Received the following email from Rhoda. Can anyone help? As editor of Tele-Read, maybe you can help us with a technology request. My friend’s grandson is bright, loves to read, but doesn’t speak and lacks the fine motor skill to turn pages on his iPad book reader. Is there any software or device that could turn the pages for him? Could you also ask if they know of an input device, do they know how a non-technical person would hook the input device to the iPad or computer? ...

A couple weeks ago, I posted about reviews of Nick Bilton’s new book, I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. After reading the sample chapters, I was intrigued, but I don’t have the money right now to go around buying books just because I want to read them. So I hopped on the web, and a short time later I was reading the book for free. (That is to say, I placed a hold request at my public library’s website, and a few days later picked up the hardcover. Why, what did you think I...

From Electronista: Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth today estimated that Amazon would sell about five million Kindle readers this year. The company should thrive on the combination of the redesign and the lower $139 price. The numbers would more than double over the course of the next two years to reach 11.5 million in 2012. Anmuth expected the price gap to keep Amazon safe from the effect of the iPad. The new Kindles create a "bifurcated" market where cheap, narrow purpose e-readers occupy the high-end multi-purpose environment, he said. ... The article goes on to make a number of other iPad/Kindle...

Publishers Weekly reports that a panel it hosted on e-book publishing rights revisited the issue of e-book pricing and royalties in light of recent developments in the publishing industry. One of the major issues raised was that of fairness in royalties across different formats. Neil DeYoung, director of digital media for Hachette, repeated in his opening remarks the standard publisher “company line” that most e-book production prices are just as high as print book prices—the only difference is the costs that are there are less visible. However, Paul Aiken, executive director for the Authors Guild, refuted these...

From E-Ink-Info.  The important point here is that this seems to be the first commercial use of the Bridgestone display. There are reports the Delta Electronics is on track to release their e-reader in December (as we reported in June). The Vivitek-branded e-reader will feature a 8.2" color touch-enabled e-paper (based on Bridgestone's e-paper technology), 3G and Wi-Fi. China Mobile will offer a subsidized version for the China market, and Delta hopes to land more partnerships. ...

The Bookseller’s FuturEBook blog has an email interview with Andrew Robinson, the erstwhile leader of the Pirate Party UK. It’s interesting to note that the Pirate Party does not specifically endorse actual piracy—it inherited the name from the original Swedish party—though it is campaigning on a platform of pruning back what its members see as an increasingly out-of-control intellectual property regime. Robinson writes: Yes, we seek a fairer balance in copyright law, that takes account of advances in technology. A law that was written to deal with businesses running expensive printing presses isn't well suited...

 Much has been said, often, about how Amazon once automatically deleted, from Kindles, books that had been illegally uploaded -- and Jeff Bezos, in his forum apology, termed it "stupid, thoughtless" and a "self-inflicted" problem for which he said they deserved the criticism they got. In a later court hearing, Amazon gave legal assurances they'd not be doing that again, and before the hearings, Communications Director Drew Herdener had said they were changing their systems so that this situation wouldn't be repeated. Despite all this, hardly a day passes without online discussions...

In its coverage of the Nairobi Book Fair, Business Daily Africa finds that a lot of publishers would like to go digital, but the lack of infrastructure is a real handicap. This is especially true of ebooks in schools: For example, if e-books were to be used in the local schools, the institutions would need to buy a projector, a smart board and at least a single computer for every classroom, in addition to internet connection to the school. On average, a smart board will retail for between Sh80,000 to Sh100,000 [about US1,200] depending on the source market. ...

The reviewer says that the unit is as thick, slow, needs a stylus for everything - including navigating your digital library and says that it reminds him of his Newton. Samsung could have produced a simple, slim gadget to display e-books, but instead it over-engineered the E60 in a bid to beat the opposition. The result is a chunky, clunky device the looks backward rather than forward and is expensive too. Two or three years ago, it would have been great. Now it just grates. WHSmith is selling the E60 online for £199....

The New York Times reports that a new study from Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter and Hunger Games novels, comes to some interesting conclusions regarding youth and e-books. The survey encompassed 2,000 children between the ages of 6 and 17, and their parents. According to the survey, 25% of children had already read e-books, and 57% of those between 9 and 17 were interested in doing so. Only 6% of parents owned an e-reader, but 16% planned to get one within the next year, and 83% of these said they would allow or encourage their...

The video won't embed, so here's the transcript from Big Think: Question: How are eBooks changing the way we consume books and media? Margaret Atwood: Well eBooks are another method of text delivery. And I did run a... I ran a blog on this subject sometime ago and it was called "Three Reasons for Keeping Paper Books." And the three reasons were: solar flares which would wipe out communications, towers, and also any electronic media that you might happen to have stored. Grid overload resulting in brown-outs which would have similar effects. And internet overload. Unless...

It was only a matter of time until mainstream journalists noticed. Slate has a probably-not-completely-safe-for-work piece that looks at the rise in popularity of erotica and pornography delivered by e-book reader. Although women-oriented romance novels have been e-book bestsellers since well before most people even cared about e-books, the article looks at what might be a new breed: racy e-books aimed at men. Though I won’t paste in the description, out of deference to people who may be reading this at work, a novel called Office Slave is tailor-made to appeal to the fantasies of a primarily masculine...