MobiReader – Best EBook Reader For Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Java & Others?

I’ve tried using many 3rd party applications for reading PDF, TXT and HTML Ebooks on my Symbian mobile device (trying to view a PDF file with the built in Adobe Reader LE proved to be too painful). However, most of these apps had some feature missing that ruined the whole experience. Luckily, i stumbled across MobiReader (by MobiePocket) which IMHO is the best eBook reader currently available for Symbian powered smartphones (and possibly for other mobile platforms as well). MobiReader incorporates some really handy features such as resume from last position, bookmarks, auto scrolling, text customization, dynamic zoom, keyboard shortcuts, search and more. It’s free and is available for a number of different mobile platforms including Series 60 (S60v1, S60v2, S60v3, S60v5), Windows Mobile, Java, BlackBerry, PalmOS and more.

You can purchase eBooks from MobiPocket store or you can download books from compatible catalog projects. However it’s not only purchased books you can view using MobiReader (pirates be thankful ;p). If you download books in PDF format (from E-Learning torrent trackers, one click hosting sites, etc) you can view them on your mobile using this software too. However, you’d first need to convert downloaded books to a MobiReader compatible format. This is easily done using a desktop software called MobiPocket creator (this is again a free software). A brief tutorial on how to do this can be found below.

1. Install MobiReader on your mobile device by visiting http://m.mobipocket.com using your device’s built in web browser.
2. Download and MobiPocket Creator for your PC using this link.
3. Open MobiPocket Creator once it’s installed on your computer.
4. Drag and drop the ebook you need converted to MobiReader format. Choose a destination folder and hit ‘import’.
5. In the ‘Publication Files’ window, select the file you just imported and hit ‘Build’ from the top toolbar (or you can customize the book further before building using the controls on left sidebar pane).
6. In the next Window, make sure you have the options set to ‘No Compression’ and ‘No Encryption’. Then hit the ‘Build’ button.
7. Once build completes you can preview how the book will be displayed on your mobile using the built in emulator tool. This is optional.
8. Open the destination folder you chose at step 4. You will see a file with .prc extension.
9. Move this file to your mobile device via BlueTooth, USB cable or any other medium.
10. Once copied to mobile device, open the file with MobiReader and start reading.

If you know any other good E-Book reader software for mobiles, feel free to share your thoughts via comments.

Gigapedia – E-Book download site (RapidShare, FileFactory, MegaShare Links)

Over the past few months, many free E-book download sites have been posted here on FILEnetworks Blog. This included both E-Learning torrent trackers as well as sites that contained direct download links for popular books. This post features Gigapedia, probably the largest E-Book download site that’s currently online. Gigapedia is not a torrent tracker – it offers verified download links to thousands of E-Books stored in one click hosting sites such as RapidShare.

For the unregistered user, Gigapedia will look like a simple book review site which does not offer any downloads. This however is far from the truth. Once you create a free account and log in, you’ll see what we mean. There are more than 150000 E-Books (both old and new) spanning across a wide variety of categories waiting to be downloaded. For example, close to 25000 books can be found in the ‘Computers/IT’ section alone. Educational material is not all Gigapedia has in store – I even managed to find complete TinTin and Asterix comic book collections to be online as well.

 
See the numbers in leftmost column? That’s the number of books in that particular category!

Another nice feature of Gigapedia is the category specific RSS feeds. You can subscribe to any one of these feeds and get instant updates when new books are added.

Note that download links for a particular book can only be found in the links tab (located near top left hand corner of book description page):
 
Links mostly point to one click hosting sites such as RapidShare, MegaShare, FileFactory, 4shared, megaupload and so on. All these links are verified – Gigapedia linking to fakes or virus infected files almost never happens.

There are however some downsides of Gigapedia as well.  The Google Custom search embedded into the site rarely helps you find the desired book. Instead of using that, I recommend you use the search located on top right hand corner of the page.
 
Choose ‘Gigapedia’ from the drop down menu, enter your query and hit search.

If I remember correctly, this site was closed to public registrations a while back. Don’t worry - it’s currently open and you can create an account for free.

Site Name: Gigapedia (http://gigapedia.com)

Registration URL: http://gigapedia.com/register

Classic Reader – Read classic literature online for free

About a month ago, we posted an article about 6 sites through which you can download and read electronic versions of popular Books online, for free. This post is kind of an extension to that article.

Classic Reader is another similar site which offers free books. As the name implies, it specializes in works of classic literature by respected authors such as H.G Wells, D.H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy and Shakespeare. There are more than 3000 complete titles online and you can view all these books free of charge.

Each books is presented using several HTML pages (Usually one chapter per HTML page). There is no option to download the entire book into hard disk with one click (unless you pay $20 to and buy the DVD version). You can however save the HTML files manually to hard disk if you prefer to read them offline or want a personal copy for yourself.

[Click Here] to visit Classic Reader now. 

[Click Here] to view the titles list.

[Click Here] to view Authors list.

6 sites you can use to download fiction, novels and other E-Books free of charge

Our previous post was about a site which you can use to view International Magazines via the Internet, free of charge. This post is about sites which allow you to download Electronic books of various categories right into your computer, free of charge. Please note that this is not a complete list; these are only the sites I have used and verified that the downloads they offer are reliable and what they claim to be. There may be plenty of other sites and if you know any such, feel free to share them by dropping a comment.

1. FreeBookSpot

This is one of my favorite sites. FreeBookSpot has nearly 5000 Electronic Books in its index belonging to various categories. Unlike most sites, it is not limited to programming/tech books. FreeBookSpot also indexes novels, fiction and even waay cooler stuff such as Star Wars novels packs!

Most of the books are in either Adobe PDF format or MS Reader .LIT format. FBS does not host every book in their servers. Most of the time they offer links to one click hosting sites such as RapidShare. It should not be a problem since most Ebooks are small in file size.

[Click Here] to visit FreeBookSpot.

2. MSLIT - Microsoft Reader Catalogue of EBooks

MSLIT is a site dedicated to indexing Microsoft Reader .LIT format Electronic books. They have e-books related a wide variety of categories ranging from action/adventure/detective novels to programming and IT related stuff.

As mentioned above, the site only indexes books in .LIT format. You need Microsoft Reader (Freely downloadable) to view them. Although the site bears the Microsoft logo actually it has no official affiliation with Microsoft.

[Click Here] to visit MSLIT.

3. Knowledge is Free

Knowledge is Free is another excellent source of information which indexes more than 2500 e-books mostly related to tech/business and programming categories. This site is very useful if you are a student or is studying for examinations such as CCNA or SCJP. In addition to E-books, Knowledge is Free also offers links to several video tutorials and nearly 500 issues of international magazines.

Like FreeBookSpot, Knowledge Is Free also offers download links from one click hosting services to indexed content.

[Click Here] to visit Knowledge is Free.

4. eBookShare

ebookshare.net is one of the first sites I used to download books from. It mainly indexes IT and Business Development related E-books but has a significant number of Magazines indexed as well.

Unlike the sites mentioned before, eBookShare does not offer HTTP downloading links. Instead, it offers links to .torrent files so the users may download the book with the help of a bittorrent client. Majority of the books indexed are tracked by the Pirate Bay public tracker so additional registration is not needed.

[Click Here] to visit eBookShare

5. FullBooks

FullBooks.com is another free e-Book hosting site which I found useful. It does not have a categorized index like most sites but indexes the hosted books in Alphabetical order. FullBooks hosts both fiction and tech related books.

All of the indexed books are hosted on the site itself. Longer books are divided into parts and each part is a .html file which you can view using the web browser. If you want to download the book into hard disk, just save the .html files.

[Click Here] to visit FullBooks.

Convert MS Reader .LIT files to .PDF, .Doc, .HTML and more with ABC Amber LIT Converter

ABC Amber LIT Converter is an advanced utility which converts your LIT (Microsoft Reader) files to any format you wish (PDF, HTML, CHM, RTF, HLP, DOC, and many more) easily and quickly. The software supports a batch conversion, a run from command line, more than 50 languages. Batch conversion ability allows you to convert a unlimited number of LIT files at a time.

Features

• Reads LIT (Microsoft Reader) files and converts to PDF (doesn't require Adobe Acrobat to be installed), HTML, RTF (MS Word doesn't need to be installed), CHM, HLP, TXT (ANSI and Unicode), DOC (MS Word), etc.
• supports batch conversion
• easy to use and easy to set up
• supports multiple charsets
• supports advanced PDF export options
• supports multiple HLP and CHM export options
• bonus: converts books to RB (Rocket eBook), FB2 (FictionBook) and PDB (Palm) (since 2.02)
• command line support, multiple language support, skin support... and more!

Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version from RapidShare.

Harry Potter : Books 1-7 [PDF]

This post should stop the 'Harry Potter mail assault' on our inbox. Now we've posted all of em'.

The Harry Potter series of seven fantasy novels was written by English author J. K. Rowling about an adolescent boy named Harry Potter and his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. The story is mostly set at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a school for young wizards and witches, and focuses on Harry Potter's fight against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents as part of his plan to take over the wizarding world.

Books Included:

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Supplementary Books Included

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
• Quidditch Through the Ages

Read comments for more information

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : E-Book [PDF]

We all know that this book was leaked on Bit Torrent around a week before official release. But you couldnt read it without hurting your eyes as the snaps of pages were of poor quality. Well that problem is solved now; fans have transcribed the entire book into a well formatted printable PDF document.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling. The book chronicles the events directly following Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, leading to the long-awaited final struggle between Harry Potter and his allies, and the ever-more-powerful and influential Voldemort and his allies, the Death Eaters.

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The Pirate Bay and The Deathly Torrents of Fire

It's war. War between P2P community and die hard Harry Potter fans. You should now be familiar with the story of the leaked harry Potter book. Soon, people who downloaded the book from Bit Torrent sites were posting spoiler comments in almost every Harry Potter fansite. This has caused the hard core HP fans to go nuts and launch counter attacks on many torrents sites. Even news sites such as TorrentFreak (which broke the news of the leak) were hit by DOS attacks which are suspected to be directed by HP fans.

Immediately following the leak, HP publishers sent several notices to bit torrent sites and few social networking sites requesting takedown of the torrents. Mininova and Demonoid, two popular trackers complied with the requested and deleted the torrents. But admins of The Pirate Bay downright refused to take the torrents down. Anyone who search TPB with the search term "Deathly Hallows" will immediately be treated with lots of torrents of leaked book. Fans have now transcribed first 10 chapters from the images into PDF and even audio books of the first 10 chapters have begun appearing.

The Pirate Bay, as usual has come up with a funny logo depicting the current situation (See image above). Clicking on the new logo will take users to a torrent page which tracks leaked images from a new book which they call "Harry Potter and the Torrents on Fire" :)

The Pirate Bay is known to have changed logos before; When TPB resurfaced after the infamous police raid on its servers in 2006, it's logo showed the pirate ship firing cannon balls at a "Hollywood" sign. This depicted it's triumph over the MPAA who used unethical means to try and take it down.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : LEAKED ON BITTORRENT!

Yeah the complete book has been scanned and uploaded by someone to the Demonoid tracker. Looks like the real deal. We have one advice to you; Dont read the uploaded book or read the spoilers which are spreading on the internet like wildfire. Wait till the book comes out on 21st and enjoy it! Owning a hard copy of Harry Potter is well worth it.

The Adventures of Tintin : Complete Comic Book Collection (25 Books)

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of Belgian comic books (Note- Comics featured in this post are translated to English) created by Belgian artist Hergé, the pen name of Georges Remi. The hero of the series is the eponymous character, Tintin, a young Belgian reporter and traveller. He is aided in his adventures from the beginning by his faithful dog Snowy. Later, popular additions to the cast included Captain Haddock and other colourful supporting characters.

The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in over 50 languages and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date. 23 Tin Tin books were written by Herge at the time of his death in 1983.

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Asterix the Gaul : Complete Comic Book Collection (33 Books)

All Gaul is divided into three parts. No, four — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the Roman invaders....

The Adventures of Asterix is a series of comic books by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). The series follows the exploits of a village of ancient Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their druid, which gives the recipient superhuman strength. This is often used for comic effect, as in a recurring sequence where the villagers sally forth from their village to rout the attacking Romans so easily as to consider it great sport. In many cases, this resistance leads the main characters to travel to various European countries (but also Egypt, America, India and other non-European locations) in every other book, while the remaining are set in and around their village.

The 33 main books or albums (one of which is a compendium of short stories) have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects. The key to the success of the series is that it contains comic elements for all ages: young children like the fist-fights and other visual gags, while adults appreciate the cleverness of the allusions and puns that sparkle throughout the texts.

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