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Saturday, 2 May 2009

Old closed beta of MobiReader opened up: The Guru loses his religion and becomes a pirate

Mobipocket mobile eBook reader MobiReader
MobiReader is a Symbian eBook reader from Mobipocket, a company bought by Amazon. Development of the program has stalled. Nevertheless the old MobiReader is still a pretty good eBook reader.

But there's a better version. Most important change: a long awaited "find" feature. It works with Symbian S60 3rd ed., but also with the new touchscreen Nokias with S60 5th ed. The new MobiReader version has been around as a closed beta test version for ages, but Mobipocket never bothered with releasing it.

And that's where Symbian Guru sins. That site is usually clean and spotless and The Guru sleeps with his hands above the blankets and helps old ladies cross the street, but now the improved but closed beta version is available for download where you'd least expect it. Yes, that's right: Symbian Guru's respectable and law-abiding portal has turned into a warez site. I wonder when Mobipocket is going to throw the book at him ;)

If MobiReader can't find your eBooks, just open them from the Symbian File Manager.

The test version of MobiReader is unsigned, so you'll have to sign it yourself or set your phone free to escape from the Symbian Signed madness.

MobiReader from Mobipocket
MobiReader v.5.3 build 581 (closed beta) at Symbian Guru

The download link on the Symbian Guru site is buried in a lot of text, maybe to hide it from the Amazon people? If you promise that you're not a lawyer hired by amazon.com, you can get the program from the direct download link below:

MobiReader v.5.3 build 581 (closed beta) direct download from Symbian Guru

Of course MobiReader is useless without eBooks. Mobipocket offers quite a few free eBooks, including classics (copyrights expired long ago) by Jane Austen, de Balzac, the Brontës, Cervantes (Don Quixote), Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Dante, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Dumas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flaubert, E.M. Forster, Goethe, Thomas Hardy, Kafka, Gaston Leroux (Phantom of the Opera), Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Jonathan Swift, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Twain, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, P.G. Wodehouse, and many others.

If reading feeds the brain, there is such a thing as a free lunch:

Free eBooks for MobiReader


2 comments:

Ricky Cadden said...

Thanks for the link, I appreciate the glowing remarks. However, it should be noted that MobiReader is a free application. I don't think it's possible to have 'warez' of a free application, is it?

android underground said...

Even if it's free, you can still violate copyrights. So now you're officially in the same league as ipmart etc. ;)

Can you already hear the black helicopters of the copyright gestapo?