Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010) Part 2

The new database -- called IATE (InterActive Terminology for Europe) - would be available in more than 20 languages, because of the enlargement of the European Union planned in 2004 towards Eastern Europe. IATE was launched in 2007.

1997 > The interface of Yahoo! available in seven languages

In 1997, the interface of Yahoo! was available in seven languages: English, French, German, j.a.panese, Korean, Norwegian, and Swedish, with websites cla.s.sified in 63 sections. Yahoo! was launched three years earlier by David Filo and Jerry Lang, two students at Stanford University, California, as an online directory to give access to websites and sort them out by topics. The directory quickly became quite popular because people found it more handy than search engines like AltaVista, where these tasks were fully automated. However, when a search didn't give any result in Yahoo!, it was automatically shunted to AltaVista, and vice versa.

December 1997 > Babel Fish, the first free machine translation software

In December 1997, AltaVista was the first search engine to launch a free machine translation software called Babel Fish -- or AltaVista Translation -, which could translate up to three pages from English into French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish, and vice versa.

The software was developed by SYSTRAN (acronym of "System Translation"), a company specializing in automated language solutions.

Babel Fish was a hit among the 12 million internet users of the time, with more and more non-English-speaking users, and contributed to the plurilinguism of the web. Babel Fish was followed by other tools developed by Alis Technologies, Globalink, Lernout & Hauspie, and Softissimo, with free and/or paid versions available on the web.

December 1997 > The translation tools of Logos for free on the web

In December 1997, Logos -- a global translation company based in Modena, Italy - decided to put on the web for free the linguistic tools used by its translators, for the internet community to be able to use them as well. The linguistic tools were the Logos Dictionary, a multilingual dictionary with 7 billion words in fall 1998; the Logos Wordtheque, a multilingual library with 328 billion words extracted from translated novels, technical manuals, and other texts; the Logos Linguistic Resources, a database of 553 glossaries; and the Logos Universal Conjugator, a database for verbs in 17 languages. In 2007, the Logos Library (formerly Wordtheque) included 710 billion words, Linguistic Resources included 1,215 glossaries, and the Universal Conjugator (formerly Conjugation of Verbs) included verbs in 36 languages.

1998 > The online database of the first volume (1751) of the Encyclopedie

In 1998, the database of the first volume of the Encyclopedie (1751) was available online, as an experimental project from ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language), a common project of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - National Scientific Research Center) in France and the University of Chicago in Illinois (United States). This online experiment was a first step towards a full online version of the first edition (1751-1772) of the Encyclopedie by Diderot and d'Alembert, with 72,000 articles written by more than 140 contributors - including Voltaire, Rousseau, Marmontel, d'Holbach, Turgot, and others -, 17 volumes of text (with 20,736,912 words and 18,000 pages) and 11 volumes of plates. Designed to collect and disseminate the entire knowledge of the time, the Encyclopedie was a reflection of the intellectual and social currents of the time, called the Age of Enlightenment, and contributed to disseminate novel ideas that would inspire the French Revolution in 1789.

April 1998 > The dream behind the web, by Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web in 1990, wrote in May 1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common information s.p.a.ce in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on 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. That was that once the state of our interactions was online, we could then use computers to help us a.n.a.lyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together" (excerpt from "The World Wide Web: A very short personal history", available on the website of the World Wide Web Consortium).

May 1998 > Editions 00h00, a pioneer in online publis.h.i.+ng

Editions 00h00 (p.r.o.nounced "zero heure") was created in May 1998 by Jean-Pierre Arbon and Bruno de Sa Moreira, as a pioneer in commercial online publis.h.i.+ng, to sell digital books through the internet. In 2000, the catalog included 600 t.i.tles, with 85% of sales for digital versions (in PDF format), and the remaining 15% for on-demand print versions. No stock, but a direct link with the reader and between readers. On the website, users/readers could create their personal s.p.a.ce to write their comments, partic.i.p.ate in forums, subscribe to an online newsletter, and watch online video clips about new literary works that were published.

In September 2000, 00h00 was bought by the media company Gemstar. In June 2003, Gemstar put an end to its eBook experiments, both for its ebook reading devices and for 00h00.

August 1998 > A quote by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg

Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in 1971, and the inventor of ebooks (electronic books), has dedicated his whole life to put as many literary works online for free for everyone, for them to be disseminated worldwide. He wrote in August 1998: "We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relations.h.i.+p to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools." (NEF Interview)

September 1998 > A quote by John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of the Online Books Page

John Mark Ockerbloom created the Online Books Page in 1993, as a catalog of ebooks available for free on the web. He wrote in 1998: "I've gotten very interested in the great potential the net has for making literature available to a wide audience. (...) I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a ma.s.s communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer." (NEF Interview)

September 1998 > A quote by Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries

Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995, wrote in September 1998: "The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and inst.i.tutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind." (NEF Interview) In January 2000, Robert Beard co- founded yourDictionary, a major portal for dictionaries and other tools in all languages.

October 1998 > A new amendment to the U.S. copyright law

Each copyright legislation has been more restrictive than the previous one. A major blow for digital libraries was the amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act signed on October 27, 1998. As explained in July 1999 by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg: "Nothing will expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now it is 95 years.

And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28-year extension, only on request) before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14-year extension) before that.

So, as you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain, as a matter of continuing policy." The copyright went from an average of 30 years in 1909 to an average of 95 years in 1998, with an extension of 65 years. Only a book published before 1923 can now be considered for sure as belonging to the public domain.

1999 > The Rocket eBook was the first ebook reader

The Rocket eBook was launched in 1999 by NuvoMedia, in Palo Alto, California, as the first dedicated ebook reader. Founded in 1997, NuvoMedia wanted to become "the electronic book distribution solution, by providing a networking infrastructure for publishers, retailers and end users to publish, distribute, purchase and read electronic content securely and efficiently on the internet." NuvoMedia's investors were Barnes & n.o.ble and Bertelsmann. The connection between the Rocket eBook and the computer (PC or Macintosh) was made through the Rocket eBook Cradle, which provided power through a wall transformer, and connected to the computer with a serial cable.

1999 > The SoftBook Reader was the second ebook reader

SoftBook Press created the SoftBook Reader in 1999, along with the SoftBook Network, an internet-based content delivery service. With the SoftBook Reader, "people could easily, quickly and securely download a wide selection of books and periodicals using its built-in internet connection", with a device that, "unlike a computer, was ergonomically designed for the reading of long doc.u.ments and books." The investors of Softbook Press were Random House and Simon & Schuster.

1999 > Other pioneer ebook readers

Other pioneer ebook readers were launched in 1999, for example EveryBook and the Millennium eBook (Librius). EveryBook (EB) was "a living library in a single book". The EveryBook's electronic storage could hold 100 textbooks or 500 novels. The EveryBook used a "hidden"

modem to dial into the EveryBook Store, for people to browse, purchase, and receive full text books, magazines, and sheet music. The Millennium eBook was a "small low-cost" ebook reader launched by Librius, a "full- service e-commerce company". Librius's website offered a World Bookstore that "delivered digital copies of thousands of books" via the internet.

1999 > A website for the Ulysses Bookstore, the oldest travel bookstore in the world

Created in 1971 by Catherine Domain in the center of Paris, France, on Ile Saint-Louis in the middle of the river Seine, the Ulysses Bookstore (Librairie Ulysse) is the oldest travel bookstore in the world, with 20,000 books, maps and magazines, out of print and new. Catherine, an avid traveler herself, started a website in early 1999, as a virtual travel in the field of computing, and wrote in November 2000: "My site is still pretty basic and under construction. Like my bookstore, it is a place to meet people before being a place of business. The internet is a pain in the neck, takes a lot of my time and I earn hardly any money, but that doesn't worry me... I am very pessimistic though, because it is killing off specialist bookstores." (NEF Interview)

1999 > WordReference.com: free bilingual online dictionaries

WordReference.com was created in 1999 by Michael Kellogg, who wrote much later on his project's website: "I started this site in 1999 in an effort to provide free online bilingual dictionaries and tools to the world for free on the internet. The site has grown gradually ever since to become one of the most-used online dictionaries, and the top online dictionary for its language pairs of English-Spanish, English- French, English-Italian, Spanish-French, and Spanish-Portuguese. Today, I am happy to continue working on improving the dictionaries, its tools and the language forums. I really do enjoy creating new features to make the site more and more useful."

1999 > Wordfast, a translation memory software

Created in 1999 by Yves Champollion in Paris, France, Wordfast is a translation memory software with terminology processing in real time.

Worldfast was compatible with the IBM WebSphere Translation Server and other translation memory software like Trados. During a few years, a basic version of Wordfast was also available for free, with a manual in 16 languages. In 2010, Wordfast is the most widely used translation memory solution on both Windows and Mac platforms,, and the second most widely used translation memory software on Windows (the first one being SDL Trados), with over 20.000 customer deployments, including the United Nations, Nomura Securities, the NASA (National Aeronautics and s.p.a.ce Administration), and McGraw-Hill.

September 1999 > OeB (Open eBook), a standard format for ebooks

With so many formats showing up in the late 1990s for new reading devices, the digital publis.h.i.+ng industry felt the need to work on a common format for ebooks. In September 1999, it released the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS).

The Open eBook Forum was then created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most ebook formats have been derived from - or are compatible with - the OeB format, for example the PRC format from Mobipocket or the LIT format from Microsoft.

December 1999 > Britannica.com, the web version of the Encyclopedia Britannica

Britannica.com was launched in December 1999, as the digital equivalent of the 32 volumes of the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The website was available for free - as a complement to the print and CD-ROM versions (for sale) -, with a selection of articles from 70 magazines, a guide to the best websites, a selection of books, etc., all searchable through a single search engine. In September 2000, the site was among the top 100 websites in the world. In July 2001, the website, not free anymore, was available for a monthly or annual fee.

In 2009, Britannica.com opened its website to external contributors, with registration required to write and edit articles.

December 1999 > Two main French-language encyclopedias on the web

Launched by Editions Atlas in December 1999, Webencyclo was the first main French-language online encyclopedia available for free. It was searchable by keyword, topic, media (maps, links, photos, and ill.u.s.trations) and ideas. A call for papers invited specialists in a given topic to become external contributors and submit articles in a section called "Webencyclo Contributif". Later on, a free registration was required to use the online encyclopedia.

Launched at the same time, the website of Encyclopedia Universalis included 28,000 articles by 4,000 contributors, available for an annual subscription fee, with a number of articles also available for free.

January 2000 > The Million Book Project, to digitize one million books

Launched in January 2000 by the Carnegie Mellon University (Pennsylvania, United States), the Million Book Project - also called the Universal Library or Universal Digital Library (UDL) - aimed to digitize one million books in a number of languages, including in India and China. The project was completed in 2007, with one million books available on the university website, as image files in DjVu and TIFF formats, and with three mirror sites in northern China, southern China, and India. The project may have inspired the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a universal public digital library launched by the Internet Archive in October 2005.

February 2000 > yourDictionary.com, a portal for linguistic tools in all languages

Robert Beard, a professor at Bucknell University (USA), co-founded yourDictionary.com in February 2000, as a follow-up of his first website, A Web of Online Dictionaries (included in the new one), launched in 1995 as a directory of online dictionaries (with 800 links in fall 1998) and other linguistic resources such as thesauri, vocabularies, glossaries, grammars, and language textbooks.

yourDictionary.com included 1,800 dictionaries in 250 languages in September 2003, and 2,500 dictionaries in 300 languages in April 2007.

As a tool for all languages without exception, the portal also offered the Endangered Language Repository.

March 2000 > The Oxford English Dictionary online