Here we are. Techo savvy, but still testing our boundaries, learning and growing and expanding---and yes, finding the usual problems along the way. One of those, naturally, is the same one the music industry has had to address: the sharing of information across the net. All right. How many of us feel sorry for big music stars when their songs are downloaded? (Looks for raised hands). Well, since technically it is stealing, we probably should, but heck, we all know they make a bundle... No, it still really isn't right. Moreover, it is against the law unless specifically released...

"My brain about exploded. Of course! What can't you do that a businessman might typically want to do that he can't do on Google Docs? Note to countries thinking about whether or not to get the OLPC laptop and worrying about Word and Excel and all that: not only does the OLPC have equivalents, but if you want the kids to be able to function in a Microsoft environment, let them go to Google Docs and they can even share the work. An entire class and the teacher can all work on a project together. Here's how some others...

Update, 1:36 p.m.: FBReader installation instructions for Linux geeks now appear at the end of this post. In fact, some patient and careful newbies might also succeed. - D.R. We're a little closer to e-book nirvana. FBReader, which in most incarnations can read .epub, the new standard e-book format from the IDPF, is now running on the OLPC laptop. In case you're tuning in late, that's the machine with an extra-sharp screen and the ability to let you fold it into a tablet----the green gizmo that made the 60 Minutes TV newsmagazine and may eventually sell for just $100....

A new e-book reader from Teheran could be irresistible for educators. Just touch a word with a stylus. Bingo! The e-book reader will pronounce, define or translate it. Just the ticket for students, especially those with language difficulties? Helps understand pictures, too Edited slightly, here's the lowdown from the Iranian Students News Agency: "Iranian inventor Ramin Sedighi made a small device that turns silent books into speaking ones. The gadget is a useful computer system that pronounces, translates and explains pictures and words of a book located on it when its electronic pen touches them. The...

Amazon's DRM schizophrenia goes on. The Kindle e-book reader is DRMed to the gills, but sure enough, Jeff Bezos's DRMless MP3 store is the first announced outlet through which Warner Music will sell music without "protection." The home page of the Amazon MP3 store tells it all: "Play Anywhere, DRM-free Music Downloads. MP3 Music Downloads for Any Media Player!" Meanwhile, of the big four music companies, as noted by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica, only Sony BMG is holding out on DRMless offerings. EMI and Universal succumbed before Warner did. Time for Jeff to join the crowd with a...

Check out Details of Apple's mysterious new portable device in Seeking Alpha (thanks, Mike). So what's plausible in this item, and what isn't? Related: Axiotron ModBook Mac tablet shipping soon? from our friends at Ubergizmo, source of the image. Technorati Tags: Apple,Axiotron,MobBook,Mac tablet,tablets...

"Eleven years ago, the Queens Library system, the largest in the nation by circulation, hired a professional enforcer to collect the 25-cents-a-day late fines as well as missing library materials from books to DVDs to rare musical scores. The gambit has paid off handsomely. The haul so far: $11.4 million, about half of that in fines. That's a lot of quarters." - New York Times via Mike Cane. The TeleRead take: Gotten any fines lately for being overdue with an e-book? The Fairfax County and Alexandria public libraries, here in Northern Virginia, could probably both build new branches financed by...

[poll=38]I've been taking a second look at commercial e-books, in light of the comments I've read on the Amazon Kindle and other reading devices, both E Ink and not. DRM remains a concern to me. It might seem like nothing to pay $4 for a digital version of a fairly disposal paperback best-seller. I typically pay $8-9 for the paperback p-book, read it, sell it back to a used bookstore for three or four dollars and come out about at par with what I would be paying for an e-version. But the main reason I don't keep every p-book is a...

Doesn't it drive you nuts when a company makes it simple to buy but difficult to cancel or return your purchase? Amazon prides itself on customer service and rightfully so. Then again, I've never tried to return anything to them so I'm not sure how difficult that would be... If you ever decide to cancel your Kindle magazine or blog subscriptions prepare yourself for something other than a 1-click operation. In fact, even though the Kindle is touted as PC-free, your computer will come in handy when you look to cancel a Kindle subscription. As Harry McCracken notes in...

Is Amazon going to open the Kindle platform in near future? The answer is probably "NO." We consumers lack the ability to get the inside information, but we can guess that the decision to make the Kindle a closed platform was done by Amazon itself, not publishers. Book publishers might have encouraged Amazon to use DRMed. But does DRM per se have anything to do with a closed system? NO. Adobe's Bill McCoy has recently written: Kindle is far more closed even than iPod, which started out and have remained primarily players for MP3s, easily made from...

Sometimes fiction can go beyond fact in truth-telling. Remember Richard Stallman's The Right to Read---about copyright-crazed, Big Brotherish society? The Kindle just might be one more step along the way. Now my friend Andy Oram (photo), an O'Reilly editor, has written a timely piece of speculative fiction on how the Internet will change news, media, and the ways people interact in the civic realm. If you're interested in such buzzwordy topics as citizen journalism and the wisdom of crowds, spend a few minutes on "The Validators." It also touches on trends in democracy, privatization, broadband penetration, etc. Love or...

So what's ahead for the iLiad---perhaps the best E Ink machine for heavy-duty business reading of PDFs because of the large screen? I caught up with iRex Technologies recently to find out. Along with the Cybook, discussed elsewhere in the TeleBlog today, the iLiad was a big hit when I showed the eight-inch E Ink screen and the iLiad's other glories to the geeks at the OLPC Learning Club earlier this month. Hardware connoisseurs remarked on the quality, not just size, of the display---including the glare-proofing. And in fact, iRex Technologies, spun off from Philips, E Ink's developer, used...