This is very odd.  If you look at the article below you will see that the Kobo Touch wins Tim Carmody's Editor's Pick as the best ereader.  (Congrats to Kobo, by the way!  A great company!) Now let's look that the other ereaders Carmody chose to compare: Sony PRS-T1 - a touch-enabled ereader that has no ads Barnes & Noble Simple Touch: a touch-enabled ereader that has no ads Kindle: low end, non-touch, ad enabled version. What's going on here? Carmody is taking a completely different category non-touch Kindle and comparing it to three higher-end touch ereaders.  In addition, one of the "Cons" he lists...

On Snarkmarket, Tim Carmody takes a look at the interesting case of why Project Gutenberg has two copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost that were produced within a few months of each other. Project Gutenberg EBook #20, October 1991, was hand-typed by volunteer Judy Boss (who subsequently got a scanner). However, Project Gutenberg EBook #26, from February 1992, was a revision of, literally, the oldest etext known to Project Gutenberg. It pre-dates Hart’s famous decision to type the Declaration of Independence by a good six years, dating back to 1964-1965 and originally rendered in all capital letters by Dr. Joseph...

On CNet, Erica Ogg poses the question, “So, who’s still buying Netbooks?” She posits that the netbook craze is a tech fad that has been fading over time, citing figures showing the number of netbooks shipped falling quarter to quarter as the manufacturers gear up to jump on the next fad, chasing the popularity of the iPad. Some have long complained that the netbook is a solution in search of a problem, featuring a too-small screen wedded to a too-small keyboard. The lack of built-in optical media renders installing software a challenge (I’ve spoken to a couple of...

Where the iPhone conquered your pocket, the iPad will conquer your backpack. So says Tim Carmody on the Snarkmarket blog, where he puts down his thoughts about why e-books on the iPad will be more successful than some people think. Carmody starts with five common reasons skeptics give that e-books won’t take off on the iPad, and notes that most of them aren’t all that new. (Though he does not address the oft-heard complaint that people will not want to read from LCD screens.) He points out that those who buy the least expensive, 16-gig...