Most people are probably aware by now of the turmoil going on over in Egypt, with the government cutting off all Internet access as part of its effort to stay in control. While much of this is outside the scope of TeleRead’s coverage, this is not: National Geographics’s News Watch blog, reposts a letter of gratitude from Alexandria’s Librarian Ismail Serageldin, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, to a number of the mobilized youth of Egypt for banding together to help protect the library from vandals and thugs during this troubled time. “The library is safe thanks to Egypt's youth,...

As the launch date of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad periodical The Daily approaches, more pundits are weighing in on what they want from it, or how it could succeed or fail. At PaidContent, Evan Rudowski of SubHub discusses the failure of Rupert Murdoch’s last big attempt at taking the digital media world by storm, 1995’s failed experiment “iGuide”, in which he took part. Based on his experiences there, Rudowski offers some advice to The Daily’s production team about warning signs to look out for that it might go the same way. For example: In its...

Some people worry that reading a book might date them, but I hadn’t heard of anyone dating a book—until now. Daemon’s Books reports on a French website called BOOX Affinity (in French, naturally) that is based on a model similar to a computer dating site: the prospective reader answers a few questions about his tastes, and get matched up to a book as to a cyber-date. It has even come up with a few hilarious TV commercials, which you don’t really have to understand French to find amusing. Of course, the idea of finding a good book via a...

From their blog: Happy Birthday, BookGlutton! You were but a glimmer in our eye in Fall of 2006. A few months later, when the two of us started working on you full time (Jan 07), we knew we were doing something exciting – after all,who had heard of social reading then? In the last four years we’ve built a lot. We’ve seen the industry change right before our eyes. We were in private beta when the Kindle came out. The iPhone was brand new. We were early. Looking at things from a startup perspective, early isn’t always positive. In truth, we would have done better...

CNet’s David Carnoy has an article and poll pertaining to the thorny issue of Amazon’s Kindle page (or, rather, location) numbering scheme. Carnoy looks at the controversy as expressed in a number of Amazon discussion forum threads—some find, as Amazon notes, that it makes a good alternative to page numbers that will have to be recalculated every time orientation or font is changed. Others are less sanguine about it, and as Sayre’s Law would predict, emotions run quite high over a largely trivial issue. "Keep in mind that his [Bezos'] background is engineering and computer science,...

The other day I wondered what a good name might be for the tablet/netbook hybrid computers that are hitting the market from a number of manufacturers. Now Engadget’s Joanna Stern is getting into the naming game, though this time taking aim at a slightly different netbook-related segment—computers that have the form factor and approximate price of a netbook but pack much better specs under the hood, such as the Dell M101z pictured at left. These, she posits, should be called “notbooks”—because their manufacturers are quick to insist that the devices are “not netbooks.” Intel, Stern explains, has so closely...

Ebooknewser has an interview with Mark Coker of Smashwords in which he talks about some of the distribution deals Smashwords has in place, and his predictions for the future. He discusses agency pricing, and whether printing costs should come out of e-book pricing. The interview has a pretty good basic explanation of what agency pricing is for someone who has been living under a rock for the last year or so and doesn’t understand it, and it includes an interesting point that Coker, sadly, doesn’t elaborate on in the rest of the review. Of...

I read Granta for years and I must admit I no longer remember the reason I discontinued the buying copies. However, this will make me come back. Granta has come to the Kindle. From the Granta site: ... Granta has never been – and I doubt it will ever be – small enough to put in your pocket. The memoirs and stories and reported pieces we publish are types of writing that benefit from expansive space. We want to look at the world in depth, at length. Two qualities often at odds with the way we live...

HOW TO USE KINDLE COLLECTIONS This is a folders-like feature available for Kindle 2's, DX's and Kindle 3's  (UK: K3's), implemented with 'tags' or category-labels (as seen with Google's GMail). I'm placing here, into one blog entry, some excerpts from some earlier pieces on Collections and may modify it over the next week or two. COLLECTIONS - BASICS Modified from steps given us by Marc Miwords . From Home, click on "Menu" . Go to "Add New Collection" . Name the Collection.  Repeat as wanted  * . Go to your listing of books or documents on the Home screen . On each title, push the 5 way controller to the right . From that...

Got the following email from Christopher Kenneally, of the Copyright Clearance Center, about his interview with Virginie Clayssen Digital Development Manager of the French publisher Editis - the country's second largest. The interview is available in a podcast and you can find it here. Here are some highlights as set out in his email (blockquotes omitted): 1. On the emerging e-book market in France -- “In France the e-book market is just emerging. We are in the beginning, for some reasons I can explain. The first one...

From the press release: Today, the European Commission and the DCA consortium, comprising 25 partners from 10 EU member states and the 2 associated countries, Croatia and Iceland, have officially launched the project Digitising Contemporary Art (DCA) initiating a significant increase in the presence of contemporary art in Europeana, the single access point to Europe’s cultural heritage. Over 30 months 21 museums and art institutions will digitise approximately 27,000 contemporary artworks and 2,000 contextual documents, making them available through the Europeana portal. With the co-funding of the European Commission under the CIP-ICT PSP programme and the commitment of the 25 partners, the DCA...

From an Article in the Contra Costa Times: Internet Archive has bought a 45,000-square-foot building [in Richmond, CA) and the large yard next door at 2512 and 2514 Florida Ave., where Palecek Imports used to have offices for its furniture business. The San Francisco-based nonprofit plans to store some 3 million books, videos and audio recordings here in a temperature- and humidity-controlled setting. That, in itself, won't create more than a few jobs. But if they can find the funding, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle said the group wants to hire as many as 500 to 1,000 locals to scan documents into...