Here. Enjoy! The screen shots and other photos are most impressive. And on the CompuUSA site, early user reaction seems to be upbeat despite some glitches reported elsewhere by 770 booster Mike Cane. ...

"If this was law a few years ago, the entire digital music movement would have been stopped in its tracks." - Marc Kantor in USA Today....

You know you've arrived when the big boys start attacking you directly and in public. Bill McCoy, an Adobe executive involved with e-pub activities, has honored the OpenReader format with some criticism that is already a tad obsolete. He is belittling OpenReader as "NoringOSoftReader"--a proprietary creature of OpenReader Executive Director Jon Noring and OSoft, the first implementer. His blog denies he's doing that; but from the tone, he might as well be. Bill, the OpenReader Consortium is already shopping around for a recognized standards group. Jon wanted a stand-alone approach similar to the model of the very reputable Digital Radio...

From Dan Jackson in the U.K. Thanks, Dan! I just listened to the first episode of the AnimeOnDVD.com podcast, and among other things they said that Tokyopop has plans to make manga (Japanese comics) available on the new Sony Reader. This strikes me as a pretty good move, because the sort of people who buy manga and graphic novels tend also to be the kind of people who would have sufficient disposable income to buy the Reader. Though with its native JPEG support, I wonder whether Reader-using manga fans might not simply turn to "scanlations" to avoid the burdens of DRM....

"When you infect a music CD with malicious anti-copying software, how long can you expect it to work for? Unlike most software, music CDs are liable to be loaded into computers decades after they're pressed; can an anti-copying program anticipate the state of computers in twenty years and ensure that their programs won't destabilize computers in the future?" - Cory Doctorow. The TeleRead take: I continue to dislike DRM in any medium, but hope for a compromise between content providers and the rest of the planet. Within e-bookdom, sane format and DRM standards wouldn't lead to a nirvana, but they could...

Here, from Content Biz. "Our favorite data--30% of ebook shoppers will leaf through online sample pages prior to making their purchase decision."...

Here, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (paid reg.). Also see Media Giraffe....

Details from The Age and Ubergizmo. Age excerpt: Kemal Dervis, head of the UN Development Program, will sign a memorandum of understanding Saturday with Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop per Child, on the $US100 laptop project, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The program aims to ship 1 million units by the end of next year to sell to governments at cost for distribution to school children and teachers. UNDP will work with Negroponte's organisation to deliver "technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries," the UN agency said in a statement....

Can the long tail of the internet help publishers? Or is that the role of the backlist? And what about authors -- wouldn't the long tail help sales by building up the number of their readers over time?...

Here, from The Age. The how-to's are eReader- and Microsoft Reader-centric and gloss over the technical challenges. But, hey, they're a start. Related: The Wikipedia's e-book entry and an e-book devices page....

I'm delighted to see e-books promoted--Read an E-Book Week is a true public service. But given the pathetic size of the e-book industry, largely due to the damage from harsh DRM and the Tower of eBabel, I don't know whether to celebrate or mourn. (Via MobileRead.) Related: A site from week-originator Rita Y. Toews, offering child-oriented e-books. She also works in other genres and has won an Epie for her memoirs, but it's especially gratifying to see her children's e-books on useful themes. The Bully, shown here, reached print, too. You can download it from her free e-books page....

Here, by Andrei Codrescu, in The Villager, via LISNews. OK. We know about wi-fi efforts in New Orleans. Could they be combined with an e-book project and donations of hardware from major vendors? Except from Codrescu: "It's not certain how long this common welfare institution is going to last in the age of Google. Information can be obtained by a click of the mouse and lending libraries on the model of Netflix are not far off." Still, he's rooting for public libraries; and I am, too....