Here's part of a post from Dear Author. I must say that I have to agree. It's beyond me how anyone can say that they enjoy the feel and smell of a cheap paperback. Silliness. ... I don’t want to dismiss a person’s love for the feel of paper, the smell of paper, or even the look of a book. But for an avid reader of genre books, the mass market paperback is a disposable item. It’s print quality is fairly poor on thin paper housed behind lurid covers. The bindings are weak and can barely last more...

Over on Wired’s “Gadget Lab”, Dylan F. Tweney gushes about how great an app Instapaper Pro is for your iPhone: “It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.” I would have to agree in principle, if not necessarily in degree; Instapaper—which allows you to sync on-line news articles for reading in a reformatted off-line version, sort of like a modern version of AvantGo—has been very useful to me for as long as I’ve used the free version. Among other things, Tweney notes, the price for Instapaper Pro has just been...

This is a major problem if Chamber Four is correct. Sony proudly announced a Mac version of its library software at its press conference last week and many of us were delighted. Since I no longer have a working Sony Reader I downloaded the software to my Mac but I haven't tried it out yet. Now, Chamber Four is reporting a major problem. If Adobe Digital Editions doesn't work on the Mac. then all us Mac users are left out of a lot of the new stuff Sony announced. Here is the report from Chamber...

HotStuff 2.0, written by Dave Pattern in the U.K., searches hundreds of  library-related blogs “to discover new and/or interesting topics.” Lo and behold we were recently among the trendies, thanks to our use of the word “giants” to describe Google and Amazon. Hardly the most novel word in that context---newspapers and public interest activist love to use “giant” to describe large corporations. But at least we used “giant” in good company. But what’s the significance of the graphic? “A daily blog post is generated using a single word that has seen a marked increase in...

When, just when, will E Ink be truly like white paper---with a high contrast between text and background? Ideally it’ll happen in the next few years. But until then, I’ll be very grumpy, as are Robert Kingett and Nicholson Baker. “This was what they were calling e-paper?” Baker has written of his Kindle. “This four-by-five window onto an overcast afternoon? Where was paper white, or paper cream? Forget RGB or CMYK. Where were sharp black letters laid out like lacquered chopsticks on a clean tablecloth?” Until we get decent contrast on the Kindle and other E...

It looks as if there is some price competition going on. According the The Bookseller: W H Smith looks like it is ready to spark an e-reader price war after offering the two new Sony e-readers at prices less than those being charged by Waterstone's. Waterstone's will be selling the new Sony Reader - Touch for £249.99, however the WHS website is selling it for £219. With the Sony Reader - Pocket Waterstone's is taking pre-orders for £179.99 whereas WHS is offering it at £159. In additional Sony news PC Pro is reporting that the 3G version will be a year behind...

It's just 10 minutes to midnight and I thought I'd take a last look at my RSS feeds before going upstairs with my Kindle. I was jolted out of my chair when I saw this come in on the Smashwords feed. It excited me for a number of reasons: 1. Mark Coker is a very nice person and it is really neat to see a nice guy do well; 2. It is also neat to see a start-up (only 15 months old) leap from a small operation into the mainstream in such a short period of time; 3. For...

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University just published a study of the copyright practices of 12 private foundation. The Executive Summary can be found here. The study, which itself is licensed under Creative Commons, looked into the usage of open licensing by the foundations. The study found that: ... the potential benefits of open licenses for foundations and their work are substantial. On a fundamental level, open licensing is in synch with a charitable foundation’s basic mission to create and disseminate learning, knowledge and resources for the public good and can lead to...

So reports EurActiv in an excellent article summarizing the current state of the Google controversy. Evidently the Information Society Commissioner, viviane Reading, supports Google's efforts, but the Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy differs and he has called for a hearing which will be held on September 7. Here are a few excerpts from an article that deserves to be read in full. ... According to EU figures, only 5% of all digital books are available in the recently-established and free-to-access EU library Europeana. Almost half of these come from France, while other countries with massive libraries, such as Italy,...

Mobile Tech Review has long been one of the best, if not the best, review sites on the web. Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief, always does a superb job. She's just reviewed the new Sony Touch and, as is usually the case, you don't need to bother with any other reviews. The picture is from the site and is a comparison of the contrast of the 505 and 600 text. Here's the conclusion, but I urge you to read the whole thing: Sony has done a very good job this time, and the Sony Reader Touch Edition is a pleasure to...

The New York Times links to sites pushing accessory keyboards. No need to stick to the shrunken one in your notebook. Got your own accessory keyboard recs? Technorati Tags: keyboards,folding keyboards...

This is from eReport: While commercial publishers work on their project to bring 1000 Great New Zealand ebooks to market, the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) has been quietly working to convert its collection to free downloadable ebooks — 1150 of them available right now. The NZETC is afilliated to Victoria University in Wellington and has been busy digitising works of historical and literary interest for several years. According to Project Manager Jason Darwin, they had been following the ebook market’s development closely and decided the time was right to jump in and help. They made the excellent decision to convert their...