While some publishers act as if the Kindle will be the iPod of e-books, Amazon is smartly hedging its bets with a version of Mobipocket for Java phones. The public alpha is here. Meanwhile you'll recall that Mobipocket is also headed for the iPhone. What's more, the open source FBReader, which can handle Mobi, not just ePub, is to run on Google Android phone platform. (Via MobileRead.)...

Guess what. As soon as I wrote this sentence and pressed Ctrl-S, presenting my creation in fixed form, it was copyrighted under my Creative Commons License. Well, maybe it took a Web post. I'll let the lawyers argue that one. The real point here is that without registration, I still won't enjoy full protection. In the past I'd have had to struggle with paper forms if I wanted to do that. But no more. Hooks for local apps someday? "On Tuesday, the Copyright Office will throw the switch on a system called, creatively, the 'electronic Copyright...

"We all love e-books because you can take that one download and send it to all your friends---so you have twenty of them instead of just one, and the publisher can’t track you down or do anything about it.” Did a librarian from Baytown, Texas, in fact say the above at a "Sci-Fi Fantasy Convention in Houston"? If so, what's the full context, and might she want to apologize? The quote comes to us by way of Cornelia Amiri, a fifty-one-year-old novelist with 5,580 friends on MySpace. I don't know Cornelia, aka the Celtic Romance Queen....

In an effort to stick by my previously-stated philosophy of limiting my dud purchases, I read the sample material for Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation. This book is a bit of an instant classic, so it was easy to pull the trigger on it. Silly me, though. I thought that when I buy a Kindle book after reading the sample the full version will automatically open up to where the sample ended. Is that asking too much? Apparently so, because when the full book hit my Kindle it opened at the start, as if I'd never read the...

Again and again I've urged big publishers like Harlequin to drop DRM---both a sales and literary toxin. Yes, people do pirate, and I won't cover that up. Still, what's more important? Piracy prevention or making money? One reason I went with Twilight Times' Books for The Solomon Scandals was that its publisher dislikes DRM as much as I do. Now, from DearAuthor, comes a nice reminder of the perils of using DRM. Jane wonders if Ellora's Cave and other successful e-publishers would have thrived if they'd insisted on locked books. She tells of the horrors that DRM has caused...

The iPhone has a nice, sharp screen. With the right software, it could be perfect for stashing away a library in your pocket. So how does it compare with other hardware for e-reading? Palm Addicts explores the topic in iPhone as e-book reader, a natural trait or a forced add-on feature? Perhaps the salient message here is the fact that PA cares so much about e-reading. Hello, Palm? Why not pimp out the TX as a dedicated e-reader? Meanwhile Palm itself is doing squat even though some firmware tweaks could turn the Palm TX into an incredible dedicated e-reader, especially with WiFi built in. Guys,...

Google's one of my favorite companies. In fact, I own a tiny speck of it for retirement purposes. So at least as a small shareholder, let me gripe---loudly---if a report in Library Stuff is on target. I suspect it is. "One year ago today, Google Librarian Central blog was updated," LS's Steve Cohen writes in How Google used librarians...and got away with it. "There hasn’t been another blog post since. That’s 365 days of no public communication with the librarian community. I’ve also asked around and found out that Google did not have an exhibit at...

Up to now I've managed to fight the temptation to go crazy and buy every Kindle edition that looks appealing. Every time I see that "Buy" button I tremble a bit, and then I scroll further up the screen and hit "Try a Sample" instead. Yes, as of right this minute, I've only bought two Kindle editions but I've downloaded sample content from 15 other books. The only reason I bought those two is because they passed muster after I read their sample downloads. DEL and DEL I'll probably pick up the...

Microsoft without Bill Gates as a full-timer might warm up eventually to open source. That's what some optimists are speculating, especially with Steve Ballmer about to depart in the near future. If Microsoft is less maniacal on proprietary vs. open, could that have e-book standards implications? Perhaps even to the point where Microsoft would rejoin the IDPF, the e-book standards group that it helped found? One can dream. An open source ePub reader bundled with Microsoft-distributed software? For now, maybe I should be grateful that Gates retains various Microsoft ties. Maybe his old company can sway...

A cranky Texas oil millionaire named H.L. Hunt wrote a novel suggesting that taxpayers in the upper quarter should enjoy two extra votes. And so on. The American political system is getting there. Notice how well campaign finance reform has fared lately? Meanwhile even Barack Obama, despite all those small, Net-collected donation, is courting Wall Street and selling out on the telco-immunity issue. But wait. Who says we need career politicians? Why not disintermediate them and elect billionaires directly to the White House? Of course we know about the past Bloomberg rumors. And now some are...

Those new $99 Sony Readers from a year ago have long since sold out. But at least as of this nanosecond, you can buy refurbished, first-gen Readers from Overstock.com for just $204.99. That's quite a discount from the nearly $300 charged for the second-gen models. Caveats: The controls of the PRS-500U2s aren't as easy to use as the newest PRS-505s, and the screen contrast isn't quite as good. But if you want a cheaper E Ink gimzo in place of the $360 Kindle, this is one option. Even better---if you can find one: Sony...

A Harvard study, written up in Slashdot, questions the Long Tail, while Chris Anderson, originator of the theory, defends it. Summary from Anita Elberse's Harvard Business Review article: "It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there's more money to be made  in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story." Raising questions about the LT, Elberse notes the success that Grand Central Publishing has enjoyed by focusing on books with blockbuster potential. The e-book angle: One of the joys of e-books is that it's easier both to sell and buy Long Tail books---nonbestsellers. That's still...