The Kindle Web-browser expanded to 52 more countries?It looks as if Jay Marine, director of product management for Kindle, was serious when he was reported to have said that Amazon does intend to enable its experimental browser in every countryAmazon I had wondered when I read posts from Kindle-owners in other countries that their Kindles were suddenly enabled to use the Experimental Web browser, if that was because in setting up the new software update, they may have inadvertently enabled the web browser for other countries other than the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico? This happened with Canada the first few...

I am probably an anomaly in the digital age. I do not own any Apple products (except the free version of QuickTime that has been forced on me) and have no plans to acquire any Apple products. I am not particularly impressed by the iPad or the iPod, and see the iPhone as just a money sinkhole. I used to think how great it would be to be able to build a computer to my own specifications and use the MacOS, but that never occurred because Apple doesn’t permit it. Of course, that was also in the days when I believed...

The long-delayed march of the Penguins? It wasn't worth the wait. After its agency price-fixing model co-conspirators came quickly to agreements with Amazon so that their ebook titles would remain in the Kindle Store right through the April Fool's Day transition date, the Penguin Publishing Group held readers hostage for about 8 weeks before finally reaching the end of the impasse, reported here moments before it was announced last week. Penguin has a terrific backlist and plenty of popular bestselling authors, and Kindle owners were waiting impatiently for an opportunity to purchase and download various among about 150 of the company's new...

I so wanted to say something nice about Barnes & Noble, the Nook, and its new B&N eReader App for the iPad. I've been a little harsh at times in the past, I'll admit: even as recently as yesterday. So, after reading early reviews of the iPad app from a couple of colleagues, and seeing how, as in the above screenshot, it had already soared to the top of all free apps in the iPad App Store, I was ready. I had even written a headline in my mind for the post: New Reading App from B&N Advances iPad Experience At the very...

It has been only 15 days since our last systematic look at the population of ebook price points in the Kindle Store, but there are two reasons why it makes a lot of sense to take a fresh look today: first, Amazon fulfilled its plan to restructure its Kindle Store bestseller lists and divide them into "paid" and "free" listings overnight last night; and equally important, during the past 15 days the Kindle Store catalog has experienced its most explosive growth ever, averaging over 5,000 new titles per...

Probably my favourite assignment for Teleread this year was having a chance this week to sit down this week and talk shop (for over two hours!) with Michael Serbinis, the CEO of Kobo Books. I got to sample the Kobo app for iPad in its full big-screen glory, got my hands on a demo model of the new Kobo Reader, and had all my ebook questions answered, straight from the top. I had been a long-time Fictionwise customer and watching the decline in their customer service over the last year has really been sad for me. I was feeling like an...

I received a press release from Amazon announcing this. This is the first time the books are available as ebooks and they include: An Enemy of the State, Wheels Within Wheels, The Tery, Dydeetown World and Healer. According to the press release the author said: "I'm thrilled that I'm able to make all five novels of the LaNague Federation series - including an additional five bonus short stories - available for the first time in digital, and for the first time all together as a series," said F. Paul Wilson. "The result is a giant roman à thèse exclusively...

There is one last aspect of the Astak that I need to review before shipping it back in. That is one of the major ways it differs from the Sony, and one of the ways it is similar to the Kindle 2: text-to-speech read-aloud mode. Note that with the version of firmware with which the Astak shipped, only PDFs could be read aloud. However, a more recent firmware upgrade expanded speech-compatibility and now it works with ePub too. (And perhaps other formats; I did not check.) I connected the Astak to my computer and recorded a couple of minutes of the...

Screen size of the new PocketBook 360 is five inches, and  supposedly the price will be $300. But here’s the real news. A $400 model with a six-inch touch screen, Blue Tooth, GPRS and 3G will follow in October if all goes as planned. The more expensive model, at least, is to let you connect a keyboard via Blue Tooth. Possibilities for note-taking? What’s more there’ll be an RSS reader. Salvation for news junkies on the go? Check out the page-changing interfaces for both models shown in the videos. What do you think? Beyond the PocketBooks: The e-reader as a commodity At the macro level,...

And now I come to the end of my two-week experiment with the Sony Reader PRS-700. It’s been interesting, and I’ll have some last thoughts on the whole experience after the jump. But as I was getting ready to package the device up, I realized there was one last function that I hadn’t tested yet: how it played audio. Audio The device came pre-loaded with two piano jazz MP3s by Jun-ichi Nagahara, so I plugged in my earphones and listened through them. The control scheme was simple enough: a pause button, a slider showing how far through an audio file one...

FedEx has informed me that my Sony PRS-700 Reader will arrive tomorrow before 10:30 a.m. I get to keep it for two weeks, officially starting Thursday but I’m not complaining about having an extra day to get the jump on things. I thought that, in the interest of chronicling my experiences, I would sit down and write down the preconceptions I come to this trial period with, so that I can look back in two weeks and see how much they have been changed by spending time with the thing. So, here are my uninformed impressions. Sony has offered me a generous...

Prior columns in this series: The Superguy Mailing List The Legion of Net.Heroes & rec.arts.comics.creative The Legion of Net.Heroes might be the oldest Usenet-based shared-world fiction setting still alive and kicking—but there are some defunct settings that pre-date it. Identifying them by the names of their newsgroups, these are mainly alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, alt.pub.dragons-inn, and alt.pub.havens-rest. Today we will look briefly at these groups where people were writing “e-books” before anybody ever knew what an “e-book” was. The Chatsubo and the Pubs When these groups are mentioned, they are often mentioned together, because they share more similarities than differences. Though they are based in different genres,...