"He shops online for music and books, both e-books and printed versions. He has a state-of-the-art scanning system that will convert the latest book to digital text that his computer can read aloud." - San Diego Union article headlined Computer advances help people with disabilities work, learn and play in the digital era.The TeleRead take: Imagine the hassles that an OpenReader approach, with a standard consumer format and either no DRM or DRM Lite, could save for blind users like Guido Corona, mentioned above. Proprietary crap can wreak havoc on speech synthesizers. And while proprietary formats may theoretically allow...

Think proprietary DRM is the solution for the e-book business? Consider all the grief arising from the closed code that Diebold has used in its voting machines. In A Really Open Election in the New York Times, writer Clive Thompson argues for open code that could be scrutinized in a public way. Time for an Open Reader approach for e-books?(Via Boing Boing.)...

An Australian company owns University Viet Nam and reportedly is offering an electronic library of "500 data sources and 15,000 e-books." Most likely, I suspect, the library is using public domain collections. And since Aussie copyright terms are still under debate, at least as far as I know, it's very possible that 1984 is among the unencumbered books. What's more, I see that Vietnam is itself among the life+50 countries, and George Orwell died more than half a century ago. Just something I can't help thinking about this Memorial Day, here in the Soviet Union of copyright law....

The post below from panyq@yahoo.com appeared on the eBook Community List. We know nothing about the sender, so be open-minded but cautious.I am looking for some ebooks distributors in the U.S. and Europe. In China, more and more universities and colleges use e-books instead of paper books. Those eletronic version of course books used in U.S. universities will have a huge market in China. We are looking forward to establishing the business relationship with the leading e-books distributors. If you know anything, I will very appreciative to hear from you.(Thanks to Roy Lewis for making certain I saw...

Oh, how primitive is Web linking. If you want to to link to another site, you're more or less at the mercy of the Webmaster. You either link to full pages or to anchors within them. Wouldn't it be nice to choose precise links from afar--for both Web sites and future e-books?Standards gurus have come up with answers to the problem such as XPointer, but there are still nasty details to work out such as how to identify the exact material to which you're linking.Michael Day's approachOver at YesLogic, XML/CSS guru Michael Day believes that the best solution for...

Want to add our headlines for free to our site? The easiest way may now be through Feedroll. Key in the following RSS address http://www.teleread.com/blog/rss.xml. By going outside the "compact" mode, you can even reproduce our full text on your site. Via another service, too, you can add headlines or full text....

"It's true that [a] PDA is a better source to read e-books. It has bigger screens than that of cell phones. But there is no one buying PDAs. That is the problem." - You Youn-sun, public relations manager at Booktopia, a Korean e-book comapany, as quoted by the Korea Herald.The TeleRead take: Needless to say, an XMLish Universal Consumer Format could help e-books keep up as platforms came and went. Technology marches on. Too bad the trogs would rather fight the format wars than meet consumer needs.Something cluefulOne exception to the general stupidity is OverDrive's use of Mobipocket, the...

Years ago I suggested that the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress register only books supplied in digital format. In the essay below, Roy Lewis certainly has a good idea even if it is not quite the same as mine.One of the things that publishers ask for from the Library of Congress is an LC number for their books as part of the cataloging. The storage problems for all of the books printed is becoming a real headache for the LOC. A good idea would be for the LOC to require a digital copy of any book...

From Marilyn Jenkins, President and CEO of CyberRead, Inc., and quoted with permission:We have not received payment since July 2003. Our contacts at Content Reserve do not returned our calls or emails. CyberRead had accounts as both a publisher and a retailer. After discussing the new fees for publishers and retailers we exited from their system and removed their books from our system. At that time I was assured they would settle up all fees due. That has not happened as yet. I'm beginning to wonder if it will...I am quite frustrated that the only payment I...

Are public libraries out of sync with the public in deciding how much money goes for actual books, and could e-books help matters?In the Louisville, Kentucky, the metro council has urged more money for the Louisville Free Public Library (shown here in a 2002 centennial photo). But there is a nifty catch. Council members want a higher percentage of the money to go for books. They are dismayed that the library owns only 1.9 books per capita compared to a state recommendation of at least 2.5.For books: Just a fraction of operating expensesJust a fraction of actual library spending...

What if indexes in e-books could reflect users' keyword and concept-word searches? (Details from the MIT Technology Review, via LISNews.)...

Well-off library users in Denver are apparently enjoying longer library hours than poor people. TeleRead anyone? A national digital library system would be open 24/7 for all. Meanwhile here are details from the Rocky Mountain News about the inequalities:Public libraries in Denver's poorest communities are open 30 percent fewer hours than those elsewhere, a community group says, and it's asking Mayor John Hickenlooper to change that.Sanice Young, a parent leader for Metro Organizations for People, or MOP, released a report Friday that indicates seven libraries in Denver's low-income communities are open, on average, a little less than 30 hours...