Fanfiction is one of the easiest sources of free reading to track down online. I use it liberally to stretch my e-reading dollars, and if you are selective, you can find enough good writing to keep you in reading material for a long time. Traditionally, one of the downsides of fanfiction is getting the stories to your e-reader quickly, easily and well formatted. Anyone remember a little executable file called Interparse? It made converting list-serve email files into decent text documents relatively easy. I say "relatively" because a decade ago, I would occasionally spend as much time on file conversion as...

Earlier today, I stumbled upon yet another article about yet another e-reading study. True, that's not exactly breaking news. But because the theory preposed by the market analyst firm that conducted the study was definitely one I'd never heard before, I figured it was worth sharing. Before I explain the study's findings, though, let me say—and I've said this before in this space—that I don't really have a whole lot of faith in most of these research firm. But then again, who knows? This one's goofy enough—and simplistic enough—that there may just be something to it. Here's the bottom line of the...

An item posted on ZDNet earlier today alerted us to the fact that come tomorrow, November 4, Barnes & Noble will be slashing USD$20 off the cost of both its Nook Color and Nook Tablet devices. "The tablet PC price wars continue to heat up," according to ZDNet, "as Barnes & Noble lowers the cost on its older slates in preparation for the release of its new Nook HD models." From the article, here are the pricing details: "Each of the 7-inch tablets will get $20 shaved off their former price tag. The Nook Color will now cost $139, while the 8GB Nook Tablet will now...

Last weekend, Reuters ran an interesting analysis-style think piece titled "E-readers grapple with a future on the shelf." The article revolves around the idea that because tablets have grown so popular, so quickly, the lowly e-reader has essentially becoming a nearly outdated gadget. Tablets, to put it plainly, have finally replaced e-readers, once and for all. From the article's lede: Amidst our growing love affair with the tablet, spare a thought for its increasingly shelfbound sibling: the e-reader. Take Taiwan's E Ink Holdings Inc, which makes most of the monochrome displays for devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. After...

By Robert Nelson It appears as if Archos is getting ready to unleash another Arnova-branded tablet, although they're actually marketing this particular model as an e-reader. What exactly does that mean? According to a recent Liliputing post: The Arnova GBook may look like a 7 inch Android tablet… because it is. In other words, you can use it to watch videos, play games, or perform other activities, but the device has a relatively slow processor, doesn’t include access to the Google Play Store, and will probably sell for a much lower price than most Android tablets. Pricing hasn’t been set yet, but the Arnova...

With a $10,000 research prize as well as thousands of periodicals for reading and study, I've very recently found a great resource for librarians, eReaders and classic pulp fiction fans.  With titles ranging from Collier's Weekly to classic works of pulp such as Argosy, Weird Tales, and even Yank magazine, I've been reading for hours. If this sounds interesting to you, then head on over to unz.org, a site I recently stumbled across when doing some research for my history blog.  Brought online by Ron Unz, who has been a huge fan of Wikipedia, there are thousand of resources to look...

Vanity Fair has an article on Microsoft’s corporate culture, and some ways in which that culture crippled innovation at the company. One of those ways is responsible for Microsoft—and Bill Gates in particular—rejecting a prototype for a touchscreen e-reader—in 1998. According to [writer Kurt] Eichenwald, Microsoft had a prototype e-reader ready to go in 1998, but when the technology group presented it to Bill Gates he promptly gave it a thumbs-down, saying it wasn’t right for Microsoft. “He didn’t like the user interface, because it didn’t look like Windows,” a programmer involved in the project...

There are plenty of read-it-later style applications that save web documents to a special application on your tablet or smartphone, but what if you want to load them onto your e-reader instead? There’s a Google Chrome extension for that. DotEPUB will allow one-click saving of web content into EPUB files that you can load into your EPUB-compatible reader. (Kindle owners are out of luck.) Of course, it’s been possible to do the same thing with Instapaper plus Calibre for a while now, but that does add an intermediate step. (We did mention this a year ago, but it’s...

I read a particularly heartfelt essay on Digital Readers via TeleRead this week–one that explored the writer’s personal book memories and expounded on the many reasons why paper books, at least to her as a reader, were important in spite of their slow transition to digital format. After I finished reading the essay I pondered how the writer’s musings paralleled my own experiences with paper books. Written language seems to have an indelible impact on the brain; nearly everyone who has ever read a good book remembers when they first read it, where they were sitting (or standing) while they...

Wired’s Gadget Lab blog reports on the state of digital textbooks, and despite the optimism of some e-textbook manufacturers it isn’t really good. E-textbooks aren’t making much of a dent in the textbook market because most of the time buying and reselling used textbooks is still a better deal. Even though the current generation of students are more dependent on digital technology and mobile devices than ever, most aren’t buying e-textbooks because they are pricier and more heavily restricted than paper books—locked down so students have only limited use of them, and sometimes even expiring after six months....

This fall, four school districts in New York will distribute 3G/Wi-Fi Kindles to students in high school English classes as part of an experiment to see whether the ereader is a viable classroom tool. The program, called the 8-Ounce Backpack Project, was funded by a foundation grant and will pay for teacher training and 84 Kindle devices, which will be loaded with reference materials as well as novels. Read the full article at the Syracuse Post-Standard. Via Seattle PI (Photo: John Berry / Syracuse Post-Standard) ...

HP's flagship tablet, the Touchpad, launched just a month ago in 16GB and 32GB models for $500 and $600 respectively, but in an attempt to move more units the company has introduced a $100 discount to both models. The new $400/500 prices are now showing up on sites like Amazon and BestBuy.com, but if you want a slightly better deal you should check out today's offer from Amazon-owned Woot.com: $380 + $5 shipping. Here's another review of the device if you want a second opinion....