Google's new desktop RSS reader, seamlessly tied in with the online version via IE or Firefox, can store thousands of items for your reading offline, and not just headlines alone. You'll see the new wrinkle as an option in your existing Google Reader after a short, easy installation process. The improved reading system comes with a few catches. For example, you can't read an entire blog post or news story if the whole thing isn't included in the feed---a sin that too many media sites are eager to commit. Silly. The TeleBlog just may be reaching more people via RSS...

This is not the best indicator of ebook piracy, but I thought you might enjoy the screencaptures I did of recent ebook torrents found on pirate bay. I'm not linking to piratebay (because of the malware and suggestive ads), but here are worksafe screencaptures on flickr. Most popular ebook downloads of two random days: Day One and Day Two. See a pattern? (Compare to the most popular downloads on manybooks). Ebook torrents listed by size. Can you guess what the biggest ebook torrent would be? (Chris Meadows probably knows!). ...

Myth: When a company wants to undermine consumer-based research about the high price of textbooks, the most effective way to do so is to portray the findings as a bunch of myths. Fact: The research they are trying to debunk comes from surveys of readers and consumers. Although the data may have methodological shortcomings, they nonetheless represent the voice of the people who feel the brunt of textbook prices. Admittedly, it looks like the Make Textbooks Affordable coalition had a point they intended to prove. That said, some of the results are staggering to ponder if true: Price...

Every year for the last three years, I have manually cut and pasted the responses from the Edge's World Question Center into an e-book. In the question for 2006 (What's your dangerous idea?), the number of responses totaled 75,000 words...hey, that's the size of a book! For the 2007 Question (what are you optimistic about?), the number of words is 110,000! These are excellent short essays (my fave is Geoffrey Miller's about why we haven't met space aliens yet). The Miller link is interesting not only because of the content but because it is a print view...

In the wake of highly negative publicity questioning the value of laptops in K-12, boosters are pointing to study out of Maine showing clear benefits. As reported in the Portland Press Herald: "...a new study due out this summer by the Maine Education Policy.Research Institute at USM shows that the machines can improve student performance, said David Silvernail, institute director. Hundreds of classrooms in study "Funded by a U.S. Department of Education grant, the study looked at 240 mathematics classrooms in 45 middle schools across the state. In half of the classrooms, the teachers were given two years of training to help them...

Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheets are among the apps tht Google wants to popularize on the desktop, not just online, says the New York Times. So how soon until Google feels the same about an e-reader app? Of course, there's a little detail here: no reader now exists other than viewing arrangements for use on the Web. Despite Google's focus on online activities, however, I'll be surprised if there isn't one in the next few years---raising the inevitable question of standards. In the IDPF's shoes, I'd spend a lot of time cultivating Google so that proprietary approaches from Mobipocket and Microsoft...

"UMPC sales haven't made a blip on the industry radar screen. 'We are talking a fraction of a percent of the total PC market. Noise,' says analyst Leslie Fiering of Gartner." - BusinessWeek. The TeleRead take: The additional power needed to run XP is one of the problems with the UMPC. At least the Linux-based Foleo (PR photo via Mobile Gazette story) avoids those hassles. Meanwhile here are some thoughts from Carol Jurd, source of the above link: "I guess we have well and truly scooped them as we have been discussing UMPCs for some months. I wonder how long it will...

The new Foleo laptop from Palm is a letdown from an e-book perspective even though it can view PDF files. A tablet would have been a much nicer form factor. Or how about an OLPC-style convertible? The new Linux-based laptop has Bluetooth capability and is designed to be used with a Treo phone. Battery life is five hours. The 1024x600 color display is ten inches, which means that some people may want to show two pages at once. Price is $500, not that different from far more powerful laptops. Bummer. What is nice for e-bookers: The instant on and off, along...

Robert Nagle and I want to see if our anti-spam Dobermans are still gobbling up legitimate comments---in fact this actually happened today to Tamas Simon, a regular poster. Email Robert and cc me. Thanks....

Who says Charles Dickens is the only guy who can do a good job with orphans? Ficbot, behind the The Best Media in Life is Free blog, likes The Dark House by Ida Alexa Ross Wylie. She describes the book---available from Manybooks.net, one of her favorite sites and mine, too---as "a somewhat gloomy but well-written coming-of-age story about an orphan-type trying to make his way in the world." Ficbot sez: "While this may be ground that has been trod upon before, this obscure addition to the genre makes for a quick and satisfying read. I have not been able to...

"eBook Searchr...searches only manually selected high quality eBook sites. No SPAM or irrelevant search results, just eBooks!" - Site. Related: Tamas Simon's e-book-searcher. Idea: I'm running out of time, but does anyone want to do some sample searches and objectively compare the two search pages?...

Latest versions for Intel and PPC. Related: Earlier TeleBlog items on FBReader....