The iPad came out in the United Kingdom this weekend, and there are a number of new reviews of it making the rounds now. One of those reviews in particular is novelist Charlie Stross’s. Stross has come out with a quite thorough look at the iPad’s advantages and disadvantages, as well as a separate post looking at iPad word processing, keyboards, and cases in more detail. On the whole, Stross likes the iPad and believes it will be quite useful, especially for reviewing PDFs. He dislikes the “walled garden” nature of Apple’s app store, however, and the things...

This was a big panel with about 15 speakers: Christopher McKitterick, Marziah Karch, James K. Burk, Jan Gephardt, Chloe Neill, Dana Bell, Michael Swanwick, Laura LeHew, Rob Chilson, Robin Wayne Bailey, Julia S. Mandala, Dennis Young, Tammy Garrison, Tracy Morris, and Ian Tregillis. (I was a bit surprised that they did not put Toni Weisskopf on the panel, given her experience in e-book-related matters.) They took turns speaking on what e-books meant to them, and what they saw in the immediate future. Here are the highlights of what they said/ Michael Swanwick said that he sees...

I just walked back in my door after the bus ride back from Kansas City. I had a great time at the convention over the weekend. I taped interviews with Pete Abrams and George R.R. Martin, which I will try to sit down and transcribe over the next few days. I attended panels relating to the coming age of e-books, and to the effects of new technology on our daily lives. I met and had dinner with occasional TeleRead contributor Moriah Jovan and her family. And I had the chance to put together some impressions....

NY Magazine has a series of articles where authors pick their favorite books in the genre that they, themselves, write in. William Gibson is one of these and he picked: Tiger! Tiger (The Stars My Destination) by Alfred Bester Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany Arslan by M. J. Engh The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard The Forever War by Joe Haldeman Pavane by Keith Roberts Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack Great Work of Time by John Crowley Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling 334 by Thomas M. Disch I checked the Kindle, Sony and Kobo store and pickings are pretty slim. Kobo and Sony have none...

By Stephen WindwalkerOriginally posted to Kindle Nation Daily 5.31.2010 Potentially big news for international readers here. Although Amazon has yet to make an announcement about it, the Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac apps now render the Japanese language and alphabet. And thanks to an email that I received overnight from Mr. Toru Suzuki with my Japanese publisher Nikkei Business Publications, I'm happy to announce that one of the first Japanese language texts available to read with the Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac apps is a lengthy free excerpt from the Japanese translation of my bestselling Kindle guide.   So,...

For those librarians out there who need to keep up with the digital world, Onlinedegrees has just published their listing of the top 25 librarian blogs. Many of them cover the e-world. I note that we are listed as number 21! I also see that my favorites, Resource Shelf and No Shelf Required, are on the list. Here are the first five: 1. Never Ending Search – Winner of the “Best Librarian Blog” category for the 2009 Edublog Awards, this blog-version of the School Library Journal updates librarians and book geeks with social networking tips and interesting literature-related...

Thanks to Resource Shelf for picking these up. Baker & Taylor Inc., the world's largest distributor of physical and digital books and entertainment products, today at Book Expo America announced it has signed agreements to provide print-on-demand services - via its TextStream Digital Print Service unit - to Simon & Schuster and German academic publisher De Gruyter. Baker & Taylor Inc., the world's largest distributor of physical and digital books and entertainment products, today at BookExpo America announced it has signed agreements for its TextStream Digital Print Service to provide print-to-order services for Baylor University Press and University of Wisconsin Press. Backlists...

Got the following email from Bruce Wilson: A short lab test in the July 2010 issue. I paraphrase and quote: Opening line: "Amazon's Kindle e-readers are still the best choice for most consumers." "In our comprehensive tests, the Kindle, $260, and its supersized sibling, the Kindle [DX], $490, had crisper, more readable type than any other e-reader in the Ratings and better than the iPad's (see sidebar)." The Ratings: 6- to 7-inch screens: 63 Kindle 60 Sony Reader Daily edition 56 Sony Reader Daily Touch 52 Nook 51 BeBook Neo 8- to 10-inch screen: 65 Kindle [DX] 49 iRex DR 800SG For text readability, both Kindles are rated above average. All others are average....

I was excited to get my new iPad on the day of its launch in Canada, Friday.Bear in mind, I did NOT buy it with the intent for it to be my primary reader, unlike some people here might be. And for reading long-form fiction, my first impression is that I was right about it not being the best reading experience. But it will (for the most part) perform as I expected as a teaching tool, and I'll enjoy using it at home and on the go. What were my first impressions? NOT A KINDLE KILLER, BUT MAYBE AN OTHER THINGS...

From the Kindle Software Upgrade v2.5 help page today, at the top, where Amazon asks users to monitor the page for further news, we see: Kindle Version 2.5 Overview We know Kindle customers are anxious to receive the 2.5 software update, so we wanted to provide you with some details about its status. We've rolled out the 2.5 software release to a set of Kindle customers and have received great feedback from these early customers. Based on this feedback, we are making some small adjustments to improve the experience further. We will be rolling out the 2.5 software update to...

Sony is taking the Reader worldwide. From a press release I received: Already available in eight countries worldwide, Sony today announced that the Reader will be coming to Japan, China, Australia, Italy and Spain by year’s end. While the majority of focus on eBooks has been spent on examining how the $24 billion U.S. book business has hit the eBook tipping point, the biggest opportunity for the eBook and eReader market this year lies overseas as the eBook phenomenon catches on across the globe. China is forecast to see e-reader sales jump from 800,000 in 2009 to three million in...

I had a thought today after reading of Barnes & Noble's new iPad app, which allows customers to loan/borrow purchased books. I haven't heard whether the annotations go along with the lending, but it strikes me that academics needing to cite locations in ebooks and those interested in annotation technology both need a way to refer to locations within electronic documents. The problem for academics looking for citation conventions is that we're all used to page numbers, which give us a way to identify a location manually by flipping through pages (or by hunting for a letter or other archival document...