Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order: “A Ship Named Francis” by John Ringo & Victor Mitchell (The Service of the Sword anthology) “A Grand Tour” by David Drake (More than Honor anthology) Does John Ringo...

Plenty of hybrid tablet/laptop devices are on their way. Dan Ackerman on CNet reports on four prototypes that were shown at CES—tablets with keyboards that flip out from behind, or slide out of hidden slots, and so on. These could offer the benefit of tablets for easy reading and net surfing, then turn into full-fledged Windows netbooks with keyboards when more physical input is needed. Ackerman wonders what the best name for such a device would be, however. “What should one call a tablet with a sliding or foldout keyboard? A laptab? A keylet? A tabtop? A keyvertible?” ...

Canada may be about to get its own anti-circumvention law, akin to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, PaidContent reports. In response to calls from the US entertainment industry to tighten up its copyright enforcement, the Canadian legislature is considering a bill called C-32 which contains such a provision. The DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision, that prohibits users from cracking digital rights management even to make fair use of devices and media they own, has been a fairly controversial law in Internet circles ever since it was passed. Canada, however, has largely been able to avoid such a law—until now. The...

Our sister blog Gadgetell points out that it’s been just over a year since we first saw Steve Jobs come on stage with his clipboard-sized wonder tablet the iPad and show us for the first time just what it was capable of and how much it cost. Since then, the device has proceeded to redefine what we thought of as a tablet—certainly there had been tablets before, but none of them exactly set the world on fire. The iPad, on the other hand, did set the world on fire, opening up new possibilities for reading not only e-books, but...

Publishing analyst Mike Shatzkin, back from Digital Book World, has an interesting piece on his blog looking at the effect that non-publishers getting into the publishing business could have other publishers. He talks about a discussion he had with a distinctly non-tech-savvy publisher of renown who was now running his own smaller operation. This publisher felt that the advances in reducing the cost of small-scale publishing should make it that much easier for him to publish books. He wasn’t concerned by all the self-published stuff he would be competing with, since 99% of it would be dreck, but as...

The Bookseller has reported that Borders has secured $550 million of funding from GE Capital, contingent on publishers also providing $125 million. Borders says it does not rule out bankruptcy, and that publishers are “extremely reluctant” to take notes instead of missed payments. (I find it hard to blame them.) According to Publishers Weekly, publishers turned down a request by Borders for another meeting. They seem to be notably skeptical about Borders’s future, and I find it hard to blame them. It may be time for publishers to cut their losses—there is such a thing as throwing good money...

On Publishing Perspectives Daniel Kalder talks with Scott Walker, president of Brain Candy LLC and one of the people behind the Creative Commons shared-universe project Runes of Gallidon. Walker believes that there is a gap between creators of commercial media, and the fans who enjoy the commercial media enough to create their own derivative works based on it and distribute them for free. He thinks the gap can be bridged, with financial benefits for all. In Walker’s proposed “transmedia” projects like Runes of Gallidon, there are gatekeepers on the world to make sure that any prospective new additions fit...

Editor's Note: we covered the beginning of  this story on December 17 here. PB Regular readers will remember Simon Smithson and Will Entrekin and their crazy self-publishing ebook experiment. Their goal was to sell a whopping 1.1m copies of their ebook Sparks, at $0.99 in six weeks. Set tough goals much, fellas? So, it’s been six weeks. What’s the verdict, you ask? I’ll let Simon tell you himself. Guest post by Simon Smithson, co-author of Sparks (with Will Entrekin) Well… our great experiment is over. For now. We tilted at the windmill of Amazon’s Best-Seller Lists, and while we didn’t come unseated, the giants remain, looming proud and dark...

From the Internet Archive Blog: Þorsteinn Hallgrímsson, formerly of the National Library of Iceland had a big idea:  digitize all Icelandic literature all the way to the current day and make it available to everyone interested in reading it. The Internet Archive was eager to be a part of this bold vision. I am in Iceland now, and because the financial crisis and Icelandic reaction to theUS Department of Justice’s subpoenaing the tweets and facebook account of a sitting member of the Icelandic Parliament, this project may have the momentum it needs to happen. Ingibjörg Steinunn Sverrisdóttir the National Librarian, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the Minister...

New Features Ask for confirmation when stopping running jobs Combine the database integrity check and library check into a single menu item. Also nicer implementation of the db integrity check. BiBTeX Catalog: Add option to include file paths in the catalog. Create 'generic' output profiles and generic devices in the welcome wizard Bulk metadata edit: Custom column widgets all have an apply checkbox next to them. Only use LibraryThing to download metadata if the user provides a library thing username and password. Since LT doesn't like web scraping Allow renaming of user categories in the manage categories dialog. Also allow searching for books in a category from...

Got an email from Loreen Leedy who alerted me to a new site where published clildren's authors are joining together to write about transitioning to digital books. It is eisforbook. Here is what the first post says: We are a group of published children’s authors and illustrators who are interested in or are already creating digital books for kids. The premise of our name is that a book is a bookregardless of the format. With the option of interactivity within some formats, new creative possibilities are open to us. Our already-published books range from pre-school to Young Adult, so there...

According to Beyond Black Friday, the MidFirst bank in Oklahoma is giving away free kindles to people who open new savings and checking accounts. But there are other Kindle-related promotions as well. The blog mentions a Portland alternative bookstore that will let customers trade in their Kindle for an equivalent value in books. Since they sell used and remaindered books, from $2 - $6, this could be quite a haul. More at the site. Thanks to David Cassel for the heads up....