For something like five or six years, I've been able to style XML elements with CSS and have the text displayed just the way I want. That is, in the XMetaL XML editor* and in browsers. Not in an e-reader, however. All the e-readers specify the vocabulary you're permitted to use in your e-book**. There's a difference between a reader and a browser, between a reader and an editor. The reader has library functions, bookmarks, annotations. It collects multiple files into a single package; browsers and editors don't have the same orientation. They just won't do. As it happens, I've worked with XML since...

I'm no true prognosticator, but I think we can see the outline of the next generation of e-readers now. Like Sophie, it can be programmed by an author. Like FBReader and Lector, it will be open platform and accept many formats. And it will be built on a 'prairielight' framework....

With a free Garnet Virtual Machine running on the Nokia Internet Tablets (the original 770 as well as the currently available N800 and N810), all Palm OS applications can run on high-resolution screens. Including e-book software with DRMed e-books....

Ghostbusters had just opened its Manhattan office, in the 1984 movie, when a secretary asked a nerd if he liked to read. "Print is dead," same the reply, a line meant to be as risible back then as the scientist's hobby of collecting molds, spores and fungi. But is the dialogue such a hoot today? Not quite, says Jeff Gomez, who uses this wonderful scene in the introduction of Print Is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age, excerpted online. Good prose will live on in e-books and other media if writers, editors, publishers and others adjust, Gomez believes. But he isn't so confident...

So are the rumors true? Are the $144 Nokia 770s at Buy.com having problems with bad screens and also with the White Screen of Death? That would certainly be at odds with the predominantly favorable reviews from Buy.com shoppers, but I'm still curious. Meanwhile, stay tuned for a review of the N800---the 770's successor---today or tomorrow, complete with my thoughts on how it works with FBReader. Find out whether I agree with Roger Sperberg's conclusions....

Planet Maemo has pointed us to Buy.com's offer of new Nokia 770's for $139.99. Free shipping too. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet runs FBReader, which is a world-class open-source e-reader that accepts books in a large variety of formats, even inside a zip archive: OEB, HTML, FB2, Plucker PDB, CHM and non-DRMed Mobipocket, among others. FBReader runs not only on the Nokia 770 and N800 but also the Linux desktop, Windows, PepperPad, Sharp Zaurus and IRex iLiad. The program is still under development (the most recent version is 0.8.4a) and has not yet implemented bookmarks or annotation. Probably no other device at...

The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is not the perfect e-reading device. If it were, it would come with the world-class FBReader pre-installed instead of making you download the software yourself. Instead, Nokia shows how secondary books are to its thinking by including a Web browser and Flash 7 plug-in, as though Web pages, animation and video were of equal value to e-books; including speakers (and headphone jack) and FM radio, as though listening to music or audiobooks were as important as type; and squeezing five times the usual number of pixels into each square inch of the display as if that...

With DRM and Michael Gorman around, some good news won't hurt, and this morning it's of the new Everun machines from RAON Digital. Need to cope with the Tower of eBabel and run a variety of e-book programs in Win XP? Here's a solution, assuming that the programs display properly. The hardware supposedly will be be available later this month, with prices apparently starting at the Korean equivalent of $700. Specs: "Weighing only 460g, the Everun adopted [a] 4.8-inch WVGA (800x480) LCD featuring auto-rotation and auto-brightness control function. It offers up to seven hours (12 hours with a large battery)...

Red Hat is releasing free Liberation Fonts that mimic the metrics of Microsoft equivalents. You can make them the default in Thunderbird, FireFox, and Open Office---or even Microsoft Office. Plus, you can set up apps to convert Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New mentions to open fonts. Actual creator is Ascender, commissioned by Red Hat. Further details here. (Thanks to Roger Sperberg.) Also of interest: Wikipedia on Linux Libertine....

The TeleBlog's daily readership often surpasses that of LibraryJournal.com and normally exceeds the audience of The Book Industry Standard if you go by Alexa.com. Would you believe, the TeleBlog even beats Publishers Weekly on rare occasions. Check out the numbers yourself. We may well be the most popular Web blog dedicated to e-book industry news and views, as opposed to, say, mobile news in general. Whether the topic is DRM or Iraq, we'll generally cover it from an e-book angle, and this focus has helped put us on the map. At various times we've drawn links from major sites ranging from...

How does the new N800 from Nokia stack up against the 770 for e-reading? Roger Sperberg is impressed overall with the features of the N800, shown here. But for reading himself to sleep, he'll stick to the old machine: ...the top-of-the-device rocker button with the + and - zoom is far easier to use on the 770 than the new formation, and this is significant for use of the internet tablet as an e-book reader. You see, FBReader utilizes + and - to advance (or retreat) in the e-text you're reading, and it's just plain easier. Not to mention that, sans...

FBRReader, one of the better e-readers for Linux-based machines, including the Nokia 770, is now running on the Pepper Pad, according to Roger Sperberg. He says there are "some minor glitches due to its using a different flavor of Linux." Check the related Google group for more information. Thanks, Roger. Related: Pepper site and some past posts mentioning the Pad. Also, here's a Pad for $456 from eCost--presumably not the latest model....