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Friday, March 19, 2010

Books Ripped Books

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 4:04 PM

For years, I've said that if there was a way to rip a book the way you can rip a CD onto a computer, ebooks would become exponentially more popular. This fellow hasn't come up with a commercial application, but he does have a way to transform his books into ebooks in just a few seconds.

I bet that somewhere, someone out there is working on an easy-to-use commercial version of this. If they can make an affordable device, they will make a shit-ton more money than some of these businesses that have slapped together ebook readers in the past few years.

Via Gizmodo.

Comments (13) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

omg...that dude looks so so bored.....why are engineers, scientists and lovers of all that is awesome always so uenthused with their work...its kinda tragic really....

Posted by Andy_Squirrel on March 19, 2010 at 4:44 PM

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Posted by gucci shoes on March 19, 2010 at 7:48 PM

Oh, Chinese spammer, when will you learn you must register to post URLs? Or, uh, almost-URLs.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 19, 2010 at 7:57 PM

Take a hacksaw, cut off the spine, and put them through a sheet fed scanner with OCR.

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on March 19, 2010 at 8:45 PM

@4, there's no way in hell a hacksawed book would go through a sheet feeder. It would leave an impossible chewed, torn, shredded, fluffed, curled, fuzzed edge. You cut paper with knives, not saws, especially hand saws.

Nice profile pic, Bailo.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 19, 2010 at 10:13 PM

@5:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanni…

"Traditional methods have included cutting off the book's spine and scanning the pages in a scanner with automatic page-feeding capability, with rebinding of the loose pages occurring afterwards."

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on March 20, 2010 at 8:48 AM

And you do know that for the last 10 years or more any book put out by a large scale printer-that's anyone who isn't hand-setting the type-has already been created as an electronic file? It's how the plates for the presses are created these days.
Most ebook sales are for new titles, so getting everyone's back list online isn't that *ahem* pressing an issue.
Not that I'm sorry to see anyone working to make that happen more rapidly and easily.

Posted by BakerB on March 20, 2010 at 10:22 AM

As @6 says, old books can be scanned very fast and very accurately by a feed scanner with OCR. The Fujitsu I'm familiar with and have used often came out four years ago, cost $5000, and can scan and OCR and save a 250-page text in about 10 or 12 minutes. I'm sure newer models (attached to newer PCs) are much faster.

Posted by OCR is here again on March 20, 2010 at 11:02 AM

Even easier would be exporting the typeset book text to a PDF. Assuming you had access to the typeset book text.

Posted by Greg on March 20, 2010 at 5:20 PM

@6, cut WITH KNIVES. Not hacksaws.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 21, 2010 at 4:55 AM

um... i dont want to burst any bubbles, but i work at a kinkos. we have a machine that chops the spines off of books, multiple at a time if necessary. scanning 250 pages, double sided would take a lot less than 10-12 minutes. seriously. at the kinkos. slimy businessmen use it every day of their slimy lives. plus, real books are pretty great. it's not broken, why is anyone trying to fix it? ebooks are bourgie.

Posted by girl, please on March 21, 2010 at 7:43 AM

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