Ebook Reading And Distribution

Overview

The overall premise of this effort is to produce a streamlined, unified system to enable XO users to access and view electronic books.

The Idea

It goes without saying that reading is a crucial tool for a child's development; the OLPC program provides the means to provide the world's poorest children with an infinite supply of books; I came up with this idea after realizing that there exists no easy way for a XO user to accomplish this.

The Need

While there are several projects related to the concept of file distribution and document reading in the works, the methods and goals between them don't totally line up eye-to-eye, and as a result there are several considerable obstacles standing in the way of the XO offering competent and feature-rich e-book accessibility.

Goals

The endgame here is to create a multi-lateral solution which utilizes features from numerous existing projects and software to not only allow easy access to and viewing of e-books on the user end, but to provide an infrastructure for the uploading, cataloguing and hosting of e-books for the purpose of creating clear channels of communication between online e-book sources (including XS servers and online archives) and XO users. This can best be accomplished with participation from the authors of the Activities and software which ideally will be used in this project, in a collaborative effort with myself and other students enrolled in RIT's OLPC course. Ideally, this project will provide a use for our XS server as part of the ebook hosting solution.

In the long-term, I hope that the solution we end up with becomes part of the default set of Activities included on every XO.

Contact

Mike DeVine

Desired Features

On The Hosting Side

• Service should include as much metadata as possible for tagging purposes
• Multiple file formats are available; which one would work best for our applications?

Distribution

• An easy-to-use interface that allows XO users to access files, and other parties to upload to a central location

Collaborating Activities, Software & Hardware

Activities: E-Book Accessibility & Viewing

• Could possibly use RIT student Justin Lewis' File Share Activity?

Software: File Hosting & Distribution

• Could possibly use Justin Lewis' File Share Server?

Hardware: File Storage & Hosting

• The XS server at RIT would ideally serve as part of the e-book hosting solution

Progress

Notes

• (1/14/2010) As of now, still collecting feedback and gauging interest in the project. -Mike DeVine