Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch wonders whether e-books might not be the next type of app to be purged from the App Store. (As we’ve been wondering here for quite some time.) Though Kincaid makes it clear he does not think e-book readers such as Stanza or Kindle will go, since they provide a great deal of additional functionality themselves, he points out that all of the stand-alone appbooks (especially those that are just a wrapper around a Project Gutenberg public-domain text) cause a great deal of clutter in the e-books category, and would offer an inferior experience to...

A few months ago, I answered a questionnaire for John Hilton III, who was writing a journal article about motivations for creating Creative Commons-licensed derivative works. He was interested in interviewing me based on the version of Cory Doctorow’s book Content that I marked up for eReader. Now Hilton has gotten the paper published in First Monday, and here it is. He starts out by explaining what derivative works are, reasons for allowing them to be made from one’s own works, and that the study focuses on derivative works of the sort meant to extend the audience of...

In All Things D’s “MediaMemo” section, Peter Kafka calls attention to the effect Apple and Adobe’s dispute over Flash is having on Condé Nast’s plans for iPad versions of Wired and other magazines. (Note: one of the images with the article is a cover from GQ, which may not be work-safe.) That tablet Wired Magazine demo we covered a couple of weeks ago was built using Adobe technology, including Flash, which means it would be a no-go for the iPad as-is. In effect, unless Apple and Adobe can come to some form of agreement, Condé Nast is going...

Such great device names: Kindle. Nook. Blio. Ectaco JetBook Lite. Spring Design Alex. Txtr. JournE. Skiff. Cool-er. Plastic Logic Que. iRex. Pixel Qi. Bookeen Cybook. Foxit eSlick. Astak EZ Reader. BeBook. Not exciting enough for you? How about the oh-so-brilliantly named Sony Reader? Most of these names are flat out horrible. What were the marketers thinking? These manufacturers are not only trying to build their brands in a crowded marketplace, they are trying to create a new market for a new generation of devices against a well established device that does not require electricity to operate, has a long history...

Here, from Akin Ajayi in the Guardian. Jeez, people were talking years ago about e-book subscriptions, and Baen has been actually doing it. Old stuff. But I like Ajayl’s idea of the use of themes, aka playlists, and of using the subscription model to give new life to backlist books. I just wonder if Jane Friedman at Open Read isn’t on to this stuff already. If not, she needs to be. (Thanks, Gary.)...

SF writer Robert J. Sawyer, who reviewed the $150 Fictionwise flavor of the jetBook-Lite, disliked found some problems with pesky requests for credit card numbers when he re-opened DRMed eReader e-books. But according to Robert, the screen is good even if it isn’t quite in E Ink’s class. So what about buying the $150 device and hoping for relief later on in the form of an upgrrade with Adobe-DRMed ePub, so you can read best sellers in that format without the same hassles? Well, the jetBook people are at least promising an upgrade. Also, perhaps the eReader DRM...

Here's my experience after two hours with the ECTACO jetBook-Lite, an AA-battery-operated dedicated e-book reader with a very nice black-and-white non-backlit LCD screen instead of an E Ink display. I bought this specifically to read eReader-formatted books from Fictionwise.com. Fictionwise is promoting the jetBook-Lite on its site. Despite Fictionwise's ad here, which shows "Dictionary" as the first menu choice (click on photo for detailed view), dictionary lookup is not supported with eReader files. It works only with plain text files---or maybe with some other formats---but not with eReader, whether DRM'd or not. Really, Fictionwise-folk, you must...

They are selling the 5-inch reader for $149 along with $50 of free ebooks. This is a pretty good deal. The jetBook will read encrypted and unencrypted eReader PDB, along with unencrypted ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, txt, dpf and fb2. It contains a dictionary and will have the CIA World Factbook pre-loaded. One nice thing is that the jetBook uses AA batteries, so you never have to worry about remembering to bring a charger. You can find all the details here. ...

Can Simon and Schuster and Hachette really use movie-business-style release windows and delay e-book releases to get people to pllunk down $25 for a hardback? Paul’s already passed on the basic details, and now here’s my own perspective. The delayed-release policy will be a gift to pirates (as well as more enlightened publishers). If customers can’t get something legally, they just might want to look elsewhere. I’m not sure if piracy will be massive. But there will be more of it than otherwise. When S&S and the like pull stunts like this, it raises the inevitable question...

Editor’s note: Welcome to our latest contributor, Walter Bender, executive director of Sugar Labs and former president of One Laptop per Child. Below he tells what Sugar---which is far, far more than just e-book software alone---means for education. Why not try out the just-released Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry for netbooks, PCs and recent Macs and share your impressions? Yes, via the Read Activity shown here, it supports ePub.  – D.R. In 1980, I was part of a team that was developing electronic books at MIT. Our principle test bed was a repair manual for an automatic...

Here’s a start. Go for it---while keeping in mind some eBabel-related caveats and other warnings from Slate: old news to TeleRead community members. For now, I’m intrigued by New Egg’s $137 deal for an Aluratek Librie reader, a $63 discount (excludes a $10 AC charger). The Amazon price is $169.99. The screen uses LCD technology (no backlighting in this case, I suspect), and one review at New Egg gives it a four out of five stars. Any overlaps with the LCD-based JetBook? The Aluratek’s supported e-book formats are PDF, TXT, FB2, EPUB, MOBI, PRC and RTF. Not...

Since the early 1990s, I’ve been pushing for a well-stocked national digital library system. The Obama White House so far has ignored the TeleRead idea as recently presented in the Huffington Post (and forwarded to White House staffer Shin Inouye on Oct. 23). But could we be getting there anyway? Via the Reading 2.0 list, here’s an except from Harvard Professor Robert Darnton’s article in the New York Review of Books---about the Google Books controversy: The most ambitious solution would transform Google's digital database into a truly public library. That, of...