--- All the 5000 books are in
ASCII Plain Text format (.txt) just like most emails. They
have no formatting and there for can compressed very tightly. All
the books on the CDs are also compressed into ZIP (.zip) files to
make them even smaller. The CD-roms include programs to view and
unzip them. We even include the program Etext Reader1.2
which does both at the same time and also lets you change the
FONT type , and size as well as the background color to make it easier
on your eyes. It lets you search the list of books by Title and/or
Author. And when you finish reading for the day you can bookmark
where you left off. What's really special is that it does all this
with out saving the books on your hard drive. It reads the books
directly from the CD-ROM s. Just pop the CDs in and go straight to
the books and READ.
--- Most likely. Since all the
books are .txt ASCII files virtually all devices can understand the files.
Usually your PDA will come with a program that allows you to import text
files like emails or .txt files from your computer. Text files are
as basic a file as can be and most devices will recognize it easily.
Read the instructions that came with your device. If it can import
text files or files from Notepad, Write, Word or any word processor it
can read text files.
---BookBot is our email book delivery
service for travelers or just anyone that wants to read
there books away from their home computer. BookBot is basically and
email service in which you email us the filename of the book and we email
you the book where ever you are. This service is FREE for a year
when you buy the collection (just $19.95).
--- Yes, the books are Public Domain and can
be copied and printed according to the Project
Gutenberg License included in every book. If you are a teacher
feel free to make copies for your students on paper or disks. If
you are interested in including them in publications with the proper attributions
feel free to do so but please read the Project
Gutenberg License. The brainfly.idx and the various indexing files included on the CD-ROMs
are the property of Brainfly, inc. and cannot be copied without express
written permission.
How do I
turn the Books To MP3?
The way the program works is that you can either listen to text (your book
or any text) or you can set it to silently convert your book to an MP3
file. It take my computer about 20 minutes to convert a large book. Just
set it and forget it. The program will convert the book to either .wav
or .mp3 and save it to your harddrive. Then you have two options.
1. If you converted the book to .wav most disk burning programs that come
with your cd burner can turn that file to a regular CD you can listen to
on a regular CD player.
2. If you convert the book to .mp3 you can burn it to a CD and play it
on any devic: computer, portable mp3 player or a CD player that can play
MP3s. It will see the book as just a long song.
Text to speech technology has come a long way in ten years. The program
I include is the free version. The voice is not as natural as I would like
( very much like Steven Hawkings the physicist) But it is easy to understand.
However the same company www.nextup.com makes a $39.95 8khz version of
the program that includes AT&T Natural Voices and it is trully amazing.
Not quite James Earl Jones but very natural. (they also make a 16khz Natural
Voices version for $51.90 which is even better)
NOTE: Our primary product is the set of 5000 books in text format
on CDROM. The text-to-speech program TextAloudMP3 is a third party application.
We don't make it or sell it. We include it as a Cool BONUS for buying the
5000 Books Set.
Listen to Samples of what the different
versions of TextAloudMP3 sound like:
(You can click on them to hear them or right click and choose "same link
as" to download)
(FOR BEST RESULTS: Download the sample to your hard drive and listen
to it on a dedicated MP3 player like WINAMP. These are large
files and may sound a little choppy if you listen to them online through
your browser or a plug-in to your browser)
Gettysburg
Address (made with Free TextAloudMP3 version - Good Quality) 711K
Minimum system requirements are a 300 Mhz Processor w/ 128mb RAM and 500MB
Free Disk Space (16khz versions require 1GB Free Disk Space). While on
all systems the Natural Voices™ work great when reading to MP3 and WAV
files, on systems with less than 256MB Natural Voices™ can have pauses
when reading aloud relating to loading voices into memory.
Recommended system requirements are a 500Mhz Processor w/ 256 mb RAM
and 1GB Free Disk Space.
Windows 95/98 Installation
Instruction for EtextReader and for Opening the Books without EtextReader:
Getting started:
1. Insert the disk labeled "Classics Edition Volume 1"
2. Use mycomputer or windows explorer to view the contents
of the CD rom.
3. Open the Directory "EText Reader Setup and Source".
Then Double click "etr-1.2.2-1.exe" or run it from a command line.
3.a. Follow the intructions.
4. Once installed run "C:\Program Files\EText_Reader\etr.exe"
by double clicking the file etr.exe. This is the default install location
you may have installed it somewhere else. You can also double click
the ETR icon on the desktop, or launch Programs>Etext Reader >etext reader
from the START menu .
5. Choose Browse CDROM from the FILE menu and select the
drive letter for your CDROM
Drive.
6. Choose the file "Brainfly.idx" and press OPEN. This
file is on both CDs so you can browse from either Disk 1 or Disk 2.
7. You should be presented with a list of all of the titles
on the CDs. You can find any title or
author by clicking the FIND button at the bottom of the
LIST SCREEN.
7.a. (The Etext Reader program has the problem that sometimes
when you start it it disappears and all you can see is the program's bar-icon
on your task bar. To bring up the program in this instance RIGHT
click the task bar icon and choose MAXIMIZE. It should pop right
up.)
8. To open any book just double click it. The program
will unzip the file and present it to you in
a different screen. Here you can change
the background color, text font, text color, text
size and make multiple BOOKMARKS marking where your
left off reading.
8.a. (Some times when you open a book in EtextReader
it will not display the bottom of a book. If this happens close the
window displaying
the book. Go back to the index and open the book again.)
As always if you have any problems email me at jorge@brainfly.net OR
You can also Browse the
titles using your internet browser
by opening the files "start.htm".
If you have installed an UnZIPPing program like WINZIP.EXE you should be
able to just click the link and the browser will launch WinZIP (or any
other Unzipping Program installed) and you can VIEW the Book from there.
Or you can then unzip the book and read in a regular Text reader
like WORD or WordPad.exe.
NOTE: IF you don't have WINZIP or some other
UnZipping Program installed we have included a FREE Unzipping Program called
ENZIP on DISK 2 directory ./Enzip.
Have fun designing the look of your book. To start reading your
book scroll down past the Gutenberg info.
1. Etext Reader 1.2 does not work with Apple computers but there are
other ways to view the texts. 2. Use the "start.htm" file as
your index file to look up the name and location of the files. If
your internet browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.) is set up to
unzip files automatically all you have to do is click on the link
and your browser will open the file automatically. 3. If not you will have to unzip the file manually with your unzipping
program (Stuffit). 4. The uncompressed Books are usually too large for the simple editor
provided with your Mac. You can use Microsoft's
Word, any internet browser (Netscape,
IE, etc.), or any wordprocessor program you
have that can handle files from 500k to 4meg. 5. If you don't have a program that can read the larger books we
have included two programs on DISK 1. For MacOS
9.1 and lower use SimpleEdit 3.5.1(this
one is Free) or Tex-Edit-Plus4.1.2 (this one
is shareware). For MacOS XTex-Edit-Plus-X(shareware)
. With these programs you can change the fonts to make them easier
to read and even edit them to mark where you left off. 6. We have also included a FREE unZipping
program called MacZip in case you don't have Stuffit or it's
not working. (also on Disk 1)
Basically the procedure is as follows:
1. Find the file name of the book you want to read by opening the file
start.htm
in your browser.
For example if you are looking for the book "Emma by Jane Austen"
click "Browse by Title" then click letter "E"
at the top of the page.
The browser will then load the page for all the titles starting with
E. Go down to the line that says "Emma , by Jane Austen.........
etext94/emma10.zip ..... Disk 1" Or search for the line
with your browser's FIND function (it's usually under EDIT)The directory
in this case is etext94 and the filename is emma10.zip. Volume 1(Disk
1) has all the directories from etext90 to etext00. Volume2 has etext01
to etext04. So etext94/emma10.zip is in Volume 1. Change to the appropriate
CD. If your browser is set up to unzip files automatically then clicking
"Emma
, by Jane Austen......... etext94/emma10.zip ..... Disk 1"
will launch your unzip program and then from there you can either view
the file or copy and paste it to a wordprocessor or unzip it for later
viewing.
2.If your browser is not set up to unzip automatically you'll have to
unzip it. If you already have an unzipping program like STUFFIT
installed you have two options.
a. Launch the unzipping program and unzip the program from there.
Once it is unzipped you can view it in your WordProcessor or Your Browser
simply open it from any of these applications. ( we have included the wordprocessors
SimpleEdit
3.5.1 and Tex-Edit_Plus 4.1.2. Install it if you need
it)
b. You may also be able to click on the file name directly and automatically
unzip it this way. Simply browse through the CDROM vol1 like you would
your harddrive and when you get to the file emma10.zip, open it.
This may launch your unzip program and take you through the steps of unzipping
it. You can then view it as above with your browser or a wordprocessor.
3. If you don't have an unzip program. Install MacZip. The program
is in Volume 2 under Mac programs. Once it's installed launch it and go
back to step 2.a.
(usually Macs come with STUFFIT an unzipping program)
I hope this works for you. If you have any questions email
me.
Project Gutenberg Books on
The REB1100 eBook Yes you can read our books on an eBook reader Here's
how:
It's pretty easy. Unzip the book you want to read. Open the book
in an html editor like Netscapes Composer. Save it as .htm.
Then use the RocketWriter
program to convert it to the .rb format by opening "RocketLibrarian".
Chose "Import File Using RocketWriter" importing the program you just saved
in HTML and then "Export File" to your hard drive thus saving it to your
harddrive in .rb format. ( When downloading the software from the
RocketEbook Webpage Choose the link for "rl13_222NuvoInst.exe"
Download the program "RocketLibrarian" it includes the RocketWriter program.
If it is no longer there email me.)
NEXT open the eBook Librarian program that came with your
ebook. Choose TITLE then IMPORT TITLE. (Make sure your eBook is ON
and CONNECTED to your computer) Choose to import it directly into your
eBook's memory. Or choose the book from your NEW directory and choose "Send
To Internal Memory". Then refresh the view of your eBook titles and VOILA!
It should show up in your ebook. The book looks best if you open it in
the html editor like Netscapes Composer and save it as HTML. Try formating
the text so that paragraphs are no more than 38 characters wide. You can
also import them in plain text but they wont be neatly formated. Here are
screen shots of Howard Pyle's Pirate Book, and a screen shot of Robert
X. Cringely's Weekly Web page which I just downloaded and stuck in my eBook
so I could read it later.
AS A SIDE NOTE YOU CAN BUY AN EBOOK on eBay.com
NOWADAYS FOR ABOUT $125 and you can store about 6 of our books in it.
It lasts about 8 to 10 hours of continous use. I can usually read
an entire book on one charge. It recharges very quickly. A couple of hours. (I have not tested the REB1200 yet so that
may not work)
If you have a problem go to the web page and choose TROUBLE SHOOTING
from the main menu or if that does not solve your problem email me at biojorge@ix.netcom.com
or mail@claywood-creations.com or visit our
Only known bugs. 1.The Etext Reader program has the problem that sometimes when you
start it it disappears and all you can see is the program's bar-icon on
your task bar. To bring up the program in this instance RIGHT click
the task bar icon and choose MAXIMIZE. It should pop right up.
2.Some times when you open a book in EtextReader it will not display
the bottom of a book. If this happens close the window displaying
the book. Go back to the index and open the book again. As always if you have any problems email me at jorge@brainfly.net
