From Chris Walters' Booksprung blog.  This looks like a great application and I think I'm going to spring for it: I’ve been trying to come up with a good way to describe the newly released Longform app for iPad. It’s a digital magazine on steroids. It’s an infinite magazine, a magazine multiplex. It’s a portable reading room where new issues arrive daily. It’s an evolving anthology of nonfiction journalism. The point is, it’s awesome. If you have an iPad and you prefer longer, more substantial articles over 350-word pieces, you’ll love it. Longform has been around a while and is one of several good reading...

Changewave Research has just released a new report on the Kindle Fire. From the press release: Survey of New Kindle Fire Owners Since the mid-November launch of the Kindle Fire, consumer demand for the tablet has been nothing less than explosive. In the January survey 6% of respondents reported they own a Kindle Fire – double the percentage of a month ago. ChangeWave asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners a series of questions regarding their overall satisfaction and key likes and dislikes, to gauge their reaction to the new tablet device. Customer Satisfaction. When asked how satisfied they are...

Last week while roaming the exhibit hall at the ALAMW conference in Dallas, Texas, I discovered Mediasurfer.  Mediasurfer offers self-checkout machines for iPads (and other tablet devices in the near future).  Users swipe a library card to borrow the iPad.  Upon return, the devices are returned to original settings. If you’d like to know more about Mediasurfer, listen to the interview with Gary Kirk, President of Mediasurfer, and Jim Nelson, COO of Mediasurfer.  They provide many more details on the software, hardware, and services offered. [Via No Shelf Required] ...

On Hack Education, Audrey Watters has a fairly long look at why Apple’s new textbook announcement may not be as revolutionary as expected. She was not impressed by Apple’s presentation, stating it lacked Steve Jobs’s magic touch, “the kind of thing that made both fans and skeptics say, ‘Yes, (perhaps) this changes everything.’” She points out that Apple is partnering with the three companies that already make up 90% of the textbook industry, and they have already gotten into digital textbooks (to the tune of $3 billion last year by just one of them). One of...

Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

On CNet, Scott Stein writes about why a $79 Kindle has replaced his iPad as his e-book-reading device of choice. The reasons aren’t really new, and indeed have popped up any time anyone has ever compared e-ink devices to tablets for reading: eyestrain-reducing e-ink screens, less potential for distraction, longer battery life, and less potential for being stolen (and less of a loss if it is). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as screen display technology gets better and lets tablets steal some of the screen-readability and battery life benefits of e-readers. Will dedicated e-readers...

From the press release: McGraw-Hill today announced the launch of Harrison's for the iPad, the digital edition of the world's most influential medical textbook, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, created exclusively for the world's most sought after tablet computer, the Apple iPad. Harrison's for the iPad was developed in partnership with Inkling, creators of the pre-eminent interactive content platform for the iPad. It leverages the mobility, rich media, and processing power of the iPad to enliven its content, improve speed of reference, and expand the learning experience for clinicians and medical students alike. The iPad's state-of-the-art platform and...

On TechCrunch, MG Siegler looks at the new education programs launched by Apple and what they really mean for high schoolers. In Siegler’s opinion, not much. While they might give college students incentive to get iPads, he finds it doubtful that most high school students will be able to get their own, in keeping with Apple’s stated goal that students should be able to buy e-textbooks and keep them forever. The program will be great for college students, Siegler points out. The idea of textbook prices capped at $15 makes the sting of not being able to “sell them...

PaidContent has a brief report on IDG Connect statistics suggesting that iPad owners are buying less physical media. The survey shows that 72% of worldwide professionals polled are buying fewer newspapers, 70% are buying fewer books, and 49% are buying fewer DVDs since owning an iPad. The biggest areas of decline for newspapers are Asia, with 90% of polled buying fewer, and the Middle East, with 80% buying fewer. This represents a bit of a double-whammy for ad-funded media like newspapers and magazines—not only are they getting fewer sales, but they’re also losing the print ad views of the...

Do iPads belong in the classroom? A pair of articles on TechCrunch raise and address the question. Matt Burns argues that tablets should mostly be kept out of the classroom, fearing that they could turn into yet another crutch for our youth, just as pocket calculators mean kids no longer need to know how to actually do math. Kids are now taught to pass tests. Knowledge is externalized, stored on some Wikipedia server or graphing calculator until needed. Learning is still prevalent in schools, but the storage of facts and thoughts is not. Digital...

We lately mentioned the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle owner lending library rogram, but iPads and Kindles have another popular lending option that is also exploding. OverDrive reported that traffic to its “virtual branch” websites more than doubled last year, seeing a 130% increase. While much of that increase can be attributed to e-readers, OverDrive also saw a 22% rise in traffic from smartphones and tablets. The increase in lending might be good news for libraries, but it is unclear whether publishers will find it so. If a lent e-book displaces a sale, as some publishers seem to believe, that...

Ars Technica has a roundup of expectations for tomorrow’s special Apple event. Sources are suggesting a number of interesting possibilities, such as Apple producing a “GarageBand for e-books”—an inexpensive app that simplifies e-book creation and publication as GarageBand has for music. But Apple may have more up its sleeve than just an e-book creation application. It may be planning announcements having to do with digital textbooks, especially considering that the iPad has a great big screen and multimedia capabilities that the company hasn’t really tapped yet for textbook applications. [Inkling CEO Matt] MacInnis...