Some of you may remember a post we ran last Wednesday, May 1, about a ridiculous website calling itself Blognix, and which had seemingly cloned TeleRead's entire site—content, design and all. Well, I suppose I was remiss in mentioning that just two days later, and without too much of a hassle, frankly, the head of NAPCO's IT department succeeded in squashing Blognix like the sad and pitiful little project it was. Incredibly though, Blognix morphed like an amoeba almost immediately after ridding itself of its bogus TeleRead cloak; it's now cloning a website called Cheap Tech For Me. Take a look for...

I had a pretty bizarre email waiting for me in my in-box this morning. It was from a fellow I'll call Bill, since I don't know if he would actually appreciate being identified here or not. At any rate, Bill was getting in touch, odd as it may sound, to alert me to the fact that TeleRead had somehow—at some point—been cloned. Bill proceded to tell me that a website of his had previously been cloned by someone using the IP address 192.155.93.220—he thinks they also used 184.22.242.240—and he was eventually able to stop the cloners by simply blocking their IP address. (He's...

Was my friend David Faucheux—a library and information science graduate—the world’s first blind blogger? Any librarians or others know the answer? I set David up in May 2004 on a commercial audio service, which he dialed up to submit recordings, often augmented with text. For the next four years David gave us an inimitable slice of America as seen through his own “eyes.” Where else could you have found such MP3s as Gaming the Shows: How to Be a (Blind) Millionaire? My favorite segment from David Faucheux, however, was Seeing eye dog etiquette—and a few recollections of Nader. Said animal, owned during David’s library...

TeleRead was the recipient of a rather flattering honor earlier this week. On Wednesday, we were informed that we'd been featured on the just-published list of 100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers, which is curated by Masters in English, "a site dedicated to helping students find the right graduate-level English program." "We built this list for our audience of aspiring graduate students in English literature and relevant fields," says MIE's Elizabeth Kelly. "But we think anyone who likes to get lost in a book will find something they love here. The list of 100 Essential Sites is split into five different categories; TeleRead...

Greetings all! I've been a TeleRead reader for three or four years now, and I'm thrilled to finally be a contributing writer for my favorite blog. I've been reading e-books for close to 15 years now. My first "e-reader" was a Handspring Visor Deluxe (pictured at right). Anyone remember that sweet little device? 160 x 160 pixels of black-and-white goodness. Today, I just laugh when people ask, "Isn't it hard to read on such a small screen?" when they see me reading on my iPhone. Peanut Press was my first e-book store. The closing of eReader.com was a sad day for me...

Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve just made my last post to TeleRead as a regular contributor. Starting tomorrow, I’m moving to The Digital Reader, to write for my friend Nate Hoffelder. It’s important to note that there are no hard feelings between me and NAPCO or new editor-in-chief Dan Eldridge, who I’m confident will do a great job keeping TeleRead true to the vision of founder David Rothman. I just don’t have the time to write as much as I used to anymore. Still, you may see the occasional bit of content from me pop up here from...

As many of you have seen we have been undergoing some site problems in the last week or so. This has probably been caused by a combination of our redesign and the fact that our traffic is growing. NAPCO, our owners, have had their IT people working hard on this. Needless to say we thank you for bearing with us and appreciate your continued support....

Here's an update on what we've changed in response to your comments and what's still in the works. Keep your comments coming, we look forward to them. What we've done so far: • Added more text to post teasers on the home page (we're still testing some things here). • Comments will only appear in comment section when they are approved and appear as part of the post. • Moved the Comment block higher-up on the page. • Removed the green font style that made "block quote" text very hard to read. • Add "Next" and "Previous" links below each post page. • See all the...

On Friday, September 10, 2010 around 5pm EDT, TeleRead's new site design should go live. Hopefully, it will point you to articles that interest you in a way we can’t do now. I’ve asked that we incorporate a “real” search function and to cater to our international readers. The new look will also allow us to be more advertiser-friendly, which is important if the site is to remain viable and grow even more than it has to date. Some of you will love the site, and I’m sure some of you won't – that’s just the way people are. But when...

Along with the site redesign, I've asked our owners, NAPCO, to implement reCAPTCHA. You have undoubtedly seen this on other sites you've visited. Since May we have received over 172,000 spam comments. Why is this important? It's important because all those spam comments are held by our filter for review before being deleted. That means that Chris and I have reviewed over 172,000 spam comments to be sure that they do not contain false positives. We regularly find false positives and have to approve them. This isn't the end, though, because an "approved" spam then becomes,...

We will have at least one maintenance outage in the next couple of days preparatory to the site redesign. Work will have to be done on the WordPress database and the site has to be off line for this....

I reported earlier that TeleRead will be undergoing a redesign. Well, we're proceeding according to schedule and don't be surprised if in a day or so you are treated to a whole new experience. Keep your eyes peeled....