From the press release: Kobo, a global leader in eReading with over 7 million users in over 170 countries worldwide, today announced the integration of Reading Life on the Kobo iOS eReading app with Facebook Timeline; elevating the traditionally solitary pastime of reading into a more dynamic activity to be shared with friends online Kobo is proud to be one of a select few kicking off the launch of apps for Facebook Timeline; apps that allow users to bring their timelines to life through sharing what they’re doing, music they are listening to, books they...

A while ago, in my story about Route 66 and technology shifts, I mentioned Kodak’s failure to hop on the digital camera bandwagon quickly enough. In the last week or so, the Wall Street Journal reported Kodak is on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, mainly so that it can sell off 1,100 patents through a court-supervised auction. The Journal article suggests Kodak has been having trouble finding a suitable direction over the last couple of decades: Casting about for alternatives to its lucrative but shrinking film business, Kodak toyed with chemicals, bathroom...

I’ve been a bit too busy to write for the last few days, so I went to catch up on some stories I missed covering. For starters, here’s one that seems to have little to do with e-books at first, but does have to do with the difference between physical and electronic media causing problems of legislation. In 1988, a reporter obtained copies of Judge Robert Bork’s movie rental information from a video rental store. This disclosure spurred Congress to pass the Video Privacy Protection Act, which required rental stores to obtain written consent every time they wanted to...

From the press release: Kobo, a global leader in eReading with 4.9 million users worldwide, today announced Kobo Pulse™, expanding its social platform – Reading Life – and its leadership in social eReading.  With Kobo, every page of every book has a pulse – an indicator of social engagement driven by who and how many people are reading, what they are saying, and what they are thinking.  Kobo Pulse™ allows readers to learn about the life of a book, connect with friends, share their sentiments, and engage in thought provoking discussions while reading any...

Fiction Writers Review discusses this, which was fueled by Facepbook's acquisition of publisher Push Pop Press.  After saying that Facebook denies that it is interested in doing this, the article goes on to say: But members of the media aren’t quite sure Facebook is being completely honest. The New York Times remains skeptical: Facebook has made it apparent over the last few years that it is not just a social network, but an entertainment distributor, too. […] Facebook’s move into other forms of entertainment, like gaming and movies, demonstrates that the company is looking at other forms of ...

Today Push Pop Press, the e-publishing firm who produced an interactive version of an Al Gore climatology book, announced today that it has been acquired by Facebook. Facebook has no interest in publishing interactive e-books, and Push Pop has announced it will no longer be publishing anything. Instead, Facebook will be incorporating Push Pop’s technology into its own platform. As Tim Carmody put it on Wired: So instead of an independent born-digital press, publishing next-generation multimedia novels (or magazines or textbooks or children's books or cookbooks), Facebook will probably get marginally better iOS apps. ...

Mike Cook Writes on Project Gutenberg News: In exploring new ways of connecting people to Project Gutenberg’s vast collection of free ebooks we’ve created our very own Facebook page. Here you’ll find all kinds of information and status updates. It should be noted that this is very much experimental – it may work, then again it may not. The more everyone gets involved, the more successful it will be. Head over to the new Project Gutbenberg Facebook Page. Cook adds that although there is another Project Gutenberg page on Facebook the page listed above is the official one. Finally: Our gutenberg.org webmaster, Marcello Perathoner, is looking for...

That's the title of an article in Publisher's Weekly about Readium and Travis Alber.  Here's a snippet: In an unusual social media venture that brings together Google and Facebook, BookGlutton.com founder Travis Alber is releasing Readum, a new social media application that allows readers to add comments and notes to books in their Google eBooks library and easily post them on Facebook for the general public or to specific groups. Alber called Readum “a proof of concept” project to create a social media connection for readers across different e-reading platforms and devices. “You can’t set...

On Galleycat, Jason Boog links to today’s edition (MP3) of his ten-minute podcast, the Morning Media Menu, in which he talks with the founder of a new social collaborative writing site called Neovella. Michael Siedlecki founded Neovella after noticing in college that his generation doing much of its reading on-line, and for the most part not actually reading books but instead reading social network stories about their friends. Siedlecki wanted to bring together the social aspects of social networking and collaborative aspects of writing together, so created Neovella in the hope of getting people writing stories together. The site...

As experiments with publishing goes, this is an interesting one: you can download Australian writer Conor O’Brien’s new collection, Quiet City, for the price of a tweet and / or Facebook post.  Just go here and follow the clickys.  Alternatively, you can get the paper book for $12. I’d never heard of Connor O’Brien until about 7 minutes ago.  Now I’ve got his book and am subscribed to his blog.  I guess that’s the point. Via Court Merrigan's blog...

If you have an iPad, you should download the free Kobo ereader app and check it out. Whether it offers a better basic reading experience than the other ereader apps is probably a matter of taste, but it offers so many bonus features that it’s hands down the best–and most entertaining–iPad app for ebooks. I’m about three weeks late to writing about this, because I ignored the news when it first hit. In general, I’ve been pretty unimpressed with Kobo for the past year or so. It’s not that the company is bad–the reader is fine if not great; the ebook prices, though...

Lately, social networking has often been hailed as a kind of great equalizer to help writers connect better with fans and sell more books. It’s a way to connect with fans, show that you’re a real person, and show the human face behind your stuff so they might be more inclined to support you. But, as guest writer Daniel Kalder notes in a Publishing Perspectives editorial, too much emphasis on social networking as a sort of publicity cure-all is fundamentally misguided for several reasons. For one thing, it runs the risk of turning into specious “magical thinking”. ...