Brilliant exegesis of Apple's iPad effect on the market for e-ink devices like the Kindle DX by Jason Perlow at his Tech Broiler blog at ZDNet, "iPad Killed Kindlenomics" A big eReadster e-OK!...

When editors understand XML as well as English grammar, and regard metadata as valuable as a plug on Oprah, only then will the structural elements exist in e-books that will make them more valuable than p-books....

The iPhone/iPod Touch have had the advantage of being the sole handheld devices with an e-reader that could access Amazon's e-list. That will soon change. The Windows UMPC will be able to run the Kindle e-reader. Also, Amazon will move the software to new Android and Maemo devices with significantly higher resolution than the iPair's 480x320. The Motorola Droid 3.7" screen has a resolution of 854x480, and the slightly smaller Nokia N900 has 800x480. Both yield 267 pixels-per-inch compared to the Apple devices' 163 ppi. With nearly three times as many pixels per square inch, the typography...

Nokia officially announced its fifth Internet Tablet today, the N900. The color, 267ppi screen and 3G wireless capabilities make this device an even better fit as a companion Kindle e-reader than the iPhone....

Using ISBNs with every format an e-book is published in may be too expensive a proposition to support. Jon Noring has suggested using EAN-13 codes for e-books without ISBNs: they're permanent, globally unique, retailer friendly, and won't inadvertently duplicate an ISBN. IDPF should do something to prevent a potential disaster....

I have a suggestion for libraries -- ask your patrons to buy ebooks in the library's name....

At least that's what blog kindle is saying. Here's an excerpt: I’ve been counting books in Kindle Store on a daily basis and now the time to share results: * When I first started counting on the 2nd of March 2009 there were 242,488 books in the Kindle Store. * As of the 12th of May 2009 there are 281,986. 39,498 books in 71 days. * So on an average day 556 new books are added to the vast collection already available to Kindle owners. * If the pace...

The BookGlutton people are really on a roll. As Roger Spergerg said in an email to me: The BookGlutton folks are just charging ahead madly! Wonderful! They have started a new service, currently Twitter based, which will build a catalog of ebooks. Check out their epubcatalog info and here's an excerpt from their write up: How do I get started? It's very easy if you're a member of Twitter. We plan to support many services in the long run, but for now, you'll need a Twitter account. With your Twitter account, follow @epubcatalog. Once you're a follower, you can tell...

Amazon announced this afternoon that it has started fulfilling orders for its Kindle 2 e-book reader, one day earlier than anticipated. In the two weeks since February 9th's announcement, the device has already become the number-one selling electronic device at Amazon. At .036 inches, the new e-reader is thinner than a pencil. Among other improvements over the discontinued 14-month-old Kindle 1, the device-side buttons for turning pages now press inward instead of outward, minimizing inadvertent page turns. While many had speculated that the $359 price would hinder sales, that doesn't appear to have occurred. Indeed, the biggest contretemps...

An e-book of Best of TOC is available at no charge from O'Reilly Press. at this link. The assemblage of tech writing by TOC speakers and others was put together as a showpiece for the second-generation Espresso Book Machine shown at the conference, with p-books printed and bound in seven minutes (on the low-end device; shorter times for more expensive equipment are promised). The TOC Blog has a description of the content. (Formats: epub, mobi, pdf.)...

The JP Morgan Library houses, among many other treasures, the only surviving original copy of Paradise Lost, as well as three Gutenberg Bibles. On Monday, I reflected upon the enormous pecuniary value of these specific copies (or instances of a manifestation, as the FRBR taxonomy has it) when Amazon announced its forthcoming Kindle2 e-reader in the Library's auditorium. No matter how strenuously Amazon labors to associate the Morgan's grandeur with the Kindle, there will be no similar physical artifacts for future generations to venerate with the electronic books that will be read on this latest and stately issue of the...

I don't know when I expected this would happen, but after ten years of collapsing e-book ventures, I was surprised when I walked through Times Square Monday afternoon and saw the Dow Jones News Ticker. This shows only the hottest news, of interest to the largest possible number of people, and there I read the hot news of the hour -- a new e-book reader had been announced! As TMQ might say, This is surely the 21st century, when the release of a new e-reader is blazoned across Times Square for the masses to exult in. [caption id="attachment_16745" align="alignnone" width="500" caption=""][/caption]...