Lexcycle Stanza - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Lexcycle Stanza is a freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

program for reading eBooks, digital newspapers, and other digital publications. The software supports the eBook formats EPUB

EPUB

EPUB is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum...

, eReader, MS LIT

Microsoft Reader

Microsoft Reader is a Microsoft program for the reading of e-books, originally released in August 2000.Microsoft Reader is available for download from Microsoft as a free program for computers running Windows. It can also be used on a Pocket PC, where it has been built into the ROM since Windows CE...

, Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...

, Mobipocket

Mobipocket

Mobipocket SA is a French company incorporated in March 2000 which produces Mobipocket Reader software, an E-Book reader for some PDAs, phones and desktop operating systems....

, and PalmDoc, as well as general document formats HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, PDF

Portable Document Format

Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

, MS Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

, and Rich Text Format

Rich Text Format

The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....

. The company Lexcycle

Lexcycle

Lexcycle is a software company that makes electronic book reading software. They are responsible for Stanza, which runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. In April 2009, Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon.com....

is owned by Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

(manufacturer/creator of the Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

).

Stanza comes in several versions: Stanza iPhone/iPod/iPad, Stanza Desktop for Windows and Stanza Desktop for Mac.

Stanza iPhone/iPod allows users to manage a library of books on their Apple iPhone or iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

and provides a customizable reading interface. It features an online catalog containing thousands of free classics, as well as the ability to synchronize with Stanza Desktop via Bonjour

Bonjour (software)

In computing, Bonjour is Apple Inc.'s trade name for its implementation of Zeroconf, a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and name resolution...

. Stanza iPhone has been one of the most popular book readers for the iPhone, listed as Apple's favorite free app

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

in their App Store Turns 1 list of favorite apps.

Stanza Desktop features a variety of text layout views, such as multicolumn, vertical scrolling, and horizontal scrolling. Significantly, Stanza also supports exporting to a wide array of formats for use on mobile devices using 3rd party readers such as Mobipocket

Mobipocket

Mobipocket SA is a French company incorporated in March 2000 which produces Mobipocket Reader software, an E-Book reader for some PDAs, phones and desktop operating systems....

or the Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

No Adobe DRM support

In February 2009, a few months before being bought by Amazon.com

Amazon.com

, Lexcycle announced that Stanza would be able to read ePub and PDF files protected by Adobe

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

DRM

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

during the following quarter. However, with no news about this support as of September 2009, the comments in the Lexcycle support forum became increasingly demanding. On September 18, Neelan Choksi, Lexcyle COO, stated that, "At this point in time, we are not supporting the Adobe DRM solution. This decision will be evaluated on a regular basis as we move forward.". It is now unlikely that Stanza will ever support Adobe DRM.

Uncertain future

As of January 2011, there has been no activity from Lexcycle in their website nor support forums for over five months, though many standing issues remain with the latest major version of Stanza, from complete libraries made unusable on updating to it, to problems already fixed in the internal version of the program.

On 10 November 2011, Stanza for iOS was updated to version 3.2, fixing iOS 5 incompatibility problems. While the previous version of Stanza was incompatible with iOS 5, Stanza 3.2 is incompatible with earlier versions of iOS. According to an email received by a member of the Facebook "Revive Stanza" group, Amazon will no longer be updating or supporting Stanza after version 3.2.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.