Rupert Murdoch is much in the news lately. He spoke at the National Press Club event at George Washington University, and was also interviewed by journalist Marvin Kalb. He spoke further about his strategy concerning paywalls and news aggregators. "We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognise it," Murdoch told a packed audience of students, journalists and other media professionals. He went on to say, "We'll be very happy if they just publish our...

The Apple iPad will not kill the Kindle. In this installment of my Kindle shakedown series, I contend that the ideal ereader should not become a multipurpose device like the forthcoming iPad, or the HP Slate, or whatever comes next. It should instead become a fully dual-purpose device, with two screens dedicated for the two purposes of reading and writing. Some say the multipurpose iPad will kill the single-purpose Kindle. I disagree. This year I have discovered the joy of single-purpose devices. Most computers are multipurpose devices, designed to do everything but not always in the best way. I easily prefer...

Ars Technica today has a great (and long—it goes on for seven pages) feature editorial about the past and future of e-books by Ars columnist John Siracusa. Siracusa, who took a job at the company that would eventually become eReader back when it was still called Palm Digital Media, has some fascinating insights and opinions about how e-books got started, what they are now, and what they might become. Siracusa holds several opinions about e-books that may seem controversial. For example, he feels that people still don't "get" e-books even now—which is why e-books have been so slow to catch...