With all the new 'convergence' devices coming out these days---cell phone/media/gaming all in one---is there still going to be a demand for dedicated ebook readers? Would anyone buy a Kindle or a Sony or a Whatever when they could just read a book on their cell phone or magical tablet? Yes. There IS still a demand and will continue to be, but in a different fashion. The days of jumping on the bandwagon with a generic 'reader' device just to get in the game may be gone, but I think what we will see in the 'dedicated device' market will be...

According to DigiTimes, Micro-Star International (MSI) has announced plans to launch a $500 tablet PC in the second half of 2010. The device would be based upon the nVidia Tegra processor, and sounds similar to the iPad in overall size and functionality. Though MSI has made computer parts for some time (I have an MSI wifi card in the desktop PC on which I am writing this post), they are relatively new to the laptop/tablet market. However, this past Christmas I received an MSI notebook as a gift, and have been quite pleased with it. It will...

TUAW is reporting that the Apple Australia site has a footnote in its discussion of the iPad saying that iBooks will be available in the US only. So I went to the Australian site to find the image that TUAW showed, above, and guess what? There is no mention that I can find of iBooks on the site at all. Not in the Features, Design, App Store or Gallery sections at all. No disclaimer, even. If you were in Australia you would have no idea that the iPad does books. The US site has a huge...

I've been keeping my eyes open to see if I could find out anything about the DRM that Apple will be using on their ebooks. It's nice to see them using Epub, but if that Epub file has proprietary DRM it doesn't really matter that it's Epub. You won't be able read it on another reader anyway. Well, the always excellent jkOnTheRun has this statement by Adobe, but they don't give a link to the source. If anyone has any more info please let us know: Adobe is quick to point out that iPad content will not work on...

Neat article today looks at the Taiwanese ebook scene. As we all know, Taiwan is the major source of ereaders nowadays. However, according to the article, if you live there you can buy a lot of readers, but not many contemporary books. Plenty of Chinese classics are available, but not much by way of current Chinese literature. According to the article the problem is that Taiwanese publishers are unclear of what impact ebooks will have on their paper sales. Sound familiar? The article says that the Taiwanese have near 100% literacy and are big readers,...

Got a press release from Kobo saying that they are developing a free iPad app that will launch with the iPad in 60 days. The release says that they will also have "Tablet" apps available for Android and Windows tablets starting in February, and that they will continue to enhance their apps for Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Android. The release indicates that if you read on your Blackberry, for example, when you open Kobo on your tablet it will sync to where you left off. That's a shot of the tablet app above....

According the Bookseller.com , publishers are excited about the new iPad. Cannongate fees that the price point is fine for a multi-purpose device and it sees some signs that publishers will be able to set their own prices. Mills and Boon feels that the price point will help the ebook market and a number of agents interviewed by the Bookseller.com are excited as well....

I'm an Apple fan---the owner of a MacBookPro and MacBook Air and a compatible home network---and I've gone through tons of iPad stuff. Should I buy one? My preliminary conclusion is, No. Here's why: --The iPad  will make a lousy ebook reader. What good is a reader with only 10 hours of battery life? You certainly can't use it when traveling - you can't even get to Hawaii, Japan or Australia on it. One major benefit of e-ink devices is that their batteries last forever. A couple of weeks on my Kindle and Sony if I'm careful with the...

A few iPad quick-links: Remember how McGraw-Hill’s CEO blithely leaked about his company’s involvement with the iPad last night? Insiders tell VentureBeat that as a result, any mention of his company was entirely dropped from the iPad’s launch today. If true, not a great surprise. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t leak on a Steve Jobs launch presentation. And speaking of Jobs’s launch presentation, Engadget reports that you can now watch it streamed in its entirety. Granted, it has been pretty much “spoiled”...

Related: Chris Meadows on the written word vs. the competition in the era of the iPad and other multimedia machines.. – D.R. Tell the truth. How many print books did you read in the last week? How many e-books? In the last month? The last year? Are you reading more or less than in the past? Share the numbers in the comment area if you’d like. Here are my answers. Print books: Two books in the last week, six in the last month, and 50 in the last twelve months. E-books: One in the last week, two in the last...

Related: David Wilks on books vs. other forms of writing. Are you reading more or fewer books than before? - D.R. Now that the multimedia iPad is in the news, here's a timely question. Just how does written word compare to the competition? We can absorb written words---in e-books, for example---faster than we can absorb spoken words. Written words are also more efficient to transmit. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the related file can be the size of tens or hundreds of thousands of them. The same for the byte count of sound recordings....

BookTrix’s David Wilk interviewed me for Writerscast---I get into topics ranging from e-books to coin-operated libraries---and you can find the results here. David did a great job. As for my end---well, I’m thinking of farming this stuff out to Thackeray. A few of David’s earlier interviewees: --Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media. --Joe Esposito and Brian O’Leary, both well-regarded publishing gurus. --Jennifer Estep, author of the novel A Spider’s Bite. --Douglas Gayeton, who wrote a nonfiction book called Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town. --P.W. Catanese, author of a children’s book called Happenstance Found and a related series....