The "Why Books?"Conference took place on October 28-29, 2010 at the Radcliffe Institute  for Advanced Study, Harvard University. "Why Books?" probes the form and function of the book in a rapidly changing media ecology. Speakers from a variety of disciplines—literature and history to sociology and computer science—will discuss the public-policy implications of new media forms and will explore some of the major functions that we identify with books today: production and diffusion; storage and retrieval; and reception and use. New: Videos of Opening "Conversation" and Three Panels Session Summaries and Site Visit Summaries Welcome, Intro and Opening Conversation: "Future Formats of Texts: E–books and Old Books" Session...

I just got around to doing a software update on my iPad. Among others it fetched a new update to the Reeder RSS reader, containing a remarkably useful feature that I am extremely glad to have. Although I mentioned the Reeder vs. MobileRSS controversy last week at the time the update actually came out, the nature of the update escaped my notice until now. Reeder has added a Readability button to its user interface. When I encounter a RSS feed that does not provide the whole article (some feeds are especially obnoxious that way—most notably The Bookseller’s, which...

From a NY Times Article by Patricia Cohen: The painstakingly slow job of transcribing often hard-to-decipher handwritten documents from history’s lead players — not to mention a lack of funds — has meant that most originals are seen by a just a handful of scholars and kept out of the public’s reach altogether. After more than five decades, only slightly more than half of James Madison’s papers have been transcribed and published, while work on Thomas Jefferson’s papers, begun in 1943, probably won’t be finished until around 2025. Now the scholars behind the Bentham Project think they may have come up with a better...

Feedbooks is a great resource and now The Gadgeteer has an excellent article on how to make the best of it. So I had this series all laid out in my mind. Start with borrowing current books, then into free books, and finally into sources for paid books. Thing is, Feedbooks has mucked it up by adding a store for selling e-books. I have been a big Feedbooks fan for years. They are a great source of public domain books formatted for your device. Once I found them, I stopped rolling my own from project Gutenberg. The site has continued to...

Robert Scoble has a post on his blog talking about answer-finding service Quora, and why he feels it is significant. He points to a tweet from venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar who believes that it is “the future of blogging.” Blogs may not be e-books, but they are on-line content and certainly that’s a form of TeleReading. I had never heard of Quora before today and was curious, so I went over to check it out. What I found was an answer-finding service, where you post your question and other users will answer it. I wasn’t sure...

Philip Ruppel, the president of McGraw-Hill Professional, has an article with the above name in Mashable today. His 5 trends are: 1. Enhanced ebooks are coming and will only get better; 2. The device war is nearly over; 3. The $9.99 ebook won't last forever Amazon popularized the $9.99 price point for best-seller trade titles, driving the widespread consumer adoption of the Kindle and consumption of e-books. This has caused confusion among many consumers who simply think every e-book should be $9.99 or less. But the majority of titles offered on Amazon are priced above $9.99, especially those with unique interactive features. For...

I recently had the opportunity to pick up a pair of David Weber books I had not yet read. (Well, “pick up” in a figurative sense, as I read them as free e-books from the Mission of Honor CD on The Fifth Imperium Baen CD repository.) I found them to be quite exciting page turners, with only a few minor drawbacks. The books in question make up the “Multiverse” series: Hell’s Gate and Hell Hath No Fury. As with all Baen titles, they are available in multiple, DRM-free formats. The books are actually co-written between Weber and Linda...

CREATIVE USES OF THE KINDLE Well, pleasurable reading is good enough for most, but there is a lot more that can be done with the Kindle, as shown in the short list just below. (I recommend bookmarking this for quick access later.) 1. an old, continuing favorite forum thread about the more unique uses of the Kindle's capabilitiesthought up by members of the Amazon Kindle Community, and I saw another idea added today. 2. a newer forum thread of favorite tips for new Kindle owners from Kindle oldtimers. NOTE: If your web browser (especially Firefox) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you...

At TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis posts an interesting meditation on how tricky most household appliance interfaces have become. Coffee makers, microwave ovens, even pepper grinders have become much more complex than they used to be—sometimes hilariously so: Many people received iPads and iPhones this Christmas, and because of Apple’s legendary intuitive and straightforward design, could pull them right out of the box and commence using. Not the case with a battery powered pepper grinder one of my relatives received at our gift exchange. It took three people to put together and when we did get it to...

In this second portion of the interview, I asked about the ways Pete earns money from the comic, including Amazon and other referrals and his premium subscriber program, “Defenders of the Nifty.” I also asked about his feelings about or experience with e-books. Previously: Part One Me: How did you decide to start the Defenders of the Nifty program? Pete: There again, that's been going on so long I can't remember exactly how it started. I guess it just came from the idea of, instead of just offering donations, kind of giving a little...

While I was out and about last night, I happened to notice a CDROM stand on the counter of a local print and copy shop. It was a free CD version of “Names & Numbers”, one of the local telephone directories. Curious, I picked it up and took it home to give it a run-through. Though I have only taken a cursory glance over it, I am actually fairly impressed. Though the device has a Windows autorun and installer built in, it can also be run off the CD without needing to be installed. At heart it seems to...

From Reddit comes the heartwarming story of a 27-year-old man whose 13-year-old brother saved his allowance all year to chip in (with other members of the family) toward buying him a Kindle for Christmas. The 13-year-old is the only child of the family who still lives with his parents, and since his father suffered congestive heart failure and has to remain bedridden most of the time, the boy has to do most of the work around the house. The family has gone through financial hard time since then, due to medical bills. Money has obviously been...