Arturo Perez-Reverte, a Spanish novelist, is famous for his
best-sellers telling the adventurous life of Capitan Alatriste in the
17th century. The new title to be released in 2000 was El Oro del Rey
(The King's Gold). In November 2000, the author partnered with his
publisher Alfaguara to publish El Oro del Rey exclusively in digital
form for one month, on a specific site of the web portal Inicia, before
the release of the print version in bookstores. The novel was available
in PDF format for 2.90 euros, a much cheaper price than the 15.10 euros
of the forthcoming print book. As a result of the experiment, the
number of downloads was very good, but not the number of payments. A
month after publishing the novel online, there are 332,000 downloads,
but only 12,000 readers who paid for it.

November 2000 > Amazon.com opened its eBookStore

Amazon.com started its eBookStore in November 2000, following a
partnership with Microsoft in August 2000 to sell digital books for the
Microsoft Reader. This software being free, Microsoft was billing the
publishers and distributors and publishers for the use of its DRM
technology, with a commission too on the sale of each title. The same
month, Amazon.com also partnered with Adobe to offer digital books for
the Acrobat Reader and the Glassbook Reader (Adobe had just bought
Glassbook, with its reader and digital bookstore). In April 2001,
Amazon.com partnered again with Adobe to include in its collection
2,000 copyrighted books for the Acrobat eBook Reader, mainly titles
from main publishers, travel guides, and children books.

December 2000 > Gyricon Media, to develop an electronic ink technology

In December 2000, researchers at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), the
Xerox center in Silicon Valley, founded the company Gyricon Media to
market the SmartPaper, an electronic paper based on the display
technology called gyricon (developed since 1997 within Xerox). Very
briefly explained, the technology was the following one: in between two
sheets of flexible plastic, millions of micro-cells contain two-tone
(for example black and white) beads suspended in a clear liquid. Each
bead has an electric charge. An external electrical pulse make the
balls rotate and change color, to display, modify or delete data. In
2004, the market was commercial advertising, with small posters running
on batteries. The company ended in 2005, with R&D activities going on
at Xerox.

2000 > The wiki, a c