March 2003 > Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, made a digital experiment In March 2003, Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, and the author of The Alchimist, decided to distribute several novels for free in PDF format, in various languages, with the consent of his publishers. In early 2003, his books, translated into 56 languages, were sold in 53 million copies in 155 countries. May 2003 > Adobe Reader was launched to replace Acrobat Reader In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader (starting with version 6), which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books. In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with titles in PDF format from major publishers (HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, etc.), as well as electronic versions of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Popular Science, etc. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell, and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library. September 2003 > The MIT OpenCourseWare: course materials of MIT online for free The MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) was officially launched in September 2003 by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to put its course materials for free on the web, as a way to promote open dissemination of knowledge. In September 2002, a pilot version was available online with 32 course materials. 500 course materials were available in March 2004. In May 2006, 1,400 course materials were offered by 34 departments belonging to the five schools of MIT. In November 2007, all 1,800 course materials were available, and regularly updated. MIT also launched the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) in November 2005, as a collaboration of educational institutions that were willing to offer free online course materials. One year later, the OCW Consortium included the course materials of 100 universities worldwide. February 2004 > Facebook, a social network Facebook is a social network founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students. Originally created for the students of Harvard University, it was made available to students from any university in the U.S. In September 2006, it was open to anyone in the world, to connect with relatives, friends, and strangers. It was become the second most visited website in the world, after Google, with 500 million users in June 2010, while sparking debates on privacy issues. April 2004 > The Librie, an ebook reader launched by Sony