Which is the better e-reader, Nook or Kindle? If you listen to Consumer Reports, the answer is the Nook—by a nose. Book eReader reports that CR’s latest review, comparing the Kindle to the Nook Simple Touch, calls the Nook better…by 1 point. The Nook tied the Kindle on most things, such as battery life and wifi access. Where the Nook shone, apparently, was its simplicity—it focuses on “reading with minimal fuss and extra features.” It eschews bells and whistles in favor of offering a simplified reading experience. Of course, a difference of one point is scarcely even a...

TechCrunch has a piece on Scribd, the document-sharing platform with 100 million registered users and 90 million monthly active users. The piece focuses on the iOS news aggregation app, Float, that Scribd developed and almost sold to Yahoo for between $2 and $8 million before Yahoo decided to walk away in February. Float had gotten off to a good start, with up to 200 news partners and good ratings at the app store. However, it soon ran up against some stiff competition: “When we originally launched Float, Scribd wanted it to be Instapaper and Read...

One of the more annoying things to owners of e-readers who travel is the restriction against using electronic devices during taxi, take-off, and landing. The FAA’s regulations restrict using these devices out of concern that they could interfere with the avionics of the airplanes. And while the FAA has said that airlines are free to request exemptions for particular devices, the testing required to request that exemption is costly enough that most airlines would prefer to let their passengers go on being annoyed. However, Nick Bilton of the NY Times’s “Bits” blog reports that when he called the FAA last week...

Do we read faster on paper than on the screen? Bob Sutton feels he gets better comprehension out of paper books, and so often buys both paper and electronic copies of volumes he needs to read for research. He was curious enough about this to see if anyone had done studies on the matter. While he didn’t find any studies on comprehension, he did find studies that suggested the iPad and Kindle offer reading speeds 6 to 10% slower than printed books—though as he noted further down, other studies suggest the advantage may be going away as displays get...

On PaidContent (in a post republished from his Domino Project blog), Seth Godin reports that Apple’s iBooks has rejected one of his e-books because it includes Amazon links to purchase the books he lists in the bibliography. He writes: We’re heading to a world where there are just a handful of influential bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Nook…) and one by one, the principles of open access are disappearing. Apple, apparently, won’t carry an ebook that contains a link to buy a hardcover book from Amazon. That’s amazing to me. It must be a mistake,...

While libraries everywhere are scrambling to come up with an ebook plan that can satisfy both their patrons as well as their long-term organizational goals, sometimes the greatest resources they can offer are already in their libraries.  What’s this?  Simply put, it’s the utilization of their local resources, of history, genealogy, and local authors.  This is the sort of information that is highly desired, yet sometimes falls off the radar, lost to the deluge of publishers, best-sellers and other more “trendy” technological items. It’s easy to dismiss local materials from any project planning, arguing there’s no budget, no staff and no...

An update on that Cudo pirated e-books story from last night: an article in the Sydney Morning Herald covers the firestorm of controversy that has erupted around the offer of a $99 e-reader shipped with a CDROM full of 4,000 e-books, many of which were illicit copies of still-in-copyright titles. Cudo very quickly backpedaled, shifting blame for the debacle to the vendor, “grabargains.com”, which offered the bundle to it. ''Despite the merchant's assurances that the offer complies with all relevant Australian laws, including copyright laws, our assessment of the 4000 e-book titles being offered...

Australian bargain site Cudo is offering, for 8 more hours at the time of this posting, a $99 budget e-book reader bundled with a CD of 4,000 written works—whose list of titles includes hundreds of works that are verifiably still within copyright, and enough duplicates and wrong author-title matches that it looks as though the seller simply grabbed the highest-ranked e-book torrents off any site they could find. I have to agree with John Scalzi here: this is some pure, high-quality premium-grade stupid, soliciting a list of so many copyrighted titles on a major bargains site like that. Add...

Publishing Perspectives reports that later this year, Amazon is going to introduce its Kindle into the Brazilian market at a price of R$199 (US$115)—significantly cheaper than any other e-reader on the market. Anonymous sources “familiar with the negotiations” suggest Amazon may even go as low as R$149 (US$87) to gain market share. (Of course, those prices are on par with what the device sells for in the US, but I suspect Brazil may have a higher salary and cost of living base than the US, thus making it remarkably cheap for there.) Not only is this well...

Reasons not to adopt e-books: we’ve heard them all before. Needing electricity to read, losing a big investment if we leave it on the bus, complete lack of the aroma so crucial to having a fulfilling reading experience. But there are some other, compelling reasons to think twice about adopting e-books that many people never even consider. Cracked has a great list of eight of these reasons. For example: #7. You Need Physical Books for Physical Tasks I'm not the first person to observe this, so I'll just say that many times...

Analysts’ predictions are often not worth the electrons they’re printed on, but CNET reports Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley has said in a research note to investors that Amazon could launch an iPad-sized 9-inch Kindle Fire by the middle of the year. Such a device could increase expected Kindle Fire sales from 12.7 million to 14.9 million units this year. He based this information on his contacts with Amazon component suppliers, which does not necessarily mean it will be accurate. This is only the latest in a number of reports that have suggested a 9-inch Fire could launch sometime this year,...

The Sun has an op-ed by “chick-lit writer” Adele Parks—another one of those conversion stories about e-book doubters who become e-book evangelists. In Parks’s case, she became curious enough to buy a Kindle after learning she was selling a huge number of e-books. After buying the Kindle, she discovered she liked it so much she has used it it constantly ever since—though mostly for travel and commuting, where a slim device that can replace a ton of books is most useful. She will “always choose a ‘proper’ book” for reading at home. Parks does not have an...