Want to be able to use your iPad, Kindle, iPod or other electronic device during take-off and landing why flying? Write your congressperson and ask them to support upcoming legislation to change the rules. According to Politico, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, said on Thursday that she would write legislation to allow passengers to use electronic devices on all parts of the flight. This is long overdue, and it’s ridiculous that the FAA has been dragging their feet on this, especially since they have given flight crews the go-ahead to use iPads for referencing flight manuals. If it’s OK to use iPads in the cockpit,...

The New York Times ran an interesting and fairly informative feature story on March 7; it covers the digital publishing industry's current digital resale controversy, which was sparked largely by the work of John Ossenmacher, the founder and CEO of ReDigi — a company that refers to itself as 'The World's First Pre-Owned Digital Marketplace.' The story includes a brief quote from Free Ride author Robert Levine; the quote probably does a better job than anything I've read before of explaining why digital resales will almost certainly lead to a fair amount of market insanity. As the article's author, David Streitfeld, writes: [caption id="attachment_81113" align="alignright"...

February 2013 had a cornucopia of Apple lawsuits in all parts of the world, from Australia to Texas to a woman in bed. ♦ The Australian government thinks Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe are charging too much for their products. Now they’ve been summoned to an Australian government inquiry and threatened with legal consequences if they don’t show up. Although Apple did testify in private, they refused to do so in public hearings and that wasn’t good enough. ♦ Although I was irritated when the iPad got updated much faster than expected, suing Apple didn’t cross my mind. That’s not the case in Brazil where the Brazilian Institute...

When looking for a new tablet, it seems consumers have Apple on the brain. The Yankee Group recently disclosed the results of a December survey in which it asked, "What brand of tablet do you intend to buy [next]?" For Apple, it was good news as nearly half of the 506 questioned picked the iconic brand. Apple Insider contends this is bad news for the rest of the tablet market, as 47 percent of surveyed consumers mentioned their intention to purchase an iPad. That left 26 percent of respondents going for an Android-based tablet, and 23 percent saying they were unsure, or didn’t know. Just one percent...

By Jonathan Pena Apple has announced that iTunes U has topped one billion downloads, an impressive number for a service launched just few years ago. Apple debuted iTunes U in 2007, expanding its library beyond laptops and computers when the company created its own iTunes U iOS app for mobile devices. Apple's SVP of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, released a brief statement stating that more than 2,400 schools across the nation are currently hosting new content on the service. “It’s inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U, and [the] incredible content offered on...

By Arnold Zafra In a move to encourage more self-published authors to make their masterpieces available on the iBookstore, Apple has created an entirely new section, Breakout Books, where self-published e-books will be displayed prominently. According to Apple, Breakout Books is aimed at helping readers find the next reading sensation by way of this collection of books from emerging—and hopefully talented—writers. All e-books on Breakout Books are independently published and were rated and recommended by iBookstore customers. And as Leslie Kaufman opined yesterday in the New York Times' Media Decoder blog, this is clearly "yet another sign that self-publishing is making inroads into...

A month and a half since Baen made the jump to Amazon availability, the publisher is about to add another feather to its cap. On her forum on the Baen Bar, publisher Toni Weisskopf has mentioned that Baen e-books will soon be available DRM-free in Apple’s iBooks store. A formal announcement will be made when the exact timeframe has been nailed down. As with the current Amazon deal, EARCs and monthly discount bundles will continue to be exclusive to Baen. The time since the program happened has seen some minor controversy erupt on the Baen Bar. After December 15th,...

Goodnight Moon is a hugely popular children's picture-book by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd Clarke Moore; it was recently made 'interactive' for the iPad. I've recently been having some weekly iPad time with our youngest kindergarten class, and thought they would be the perfect guinea pigs for this intriguing app. So ... how did it go? The 'Interactive' Features The interactivity was about what I expected. You can have the app read you each page, and then the kids can press on individual words to hear them again, or tap on a magnifying glass, which they can use to zoom in on...

Everybody’s coming out with tablet gift buyers’ guides this time of year (including us in not too long). I thought it might be a good idea to come out with more of a thinking guide, something to suggest ideas for you to consider while you read those guides—a “buyers’ guide guide” if you will. These are the primary considerations I think a tablet buyer should be keeping in mind. 1) Walled garden or the open road? Many of the most popular tablets this year are locked up in someone’s walled garden. The iPad and iPad Mini are no-brainers...

By Brian Howard | for Book Business On Friday afternoon, The New York Times' Nick Bilton posted an item on the paper's Bits blog entitled "Apple Now Owns The Page Turn," citing U.S. Patent D670,713. Incredulous, Bilton wrote: This design patent, titled, “Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface,” gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application. Yes, that’s right. Apple now owns the page turn. You know, as when you turn a page with your hand. An “interface” that has been around for hundreds of years in physical form. I swear I’ve seen similar animation in Disney or Warner...

It’s not clear whether Apple is doing this or it’s just someone who’s cut a deal with them (both 9to5Mac and CNet asked Apple for clarification, but the company apparently hasn’t responded yet), but an eBay store entitled “refurbished outlet” has opened up, selling factory-refurbished Apple products at the same prices (including some 4th-gen iPod Touches at the bargain prices I noted a couple of weeks ago) and with the same one-year warranty as on the Apple Store. (It’s a buy-it-now only operation, so there’s no bidding.) As a side benefit, only a few states’ residents—California, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey,...

Here I go, turn the page. On the NY Times Bits blog, Nick Bilton gleefully reports that the patent office has seen fit to award Apple a design patent on, of all things, the digital page turn used in iBooks. Bilton uses this as proof of the ridiculousness of the current patent system, as well as a reminder of the obnoxiousness of Apple’s recent patent litigation practices. But is this patent really as silly as it looks? As some people point out in the comments under Bilton’s article, the patent is narrower than Bilton makes it seem—it doesn’t cover any page turns,...