Audiobook and E-Book Expo: Exploring Digital Books and Content will be held Friday, October 29 in East Peoria, Illinois.It will "explore where the library field has been and where it is going in the area of audiobooks for everyone--adults, children, the visually impaired, the learning disabled, and more. Experts will share the latest in web-based ebook management systems, handheld players, and collaborative projects."Keynote speakers include: Tom Peters of TAP Information Services, Steve Potash, CEO of Overdrive, Inc., Jenny Levine of the Shifted Librarian and the Suburban Library System, and Judy Dixon from NLS. Other speakers include Jane Chamberlain, Adult...

Loved many of the points that John Kerry made last night, but when will he and John Edwards wise up on copyright? Think about the copyright-related implications that Kerry unwittingly raised in his speech: A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a little chip the size of a fingernail? We did and that too changed the world forever.Hmm. Dream on, John. The biggest obstacle isn't the tech; it's campaign contributors. How fascinating that you talked about a library on a chip--the very stuff gives copyright holders nightmares! And...

See mention of ABC correction below. - David Rothman Via a story headined Officials: Democrat's Biggest Money Man Has Mob Connections, ABC News is raising the questions similar to the ones I've asked for months. I wondered why, so early in the presidential campaign of John Edwards, Hollywood producer Steve Bing coughed up at least $900K to Edwards' New American Optimists PAC. Bing's people and Edwards' were mum when I sought answers. I also noted that Bing is among the biggest Dem donors. And now ABC says Bing isn't explaining his massive donations of more than $16 million to Democrats and their PACs. I didn't use...

While Sony's been backing off from PDAs in the States, it's actually moving ahead with ultra-portable computers, some of which could be great e-book machines. They come with sharp screens--and without the horrendous DRM hassles that Sony is imposing on the Librie e-book reader being tested in Japan. No E Ink, but perhaps that'll eventually be available. Check out Sony U-70 review-is that a PC in your pocket? in the jkOnTheRun blog. A few details there: The Sony comes in two flavors, the U-50 & U-70. There are three differences between the two models which are otherwise identical. The...

Alternative history, anyone? Might e-book enjoy billions of dollars in annual sales by now--far beyond the present $20-$30 million--without Hollywood-bought laws? And might the Net be even bigger than it actually is? I won't blame the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the like for all of the problems of the electronic media, but they didn't exactly help. E-books are a $3-billion-a-year business now, with all the U.S. best-sellers instantly available throughout the world at affordable prices. Small wonder. The cheapest machines for reading them off high-resolution screens go for less than $50, and low-cost computer networks have penetrated even...

Washington's medieval policies on stem-cell research are one reason why many of the world's best bioscientists are ending up in Singapore rather than the States. Alluding to those researchers, a headline in the August issue of Wired even reads: "Singapore Wants You!" The man who cloned Dolly has already moved to Singapore.Now apply this concept to the INDUCE debate over technologies such as P2P. Will the world's best tech brains stop coming to the United States because Hollywood greedsters dictate our copyright laws? Will they go to Singapore instead? I'm not sure about Singapore, given P2P's inherent threat to the...

From a Vancouver Sun article by Peter Tupper: Paper books offers familiarity and reliability. Electronic books offer keyword searches and easy cutting and pasting passages into your email or word processor. You can put an entire library on a thumb-sized USB drive and plug it into a computer anywhere. You can print a couple of chapters, take them to the beach and not worry about sand or water. A visually impaired user can feed the text into a speech program instead of waiting for a Braille or audiobook edition. ... The hitch with e-books is not that they are...

"Senator John Edwards returned $44,000 in campaign contributions on Saturday after learning that the prominent corporate lawyer in Los Angeles who raised the money is facing misdemeanor campaign-finance charges in California. The lawyer, Pierce O'Donnell, was charged two months ago by the Los Angeles district attorney with violating California election laws." - New York Times. The TeleRead take: Perhaps the Times can now ask Sen. Edwards about the more than $900K that Edwards' New American Optimists PAC received from Hollywood producer Steve Bing early in the campaign under circumstances that neither will explain. Is Hollywood money why "The People's Senator"...

Poor people's Blockbusters. That's what a librarian friend of mine warns public libraries against becoming. Libraries should enter the multimedia age but never forget the importance of their role in promoting good literature that stretches readers' minds. Alas, in the August issue of Cites and Insights, an old-guard techie named Walt Crawford approvingly quotes critics of the invaluable Reading at Risk report from the National Endowment for the Arts. For example: ...Ann McVea used the subject heading "Logic at Risk" to note that people just might be reading nonfiction, magazine, newspapers--or even listening to audiobooks. "I don't think I'm...

No, I haven't tried the Symbian Bookworm e-reader for "creating" and reading e-books for the Sony Ericsson P800, P900 and P910 mobile smart phones. I don't own the hardware. Beyond that, despite my general enthusiasm for Mobipocket, which also sells versions for Symbian-OS phones, I'm down on proprietary formats. Just the same, Bookworm's "creating" part opens up some interesting possibilties for fans of public domain literature, and the screen shots look interesting, as does the list of claimed features: --Easy installation --eBook creation --Auto chapter detection --Title, Author, Synopsis (Back cover description) fields --Large book sizes supported (Up to the...

I wondered if the Creative Incentive Coalition, a major combatant in the net.copyright battles in the late '90s, was organizing a bash for potential donors attending the Democratic Convention this coming week. Strange. I didn't see a Web site for the coalition at or near the top of the Google listings for that name. Did someone misspeak, did I hear the news item incorrectly on a cable news network, or was the CIC being revived? OpenSecrets.org apparently does not have an annual listing for CIC more recent than 1998. Well, on checking, I see that the group is the Creative Coalition, not the Creative Incentive...

From the start, TeleRead has warned that books are losing out to video games and TV and scads of other competitors. Nothing against other media. It's just that we need to assure books a proper place in the general scheme of things, and a Carnegie-style free library model, with proper compensation for content creators, could help immensely. Just as with commercial TV, people are more likely to engage in a free activity, especially if available via the Net as a TeleRead-type library system would be.While leaders of the p-book industry are trying to play up the positives, the long-term...