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

If you've been absent and are keen to find out what MobileRead was up to this week, check out the links below:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• RIAA Abandons Song Sharing Lawsuits
• Salon Opened for Kindles in Maryland
• Sony promises Revolutionary Vaio Laptop

Miscellaneous - Lounge

• Good News Everyone...It's Christmas!

06:01 AM by CommanderROR in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Dear fellow Mobileread.com users,

once again Christmas has arrived. I hope you will all enjoy a peaceful, relaxed and romantic time with your loved ones.

In the name of all members of the Mobileread.com team I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

And to all those who wanted an eBook Reader for Christmas this year, I hope your wish will be fulfilled!

08:42 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

According to Sony

On the 9th of January you will change the way you look at laptops. Forever.

This means to me a new display technology. Maybe an OLED laptop. Maybe display goggles instead of a screen? Maybe a screen with an extra wide viewable angle?

And if we're really lucky, it will be a display that catches on for dedicated e-book devices as well.

Who knows, but my hopeful guess is that they are introducing some of that 3D screen technology we have been hearing about. I suppose we'll find out January 9th...

From Engadget.

12:31 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

I took this poor, but interesting photo on my Treo while I was in Maryland a couple of months ago. Forgot I even had it, but figured some of you might get a laugh out of it.

Be sure to click through to the article, and display it full size, or you won't be able to read the sign.

A Kindle salon I can imagine and even get excited about. But I can't for the life of me figure out what a Moon Boom Salon would be!

11:52 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

In a move that is long overdue,

The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers' access if they ignore repeated warnings.

This ends a practice that may have only made the situation worse with respect to piracy, and most certainly brought undue hardships to families that were under the RIAA legal guns.

With a new policy of warnings and then loss of internet access, maybe we can all focus on reasonable consumer markets for electronic music sales which are actually a good deal for the consumer.

On the negative side, it is unlikely that anyone will have the money, endurance or desire to fight accusations made by the RIAA. In other words, if someone is unjustly accused of sharing copyrighted music, is there any hope? Probably not. Will this lead to heavy handed and unjust control by the RIAA? One can hope that level heads will prevail, and current file sharers will enticed to become legal purchasers, and innocent file sharers (non-copyrighted music, for example) will be left alone.

Does this matter for e-books? Of course... all content buyers win every time we see DRM usage limited, or we see the consumer enabled to make personal copies of content, or we see heavy handed law enforcement become more balanced. It would be impossible for e-book publishers and sellers to ignore the news of the day for a related industry. Maybe in the book world, some of the pain brought about in the music world will bring perspective that allows everyone to win with e-books - before we make pirates out of every good citizen willing to purchase e-book content fairly.

From Yahoo! Tech.

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

If you've been absent and are keen to find out what MobileRead was up to this week, check out the links below:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Sony Reader being marketed on Dear Author
• Foxit eSlick, New eInk based reader for $229

Miscellaneous - Feedback

• Forum restructuring: Device sections

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead wiki now multi-lingual
• Forum restructuring: Formats sections added

04:32 AM by FizzyWater in E-Book General | News

I looked around and didn't see this posted already. Hope it's not a duplicate.

DearAuthor.com is a (mostly romance) book review and discussion site with a large and vocal group of regular visitors.

Sony has donated Sony Readers for all the Dear Author reviewers! They've also donated three additional Readers for the Dear Author folks to offer for contest giveaways.

Jane at Dear Author is a big advocate for ebooks (and reading, in general).

I thought this was exciting, since I love my Sony, but have wondered if they had any chance against Amazon's aggressive marketing strategy.

You can read about it here.

09:43 PM by lovebeta in E-Book General | News

As Foxit's first-generation e-book reader, eSlick is specially designed to support multiple formats and enables users to view various documents with ease. With the thickness of 0.4” (9.2 mm), the weight of 6.4 ounces(180g) and the introductory low price of $229.99($259.99 MSRP), the Foxit eSlick will become the ideal e-book reading device for users. This first edition will be available very soon. If you are looking for a high quality and low-cost e-book reader, the eSlick definitely is what you’re looking for. Click here to pre-order eSlick right now!

Screen:6" E Ink® Vizplex screen 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 166 dpi, 4-level gray scale
Size: 7.4" x 4.7" x 0.4" (188×118×9.2mm)
Weight: 6.4 ounces (180g) battery included
Color: Black/Gray/White
Connectivity: USB2.0
Operating System: Embedded Linux
Supported Formats:
- eBook Formats: PDF, TXT, Any printable document(after converted to PDF using included software)
- Sound Formats: MP3
Internal Memory: 128MB
Storage Memory: SD Card (2GB included. Supports up to 4GB)

Included Software:
Foxit Reader Pro Pack ($39 license)
Foxit PDF Creator ($29 license)
From http://www.foxitsoftware.com/ebook/