Details from BBC via Globalization Institute. Related: Economics of used books, from Cory Doctorow....

"Gotta love how TechWeb can publish two stories about the Tablet PC with completely conflicting headlines within hours of each other." - Engadget. Related: Tablet PC Faces Uncertain Future, Analyst Says and Tablet PCs Headed For Broader Use, Study Says. From the latter article: Worldwide sales of Tablet PCs totaled about $1.2 billion in 2004 driven by sales in specific market niches such as health care and real estate, the study said. However, the study predicted that sales will grow to $5.4 billion in 2009 because, as prices come down, the devices will become more popular to more users. ...

Check out a spiffy PowerPoint presentation explaining LibraryCity, introduced here a few days ago. You can reach Executive Director Lori Watrous-deVersterre at info@librarycity.org. She's the author of the presentation. Feedback cherished--especially from librarians! The presentation is from the Let's Go Library Expo Meanwhile Jon Noring has just given a wonderful explanation of the ABCs of OpenReader. Here's a file of his talk in WMA format. The talk also covers hardcore techie stuff, but the basic are there. Another interesting presentation has come from Juliet Sutherland, executive director of Distributed Proofreaders. I've just uploaded the audio file. Meanwhile you can...

Details from Mobile Magazine, via eBook Community List....

Will Nokia with its Internet Tablet 2005 succeed in creating a non-PDA handheld market where other Linux and WIndows (CE and XP) efforts have not? It's a "1kg wasteland," neither standard notebook nor PDA nor smartphone, says Gartner analyst Ken Delaney. ...

Private Sex Cult E-mails in Your Inbox Every Day!!, in the Book Standard, is another look at The Daughters of Freya, discussed here earlier. ...

When we last tuned in, consumer tech writer Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal was bashing the Pepper Pad. But some other gadgeteers loved the machine. And now Casey Bisson, a library technology specialist at Plymouth State University, has done a post for the most part singing the Pepper's praises ("Put A Pepper In Your Library"). Just back from a hands-on at Pepper Central, Casey tells me: I'll do a more complete review of the hardware in an upcoming post, but it I can say that the little machine actually works, and works pretty well. The...

DRM can actually harm small publishers, new musicians and others in the long tail. And MIT grad Bob Frankston's essay, seen on the Interesting People list, neatly spells out the risks. On top of that, remember that tech companies will use DRM as a tool to try to force you to upgrade your monitor and other hardware. Within the e-book area DRM is already associated with proprietary standards that drive up costs for publishers and consumers....

China may be E-Book Central, at least in the future. But as TeleBlog regulars know, I'm not a fan of this guy--or of the present Chinese leaders or the PR campaign that a buzz-minded ad agency cooked up for Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library. So I read with interest a note from Robert Nagle of the Idiotprogrammer blog. He correctly worries about DRM being used in the service of Chinese Big Brothers. In fact, Robert wonders if China will go ahead with e-books in the first place, given the possibility of this e-book thing getting out of hand. Okay,...

I love this idea. A coauthor of the The Daughters of Freya, an emailed mystery novel mentioned here in January, says readers will be able to discuss the book online during the three weeks that the installments are reaching their mail boxes. "The idea," says Michael Betcherman, "is to create a shared experience out of what is normally a solitary activity." Start date is August 1, and the promo price is just $3.95 U.S. So what's next--an audio conference, not just a text forum? ...

eBookAd still hasn't paid the $400 apparently due Melysha J. Acharya, author of the the BreakUp Workbook, a best-seller at the troubled e-book distributor and retailer. So yesterday she wrote me that she was ripping out all links to eBookAd from her BrokenHeartedGirl site. We're both grieving for eBookAd of yore. I thought the company's cash problems were under control and simply the brief result of a series of credit-card frauds. Maybe that's true. But Dustin Revin, head of eBookAd, isn't communicating with Melysha, at least. Can anyone write a BreakUp Workbook for disappointed writers and e-book advocates? Melysha flooded...

In John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, California, the cash-strapped library system has received at least $1,000 from San Quentin prisoners. Most Americans, murderers included, already love public libraries. But how can libraries use high-tech to deliver even more value to the taxpayers and stretch scarce tax dollars further? And just how can we bridge the gap between ill-funded libraries and the Google generation in an increasingly wired--and wireless--world? Lori Watrous-deVersterre, executive director of the new LibraryCity, a nonprofit collaboration between creative librarians and innovative technical people, will speak on the above topic and more on July 28--at a virtual library conference...