Details from ActuaLitté (thanks to Nicholas Gary). Google translation here. Cybooks---at least some and maybe all---will come preloaded with French and English classics. A bare package will go for 350€; a deluxe one, for 450€---with a 2G SD card, a USB charger, a headphone and other trimmings....

One of my gripes against iPod e-reading software is that it typically lacks a progress bar for an entire book and offers one just at the chapter level. eReader, via an update to version 2.2, has addressed this deficiency. Nice going, guys. It's in line with a promise from eReader that it would be upgrading regularly Page numbers, too! Trying out the update, you'll also notice that eReader lets you call up page numbers---an issue related to Chris Meadows' concerns---and that the usual view is a full screen. What I'm not clear about...

The Sonny Bono copyright term extension law has resulted a torrent of creativity output, right? Leaping out of his grave at Rockville cemetery, F. Scott Fitzgerald has just pulled off some new Hollywood deals to make up for his past failures. Brad's Reader and PW have the details. The real joke in this case: It's on Hollywood. Without Bono, might the Fitzgerald properties be free? The bigger picture: Studios want to protect their own copyrights and mice, so they'd point out that the small-n net from Bono is larger than without it. Still, many public interest...

Any writers care to share dollar sales stats----either through direct dealing with Amazon or reports from publishers? Mitzi Szereto, an erotic writer, talks about $30 in K-earnings from a series and seems to think that it is a promising start. Mike Cane would disagree. That said, I can recall Oxford University Press and some others reporting better-than-expected earnings. So what's the deal here?...

Two-handed typing and even a virtual scroll wheel are among the features that Apple might include in a tablet Mac running a full-strength OS X operating system. AppleInsider ran across helpfully illustrated company filings. Will this be a real product? Other questions arise. How fast and accurate will the typical user be? Will he or she be able to type comfortably for any length of time, and without risking injury? At least with a regular mechanical keyboard you can rest your fingers on the keys. Oh, and will they teach gestures in high school if this approach catches on? Yet...

So we now know that, unless an Amazon rep is outright fibbing, there will be no new Kindles this year. Writing for Wired's Gadget Lab blog, Charlie Sorrel came out with this wish list for Kindle 2.0 features before they got the memo. Sorrel's five Kindle wishes are: Sex Appeal (i.e. un-ugliness) Touch Screen Color (specifically, so that the Kindle could do comic books as well as printed matter) Worldwide Availability Subscriptions (for books and comic books, not just newspapers) ...

Is Amazon playing mind games with the media? Or maybe changing its mind---because people might shun the existing Kindle if the first 2.0 model were expected in a month or so? Fear of the Osborne effect? Now the word from Amazon itself, namely chief spokesman Craig Berman, is that new Kindles will not appear in '08. I'd love for BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows and others to tell us the story behind the story. Berman's exact words Meanwhile here are Berman's exact words to Brad Stone of the New York Times: "Don’t believe everything you...

Check out the, er, glowing customer-reviews for the Mighty Bright XtraFlex2 Light, which sells for for $16.02 (TeleBlog Amazon Associate link). Own one? Agree with the reviews? Ballyhoo: "The Mighty Bright XtraFlex2 Light is a battery operated clamp on accessory custom designed to illuminate your Kindle Wireless Reading device. Two Super LED lights in one head gives you the lighting power of 6 normal LED's. Brilliant light output! You have the option of using one or two of the Super LED lights with just a simple tap to our proprietary sensor switch. The flexible neck allows you to...

This screen-related gem was spotted by the sharp-eyed Michael Harris in the blog of Mary Lou Jepsen, formerly OLPC's CTO and now running her own tech company, Pixel Qi: "We’ve been a bit quiet in the blog, but have found manufacturers and kicked off development of some new screens that will be ready next year. These screens will go into both laptops and e-book readers and offer massively longer battery life, and much better readability in both room-light and in sunlight, as well as in the case of the laptop screens excellent color, contrast. We have been working hard...

One gimmick is that the new IE 8 will come with search arrangements with a number of content-related partners. Interesting. But wouldn't it be a lot more fun if Microsoft turned IE into an e-book standards-compliant reader when you wanted it to be? Ain't gonna happen, but a TeleBlogger can dream. An intriguing feature: "Search suggestions." And now a few more details from Forbes: The new browser comes with a search box in the upper right-hand corner and, just below that, a row of tiny logos for various search destinations,...

Details at NonstopBooks---complete with some explicit titles, so don't go there if you're squeamish. The books involved seem to be mainly of the dead-tree variety. But let's extrapolate. Yet another case for e-book standards? We need all kinds of bookstores, not one big giant imposing its tastes on everyone. Proprietary forms and DRM are censors' friends. The tighter the link between tech and content, the worse the choke-hold. While Amazon isn't censoring the books outright, it is applying morality. In fairness to Amazon, the New York Times keeps certain categories off its lists, and I can appreciate...

In The Great Kindle Numbers Debate, the latest wrinkle is a search trend chart created via Google. It suggests that the iPhone (red) and the Blackberry (orange) are far more popular as search fodder than the Kindle (blue). Click on the graph for more details. I spotted this gem via the Reading 2.0 list. Even if just a fraction of iPhone buyers end up with e-books, the numbers could be impressive. Meanwhile consider the record from the past few days: Actual Amazon execs are questioning the 240K sakes figure spread by Technocrunch...