A female executive can read a steamy romance on a PDA during lunch without the boss finding out. Here's to the privacy of e-books! But should libraries protect kids from controversial books on topics such as sex or drugs or other minefields? A tricky issue. In the current LISNews, a medical librarian named David Rothman---not me---points to an AP article mentioning a child who learned to sniff nail polish remover via a p-book checked out from a school library. No reference to E. But you can imagine the possibilities. Will keyword-based filtering soon be a feature of e-book servers for libraries...

It's a slow morning so far for e-books, but if you want an idea of what competition books will get from VR worlds, check out a fascinating post in a Second Life blog on physical appearance and SL vs. Real Life. Hmm. So what would a Jane Austen avatar look like---given all the less-than-complementary remarks in the New York Times?...

From Mary Lou Jepsen's comments in an OLPC Talks transcript just quoted in OLPC News: The screen is 7.5 3x4 so it is more 30% more area than the last screen. It's 200 DPI which [is] about 5 times the resolution of your screen which is 72 probably. Why is 72 5x? Because it's X and Y. The reason we went high resolution is part of the justification of the expenditure of government for book replacement. The number one reason we prefer to read on paper rather than on a screen, so it's stunningly higher resolution, color translucent mode is about...

Here, from DearAuthor.com. The TeleRead take: Remember, people who buy more than their share of e-books are the most harmed by DRM---well, assuming they don't boycott "protected" titles. Related: 'EMI to go DRM-free' in Apple iTunes deal, ‘but at a price': Biz model ahead for some e-publishers? from the TeleBlog. Also see Killed By DRM: e-Books, from Wired News's's gadget blog. The other side: A more DRM-friendly perspective from Oxford University Press exec Evan Schnittman. He says Apple's iTunes shows that a "complete technology sales model" can work even with DRM. My counter-argument would be this. Does the book-industry really want...

John Scalzi, Jonathan Lethem, Strobe Talbott, Steve Levy and Kelly Link are among the videoed participants in the Authors@Google series. That's a self-altered photo of Scalzi, by the way. The series, says the official Google blog, covers topics ranging "from literary fiction to science fiction, sociology to technology, politics to business." Not everyone's appearance in the series, apparently, is viewable---I couldn't find a Martin Amis video from it, for example. Related: Online home of the Authors@Google project and the YouTube video archive for it. Also see Techmeme roundup. Speaking of Amis, see a The Amis Inheritance in the New York Times...

"I'm guessing ole Tom's trickery is not a sustainable model for encouraging mass collaboration in a 21st century business venture." - Blogging Wikinomics---with follow-up in today's New York Times. So, gang, what do you think? Paint the TeleBlog's fence---while keeping in mind that this one is noncommercial. As I see it, there's room for both fence models and the traditional variety. What I hate, though, is the idea of corporations building business plans around the idea of not paying regular contributors for tasks such as routine newsgathering. The fence-painters need to be driven by passion. "Hey, Tom, I don't enjoy pure...

PDF Annotator was the topic of a brief TeleBlog item. But reader Joseph Gray reports finding a free alternative, PDF-XChange viewer. It isn't as easy to use but offers much more than just annotation: "View, Print, Export Text & Images and add content to PDF files." Tracker Software, he says, will soon add a highlighter pen, not just one for drawing---as well as "deleting of drawing objects, sticky notes and typewriter text without having to select an annotation tool first." In addition, at his suggestion, Tracker is considering a way for users to choose which customized buttons appear in the...

"OLPC added a new country this week: the USA. This move will engage a wider developer community, impacting and improving software and content. Please note that such a move into schools and learning in the USA is not necessarily a commercial machine." - Walter Bender, an OLPC official, to an email list. The TeleRead take: I don't know if you can use the machine in the bathtub, but computing in the rain is no prob. "On a rainy day in Boston," OLPC says, the organization's Mary Lou Jepsen "decided to let the BBC film her testing the XO in a downpour....

"Orion Group is to publish its first e-book next year---most likely as an exclusive with Waterstones.com---and Macmillan has also taken its first digital steps outside the academic world, quietly making around 40 mass-market titles available in e-book form" (links added). So reports Publishing News. Photo is of Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries series, which Macmillian will publish in E Two interesting wrinkles: "We have the digital rights management software in place to block access from territories where we don't have rights" PN quotes Mark Stay, an Orion account manager. "It seemed a good idea to publish it as an e-book...

"Adobe InDesign CS3 now supports the direct generation of OCF-packaged OPS content," reports IDPF exec director Nick Bogaty. More info on InDesign here. Info on the new feature here. "You can export a document or book as a reflowable XHTML-based eBook that is compatible with the Adobe Digital Editions reader software" (link added)....

Update 2007/04/28, 11:59 MDT: The OpenReader site is back online, and the "malware" has been removed. Somehow a bunch of links to bad sites and a bad-actor counter got added. They've been removed with the help of James "KodeKrash" Linden, who is also now tracking down how the bad stuff got there in the first place. He says avoid using canned CMS like Mambo if possible, a sentiment with which I agree. Now to get the Google bad flag removed for all search results which bring up OpenReader pages. - Jon Noring Badware has infested the OpenReader site, and it's down...

OLPC's growing closeness to Microsoft could have a major positive---more interest in the K-12-optimized laptop for use in U.S. schools and libraries. It's up to Bill Gates. Will Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, which he and his wife control, kindly adjust to the idea of econo-computers? If so, given the importance of the Microsoft brand name to many educators and librarians, then this could significantly speed up adoption of the machine. And that in turn could be catnip for e-bookdom in some ways---since, as shown here, the laptop can double as a tablet, with the right ergonomics for books. The political...