Coming later today: FBReader tips---plus a lesson that e-bookers can learn from Gateway's last moo (yes, I'll explain for the unfamiliar)....

At least 40 percent of TeleBlog readers live outside the United States, and many of our U.S. fans are frequent international flyers, not just frequent readers. Beyond Paul Biba's love of e-books, then, his creds as a globetrotter should enrich the TeleBlog in highly relevant ways 45+ countries For the past 40 years, our newest contributor has been a corporate lawyer with a specialty in international transactions. In that regard, Paul has visited over 45 countries, and long plane flights got him interested in e-books and their ability to help him travel with a minimal amount of baggage. He started with computer...

No substitute exists for reading e- or p-books to your child. Talk about bonding and knowledge! Still, if you're looking for animated picture books for your son or daughter to augment other learning activities, you might check out TumbleBooks---the topic of a review in Web Worker Daily. Family subscriptions are $30 a year, and some public libraries offer the books for free. Here's an excerpt from Dian Schaffhauser's WWD piece: Child engrossed "This online collection of lightly animated, talking picture books keeps my five-year-old engrossed long enough for me to get through that client call without interruption. Best of all, it's a free...

OK, here's the reason Nick Bogaty's leaving as exec director at the IDPF. Bill McCoy at Adobe has hired Nick, effective next month, "to lead our digital publishing business development." From Bill's blog: "While Nick understandably decided to seek new challenges after an almost six year stint at the helm of IDPF, his passion for promoting the broader adoption of digital publishing was clearly unabated, so I'm delighted that he's chosen to come on board and play a key role in advancing Adobe's contributions." Best of luck to Nick and Bill. I hope they'll both give serious consideration to actual implementation of...

The International Digital Publishing Forum, the e-book trade association, is looking for a new executive director, ideally New York-based. See posting at paidContent.org. Starting date is "immediately." No, I don't know the reasons for the departure or forthcoming departure of Nick Bogaty (still listed on the IDPF site as director). Best of luck to Nick in the future! Here's the Number One qualification I'd look for, beyond the expected organizational and technical skills: a genuine love of e-books. E-book-lover as next exec director? The IDPF should find out if and how often the candidates read digital books. Here's to the cause...

Deena Fisher, publisher at Drollerie Press, an e-hip house devoted to genres such as fantasy, sci-fi and horror, is the latest contributor to the TeleBlog. She isn't just a publisher of E, but also an avid reader, via her Nokia 770 (nicknamed "Zippy" even if it isn't) and her desktop. Deanna reads books in most all of the major formats, ranging from Mobipocket to HTML, and has a strong preference for nonDRMed titles. Library connection As a mother of three and wife of a librarian specializing in horror, fantasy and sci-fi books, she's also a library booster. Deena's little small press---where her executive editor is...

Angry e-bookers are still recovering from the Mobipocket outrage, which means joys like reset passwords. But at p-book stores, other obstacles can arise, such as long lines, and Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, has a few thoughts on that. Hyatt's term for the obstacles is "friction." Meanwhile a discussion is underway at MobileRead on, among other things, the possibility that an iPoddish approach at Amazon could reduce the friction that arises out of DRM. You know? Buy a gizmo like Amazon's forthcoming E Ink machine and laze back and just stock on up e-books from The Company Store. Not exactly...

Yes, we'll be running those promised FBReader tips, but most likely tomorrow or Tuesday rather than tonight. I wanted to spend more tinkering time. Meanwhile take our Mobipocket poll---admittedly unscientific---if you haven't already. Forget what we're writing here. Make the choice that best describes your feelings about the Web-site outage and its effect or noneffect on your book-buying....

"For e-books," wrote Bill McCoy, an ePub guy at Adobe, "I really like the 'social DRM' approach of The Pragmatic Programmers, who 'stamp' PDF eBooks with a 'For the Exclusive Use of ...' and the name of the purchaser." None other than a co-founder of The Pragmatic Programmers, Andy Hunt, ran across our pro-SDRM post the other day. He particularly enjoyed this argument in the TeleBlog: "We could take e-books more seriously as a medium if we could truly buy them, especially for future use on new machines with different operating systems." An artsy-craftsy type gets social But who says hardcore techies are...

"We reset your password because we recently learned of an attempt to gain access to a Mobipocket server. Files containing name, account name, password, address and e-mail address for some Mobipocket customers were kept on this server. Although we have no evidence that these files were accessed, we changed your password and are notifying you out of abundance of caution." - Just-received notice from Mobi. The TeleBlog take: I am not a security expert. I would welcome thoughts from the true specialists. For this layman, at least, the term "evidence" can be tricky. My guess is that Mobipocket was, as claimed,...

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The Sony Reader gets yet another look in BusinessWeek. The September 3 issue tells how Sony intends to address shortcomings such as an inability to read DRMed books except in a proprietary Sony format. The next model's Adobe software, as we know, will handle encrypted PDF and the IDPF format. Break ahead for public library patrons With the new Reader able to read DRMed PDF, perhaps it will be handy for downloading public libraries' OverDrive books, which, in their Mobipocket incarnations, can be tricky to use, at least on older CE machines. Let's just hope that Sony will allow existing Readers to be...