We've all seen tech demos of location aware augmented reality apps in recent years, but what else can be done with this "format"? The writing on a gravestone is also an example of site specific literature, writes Andrew Wilson at The Literary Platform, because it depends on its physical location to create a memory. He continues, "Of course all books make memories, but site specific literature uses 'here' to help make them." Wilson then goes on to examine other possible characteristics of this largely experimental concept of writing, such as it's non-linear, it relies on the real world for world building,...

Japanese company Glory recently unveiled a new ebook vending machine concept aimed at customers with smartphones. The Digital Reader writes, "You select and pay for the ebook on screen. The machine will print a receipt with a QR code and other info you’ll need to download the ebook." Here's the full post....

When I’ve written a post with a list of mobile storytelling applications, I had a chance to take a closer look at Blurb Mobile. When I opened it for the first time a couple of days earlier, it looked a bit complicated, but when you give it a second chance, it’ll reveal all the possibilities and open your imagination as to how future digital storytelling will look like. The most prominent part of Blurb is that it prompts you to think of a story as a sequence. You can upload up to eight elements at once and this is immediately making...

Update: Macworld just posted that an unnamed Apple source says Apple is currently working with developers to bring their apps in line with the new guidelines, and that we can expect to see modified app updates appearing in the coming days or weeks. [Original post follows.] Despite all the threats, blog outrage, and speculation around Apple's new rules for content apps over the past several months, as of this morning the three major ebooksellers' apps already available on Apple's App Store—Kindle, Nook, and Kobo—remain unchanged and available for download. (Sony never got a chance to play.) Kindle and Nook both offer a...

Smartphones are penetrating more and more widely these days, but there are still plenty of people out there with feature phones or other small-screened devices. And while there are cloud readers (such as Ibis Reader) and free e-book sites that work on smartphones and tablets, they tend to be media-intensive applications, requiring a decent amount of screen real-estate and memory. Enter ebook.Taggedzi.com, a cloud e-book site designed to work with small-screen devices that don’t have those sorts of specs—for example, basic feature phones. (Why do they call those “feature phones” when they really don’t have any?) The site acts...

It turns out that the Kindle is getting another retail outlet. Amazon issued a press release this morning announcing it was going to begin selling the 3G version of the device in AT&T’s retail stores nationwide. These stores currently sell feature phones, smartphones, and other devices that work with AT&T’s network, so it’s not too surprising they would decide to add the Kindle. (The 3G version, at least. The wifi-only version was not mentioned in the press release.) Though it’s a little ironic that, unlike every other product AT&T stores sell, the Kindle comes with free 3G for life rather...

The Guardian has a report on ways teachers can use smartphones to improve the educational process. Apps such as Classdroid allow teachers to photograph, grade, and blog homework assignments quickly and easily. There are also anti-bullying apps, quiz and testing apps, and so forth. (It doesn’t mention e-books save for a way to keep Wikipedia on a smartphone, but they could be just as useful in that context.) The article doesn’t say much about student use of cell phones, which could have even greater implications for education and information access—assuming schools can come up with ways to encourage desirable...

In addition to looks back at the last year, this is the traditional time for looks ahead at the year to come, and Seth Weintraub has an interesting one in Fortune’s “Fortune Tech” blog. Weintraub predicts that, due to falling prices and improving networks, 2011 is going to be the year the smartphone (particularly the Android smartphone) really takes off, bypassing traditional computers as the way the majority of the world’s population accesses the Internet. In terms of price, Weintraub points to new and forthcoming chipsets from Broadcomm that should allow Android smartphones to retail for under $100, possibly...

Are the days of unlimited wireless data plans numbered? ReadWriteWeb reports on a speech by a wireless researcher who believes that they are. Dr. Reinaldo Valenzuela, director of wirelss research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, notes that the more people use smartphones, the more data usage is going to go up. Only 10% of all smartphone users are using the majority of data, and as that usage grows, soon the cost of providing “unlimited” bandwidth data plans will surpass the revenue it brings in. Valenzuela believes that metered pricing is one possible answer, but there are also...

Audrey Watters of Read Write Web reports that the final version of the National Education Technology Plan (NETP), centered around improving educational uses of technology, calls for making sure that educators and students have 24/7 Internet access and for implementing policies that “enable leveraging the technology that students already have.” As Watters points out, the most ubiquitous technology among students is cell phones—more than 75% of kids between 12 and 17 own them, and a lot of schools have policies regulating or banning their use. Cell phones’ drawbacks include that they could distract from learning, contribute to cyberbullying, pose...

Alexia Tsotsis has a post at TechCrunch pointing out that the phone call is “dead” (in the sense in which the term is used in the tech industry these days—meaning “on the decline”). The article itself is interesting enough, though it says much the same things as a piece I covered here already. But it seems to me that the “decline” or, perhaps, transmutation of the mobile industry might have some implications for “telereading”, too. E-books are just one aspect of telereading, after all. Other aspects include magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other textual Internet sources—and getting those in a...

Mobile technology is amazing, isn’t it? Various companies and charitable organizations have made a big deal out of the necessity of getting to a $100 netbook or tablet for third-world educational purposes, and for the sake of domestic poor and homeless who might not otherwise be able to afford their own computer. And we’ve been getting there—though netbooks actually of sufficient quality to be useful are still around $130 in refurbished form. But another form of mobile technology has fallen to the point that it’s pretty much already at universal affordability: the prepaid cellular phone. As I was...