11:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Update: The maintenance is complete. A faulty hard drive was replaced.

A quick reminder: We are going to have a scheduled hardware maintenance in 15 minutes, involving a short downtime. I cannot say how long it will take as tech personal will have to investigate a damaged hard drive. Holding my thumbs.

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

What was going on this week at MobileRead? Here's your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• TeleRead site issues - a word from David
• Mozilla Fennec powered by E Ink
• Beware of the cold or your e-reader may die
• E Ink taken to the next step: E Tattoo
• Author tries to turn piracy to her advantage
• Wizpac txtr reader announced - the Kindle killer?
• PVI: Flexible e-paper by Q2 2009 / Color by end of 2009
• The Economist on current e-paper developments
• Sony to roll out Reader bundle for Valentine's Day

E-Book Software - Reading Software

• Mobipocket adds BlackBerry Storm and Bold support

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Reminder : Paris Meetup 31 january 2009 [Paris, France]
• MobileRead: New features to group discussions
• Hard disk degraded - maintenance [postponed]

01:22 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

If you just don't have any idea what to get that special someone in your life for the holiday of love next month, you may find the following Sony bundle the right gift. The "Limited Edition Harlequin 60th Anniversary Sony Digital Book Reader in Sangria Red" includes:

• a Sony Reader PRS-505 in Sangria Red with an embossed cover
• 16 Anniversary Harlequin eBook titles and a free copy of "Secret Fantasy" by Carly Phillips
• discount offerings on Harlequin's newly released eBooks for a limited time

Available by the end of the month. Although money can't buy you love, around $300 takes this romantic gift. The rest is up to you.

06:23 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

In this week's edition the acclaimed Economist magazine runs an article on the current technological development of flexible electronic screens. In "Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me" you find an excellent overview of what companies like HP Labs or Plastic Logic are currently working on and how this development could shape the future of e-reading.

The full article is also available online.

Related: PVI: Flexible e-paper by Q2 2009 / Color by end of 2009

05:59 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Completely unsubstantiated "market sources" rumors are making the rounds that Prime View International (PVI), producer of most of the E Ink panels that are out there, is ready to begin mass production of flexible e-paper by Q2 2009 and of color e-paper by the end of this year. Yes, I know, this has been dragging on forever, but at least we're now talking about feasible dates and we won't have to wait too long before finding out whether these rumors are all true.

[via Digitimes]

03:03 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Fabian sent us some noteworthy news about a new e-reader from German company Wizpac Ltd. Dubbed txtr reader, it features everything an e-book affectionado would die for, including (quoted from their press agent):

• The latest 6-inch eInk display for maximum readability
• Advanced power management guaranteeing weeks of reading time
• Full connectivity including USB, Bluetooth, and true mobility with SIM-enabled UMTS/GPRS
• An user interface that will blow away everything you’ve seen on eInk so far
• Bookstore on-device and on the web
• Of course, tight integration with our online platform txtr.com
• and very cool design

Find a full list of specs over here (take a special look at "Special Features"...).

I dug further and found evidence that this reader should support PDF, HTML, Office, and ePub among other e-book formats and that also a developer API is planned with support for on-device 3rd party applications.

Alright, let's take this all with a grain of salt, but should this reader come into existence, it could be a real Kindle/Sony/you-name-it killer for what it matters.

04:19 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Suprina Frazier, self-publishing author, recently discovered that she became the victim of piracy. One of her books got uploaded on the text hosting site Scribd.com, from where anyone with Internet access could download it without the author's consent.

And what did Suprina do? Rather than contacting Scribd with a takedown notice, she turned to the uploader (aka the pirate) himself.

Instead of contacting the site’s copyright agent, I directly contacted the person who pirated my work. Not to take down my e-book. No, to keep it up (after all, it was a freebie anyway), but with certain considerations. I even went so far as to post my requests/considerations in the comment section of her Scribd page so that everyone that links to that book will see that I’ve given this person my permission to leave that e-book up.

I also posted a statement on my main blog giving all my readers permission to post that particular e-book along with another freebie on their sites (with certain considerations, of course).

I decided that if that site can be used to pirate my books, why not use that same site to PROMOTE my books.

So, instead of freaking out about her discovey, Suprina actually felt the piracy in this particular case was a good point ("it was a freebie anyway") and is now looking into an alternative business model. What do you think - could it work to her advantage?

04:26 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Update: We have postponed the maintenance to next Sunday @ 12:00pm EST.

Today our warning system alerted us of a degraded hard disk on the server that powers our web frontend. We have a tech personal currently investigating the situation; I am just giving you the head-ups in case we need to reboot the system unexpectedly.

Alex