The

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People and characters * Franklin (given name), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (surname), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (class), a member of a historic ...

eBookMan is a discontinued handheld device made to read

ebook An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

s. This gadget, made from 1999 until 2002, has standard PDA functions and can play and record sounds. It has a black on green touchscreen, contains 8 or 16 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, and uses its own proprietary

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. Its

handwriting recognition Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwriting, handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens ...

system accepts nearly natural handwriting. Three models of eBookman were produced: the 900 (8 Mb memory - no backlight), the 901 (8 Mb memory - backlight) and the 911 (16 Mb memory - backlight). All come with an MMC (not SD-compatible for the 8Mb model, but properly compatible with the 16Mb models.) slot which allows for memory expansion. The eBookMan can read contacts and appointments from

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...

; synchronization with a Windows PC is done through a

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

cable. Early eBookMan units lost all information stored on them when the batteries were changed. Franklin acknowledged the problem, and replaced all defective units at no charge. Its

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...

system is tied directly to the hardware, which resulted in an immediate problem for marketing: it was not possible to try the device in-store since it wouldn't work until the user connected it to an Internet-linked PC and downloaded their own registered version of the OS. Support was provided via a home page at Franklin, now removed, which when development ceased in 2002 was still describing the device as 'new'. Although

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...

on the eBookMan ceased in 2002, new eBookMans continued to be available from

Ectaco ECTACO Inc. (East-Coast Trading American Company Incorporated) is a US-based developer and manufacturer of hardware and software products for speech recognition and electronic translation. They also make jetBook List of e-book readers, eBook read ...

. As of April 30, 2011, all support and downloads for eBookMan were discontinued. There is an active user base. Some users have written programs for the eBookMan. Many games were developed and a free version of the

Mobipocket Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems. The Mobipock ...

reader was developed for the eBookMan to take the place of the underpowered Franklin reader which came with the device.

References

External links

* * {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121019035838/http://www.pcworld.com/article/48373/article.html , date=October 19, 2012 , title=PC World review Apr 30, 2001 Personal digital assistants Dedicated ebook devices

See also

References

External links