Our founder David Rothman wrote an interesting column on how to use e-books as part of an educational strategy for encouraging children to read. He suggests that parents should aim for a mix of electronic and paper books, using paper books as “gateway drugs” to get kids interested and e-books for times when paper books are not available or appropriate. He also suggests that developers should look into different ways of using e-book content to make it more effective for learning. The effectiveness of the actual books for children is just one issue. As part of...

Netflix recently caused a stir when it decided to split its formerly-all-inclusive, DVD-rental-plus-streaming subscription fee into two separate subscriptions, effectively nearly doubling the price to those who wished to continue both streaming and receiving DVDs. A number of Netflix subscribers have been up in arms over this change. Gizmodo points out that this shows demand for DVDs is still tenacious—perhaps more so than Netflix expected when it bet so heavily on the streaming future. It costs Netflix as much as 75 cents each time it rents a DVD through the mail, while it may only cost 5 to 10...

Occasional TeleRead contributor Robert Nagle passed me a link to a review he lately posted of our founder David Rothman’s small-press-published novel, The Solomon Scandals, which recounts a journalist’s investigation of a scandal in 1970s Washington. Nagle quite liked the book, giving it four stars, though noting that the tone could get a little preachy at times. Ars Technica reports that Google will release the first e-ink reader optimized for Google Books in about a week. The iRiver Story HD, apparently a revision of iRiver’s 2009 Story e-reader, will include wifi and a qwerty keyboard, and cost $139.99 suggested retail when...

TeleRead's founder, David Rothman, has an article on today's front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  The article,  "It's Time for a National Digital-Library System," is familiar to most TeleRead visitors, describing his concept of a national digital library, as well as the support his idea has received from popular pundits: (William F.) Buckley loved my proposal ("inspiring") and came out in the 1990s with two syndicated columns backing the vision. As a harpsichord-playing Yalie famous for political and cultural conservatism and cherishing archaic words, Buckley was hardly a populist in most respects. But he fervently...

A few days ago, I mentioned the WordPress plug-in PadPressed, which makes blogs resemble Wordpad documents when read on the iPad. Now our founder and editor emeritus David Rothman has put that plug-in into use on his own blog about his book, The Solomon Scandals, with an emphasis on the availability of sample chapters and other material from the book in that format. Visit it from a desktop web browser and it looks perfectly ordinary. But go there via the iPad’s Mobile Safari, and the interface becomes essentially the same as an iPad app. You can even tap...

And speaking of school libraries, NPR reported a few days ago that they are increasingly becoming seen as a luxury where school budgets are concerned. Since there are few laws mandating that schools must have libraries, they are beginning to go by the wayside as budgets dwindle. But librarians do far more than just check out books. They help students with research and information technology, such as the Internet—or even e-books. Students, especially those from low-income families may not have access to the resources they need to do their schoolwork at home. [Rosemarie Bernier,...

TeleRead founder, David Rothman, the cover of whose latest book is pictured here, has a 4 page article with the above title in The Atlantic as a guest post in James Fallows' column. David's article is far too long to quote, but here is what Fallows has to say about the: ... guest essay by David Rothman, of the Teleread site and the DC roman-a-clef The Solomon Scandals. David was one of the journalism world's earliest adopters of computers and related technology. Since 1992, when many people (including me) could barely imagine what a Kindle/Nook/iPad-style "e-reader" might be, he has been...

It’s been just over a year since Amazon bought Lexcycle, makers of Stanza, and as I reviewed Stanza the other day I glanced back over some of the old blog entries TeleRead writers made back then. I thought it would be interesting to look at a couple of those predictions or opinions in light of how the past year has gone. David Rothman wanted Washington to see the acquisition as a signal to investigate the e-book industry for possible monopoly practices: Washington often bungles things, but at least we can vote the bastards out...

On the Music Machinery music technology blog, Paul Lamere takes a moment to reflect on e-book technology—particularly the Kindle and its Whispersync. Whispersync is the system for tracking where you are in a book so your Kindle or Kindle device or app can synchronize with any other Kindle devices or apps you own. Lamere points out something that most Kindle users probably do not think about very often: with this system, Amazon knows not only what you are reading, but how you read it. Did you start a book and never finish it? Is there a particular passage...

On TeleRead founder David Rothman’s The Solomon Scandals blog, Rothman links to a love song to printed newspapers by journalist Danny Bloom, “I Just Can’t Live (Without My Daily Snailpaper)”.  It’s a remarkable song, full of nostalgia about various newspapers and personalities associated with them. It definitely grows on you over its 6-minute length. But at the other end of the spectrum is the TechCrunch piece in which Erick Schonfeld talks about a recent conversation with Netscape-founder Marc Andreesen. Bringing up the legend that Cortez ordered his ships burned upon arrival in the New World to make...

On le savait depuis un petit moment, et même que durant quelque temps, David Rothman nous avait proposé de devenir acquéreur de TeleRead (c'est très sérieux comme info, j'ai les mails à votre disposition, pour les sceptiques...). Car voilà, TeleRead n'est pas simplement une mine précieuse de renseignements, c'est avant tout un travail quotidien lourd et qu'à un moment, David préfère se consacrer à l'écriture plutôt qu'à la veille sur internet. Et personne n'y trouvera à redire. David quittera donc son poste de rédacteur en chef et éditeur, laissant à Paul Biba le soin de poursuivre la route. Avec près...

Well, that's quite a bit of news posted below. David has been an icon in the ebook industry and will be a pretty tough act for me to follow. Now on to a few matters you may be concerned about. When discussing the ownership transfer, and my position position as Editor, with NAPCO over the past few weeks, one thing became abundantly clear. NAPCO values the way TeleRead has been written and its journalistic integrity and has no intention of changing this. If I thought they would then it wouldn't be me writing this. I expect...