A Finnish study, sponsored by a paper company and mentioned here earlier, compared the "Standard Usability Scale" scores of print, an iPAQ Pocket PC, a Tablet PC and a Nokia 7710 for e-book reading. Here are the results as summed up in eFinland: Printed material performed best in the reading platform comparison, receiving an overall average SU score of 86.4 out of 100 with the highest individual score at 100 and the lowest at 67.5. Of the actual eBook reading devices, the highest overall score of 80.0 was obtained by the Rocket eBook. The lowest individual score of all was 45,...

Here, via the Librie list. All this is actually rather relevant to Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti's discussion of paragraph and sentence lengths in e-books. The closer they can be to p-books in appearance--just so the pages are big enough--then the less need there'll be for e-writers to worry about the lengths. Further info here. Question: the photo makes me wonder, "Has E Ink improved the contrast between text and background?" That's a problem with the Librie....

TeleRead e-book reviewer Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, a veteran book editor, has recorded a very helpful MP3 on the need to keep sentences and paragraphs short in books intended to be read electronically. The text version is here. Enjoy Sadi's podcasts regularly by pasting the TeleRead audio feed into your podware. And remember, she welcomes feedback. ...

Who am I to speak to the length of paragraphs and the style in which e-books are or should be written? I come with a background in traditional publishing. But I'm also a tech and e-book geek who has taught tech writing, and I've written many thousands of words online. So here's my humble opinion. I've been trying to slog through several e-books online or through PDF files, and I'm finding it very difficult. When I say e-books I mean books written for the Internet, not books that were written for print and then turned over to e-books because there was...

"Come December 2005, the young and talented writers will be invited to join eAuthor contest by Oxfordbookstore.com. They are the fiction writers whose works have never been published as printed books. This time around, they will get an opportunity to have their works displayed on the internet after the online talent search competition." - The Financial Express in India. The TeleRead take: This apparently isn't the first year the contest has been held. Rules appear here. At any rate, it's a great idea for bookstore--well worthy of imitation by large and small bookstores alike. In an era when many local bookstores...

Distributed Proofreaders is not just a piece of software; it is also a string of communities using that software, some by themselves, some heavily connected. Currently, the Distributed Proofreaders software is being used by three different projects: Project Gutenberg in the USA for mostly English texts, Project Rastko in Serbia and Montenegro for European languages and Project Madurai (in Australia?) for Tamil documents. Having looked at the output of Distributed Proofreaders (DP) the last time, we'll explore the human side of the mechanics of DP. The three projects use different versions of the Distributed Proofreaders software. This software contains the PHP code that...

"Hey, guys. I can't be the only Apple user that's bought a Cybook! Unfortunately, there is no Microsoft ActiveSync that I can find for the Mac platform." - Novice posting to the Cybook list. The TeleRead take: Can Microsoft ever figure out whether e-books are valuable in themselves, or just as a way to promote Windows? The Cybook post is yet another example of the mess in e-books, and, yes, the Tower of eBabel does figure here. Granted, the lack of ActiveSync for the Mac is a generic problem extending to apps beyond e-books, and, granted, there are workarounds such...

Could e-books be a great fix for a St. Louis man with a massive book addition--the kind that got him written up in the Post-Dispatch? Excerpt: Norma Kachigian has come to terms with her husband's addiction. It could be worse, she tells herself. It could be alcohol. It could be drugs. Instead, Amerik Kachigian, 72, a semi-retired Granite City lawyer, has spent his life collecting books, storing them away like a well-read squirrel preparing for winter. "I tell people, 'The day he dies, before I bury him, I'm going to get a Dumpster and throw them all out,'" said Norma Kachigian, 65. "They're...

"...I've decided to challenge myself to see if I can effectively use my Tablet PC as a total replacement for pen, paper, and books. Next week, I start an intense 8-week business law course and I've decided to use this course as the subject of my next Tablet PC challenge." - Eric MackOnline, via Electronic Paper....

Details from Ars Technica, via MobileRead....

Here--text, video and audio. Excerpt: ...administrators say the system is working well overall, and students seem to agree. Sophomore Justin Platt says it's a relief not having to worry about having different textbooks for every class. "You keep a lot more organized. You don't have to worry about bringing all this different stuff every day. It's always there for you." ...

Oh, Gazit Bingaman, how can I forget you? Every day I find you in the TeleBlog's spam filter. This morning I zapped exactly 825 comment spams touting poker and cellular ring tones and the other joys of life. Most came from you. I've been mighty curious about the kind of of business that would be your domain registrar. Over at eNom, John Kane has finally responded to my calls and email, and parts of the conversation amazed me. In effect he asked, "Aren't you begging for it? You've got a blog where readers can post comments. Gazit's just taking advantage of...