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Get ready for ' War of the Worlds"


free Sophie e-book reader

Rivertext.com has released the new Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) compatible version of the free Sophie e-book reader -- including an expedition into the Kafkaesque.

The latest e-book, a collection of five extraordinary stories by Franz Kafka and his precursors, begins with a look at the deeper meaning of the term 'Kafkaesque.'

The preface to the Sophie e-book released earlier this year, H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," offers a more provocative and timely interpretation of the original science fiction classic than Stephen Spielberg's new blockbuster film starring Tom Cruise. All the Sophie e-books begin with an original and thought-provoking preface.

The 12 e-books have many useful features as well as at least one delightfully useless feature. Two of the e-books, "JFK Witness" and Thoreau's "Walden" include guided tours created with the Sophie notebook tool. This tool allows readers to create and share with others their own indexed and commented "readings" of important texts.

Sophie's search

Sophie's search feature lists the chapter and the phrase for each occurrence of a search string. On the more or less useless side of the feature list, a copy of Fourth World's Text Blender Pro is built-in to each e-book reader. Paste in any meaningful passage and the text blender will, grind, whip, puree, or liquify it until it is more or less meaningless. A few poets, song-writers or latter-day beatniks will find this to be a useful feature, but for most it will be a delectable distraction.

The other e-books included in the free download are: Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness," two books by G.K. Chesterton "The Man who was Thursday," and "The Innocence of Father Brown," Thomas a Kempis' "Imitatio Christi," "Pencil and Poison - Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde," Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde."

Version 1.02k of Sophie is fully compatible with Macintosh OS 9, or OS X and it runs Windows 95 and later. Sophie was developed by Rivertext.com and Fourth World Media Corporation Inc. for the legendary multimedia CD-ROM "If Monks Had Macs." This CD-ROM includes sophisticated intellectual tools, games and richly illustrated multimedia. It also works on Windows.Download SophieMore information about "If Monks had Macs" and SophieBrian Thomas is the author of the acclaimed multimedia CD-ROM If Monks had Macs
audience = General: cross platform anyone

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Reviewed by Fred Showker for DTG Magazine and the News-Serve Network. (C) 2005, all rights reserved. For republication permissions and credits press the "Contact" button below. First published in DTG Magazine. ... Event dates are subject to change. Some products, programs, or promotions are not available outside the U.S. Prices are estimated retail prices and are listed in U.S. dollars. Product specifications are subject to change. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Power Mac, Velocity Engine, FireWire, AirPort, Safari, Sherlock, QuickTime, iLife, iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iCal and Apple Store are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Mention of third-party products is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither a recommendation nor an endorsement.

 

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