipated. [3]
The software provides:
- A personalized press review using the Mobipocket Web Companion, an automated content extraction tool dedicated to press articles.
- eBooks, including for each book a biography of the writer. Each downloaded eBook is registered in the My Mobipocket personal virtual library, from which a user has access to any previously-downloaded eBook.
- A secure reading system, as a result of the encryption of eBooks (using DRM) and unique signature, a timestamp added to each book at the time of purchase.
Depending on the device, different functions are available. Those are usually managing of books and their metadata, assigning books to arbitrary categories, auto-scroll, rotate by 90°/180°, bookmarks, custom hyperlinks within one or between different documents, highlighting, comments and by sketches. When transferring documents to other device types, functions that are not supported on the device will be ignored but the information one is reading will not be altered or deleted.
There is a reader software version for personal computers running on Microsoft Windows. It allows you to import different file formats, among them HTML, PDF, OEB , CHM , TXT and Microsoft Office formats. Mobipocket books can be read on Mac OS X using Lexcycle Stanza, a 3rd party program.
This way, a user can create documents in the Mobipocket-format (.PRC) and use personal comments, bookmarks etc. on all devices supporting those features.
Note that there is no way to print or export the text itself nor the personalized additions without manually selecting, copying and pasting them piece by piece. According to Mobipocket Support a print function will be released soon; an export feature is planned but not yet in an advanced stage as consultation with publishers continues.
See also
- Comparison of e-book formats: an overview of various e-book formats
- TomeRaider: an alternative ebook reader software with a large free ebook base including Wikipedia:TomeRaider database.
- Amazon Kindle: Amazon's e-Ink device which can read DRM-free Mobipocket files
- Cybook Gen3: Bookeen e-Ink device which can read DRM-free and DRM Mobipocket files
- Irex iLiad: Irex' e-Ink device which natively supports Mobipocket files, and synchronizes with the desktop Mobipocket reader
References
External links