"China's largest PC firm, Legend Group, is now selling a Chinese language Palm OS handheld in China. The Legend Palm 168 features a color screen, MP3 player, dictionary and voice recorder. The Legend Palm 168 has a 3.5 inch, 240 x 320 pixel screen that can display over 65,000 colors. It has a 'virtual graffiti' area which can be hidden to allow full screen photos and ebooks." - Palm Infocenter. The TeleRead take: In the e-book area, the Legend Palm will face competition from makers of dedicated devices. Oh, and then there' s the ever-present, ever-pesky format question. Global...

Economy is among the reasons cited for e-books reaching some public libraries in the UK. Of course, this argument would work much better with a standardized consumer format....

"Education is a little bit disappointing. The school market, in particular, is being affected. States are reviewing their finances, how they are going to pay for educational costs." - Edward Atorino, an analyst with Blaylock & Partners L.P., on McGraw-Hill's latest earnings report. The TeleRead take: While McGraw-Hill as a whole posted higher earnings than during the first-quarter in '02, revenue from education fell 1.6 percent. And that decline could worsen if the present recession drags on and schools and libraries must cut further. We've seen what happened in Texas. If McGraw-Hill and other publishers want to keep the...

"Three years ago, the feeling was government needs to stay out of the Internet. Now, Internet service providers has really become a threat to their business, annoying their customers beyond belief." - Virginia Delegate Timothy Hugo, executive director of the CapNet tech lobby, following the signing of one of the nation's toughest anti-spam laws at the state level.The TeleRead take: I'm right here in Virgnia and hoping that my state government will sue the bejesus out of artmarket.com, the makers of various organ-enlargers, mortgage-lenders, and other companies that stuff my email box--doing their best to outsmart the filter in...

Is China secretly preparing to clone native versions of Jack Valenti or his counterparts from the pharmaceutical industry in the States? Well, maybe not. But you'd almost think so if you go by a headline in People's Daily--Intellectual Property Protects China's Traditional Cultural Heritage. A sample:A Chinese official said, China has for a long time had the largest numbers of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers in the world. Add to that the practitioners of TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine], the scholars, craftsmen, artisans and businesspersons in all fields. Clearly, there is an immense national heritage to protect and defend... Treatment that...

World Intellectual Property Day slipped past us on Saturday, complete with an accompanying comic book. Perhaps Lawrence Lessig and Harry Shearer can team up on a rewrite. Hey, no laughs, please. China, ever on the prowl for trade breaks, is using WIPD as a chance to suck up to Hollywood. (Spotted via uppity items in the bIP Log and Matt Morse's Web log.)...

A TeleRead link shows up in the Web log of Diane Duane, the best-selling writer of sci-fi and fantasy--as well as the author of many scripts, including one of the early episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." She's also an old hand in the online world--a former regional coordinator for FidoNet, in fact. The TeleRead take: Thanks, Diane. So your Young Wizards are on our side? If you can put in a word with Spock and Crew--well, so much the better. Point is, TeleRead would be catnip for young adult readers in search of just the right book....

"I have no clue where he got the idea, but during the mid-'80s, my father, an optometrist and occasional tinkerer, dreamed up a concept a lot like today's e-book. The gist of the idea was to have a paperback-sized book/computer with a screen for reading. A knob on the side of the device would allow readers to scroll from page to page. The book would be small enough to bring to a couch or bed and free readers from the drudgery of flipping pages." - Allan Hoffman, in the New Jersey Star-Ledger (via Pocket PC eBooks Watch).The TeleRead take:...

Books and libraries, whether of the e- or p- variety, can't replace good newspapers. Still, Jessa Crispin's Bookslut blog, for which I've been looking for an excuse to link, based on her webzine's memorable name, reminds us all of the need for intelligent reading matter to augment local dreck. Her news peg, to use some jargon from the trade that she once practiced, is the April 27 death of Edward L. Gaylord, 83, publisher of The Daily Oklahoman. In 1999 a headline in the Columbia Journalism Review called the Oklahoman The Worst Newspaper in America. A blow to local...

Mr. Linux himself, Linus Torvalds, would allow Digital Rights Management in Linux. He's no fan of it. But he'll tolerate it, according to the Inquirer. "I've had some private discussions with various people about this already," he says, "and I do realize that a lot of people want to use the kernel in some way to just make DRM go away, at least as far as Linux is concerned." However, he himself refuses to "play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to--which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve...

"In a huge setback to the big record and movie companies, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in favor of two online services that allow people to share music, movies and other digital files freely over the Internet. The decision puts the brakes on the momentum the entertainment industry had previously enjoyed in its legal efforts to block file-swapping services, which have made it easy for consumers to acquire copyrighted material free." - New York Times, April 26.The TeleRead take: Heads up, book publishers. In essence, Judge Stephen Wilson said the corporations offering the tools for file-sharing weren't...

"This is a mess." - Joe Bill Watkins, a lobbyist for the Association of American Publishers, as quoted on a budget proposal that would delay spending $318 million on textbooks in Texas.The TeleRead take: Ouch! The Associated Press story is from April 11, but whatever has happened since then, publishers should regard this as a wake-up call. "Publishers," the article correctly notes, "invest millions of dollars in Texas because texts adopted in the state of 4.1 million schoolchildren are marketed in dozens of other states." The cuts will keep many thousands of Lone Star children reading obsolete textbooks. What...