Here, I'm on the way to a breakfast meeting, so I'll just provide a quick link. On possible new features: Color or animation isn't likely. E Ink [the type of technology Kindle employs] display doesn't support color in a commercial way. Plus, the rapid screen updates required for animation create eyestrain. The Kindle is more like a printed page — easier on your eyes. We will do on-air updates. Perhaps we'll create better user interface to improve what you're talking about for a newspaper....

Tiger Direct, whose $100 Sony Reader sale I fondly remember, is coming through on Black Friday with another temptation. It's a $350 Asus Eee PC 901 Netbook with the features mentioned in the headline. "Original price" was $600, though the cost has apparently dropped since then; read on. No, I haven't tried the 901. But the rugged solid state drive and a rated battery life of up to 7.8 hours could make it interesting to some e-bookers---even if this is hardly the ultimate Black Friday bargain. For that, how about a widescreen 19-inch Acer LCD monitor for $110, new? What...

The cover of the D.C. newspaper novel by Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, isn't officially online yet at either its Random House/Knopf page or the one at Amazon. Does the p-catalogue show it? I don't know. Nor if a final version exists. But here's what I found when I evilly clicked on "Cover Not Available." Good job, Knopf. I'm just curious if you deliberately kept the cover under very loose wraps to drum up publicity. Whatever the case, I bit. Good luck with the book. Meanwhile Twilight Times Books has  locked up the cover...

Independent ebook authors, and adventurous readers looking for their work, should without fail check out eBooks Just Published, a recent venture by Mark Gladding of Tumbywood software. This site allows authors to submit announcements of their new work. The books are categorized according to genre, and readers can vote for their favourites. Browsing eBooks Just Published feels a bit like browsing a book store - except that all the books on offer are electronic and, most importantly, DRM-free. The format allows each book to be presented in its best light, showing jacket art, blurb, and any other text the author feels appropriate,...

Although I have not yet downloaded or experimented with it, today I received the following e-mail from Access about  their Garnet (PalmOS) emulator for the Nokia Internet tablets: Dear GVM User, Today, we are pleased to announce availability of the new ACCESS GVM Beta 3 for Nokia Nseries. This new version includes several bug fixes in Garnet VM core components as well as in Garnet PIM applications. The Beta 3 also grows the already big list of compatible applications with two new supported games. Enjoy! Download the ACCESS GVM Beta 3 from our web site: http://www.access-company.com/products/gvm/?emc=el&m=173517&l=1&v=17a23a000c Thanks, ACCESS I previously...

Over at Boing Boing, Cory has posted his fiction picks today. A fair number of them are available as e-books, so if you don't mind the DRM you might want to go and see what he is suggesting. I added Charles Stross's Halting State and Saturn's Children and Neal Stephenson's Interface to my Kindle, based on his recommendation. His choices contain a number of young adult books and his previous picks for kids are available here. By the way, while I was doing that I added another book to my Kindle that I've wanted to read...

A 20-40-hour battery life for laptops? Mary Lou Jepsen---the goddess of screen tech, one of the main brains behind the low-power OLPC laptop screen---says a new kind of e-paper screen could soon stretch battery life So one of the main problems of e-reading on laptops---having the recharge batteries too often---might vanish. Needless to say, exciting possibilities also exist for dedicated e-readers. ""We are working with a number of notebook and e-book makers on a number of different form factors," Mary Lou says. The new e-paper would have a paper-white background and HDTV quality in color. Plus, it would be...

E-book publishers, take note: when you serve your customers, you sell more books, and when you don't take care of them, you cost your author sales. Here's a success story from the front line, involving a favorite writer of mine, Kelley Armstrong (shown in photo by Curtis Lantinga). Mid-month, concerned readers noted a spate of new releases at Fictionwise which were available in Mobipocket format only. This is a popular format, but it is not readable on many devices including my iPod Touch, and its DRM scheme is cumbersome and restrictive. It is also owned by Amazon.com, makers of the USA-only...

Fictionwise is offering 40 percent Micropay rebates. Details on the FW home page....

Got the Web address of an e-book file you want to read on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Simply type it in, and the just-released Stanza 1.6 will download it directly via its new embedded browser. From the Library screen, choose Online Catalog , then Direct Downloads, and hit the plus sign. You'll see a screen asking for the Web address. Another way exists to import books directly into Stanza via browsing. It's the "Add Web Page" option, through which you can add the listings on a Web page to the Online Catalog screen. From the Catalog page,...

Thanks to our reader Dr. Ellen V. Hage for pointing this out. Newegg is selling the black ECTACO jetBook Reader for $198 with free shipping. The white version is priced at $299, so this is a good deal. According to the write-up on the site the unit only supports txt, pdf and jpg, but it might be good for some our more technically inclined readers. Anybody else see any good deals out there?...

Smashwords, a digital self-publishing platform for independent authors, is now making its ebooks available on the Stanza reader. They have also developed an iPhone/iPod Touch optimized site for those who want to access Smashwords directly. Full details of how this all works are available here at the Smashwords blog. I notice that the blog says that books are in multi-format, including epub, and will be DRM free....