This one was set for today, but for time reasons I'll go with it over the weekend. Stay tuned....

Donkeys and camels bring books to kids in Kenya, but is there a better way in many cases---potentially offering far, far more titles? Consider the Children's Machine. First the naysayers said the $100 laptop---and, yes, the price will drop from today's $140 or so---would never happen. Now the debate is shifting. How will traditional educators live with a machine that encourages kids to self-teach in line with the philosophy of constructivism? And what about the actual long-term costs of the machines---e-book-friendly and much more---for cash-strapped developing countries? Iraq costs vs. the Children's Machine Walter Bender, president of software and content for One...

Can you hide behind an IP address and smear someone via Wikipedia? That's what a nameless poster apparently did to Fuzzy Zoeller, a golf champ keen on a positive Web image. Now he's taking a swing at the offender via a lawsuit, the results of which might be relevant someday to comments posted in interactive e-books. The just-made Wikipedia link to Zoeller's name does not include the claim that he abused alcohol and drugs and beat his wife. Wikipedia volunteers strive to remove libelous references, as was done here. Not a first Essentially, this isn't new territory. While the situation never...

Some dinos in the news business are trying hard to turn into mammals---for example, with savvy use of talent from readers in the best Web 2.0 tradition. But would you believe, some other newspapers are actually getting worse in various ways? Even if you've downloaded the Microsoft-created Times Reader for the New York Times, you'll still have to mess with separate programs for the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, the Daily Mail, and the Forbes. How many other newspapers and magazines will replicate this folly? Let's hope they keep HTML editions. Meanwhile check out great responses from jkOnTheRun and MobileRead. What a horrid...

Update, 2:43 p.m.: The site replied that it had removed the illegal copies, but then I saw a James Bond novel. Sorry again, guys. - DR. What a cool mix---a social site for sharing e-texts on mobile phones, with votes on the most popular titles, reader comments, tagging, and now many thousands of Gutenberg books. The hottest items right now? Well, I'll list 'em and provide the URL, but not until the site removes Bill Bryson's best-seller A Short History of Nearly Everything. Whoops. I also see the full text of a John Grisham novel, The Chamber. If you dislike DRM as...

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The New York Times reports that elementary school librarians are planning to ban a prize-winning children's book for naming a genital on the first page. The Higher Power of Lucky, written by Susan Patron, describes how the "heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum." David Goldenberg has come up with a list (using Amazon's Search Inside feature?) to figure out which other books librarians must burn before they can claim to have cleansed their libraries. It...

J.K. Rowling writes in longhand and probably wouldn't authorize Harry Potter e-books online even if Brinks armored trucks could protect them. But suppose consumers do succeed in enlightening her. Here's free public advice from the TeleBlog's latest contributor. - David Rothman In one of the Harry Potter movies, a photograph came alive in a newspaper. Was that a next-generation E Ink screen with good refresh rate so you could embed videos? If J.K. Rowling can live with such techno-magic, maybe she'll eventually change her mind about e-books. Just think how she could single-handedly bring e-books into the mainstream, or at least...

I am a 33-year-old software engineer, expert in enterprise architecture and Web development. Currently I work for Boeing Canada. I live in Vancouver, B.C., with my wife and my 11-month daughter. An ardent e-book enthusiast, I run a Web site at DigitalReading.net where I try implementing various ideas of related services such as e-book search, e-book ratings and review, and collaborative book authoring. I am also a former member of Mensa (behind on dues). ...

I went to the Alexandria Public Library yesterday while my favorite Shell Service Station labored on my 1988 Honda. Among other items, I checked out a p-copy of Saving Graces by a former Alexandria resident, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. Just as ancient as the 1988 Honda Unfortunately, along the way, I was reminded how the library in one respect is as ancient as my car. In this supposedly modern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., the public library still doesn't carry e-books with text except for a horrid NetLibrary arrangement through which you apparently can only view e-books rather...

TeleRead apparently did not announce when, last October, the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation (DP) secured tax exempt status by the IRS under section 501(c)3 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Congratulations! This milestone means that donations to Distributed Proofreaders by U.S. residents may be tax deductible. The DP Foundation Board of Directors includes Charles Franks, Juliet Sutherland, and Dr. Greg Newby (Director and CEO of PGLAF). Do consider financially contributing to DP. And of course, do your “one page a day!” (which reminds me…)...

Comparatively speaking, it requires more effort to persuade a reader to invest TIME in an e-book than MONEY. ...