Ouch! Despite muscle relaxants and an ergonomic desk and chair, my left arm still hurts like hell. I'm going to paste in slightly tweaked passage from an email I wrote to Richard Bellaver at Ball State University, a well-regarded usabilty expert. Here's some research that I hope a usability maven will undertake with a qualified medical expert. Why not study the ergonomics of laptops vs. tablets, especially for K-12? I love the idea of the $100 MIT laptop computer, but think that laptops suck ergnomically. The ideal eye-screen distance may be at odds with the keyboard-user distance for typing. At least...

"...a PDF reader for the PSP has been released and users everywhere are sure to be thankful." PSPUpdates via MAKE:Blog and Brian at MobileRead....

How useful can e-book dictionaries be to elementary school students? Dr. Richard Bellaver and others at the Center for Information and Communication Sciences at Ball State University reached the following conclusion in a study sponsored by the AT&T Foundation: This study confirms the premise that it is possible to use an eBook as a dictionary at the elementary-level. Although no official timings were conducted, researcher observation indicated that several children were able to find the right answer faster with an eBook than with a traditional dictionary. While operating the eBook the children also learned the basic principles of operating any electronic...

TeleBlog contributor Casey Bisson has just received a Pepper Pad for review. He says: "The Pepper Pad, I believe, is the type of device we need to drive information services into the mainstream." Casey hopes the device will help foster "Internet access well beyond the 100 million US subscribers who have at-home internet access today and start approaching the nearly 200 million US subscribers who carry cell phones. That's why I'm interested in their applications in libraries, and that's why I'm looking at [a] demo unit...." Related: More on MIT's $100 linux laptop for the Third World, via CNET....

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab, has unveiled the design for a $100 laptop for the Third World. As noted in Technology Review, the machine "will at a minimum feature a full-color screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, a processor that runs at approximately 500 MHz, and 1 GB of Flash memory. It will also have a hand crank for generating power in areas of the world without electricity." That's all cool and good. At the same time, however, could a Digital Divide happen even within the Third World? Imagine a future when some rural people enjoy highly functional laptops but others...

Seth Godin's marketing book Knock, Knock is now free in Mobipocket format via Ubibooks. Related: NYT on the Net and the used book market. Update, Sept. 30, 2005: Ubibooks' Michaël Dahan tells me: "From now, all the new books added (generally on Friday) are discounted 20 percent off during the whole week."...

Internet Tablet Talk reported earlier this evening it has received "official word" that the eagerly anticipated Nokia 770's release has been pushed to October. ...

In the children's book section of the Library of the Future, you can have your type in any color you want, no matter how old you are....

Tim O'Reilly, one of the most respected publishers of computer books, sides with Google, against which the Authors Guild has launched a copyright suit. Here's part of his op-ed in the New York Times today: Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them. Even online sellers like Amazon offer only a small fraction...

Details from Alex at MobileRead....

Details from UPI. Related: Japanese e-book growth coming from subscriptions....

A Librie-type machine is coming out--from Tianjin Jinke Electronics Company--complete with a six-inch screen with E-Ink technology. That should mean low power consumption and screen visibility in strong sunlight. The Tianjin e-book device, which includes a Librie-type fold out cover, could be a harbinger for $150 Librie clones, especially since E-Ink is releasing a display kit for developers. Besides having 64M storage inside, this baby supports SD/MMC memory cards up to a gig rather than confining you to Sony-blessed memory sticks. Plus, the Model V8 in the "Hanlin eBook" series reads TXT, HTML, PDF, DOC, PPT and even Excel. Size...