07:53 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

The BBC is reporting:

The BBC Trust has asked the BBC to postpone its plans while it looks into the business case for the new services.

The free applications were due to be released in April but have met with criticism from groups who say they will skew the market for news apps.

Several newspapers including the Guardian and Daily Telegraph already offer both free and paid-for apps.

A spokesperson for the BBC Trust said that the body had decided to launch an assessment of the apps after “representations from industry”.

One of the most vocal opponents has been the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA), which said that the corporation would “damage the nascent market” for apps.

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FYI: The underlying problem here is not apps, but the fact that the BBC is a tax funded organization in the UK, and it competes with news organizations like The Guardian, The Times, etc. The BBC has no profit incentive, so they give their content away for free.

I find the complaints about the free apps to be a little silly. Isn’t this same BBC content already available on mobile devices for free (via the browser)?

12:27 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

They just announced a new version of their PC app, and it’s based on Adobe Air. From the press release:

Zinio, the global leader in digital publishing technology and services, today announced the launch of Zinio Reader 4, built using Adobe AIR. In combination with Zinio’s latest product launch, National Geographic celebrates World Water Day with a free download offer of its interactive April 2010 “Water” issue, using Zinio Reader 4 and “UNITY” platform.Zinio’s newest digital reading application enables a seamless, online or offline reading experience across the Company’s global offering of over 2,000 top consumer magazines. Zinio Reader 4 was built using Adobe’s AIR framework, optimized to power a cloud-enabled library, specifically tailored for interactive magazine and book content experiences. This latest release from Zinio is another addition to its continued focus of offering ubiquitous access across PC, Mac, netbook, touch-screen and tablet devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and the upcoming iPad from Apple. An extension of Zinio’s pay-once-read-anywhere “UNITY” platform, Zinio Reader 4 is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, in its initial beta release. This new application introduces enhanced features enabling consumers to access their favorite interactive magazines and books worldwide, online or offline, in a more optimized and enjoyable way.

The app can be downloaded now, and a special release of the latest issue of National Geographic is available for it as a free download. You can get that issue here, but you’ll need to set up an account with Zinio first. Unfortunately, the app is broken at the moment. It can’t access the Zinio website to download content, but this will probably be fixed fairly soon.

I opened the special issue in the browser based Zinio reader, and I’m pleasantly surprised. I was expecting something like a PDF viewer, with pages that were simple copies of the print edition. Instead, the content scaled to match the browser window, and there was a scroll bar for when there was more text on the page than could fit on a screen. This app was quite usable.

12:12 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

I found an interesting new e-reader out of China. They have a fascinating market there; it’s so crowded that developers are trying anything to make their device standout. Bi Sheng has released an e-reader that is basically a smartphone with a 6″ E-ink screen.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to do this. Given the several devices with 3G and other wireless connections, it seemed to be a rather obvious that it would happen sooner or later.

If you look at the picutre, you might think that this is just another Kindle clone. It’s not, really, because it doesn’t have a full keyboard. Instead it has buttons that you’d find on a phone. This was probably a good decision; the buttons will be bigger and therefore easier to use.

It has Wifi, Bluetooth, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE; it can make calls, send text messages, and browse the web. There is no mention of whether it can read ebooks, or what format it supports.

source

10:42 PM by anurag in E-Book General | News

Good news for self-published Smashwords authors:

http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/...o-apples-ipad/

Big publishers are flocking to publish electronic versions of their bestselling books on Apple’s iPad, which launches on April 3. But small publishers and self-published books will make it to the iPad as well.

Smashwords, a site that lets writers self-publish their eBooks, said today it has signed a distribution deal with Apple to put its books into the iPad iBookstore. Mark Coker, chief executive of Smashwords, said in an email to authors that his company was working on signing the deal ever since the iPad was announced. And, yes, this means that unpublished authors can sell their work on the Apple iPad for virtually no cost.

To get books on the Apple store by launch day, Smashwords authors have to have their works submitted to Smashwords’ premium catalog by March 31. The book has to be in the EPUB format and have a big cover image.

...

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

In case you've missed any MobileRead news from this week, here is our usual roundup:

E-Book General - News

• Amazon reveals new Kindle app for iPad
• Kobo Launches New E-reader!
• Liquavista Announces Dev Kits for New Screens
• Wall Street Journal to cost $18 on the iPad
• Skiff partners with Samsung – Oh Boy, What a Gaffe!
• B&N eReader Now Out for Windows Mobile (sorta)
• Ohio calls for more Digital Textbooks
• The Times will add Paywall in June

E-Book General - General Discussions

• Delstar Openbook Review

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• April 2010 Mobile Read Book Club Vote

02:44 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

For thos who don't know, this means they’re going to make you start paying to read the news on their website. Fine by me; I’ll just get my news elsewhere. From the announcement:

News International today announces that The Times and The Sunday Times will start charging for access to their digital journalism in June using a pricing model that is simple and affordable.Both titles will launch new websites in early May, separating their digital presence for the first time and replacing the existing, combined site, Times Online. The two new sites will be available for a free trial period to registered customers.

From June, the new sites, www.thetimes.co.uk and www.thesundaytimes.co.uk, will be available for a charge of £1 for a day’s access or £2 for a week’s subscription. Payment will give customers access to both sites. The weekly subscription will also give access to the e-paper and certain new applications. Access to the digital services will be included in the seven-day subscriptions of print customers to The Times and The Sunday Times.

01:14 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

There is a bill before the Ohio state legislature which would require all universities in the state to make digital textbooks available. From the Columbus Dispatch:

Saying it could save more than 50 percent on the cost of textbooks, some House Democrats want to give Ohio college students the chance to trade in their piles of expensive books for laptops or other electronic readers.

Supporters and the Ohio Board of Regents say the key to such a plan is convincing university faculty members that digital textbooks can work as well as the paper versions. Individual professors are responsible for choosing the textbooks used in their classes.

Under the bill, the regents would have two years to require publishers to electronic versions of textbooks. Publishers also would be required to provide textbook formats for students with disabilities.

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11:07 PM by pilotbob in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

Help up choose a book as the April 2010 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. We will start the discussion thread for this book on April 18th. Select from the following books.

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald.
The Egg and I, first published in 1945, is a humorous memoir by American author Betty MacDonald about her adventures and travails as a young wife on a chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. The book is based on the author's experiences as a newlywed in trying to acclimate and operate a small chicken farm with her first husband Robert Heskett[1] from 1927 to 1931 near Chimacum, Washington. On visits with her family in Seattle, she told stories of their tribulations, which greatly amused them. In the 1940s, MacDonald's sisters strongly encouraged her to write a book about these experiences. The Egg and I was MacDonald's first attempt at writing a book.

Topper by Thorne Smith
It all begins when Cosmo Topper, a law-abiding, mild-mannered bank manager, decides to buy a secondhand car, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of its previous owners—the reckless, feckless, frivolous couple who met their untimely demise when the car careened into an oak tree. The ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life—and they commence a series of madcap adventures that leave Topper, and anyone else who crosses their path, in a whirlwind of discomfiture and delight.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Via www.fantasticfiction.co.uk A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, and suspicious of anything modern - this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, crusader against dunces. In revolt against the 20th century, Ignatius propels his bulk among the flesh-pots of a fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes, until his mother decrees that Ignatius must work.

My man Jeeves by P G Wodehouse
Containing drafts of stories later rewritten for other collections (including "Carry On, Jeeves"), "My Man Jeeves" offers a fascinating insight into the genesis of comic literature's most celebrated double-act. All the stories are set in New York, four of them featuring Jeeves and Wooster themselves; the rest concerning Reggie Pepper, an earlier version of Bertie. Plots involve the usual cast of amiable young clots, choleric millionaires, chorus-girls and vulpine aunts, but towering over them all is the inscrutable figure of Jeeves, manipulating the action from behind the scenes. Early or not, these stories are masterly examples of Wodehouse's art, turning the most ordinary incidents into golden farce.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Wikipedia says "The novel explains the tale of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut who awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval Britain at the time of the legendary King Arthur".

Fool by Christopher Moore
This is from Publisher's Weekly (as cited on Amazon):
Starred Review. Here's the Cliff Notes you wished you'd had for King Lear—the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue—in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard and all Fate's bastards. It's 1288, and the king's fool, Pocket, and his dimwit apprentice, Drool, set out to clean up the mess Lear has made of his kingdom, his family and his fortune—only to discover the truth about their own heritage. There's more murder, mayhem, mistaken identities and scene changes than you can remember, but bestselling Moore (You Suck) turns things on their head with an edgy 21st-century perspective that makes the story line as sharp, surly and slick as a game of Grand Theft Auto. Moore confesses he borrows from at least a dozen of the Bard's plays for this buffet of tragedy, comedy and medieval porn action. It's a manic, masterly mix—winning, wild and something today's groundlings will applaud. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Augustus Carp, Esq. - Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Bashford
From amazon.com: 'Bashford's comic 1924 volume offers the mock autobiography of Augustus Carp, a self-aggrandizing, stuffy, puritanical oaf, who indulges in numerous vices in the name of Christianity, rationalizing his own weaknesses while condemning others for the same acts. Great fun.'

A Damon Runyon Omnibus
She quotes Wikipedia: [Runyon] was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit," "Big Jule," "Harry the Horse," "Good Time Charley," "Dave the Dude," or "The Seldom Seen Kid." Runyon wrote these stories in a distinctive vernacular style: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff.Ever since the day when he came upon six-year-old Joshua of Nazareth resurrecting lizards in the village square, Levi bar Alphaeus, called "Biff,"had the distinction of being the Messiah's best bud. That's why the angel Raziel has resurrected Biff from the dust of Jerusalem and brought him to America to write a new gospel, one that tells the real, untold story. Meanwhile, Raziel will order pizza, watch the WWF on TV, and aspire to become Spider-Man.Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung-fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes -- whose considerable charms fall to Biff to sample, since Josh is forbidden the pleasures of the flesh...

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
"The first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next-a New York Times bestseller!In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bront?'s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel-unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix."

Candide by Voltaire
Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone and its erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel that parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact.
As expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté.Today, Candide is recognised as Voltaire's magnum opus and is often listed as part of the Western canon; it is likely taught more than any other work of French literature.