From the Aldiko blog: Many Kindle Fire users have asked us how to install the Aldiko Book Reader on their Kindle Fire, below we are going to share two easy methods to you. Downloading and installing directly to your Kindle Fire: (1) At the top of the Kindle Fire menu, select the Gear (settings) icon and then tap on the ‘More’ icon; (2) Tap on ‘Device’, then choose ‘ON’ for ‘Allow Installation of Applications’; (3) Open the Kindle Fire’s browser and open the below link: https://aldiko.zendesk.com/entries/402881-download-the-latest-version-of-the-aldiko-book-reader-application#overview to download the Aldiko app; (4) When download completes, open the notification bar on your Kindle Fire....

From Shelf Awareness: Waterstones, the last major independent bookstore chain in the U.K., will begin selling Amazon Kindles and e-books in its nearly 300 stores this fall, the companies announced today. Although Kindles are sold in a variety of bricks-and-mortar retailers, this is the first time that the e-readers are available in traditional bookstores. The deal is all the more striking because there were long-running rumors that Barnes & Noble was seeking to make a deal with Waterstones to sell its Nook in the company's stores and because James Daunt, who was appointed managing director of Waterstones last July, has been highly...

The Innovative Educator has a fairly long blog post proposing a number of ways that schools could use students’ cell phones to increase engagement with reading and writing in the classroom. The piece starts with the startling assertion that texting actually helps students’ grasp of grammar, and goes on to list some interesting ideas for ways cell phones could help kids learn. Some of them have to do with using phones to text notes or journals to themselves, or send text messages to teachers so they can offer feedback without fear of being embarrassed in front of their peers....

On Blog Kindle, blogger “matthew” ponders whether the Kindle would be good for classroom use in early education (first through fifth or sixth grade). It would mean students wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting their books, and it could avoid vandalism such as notes scribbled in margins. Of course, it does have its drawbacks—most notably, students’ tendency to break things, intentionally or accidentally. Though Amazon does have a good return and repair policy, it is unclear whether it could stand up to the rigors of grade school use. More important would be the issue of...

Might an ad-supported Kindle Fire be in the offing? Ad Age reports that Amazon has been soliciting ads to appear on the Fire’s welcome screen, according to an executive at an agency Amazon pitched. The ad packages would start at $600,000 and include both Kindle Fire and Kindle with Special Offers ads, going up to $1 million for additional ad perks. The current Kindle Fire has no advertcising, but Amazon has been reported to have a new model of the tablet in the offing for July and may be looking to start the program then. An interesting note is...

New Features EPUB Input: When setting the cover for a book that identifies its cover image, but not the html wrapper around the cover, try to detect and remove that wrapper automatically. When deleting books of a specific format, show the number of books with each format available Linux install: No longer create MAN pages as all utilities have more comprehensive command line --help anyway Add a tweak Preferences->Tweaks to control the default choice of format for the Tweak Book feature Conversion: Allow setting negative page margins. A negative page margin means that calibre will not specify any page margin in the output document (for...

Wired’s Threat Level blog has some coverage of the latest hearing in the current round of U.S. Copyright Office DMCA exemption hearings. Topics argued today included the iPhone jailbreaking exception, cracking CSS on DVDs, cracking the protections on video game consoles, Prospects look poor for cracking video game consoles (sadly for PlayStation hacker George Hotz), but good for the jailbreaking exemption. Apple, which argued last time around that jailbreaking would destroy its business model and open cell phone towers to sabotage, was nowhere to be found at this meeting after its business model turned out to remain notably...

The Financial Times reports (note: free registration or visiting via a Google News link required) that Plastic Logic is shutting down its US offices in Mountain View, California, and laying off a number of other workers in Germany, the UK, and Russia as exits the e-reader-making business to concentrate on making screens for other companies’ devices.  Plastic Logic entered the e-reader scene with its widely-announced Que large-screen e-ink reader. However, it abandoned the planned device after the iPad came in and changed the market to where it was no longer tenable to launch. Next, Plastic Logic received funding...

From Andrys Basten's A Kindle World Blog.  Here's a snippet: The front-lit E-Ink Kindle reported by TechCrunch's Coldewey on April 8 as in development and seen by him is now reported to be coming in July. At the time it was reported in early April, a front-lit Kindle seemed many moons away, but it could be that Barnes and Noble's release of its Nook GlowLight may have lit a fire under Amazon's development team, although I hope Amazon has found a way to avoid the lowered-screem contrast reported for the GlowLight.  Since that is difficult to avoid with a 2nd layer above...

For a long time I have advocated buying ebooks from Barnes & Noble. Not because B&N was the cheapest or had the very largest selection (although I admit that I consider the argument that Amazon has more titles than B&N to be a specious one; after all, does it truly matter that one has 1.3 million titles and the other has 1.1 million titles, as long as the store where I shop has the title I want to buy? How likely is it that I will read even 10% of the available titles — or, more importantly, even have an...

From the Bowker Announcement: British children aged 10 and under are reading e-books, but on laptops rather than designated devices like the Amazon Kindle.  Once they turn 11, they embrace the Kindle as their most widely used device for e-book consumption. These insights are courtesy of Bowker Market Research’s Understanding the Digital Consumer project, an ongoing study of the use of e-books by British consumers.  The latest wave of research, completed in March 2012, included an extended set of questions around children and their use of digital content. [Clip] The latest results from Understanding the Digital Consumer show that among adult readers...

You notice that Amazon seems to be treating Barnes & Noble as its research lab lately? B&N launches a touch-sensitive reader, so does Amazon. B&N comes out with an Android tablet, so does Amazon. Now, if a rumor reported by Reuters can be believed, it seems Amazon is eyeing the front-lit Nook GlowLight as its next xerox target. On the positive side, a reader with a light built in would mean no more clipping on external lights to read in the dark. However, it would use up battery power faster. Right now, this is only a rumor,...