Occasional TeleRead contributor Robert Nagle passed me a link to a review he lately posted of our founder David Rothman’s small-press-published novel, The Solomon Scandals, which recounts a journalist’s investigation of a scandal in 1970s Washington. Nagle quite liked the book, giving it four stars, though noting that the tone could get a little preachy at times. Ars Technica reports that Google will release the first e-ink reader optimized for Google Books in about a week. The iRiver Story HD, apparently a revision of iRiver’s 2009 Story e-reader, will include wifi and a qwerty keyboard, and cost $139.99 suggested retail when...

A fashionable line in the media these days is, “Elections have consequences.” So does governance, whether of the local Rotary Club, the United States of America, or a Harvard-hosted group serving as a quasi-shaper of national digital library policy. Alas, the so-called Digital “Public” Library of America has refused to live up to the P word. It would not let me attend a meeting across the Potomac from me even though the financial cost to the group would have been zilch and my library views have appeared in publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Chronicle of Higher Education and LibraryJournal.com. I couldn’t even be a...

A National Digital Public Library that Harvard Library Director, Professor Robert Darnton has been talking and writing about for many months and others (for example, TeleRead Founder David Rothman have been talking and writing about for years) will soon be the topic of a research and planning initiative that will be hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard University Law School. From the Berkman Center Web Site: With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Berkman will convene a large and diverse group of stakeholders in a planning program to define the scope, architecture, costs and administration...

In an article in The Atlantic, David Rothman discusses the need for a national digital library system. Here's a snippet: But there is one thing I currently cannot do with my Kindle despite all the sizzle in the commercials--read public library books. Local libraries do not use the Kindle format for their electronic collections, relying instead on rival standards used by Sony Readers and certain other devices. Amazon undoubtedly would love to fix this under terms favorable to CEO Jeff Bezos and friends. But then other issues will remain. How many Kindle books--or those readable on Sony Readers, iPads, and...

A few days ago, I mentioned the WordPress plug-in PadPressed, which makes blogs resemble Wordpad documents when read on the iPad. Now our founder and editor emeritus David Rothman has put that plug-in into use on his own blog about his book, The Solomon Scandals, with an emphasis on the availability of sample chapters and other material from the book in that format. Visit it from a desktop web browser and it looks perfectly ordinary. But go there via the iPad’s Mobile Safari, and the interface becomes essentially the same as an iPad app. You can even tap...

TeleRead founder, David Rothman, the cover of whose latest book is pictured here, has a 4 page article with the above title in The Atlantic as a guest post in James Fallows' column. David's article is far too long to quote, but here is what Fallows has to say about the: ... guest essay by David Rothman, of the Teleread site and the DC roman-a-clef The Solomon Scandals. David was one of the journalism world's earliest adopters of computers and related technology. Since 1992, when many people (including me) could barely imagine what a Kindle/Nook/iPad-style "e-reader" might be, he has been...

Where to start---in this first look at the iPad and some major e-reading apps for it? How about the new ones like iBooks and oldies like Stanza? A 32G WiFi-only iPad, almost fresh off the jet from China, is resting on my lap as I type. And even as a fan of public domain e-books and author of a novel from a clueful, DRM-hating small publisher, I’m delighted. No jokes about “hands-on” and the iPad name, please, and don’t be a jerk on the openness issue, either.The iPad is about much more than Apple’s control-freakish App...

On TeleRead founder David Rothman’s The Solomon Scandals blog, Rothman links to a love song to printed newspapers by journalist Danny Bloom, “I Just Can’t Live (Without My Daily Snailpaper)”.  It’s a remarkable song, full of nostalgia about various newspapers and personalities associated with them. It definitely grows on you over its 6-minute length. But at the other end of the spectrum is the TechCrunch piece in which Erick Schonfeld talks about a recent conversation with Netscape-founder Marc Andreesen. Bringing up the legend that Cortez ordered his ships burned upon arrival in the New World to make...

Well, that's quite a bit of news posted below. David has been an icon in the ebook industry and will be a pretty tough act for me to follow. Now on to a few matters you may be concerned about. When discussing the ownership transfer, and my position position as Editor, with NAPCO over the past few weeks, one thing became abundantly clear. NAPCO values the way TeleRead has been written and its journalistic integrity and has no intention of changing this. If I thought they would then it wouldn't be me writing this. I expect...

TeleRead, the oldest English-language site devoted to general e-book news and views, is now owned by the Gadgetell subsidiary of North American Publishing Company (NAPCO). We closed the deal today. I’m leaving as editor-publisher, but Co-Editor Paul Biba (left photo) will remain---as full editor. What’s more, Senior Writer Chris Meadows (right), the second most frequent contributor, will stay. Both Paul and Chris have been e-book-lovers for eons, and publications ranging from the New York Times to the Guardian have quoted Paul over the years. Under Paul, who has supplied most of TeleRead’s posts since September 2008 and managed it...

Especially since 9/11, the FBI has long been interested in being able to check up on the reading habits of ordinary people. In 2002, we covered a librarian's concern about a provision of the Patriot Act that would allow the FBI to request information from libraries. In 2005, we covered an actual use of that provision. In 2008, David Rothman discussed FBI director Robert Mueller suggesting “that the bureau should have a broad ‘omnibus’ authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks.” Since the Kindle uses wireless networks, David was concerned that it meant the FBI...