Speck sent me two cases for the Kindle 2. Both are neat and work well. The first is the "Fitted" case. This is a simple two piece plastic shell. Place the Kindle 2 in the lower part and then snap the top part over it. The back is covered in fabric and the plastic of the front part is painted with black, non-slip paint. The case will protect the body of the Kindle from scratches, but offers no protection for the screen. All the ports on the Kindle are accessible. I rather like the look of...

From Ed Kukulka and the Entourage Edge forums: The thick envelope in my mailbox was my first indicator that I would soon have access to recent, popular books for free. My Fairfax County library card had arrived. You may be thinking that my old school euphoria over a public library card doesn’t belong in a forum for new technology. But as technology has advanced, so have the capabilities of your library card. In fact, many libraries allow you to check out e-books in much the same way you’d check out a pile of pages bound in a cardboard cover from your...

Received the following from Ansgar Werner in Germany: “This book is something you do” says Canadian Blogger & sci-fi author Cory Doctorow about his latest novel „Little Brother“. Like previous titles, the anti-DRM-activist had the electronic version published under a creative commons license, which lets you share it, remix it, and then share your remixes. Much like the novel's digital guerilla of gamers and hackers fighting against a fictional police state, its readers have been taking action against the Big Brothers of cultural industry. There are now free e-books in dozens of formats, fan translations and fan audiobook readings. On the...

Over at iPad Nation Daily, Stephen Windwalker has an article about a $0.99 app that will read thousands of free audiobooks on your iPad, iPhone or Touch. The app is called Audiobooks and has a bookmarking feature, sleep timer, advanced search and, for the iPad, a web browser. The books are from the LibriVox project and there are over 3,200 of them. From what I gather from the article they are mainly classics. Check out Stephen's article for more info....

Publishing Perspectives posted an article yesterday by Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), about the benefits that computer technology has had and e-books are likely to have for child literacy. (There is also a related editorial/discussion topic by Edward Nawotka.) McLean notes that studies have shown literacy rates for children have already increased considerably over those for children of the same age prior to the computer. But reading literacy is only one kind of literacy that children are going to need in coming years. Participation, collaboration, intuitive problem-solving,...

Received the following question from librarian Ned Heeger-Brehm: I follow your blog with great interest and I particularly appreciate the sales information you pass along. For my own clarification, when the Association of American Publishers report that “Ebook sales up 176.6% in 2009” does that include eaudibooks or just ebooks? I’ve wondered the same thing about the IDPF statistics reported at www.openbook.org. ...

My previous article, Will eBooks Be the Downfall of Literature?, turned out to be quite controversial, provoking lots of comments around the Internet, few supportive. Arguments against my article ranged from free speech (which is a legal concept that really doesn’t apply) to with so much dreck the cream will rise to the real culprit being print on demand to literature includes dreck by definition to … pick your own dart. Many commenters lauded the ability of anyone with a computer to “publish” their ebook. Swimming through an open floodgate is not, in my view, a good way to swim;...

Shelf Awareness has a round-up of reviews of the iPad as an ebook reader. They include reviews by Mike Shatzkin, Kassia Kroszer, Jane Litte and Sarah Wendell, all of whom, the author says, are not impressed with the iPad as a reader. They also include reviews by Drew Goodman and Elizabeth Silvis who take the opposite viewpoint. If you are looking to buy an iPad you might want to read the article....

We all know that the so-called “paperless office” turned out…not to be. In fact, computers caused the use of more paper than ever before. There was even a paper shortage a few years back, though it may be stretching a point to tie this to paper use brought on by computers. But it looks as if the predominance of electronic media—websites, electronic newspapers, and, yes, e-books—is now doing what the “paperless office” could not, cutting down on the use of paper significantly. And this is having some unanticipated consequences. In particular, it could quite possibly cause a shortage...

Last week we reported on a story that a number of universities (such as Princeton, Cornell, and George Washington University) were allegedly “banning the iPad” due to problems caused by the way the iPad handles DHCP (part of the system that governs how wifi connections are made or dropped). However, blogger Steve Wildstrom points out that a little basic investigation turns up the fact that this simply isn’t true. Princeton had to block some misbehaving iPads were blocked from its network, but not all of them, nor is it disallowing their use as a whole. ...

From a press release I received from them: Do you have a poem pacing about in the confines of your computer or your mind? Is it wild? Gentle? Hilarious? Tragic? Insane? Serious? Abstract? Concrete? All of the above? Or is it something completely different? Submit it to Wattpad and you may get published! Be sure to include the tag poetrycontest. The winners will be determined by Frontenac House. Submissions must be original, in English, and may not have been previously published anywhere else. Contest deadline July 31, 2010. Winners will be announced on September 15, 2010. The year 2010 marks the 10th...

Found via BoingBoing: David Nickel reports that fellow Canadian SF writer Dr. Peter Watts, who was arrested and beaten at the Canadian border by US border guards on his way back into Canada, has received a suspended six-month sentence, a fine, and a lecture on respecting the police, but no actual jail time. It is good that Watts will not go to jail. Unfortunately this still leaves him a convicted felon in the eyes of the law. I would hope that he could appeal the conviction and get it overturned. But either way, it is good to know that...