In reference to my post a few days ago about free on-line writing possibly devaluing paid prose, an interesting post came my way from Mary Hamilton at her Metamedia blog in which she talks about unpaid work versus paid from a standpoint of social relationships. Hamilton cites a chapter from a book called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, on the effect of market forces on social relationships. The chapter talks about an experiment studying how hard students would work on mindless tasks if paid nothing, fifty cents, or five dollars for their work. It turns...

Galleycat recently took a look at the top ten pirated e-books on Pirate Bay, and found a rather peculiar selection of titles that would seem to indicate the average pirate is primarily interested in math, sex, and Photoshop. (Yeah, sounds like the average geek to me.) The list includes three sex-related, two math, and two Photoshop titles, The remaining three books have to do with odd trivia, secrets of rich people, and how to make people like you. It’s interesting this top-ten list includes not a single fiction title—they’re all self-help and non-fiction. Of course, the article notes...

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study from mobile VOIP company Rebtel which polled immigrants on their tablet-buying habits. It finds that an average of 13% of immigrants own tablet-style devices, compared with a Pew study showing 4% of Americans own tablets and 5% own e-readers overall. While their terminology is a little sloppy (they seem to consider the Kindle a “tablet” for purposes of the study), and the charts are a little tricky to interpret, the results are certainly interesting. Why would immigrants adopt mobile technology at a higher rate than native residents? I wonder if it holds true...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The technopanics we’re seeing now over e-books replacing print books, computer gaming ruining people’s minds, and other technophobias of the day are nothing new. I’ve reviewed a book to that effect—Nick Bilton’s I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. On Techdirt the other day, I spotted a link to a historical analysis of the life of fifteenth-century abbot Johannes Trithemius, who really, really hated the printing press for what it was doing to the business of copyist monks. It’s very interesting reading, not least because...

Could Amazon be offering the Kindle free by the end of the year? Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, thinks so. He points out that an analyst charted the decreases in the Kindle’s price over the last two years and projected that it could be marked down to nothing by November of this year. Kelly notes: Since then I've mentioned this forecast to all kinds of folks. In August, 2010 I had the chance to point it out to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He merely smiled and said, "Oh, you noticed that!" And then smiled...

Yes, Rita Toews has obtained a Nook, donated by the E-Ink Corporation, that Read an E-Book Week would like to put in a lucky person's hands! Just go to REBW's contest page, send in your response to the ebook-related question, and on March 13, Rita will announce the winner of the Nook!  Details are on the contest page.  Go and enter now!...

Readability disabled its old bookmarklet this afternoon, redirecting the script reference to its new browser applet instead. Rationally, I can see why they would have to do it—if they’re wanting to track pages viewed for the purpose of doling out content payments, they have to channel them through a source that can actually track those views. But I’m finding that the new applet is considerably less satisfactory than the old bookmarklet for a number of reasons. The old bookmarklet seemed to do its actual processing on my own computer. This provided a faster response time, and it also...

Lest it be thought that only Apple was capable of pulling a snit over in-app purchases, GigaOm reports that Google has pulled the popular app Visual VoiceMail from the Android Market citing a violation of developer payment rules. Visual VoiceMail is a free app, but its provider offers premium paid services through a website, just as Amazon and others provide free iPhone apps but sell e-books externally. The app had been available for over two years without any fuss being made over the matter. There is a decent amount of money at stake: the developer says that...

Library Journal reports that HarperCollins has issued new terms to Overdrive for how many times a library e-book can be loaned out. Library Journal reports that HarperCollins has declared a library-purchased e-book may only be loaned 26 times before it must be re-purchased. This bears a certain similarity to agency pricing in that not just Overdrive but any library e-book provider dealing with HC will be required to abide by those terms. The publisher also issued a short statement: "HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from...

I’ve been letting news about the Tolkien estate’s chilling effect on creative efforts involving Tolkien’s name or works pile up without reporting on it because most of it doesn’t seem to relate directly to e-books, but enough of it has accreted that it has reached critical mass, so I’m going to touch on all of it at once. After all, it wouldn’t feel right not to give it at least a Tolkien effort. In Soviet Russia, rings lord you! – I caught a note on Galleycat a couple of weeks ago that a fan has translated a...

You can turn the Nook Color into a fully-functional Android tablet, but conversely you can also read Nook books on other Android devices through Barnes & Noble’s Nook app. Now Engadget reports that B&N has updated that app with a number of minor features including a library grid view, book download progress bar, and wish list. Barnes & Noble also promises a Honeycomb app will come out sometime this spring. Between this and the recent addition of Google Books to the Android market, Android is starting to look more and more like a viable alternative to iOS for e-book...

One of the great things about the current state of electronic text is how much information and advice is available free on-line for the asking—concentrations of expertise in answer sites like Quora, as well as pre-published content available through search engines. But when it comes to important matters such as medical advice, there’s an amazing amount of misinformation out there. It seems a lot more people enjoy giving medical advice than are really qualified to give it. One problem is, when it comes to giving out advice, doctors are sadly underrepresented in social media. A CNet...