personalBook enables a secure distribution of digital books on the popular Palm platform. personalBook consists of a reader for the Palm platform and a platform-independently implemented server.

Licenced to the ECCE TERRAM Internet services GmbH, personalBook goes by the name "Das Hand-Buch" and comes to broad public application at http://www.digibuch.de/.

One of the important challenges of electronic publishing is to protect copyright, despite the simple and infinite possibility of copies of the digital information. Only then high-quality content can find its way into this electronic medium. So far this is implemented mostly by special proprietary hardware, which trys to prevent the digital access to the data completely, or by personbound passwords, trying to make pass on more difficult.

Both systems have problems, which hasiland.com did not accept: The hardware solution ('dedicated reader') requires a basic investment of the customer, without the security to have acquiried a system with a future. Besides these devices are not felxible, since they permit only to display text despite their technical possibilities. If one has such a device with itself, one cannot write eMails, manage dates and contacts... It is not certain whether costumers are willing to carry around many computers, each serving a diferent purpose.
A password query on the other hand is neither secure nor comfortable.

Main objective in the development of personalBook was to free the user from the tiresome obligation of manual authorization. And that without a compromise on security.

Frank Bodmann, one of the managing partners of hasiland.com: "While it is accetable for personal computers to ask the user for a password, it is not acceptable for a Palm, which one carries in his vest pocket, if one must prove its identity again and again to the device. The Palm is more personal than any PC. "

In order to do without authorization and nevertheless successfully protect copyright, the personalBook technology 'personalizes' both the books and the reader with each download by a customer. While the books are encrypted and inseparably linked with the identity of the customer, the key to open the books is integrated into the reader. This process is invisible to the costumer.
personalBook utilizes strong encryption.

Frank Bodmann: "The best concept succeeds or fails with what the user get into their palms. For us this is the reader." Therefore considerable expenditure was put into the development of the personalBook reader. The result is a software with a comfortable and simple user interface, which can 'quite besides' display documents in the widespread AportisDoc format. More information on the reader and a free download is available at http://www.digibuch.de/handbuch.html (sorry, page only available in german).

A personalBook reader for the EPOC operating system, which is used among others on the PDAs of PSION and Ericsson, exists as a prototype.

hasiland.com develops adapted versions of personalBook for licensees on demand. Whether it is 'branding' to the cooperate identity or an adjustment to different areas of application, from news services to enterprise-internal knowledge management solutions. This enables a tight integration into the enterprise and/or the existing software base.

For further information please contact us.

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