Barns and Noble has announced and is pre-selling the new Nook second generation Simple Touch Reader (STR). Looking at the specifications the eReader PDB format is not listed as being supported. Only EPUB and PDF are listed. My concern is the fact that I still get books in the PDB format from B&N and this new Nook isn’t going to be able to read them. I sent and email to B&N’s customer service asking for clarification. The email is as follows: The new Nook STR has EPUB and PDF listed as the only supported ebook formats. How will I be able to read...

We send our regards to Chris.  Unfortunately it means that Chris can't type so his posting will be limited for a while. We'll miss him....

New Features Allow the coloring of columns in the book list. Support for the Nook Simple Reader Get Books, new stores: Virtualo, lulu.net A store chooser dialog for Get Books (click the little preferences icon at the bottom of the Get Books screen). Add a merge_lists, and, or, not template functions to the calibre template language EPUB Output: Change any white-space:pre declarations in the CSS to pre-wrap to accomodate readers that cannot scroll horizontally. Windows installer: Remember and use previous installation folder when upgrading. Note that this will work for future upgrades, after this one. Bug Fixes MOBI Output: Fix hidden tags with id attributes also hiding their trailing...

  From The University of Iowa Libraries page: Forty-four years after its first public performance, the Stradivari String Quartet now has audio recordings from 1963-1996 publicly available in the Iowa Digital Library athttp://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/strad. The collection is part of the Iowa Sounds Digital Collection, a growing digital repository of audio recordings that documents the musical and cultural heritage of the University of Iowa community. The quartet made its first public performance with the Stradivarius instruments on May 19, 1967 in Macbride Auditorium in Iowa City.  The Iowa Quartet informally announced its name change on July 21 1969 at the International Music Camp in North Dakota, beginning...

I received the following newsletter from LJNDawson and thought I'd pass it on to you.  Note, particularly, her points 1 and 3  about the chaos in the industry right now. It’s been almost exactly eight months since I started working at Firebrand, and sort of put this newsletter on hiatus. But I think (insert a million caveats here) that I’m now feeling grounded enough in this work so that I can start commenting publicly again without fear of putting my foot in my mouth (okay, I’ll never be without that fear…but this does not stop me!).That said, I will be combining this...

In April, I covered the contention of Good Old Games and its developer arm, CD Projekt that DRM drives gamers to piracy. At the time, I mentioned that CD Projekt would be releasing its next game The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings completely DRM-free. Now Paul just pointed me to a story on Afterdawn noting that CD Projekt has announced that the version 1.1 update for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will strip all DRM and computer-count restrictions that came with the game originally. I’m a little confused by this given that I’d heard it was supposed to...

A study sponsored by the Pearson Foundation for Harris Interactive surveyed 1,214 college students and 200 high-school seniors heading to college.  More than two-thirds of them showed overwhelming interest in tablet devices, and believed that tablets would transform higher education. Interestingly, this same pro-tablet group largely did not own tablets: Only 7 percent of college students had a tablet, and only 4 percent of the high school students owned one.  Yet almost half those surveyed believed that digital textbooks would replace print textbooks in colleges within five years. Of those who owned tablets, 73 percent liked digital formats over print; only 32...

From HP: HP today announced the launch of Paul McCartney’s private cloud-based digital library. The HP solution provides MPL Communications, Ltd. with instant access to its diverse media assets on an HP Converged Infrastructure ready for future growth. McCartney’s collection currently includes more than 1 million items, including photographs; video footage from live concerts; rolls of film, videotapes and reels; music recordings; original works of art; as well as memorabilia. With HP, McCartney’s personal assets are now digitized. [Clip] This solution provides MPL Communications, Ltd. the flexibility required to deal with its rapidly expanding library and to ensure the security of McCartney’s priceless assets. MPL Communications,...

Received the following email from O'Reilly and thought it would be of interest: We're starting a series of TOC webcasts that I hope you'll share with your readers. They start next week, andJoe wikert just announced them at http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/toc-webcasts-sneakpeek-tamblyn.htmlWe're calling this new TOC webcast series SneakPeeks, and they'll offer a pre-release look at some of the best publishing tools, platforms and technologies that are about to hit the market.Our first SneakPeek takes place next Tuesday, May 31st at 1PM ET / 10AM PT and features segments from the following startups: 24symbols, Valobox, Appitude, Active Reader and OnSwipe. Space is limited, so be sure to register now at http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/1935?cmp=il-radar-webcast-toc-sneak-peek-052511 to take part...

That's the title of an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education today.  Important stuff: The U.S. Department of Education today released a new guide to laws and rules colleges must follow to ensure e-reading devices and other emerging technologies are accessible to all students. It focuses on students with vision problems, a group whose access issues have triggered official complaints against colleges. The document, in the form of “Frequently Asked Questions,” was published in response to the department’s “Dear Colleague” letter to college presidents on the subject last June. If colleges use e-readers, or other emerging technologies, blind students “must be afforded the...

That's the report from The Bookseller today: Bloomsbury's e-book sales topped £1.1m in the first three months of 2011 ... In his chief executive's statement Nigel Newton said in 2010 and 2011 e-book sales had "seen significant growth", adding that "since the last quarter of 2010, the UK has also begun to experience a surge in demand". Bloomsbury's e-book sales have grown from £79,000 in 2009, to £1.5m in 2010, with sales from January to March 2011 reaching £1.1m. He added that, with the Kindle now "firmly established in the UK market and recently launched in Germany, there is now a focused...

Received the following email from LockLizard about their PDF DRM.  What interested me was not the DRM so much as the fact that a new ebook store has opened in Romania. Adevarul, Romania’s premier integrated multimedia business publishing magazines such as OK!, Forbes, etc. chooses LockLizard Safeguard Enterprise PDF DRM to secure ebooks in their new ebook shop,www.adevarulshop.ro. Adevarul had been looking to provide digital products and take a leading position in the rapidly developing ebook marketplace, but concerns over piracy and associated loss of revenue had prevented them from pursuing this avenue further.  Enter LockLizard with their PDF DRM software - a DRM solution for secureebooks in...