07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Ebooks and ISBNs
• 5,000 documents by American Founding Fathers now available online
• On the Media
• Txtr without WLAN
• Amazon sends out Kindle ad disguised as a press release
• Final report on ebook observatory project just released
• Aluratek Libre just got Adobe DE support
• Interview about ebook piracy on Spark (CBC Radio)
• Ebooks & academic libraries: a study
• Sherman Alexie still hates ebooks
• Introducing the Digibook ADB-106
• Hearst just announced their ebook reader
• A Glimpse into how B&N handles digital textbooks
• Pocketbook 901 announced

E-Book General - Writers' Corner

• Why Is This Hill so Steep? by Steve Jordan

Portable Devices - Other Devices

• PREVIEW: Nationite MIDnite Xpress 4.1" WinCE MID + W1060 Review Update
• Review: W1060 7-inch MID by WireLession

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead Winter Contest - 3 PocketBooks and 15 E-Book Vouchers

03:35 PM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

Claimed to be "the world's first electronic textbook".
Google does a passable translation, but here I translated some key points myself:

1. developed in cooperation with the leading textbook publishers [of Ukraine?]
2. 9.7" plastic E-Ink screen. [according to the company, plastic screens are not available in volume just yet, so the first limited batches will have glass screens]
3. custom software that not only includes traditional search, TOC, bookmarks and notes but also has a hyperlink feature that allows to revisit key points of the previously studied text without closing the current view [some kind of a split view?]
4. size 24,02×18,07×1,1 cm, weight 350g.
5. native support for 16 file formats
6. 10000 pages on single charge
7. SD card slot
8. ABBYY Lingvo dictionaries [ABBYY is the leading electronic dictionary provider in Russia and ex-USSR]

To be available in Q1 2010.

Via the-ebook.org.

10:54 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I just found something rather interesting on The Daily WTF, a blog I follow.

From the blog post:

"There is something so fundamentally wrong with this," David Daniel notes, "I bought an 'eBook' from the Arizona State University bookstore. At checkout, I wondered why they wanted me to choose a 'shipping address' and a 'carrier'... and now I know. They FedEx'ed me the eBook."

I'm sure you're scratching your head, but I find it fascinating. Look at the image. Do you see the hole in the top of the cardboard square? I think that little piece of cardboard is supposed to be hanging on a hook in a college bookstore. Obviously the hook is supposed on the shelf next to the paper version of the digital textbooks.

In case you're interested, the link in the image leads to www.digitaltextbooks.com. This site is owned by MBS, a textbook disitributor (both paper and digital). MBS is a business partner of B&N College, and currently handles digital textbook sales for B&N. MBS has been in digital textbooks (and ebooks in general) longer than B&N, so don't interpret that to mean a subordinate relationship.

10:15 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Okay, they didn't actually announce the device yet, but the news released today is bigger than just a device. Hearst (a US media conglomerate) just announced the formation of Skiff, its new digital distribution platform. The rumored new device does exist and will be part of this platform. But it' won't be the only device. Skiff platform will support wireless delivery of content to more than just their device. According to the Skiff homepage, supported devices will include notebooks, PCs, tablets, smartphones, and dedicated reading devices.

We don't have much info on the gadget yet, but the press release does mention that it will have a color screen and that Skiff has partnerships with Sprint and Marvell.

company website
press release
Wikipedia

09:18 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

One of MR's inquisitive members just pointed me at a new ebook reader from Netherlands based Ambiance Technologies. Other than a PDF flyer, we don't have much information yet. But we do know it's currently for sale at Expansys for £230.

Here are the important details:

• 6" epaper screen w/ 16 gray level
• SD card slot
• broad format support (appears to be running FBReader)
• MP3 support
• 8 languages supported

05:56 AM by Steven Lyle Jordan in E-Book General | Writers' Corner

Why Is This Hill So Steep? by Steve Jordan is now available in multiple e-book formats, and (sing it with me!) No DRM.

E-books. Electronic. Books.

Sounds like a simple concept, doesn’t it? So why has this simple concept taken so long to develop, when other forms of digital commerce and media have become modern sensations? Because of a series of events and forces acting against it that would seem too improbable to believe in a dime novel.

(Or maybe an e-book.)

If you want to know where e-books are going, it will help to know where e-books have been, and why they still seem to track mud on the floors wherever they go. This book sheds light on a perfect storm of publishers, corporations, professionals, amateurs, dogmas, movements and beliefs, all of which worked either unintentionally or deliberately to forestall the coming of the e-book for over two decades. And it details which of these elements is still going strong and continuing to hold back e-books. At last, you’ll learn how badly e-books have had the cards stacked against them, and why.

If you know of anyone in the print or publishing industry, who could use some insight as to the issues facing e-books... or someone outside of the industry, who's just curious about e-books' history... this is the book to recommend to them. Written from the perspective of a man whose career made him part of the industry, even before it was an industry!

03:48 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

He was on The Colbert Report last night (a late night satirical talk show on Comedy Central). He wasn't as inflammatory as when he wanted to punch you in the face. This time around he was merely misinformed and paranoid.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...sherman-alexie

*****
He signed my Kindle a couple months back at Fall for the Book. I'm really beginning to regret having asked.

10:24 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

There is an academic paper in the December issue of the IFLA* Journal that looks interesting. It's a study of how academic librarians in Italy are integrating ebook collection into their library holdings. You can download it from here as a PDF.

from the abstract:

The paper reports the results of a research project that aimed to investigate how academic librarians are managing the integration of electronic book collections in their library holdings and focuses on the selection criteria and collection development issues. The background is represented by the Italian academic libraries that have been lately involved in electronic book collection development projects, and by the Italian digital publishing e-books offer.

*(International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions)