Curious how Stanza looks on the new high-resolution iPhone 4? Here’s a video. Of course, the resolution of the video is nowhere near as high as that of the iPhone, but it still seems to look pretty nice. (And the iPhone 4 itself looks nice in person, too—my brother showed me his a couple of weeks ago, with the free Winnie the Pooh iBook on it. I plan to get one before long myself…) (Found via eBookNewser.)...

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...

I’ve already looked at the other two of the original “big three” iPhone e-book apps. The third of these apps is Stanza, the EPUB reader from Lexcycle. Stanza has a lot in common with eReader. They’re both great apps for the iPhone, their reading models are similar, and Stanza even shares the ability to download and read eReader-format e-books—even those protected by DRM. And like eReader, Stanza’s future in the iPad era is uncertain. Lexcycle COO Neelan Choksi said in a comment posted on Lexcycle’s forum on March 15th, “Currently, there is no work being done to customize...

And now it’s time to review an e-book app that does not have “Reader” in the name. Time to look at the big kahuna of iPad e-book readers, the one that was supposed to change the publishing industry forever: iBooks. There’s quite a lot to like in this free iPad e-reader, and only a few minor niggles. Given that it uses EPUB and is quite easy to load with content, I can use it as a replacement for Stanza on the big machine. In fact, I would say it’s as good as or even better than Stanza in...

Yet another reminder: use the Previous entries link at the bottom of the TeleRead  home page to see recent items no longer showing there---including Fictbot’s funny essay on book-sharing and some important Stanza news....

The Stanza e-reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch remains a big favorite of mine. Now it’s better than ever---with the Version 2 release and easier recovery of “lost” books from the vagaries of OS upgrades. I remain a Stanza cheerleader, because it lets me display books exactly the way I want to see them. Plus, it’s blended in well with a variety of public domain sites and bookstores. In V. 2---no bomb in this case!---I especially appreciate the greater ease of changing font sizes via the two-finger “squeeze” method. As shown in the left image,...

Kapan is publishing Stanza e-books for law and nursing students. But these “wrapped” ePub editions are just for iPhones and Touches. After a Kaplan news release---edited---I’ll discuss this. Your thoughts? - D.R. Five titles from Kaplan Publishing for law and nursing students will be available at the iTunes store via the Stanza e-reader. More titles will appear for students with access to iPhones or iPod Touches. Medicine will be among the fields included. This will happen through arrangements between Kaplan Publishing, LibreDigital (digital publishing service provider) and Amazon’s Lexcycle subsidiary (developer of Stanza). ...

An e-book focused conference, organized by O’Reilly Media, will take place Oct. 8 from noon to 3:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time, and the cost is $149, though Tools of Change alumni qualify for a discount. Among the topics: pricing, reader wishes and the future of E. Speakers include Trip Adler, CEO of Scribd (photo); Matthew Bernius, co-director of the Open Publishing Lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology; Angela James, editorial director of Quartet Press; Kasia Krozer of the Booksquare blog; and Neelan Choksi, CEO of Lexcycle....

Note: Also see Robert Nagle’s different view of Baker. By the way, unlike Robert, I agree with Baker on the issue of the many books missing from E. This is a major flaw of e-books. TeleRead as a corrective step, anyone? – D.R. Most of Nicholson Baker’s piece in the August 3 New Yorker is on the Amazon Kindle. But the real news shows up far inside. Although a long-time skeptic toward e-text, Baker open-mindedly recognizes the merits of the iPhone and iPod Touch as e-book readers: “Forty million iPod Touches and iPhones are in circulation,” writes Baker, author of fiction and...

The new Stanza 1.9 e-reader app---for the iPhone and iPod Touch---offers book annotations. Fancier page-turning animation and better iPhone OS3 compatibility are among the other goodies in the just-released version. What’s more, Hadrien Gardeur at Feedbooks says CSS support is better. The worst feature---this is Hadrien speaking, I don’t have Amazon’s side---is “censorship on all books with subject set to Sexuality in the online catalog.” True? Trying the search function in Stanza’s multicatalog mode for the word “sexuality,” I found oodles of titles, but maybe I’m missing out on some metadata details. Annotation tips ...

 I wish the Stanza  e-reader for the iPhone hadn’t ended up at Amazon, given the Jeff Bezo’s current fondness for DRM, proprietary formats and other devilish things. That said, I wish the Lecycle crew luck just the same. Here’s an Amazon news release on Stanza’s first birthday---on its amazing journey. TeleRead was among the first to discover Stanza. Let’s just hope that Amazon will let Stanza continues as a gateway to public domain books from sources such as Project Gutenberg, and new content from places such as Smashwords. Allowing Stanza to continue its ePub focus wouldn’t hurt, either....

One of our readers sent us this email (quoted in part): Previously, Stanza has handled all of my personally-created no-DRM EPUB books without a hitch. At least until version 1.8.1. Now, after purchasing an iPhone 3G, Stanza insists on displaying only the first page of certain non-DRM EPUBs that display perfectly on my wife's iPod Touch 2G running OS 3.0. and on pur Sony PRS505s. We got in touch with Lexcycle and here is their reply: We did get a couple reports of that problem on the forums. It is indeed a glitch that most people report is solved by either toggling...