German ebook software company txtr has updated its Android app with several new features. Some, such as bookmark and note syncing, are familiar to users of the Kindle app, but the update surpasses Amazon's offering by including cloud storage for personal docs as well as purchased books. The company also offers a white label version that can be customised or branded by third parties, and claims to have the largest selection of German language titles in the German market. From the press release: Besides searching for books and browsing by genre, users can now discover books through channels, such as Featured Books...

Shane Richmond, Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group, has an editorial in the Telegraph about the way that DRM breaks up even the same file format of e-books into a Tower of e-Babel. He tried to open Adobe-DRM EPUB files in iBooks and of course was told that wouldn’t work. Richmond writes: Can we pause for a moment to remind ourselves just how absurd this situation is? It’s been a problem for so long that sometimes it’s easy to take it for granted but we are being sold products that work...

You can read Adobe-DRMed ePub on your iPhone or iPod Touch via an app from Txtr, the e-reader hardware company. Download it via the App Store or iTunes and share your impressions with fellow TeleRead community members. My impression is that the app lets you access material from your private bookself on the Txtr server. I wanted test the app, but need to move on. Here’s the word to TeleRead from Txtr’s Josch Bach: “We are very busy with our eReading platform, and of course, there is an App for it. We might do not feel much love for...

The Txtr reader has been delayed due to production-line QC problems resulting from worker turnover at a Chinese factory---the problems affect WiFi capabilities---but meanwhile here is a video of it in action...well at least some on-and-off stuff. An older video from the Frankfurt book fair is here.  (Company blog via Publishing Perspectives.) ...