The Android-based WebStation has gotten mixed reviews on the web so far. The main complaint is that it is slow and the built-in browser doesn't do Flash. However, Judie Lipsett and Dan Cohen from Gear Diary took a look at the device as an ereader, and they rather liked it. It does cost $400, however. I already like the fact that it will show the color covers for my eReader books — unlike the nook, which treated them like second-class citizens, and I like that it is backlit and has real surfing capabilities — unlike the Kindle. If...

I doubt they'll have many takers at a $349 price, but the device does have some interesting specs. It has a Wacom digitizer and will read EPUB, PDF,Mobipocket, Fb2, TXT, PDB, HTML, CHM, DJVU. Works with Adobe DRM/Adobe Digital Editions and has an SD/SDHC slot that will take up to 32GB. Perhaps the most interesting part is that it has a Webkit browser that works with the built-in WiFi. The screen is a standard 6" e-ink with 16 shades of gray (after a software upgrade). You can find it here. (Via Engadget)...

When you have predictions coming from someone with Mike's background, they are probably worth looking at. Here are the bare bones, and you can go to his site to get his reasoning for each one. 1. At least one major book will have several different enhanced ebook editions 2. Here come some new retail book outlets, but can publishers afford the risk of selling to them? 3. Thanks to digital, there is no minimum length for a book anymore. 4. Ebooks will require a new industry directory (and it won’t be printed.) 5. Big publishers...

From Plato to Charles Dickens and  F. Soctt Fitzgerald, the OpenCulture site lists free books. Just keep in mind that you can download Kindle-readable books from Feedbooks, Manybooks and Project Gutenberg and elsewhere, not merely the Kindle Store. Also, why no mention of the Sony Reader and Nook and the ePub format usable on both? That said, this is a useful list. TeleRead itself has a list of free book sites and guides to finding freebies, and we’d welcome volunteers to update and expand it. In case you didn’t recognize him, that’s...

The weather here in Toronto, Canada, is 18 degrees F and feels like 8 degrees, according to Weather.com’s statistics for 8 a.m. today. That’s just right for snuggling up inside with a good e-book without first having to visit a bookstore or library. In fact, our wintery winters come up in a Canadaeast article headlined Local libraries an overlooked option for free ebooks. The article also laments the lack of Kindle compatibility, which patrons often don't realize until after the fact. But here is what caught my eye: hard numbers, at last, about actual numbers of books bought,...

The Blio reading app, old news to TeleRead community members, will be in the spotlight at CES. Wired News has an upbeat story quoting the legendary Ray Kurzweil, one of the developers: “We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive.” As he sees it, people will want to read e-books on multiuse devices that can display color---like, er, that the tablet that Apple-ologists are all atwitter about---which the current E Ink machines can’t do. “We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such...

I realize I have been a little silent over the last couple of days. I have been spending them with my parents, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, and my toddler-aged nieces and nephews in a delayed Christmas celebration. Yesterday and today was spent in much playing of Rock Band 2. Also, today when we opened our presents, I was astonished—indeed, downright poleaxed—to discover the rest of my family had gotten together to buy me a brand new MSi A5000 laptop running Windows 7. I immediately installed FBReader and put all my Baen titles on it. Unlike my old Toshiba...

We’ll get to the guy in the photo in time. But first the main point. For months, TeleRead and others have been hoping to see the actual number of Kindles sold, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and friends are mum despite their hype. I can understand the competitive reasons for not disclosing the information, but what about Amazon’s investors and the need for confidence in America’s stock markets? Not to mention the DRM-saddled Kindle owners with a compulsory interest in the company’s survival. Amazon’s shares have soared in a year from about 50 to around 139 as of...

We mentioned part one of this review on December 26, and now comes part 2 which discusses the online store and how newspapers work. ...

We've talked about reading lights recently and here's another one. It costs $14.99 and looks as if it might work out pretty well with an ereader. I don't like clipping a light to my Kindle as it makes it top heavy. If you want the details go over to BookofJoe. And speaking of BookofJoe, he also has a listing of AbeBooks' most expensive sales in November. Admittedly not ebooks, but still fun to look at: Works of Charles Dickens and a signed letter, $12,500; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winston Churchill and more. Take a look here....

We don't hear much about Nokia phones here in the US as Nokia is just a fringe player in the market. In the worldwide market, however, Nokia, with its Symbian operating system, is the world leader in phones. Thus it's nice to see recognized software, like eReader, finally catching up to Nokia. Ewan Spence of All About Symbian has a review of the latest 4.0 version of eReader for Symbian. Here's the result of the review. You an read the full text here. While eReader has some flaws, none of them are show stoppers; and the service behind...

You can sort Nook books in alphabetical order, despite the eagerness of your Mac’s software to display the titles in the order order you copied them cover. Scott Lewis of The Lewis Four blog has written a script to accomplish sorting alphabetically. Scott also has a link to a site that has solved this problem for Windows users Could be very useful....