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.